Spacex Falcon 9 launch

You might be thinking of another company who did the same this year, but with a lot smaller of a rocket with less applications that didn't travel as far up. Both are milestones. Take a look at the link I just quoted, they mention the other company in there.

 

Is there footage online somewhere? The only link I can find is about 2 hours of the rocket sitting on the launchpad.

 

This is all good and fun until him and Bezos accumulate enough technology and go to war against each other leaving the rest of us to suffer.

 

I found a link by googling. It was 50 min long. Had to speed up to 30 min for the launch. Then it was 10 min to landing. It was really the lead up to and then actual landing that were wild.

 

I can't find it now.

 

There is a link to a youtube video higher in the thread, the launch is about 35 mins into the video.

 

I'm looking forward to the robot wars myself.
https://www.rt.com/usa/272074-japan-america-giant-robot-battle/

 

SpaceX finally did it.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11392138/spacex-landing-success-falcon-9-rocket-barge-at-sea

 

Watching the landing is completely mesmerizing.

 

Why is he landing it on a barge in the ocean. Seams like the rocking motion of the waves would make it more difficult?

 

Much higher difficulty. As I understand it, the sea landings are important for safety and flexibility. I think SpaceX only plans around 1/3 of missions to be land returns.

 

Requires much less fuel to bring the rocket to a floating pad that can be positioned anywhere in the ocean, than to backtrack against its momentum to come back to the launch pad. More fuel = more weight, which requires a bigger rocket.

 

While you're exactly right it seems like there would be a way to land it on a random island that is in the general path of the launch.

 

Musk tweeted this awesome video and promptly deleted it for some reason.

https://youtu.be/lSx4DGBstYA

*Can't get the youtube tags to work for some reason.

 

I think it's because depending on the type of launch (altitude, payload, orbit, etc), there's a wide range of landing zones. They decided a water platform is the most flexible option, even if its the more difficult one.

 

That makes sense.

 

If you can dodge wrench, you can dodge a ball.

 

Second consecutive drone ship landing early this morning - this one returning twice as fast as previous mission. Pretty exciting stuff.

 

Is that good?

 

Hey, it happens and the launch pad should feel honored it came twice as fast.