http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/12/1...mission-update
Space X launch tonight around 8:30 details here if you want to watch live.
They are going to try and save the first stage with a landing on land, but
this is secondary.
http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/12/1...mission-update
Space X launch tonight around 8:30 details here if you want to watch live.
They are going to try and save the first stage with a landing on land, but
this is secondary.
While no one ever listens to me,
I am constantly being told to be quiet.
In a world of snowflakes,
be the heat..
Full video by the corp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4
Truly amazing to see the first moon launch on a fuzzy camera and to watch history again
tonight with the first landing of a rocket stage back on Earth and to see the deployment
of 11 satellites on a crystal clear camera feed. Just damn.
Last edited by l921428x; 12-22-2015 at 12:53 AM.
While no one ever listens to me,
I am constantly being told to be quiet.
In a world of snowflakes,
be the heat..
They stuck the landing!
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul
"(The Second Amendment) isn't a law but an enumerated right, a right that we cannot allow to be corralled to make politicians and ant-gun fanatics happy." ~Old Grump
That's cool stuff. I remember watching a lot of this stuff when I was a kid in 68, 69, 70, etc...It was fascinating.
In a related story, there will be a Return of Killer Klowns from Outer Space movie in 2018, or so I heard.
The first lunar landing could have been televised in a much higher resolution (and in color), but there were bandwidth constraints.
Analog TV (crappy old 480i) consumes about 6 megahertz bandwidth. Todays digital compressed TV has much more resolution and takes up less bandwidth.
The simple reason that the Apollo 11 video was so "crappy" is that spacecraft telemetry was more important than box office ratings, so very little bandwidth was reserved for useless (from an engineering standpoint) TV.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
I understand what you are saying
understand what I am saying.
Considering how much room, physically, the computing power of a Iphone
would have taken up then. I was remarking on the tech increase just in
my 58 years. If the political aspect of the next 50 years wasn't so creepy, I
think I would want to watch. Then again I may see it. Now I just scared myself.
But there was a first stage rocket booster that was successfully returned to a
pad in Fla. and that was a first. I have basically seen the whole space exploration
push, I still remember yelling "GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO"!!!!!! when the Columbia
was launched and watching the Challenger explode. Voyager has left our solar system
to travel forever, rovers and landers on Mars, landing a craft on a comet........
I guess that is what I was really trying to convey.
Last edited by l921428x; 12-23-2015 at 10:04 AM.
While no one ever listens to me,
I am constantly being told to be quiet.
In a world of snowflakes,
be the heat..
I know what you mean. I was 12 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It's something I'll never forget.
And it's certainly thrilling to see another first... the successful return of a booster stage which will enable refurbishment and re-use, saving millions of $$$. Most people don't realize that they've seen history in the making.
On the flip side of that, think of the beautiful Apollo S1C first stage boosters. Designed, hand built, tested and retested to the utmost perfection humans could achieve. Then, after less than three minutes of operation, they were cut loose, continued to coast upward for a short while, then fell back down, slamming into the Atlantic Ocean at close to Mach 1 and crumpling like aluminum foil to sink to the bottom, presumably never to be seen again.
However, recently Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) found the S1C that boosted Apollo 11:
Too bad these couldn't have been brought back... if not for a safe landing and re-use, at least intact to be placed in a museum.
Unfortunately, weight and booster performance were the #1 priority. Parachutes to bring them down gently? Nope, too much weight. Save some propellant for a safe, powered landing? No way. Too much weight.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
Old v New tech. Those Saturn V motors hammered the world when lit.
I think 1 thing I will always regret is not going to Fla. to see a shuttle launch.
Hell I built models of the launch platforms for the Saturns. The were 13" tall.
While no one ever listens to me,
I am constantly being told to be quiet.
In a world of snowflakes,
be the heat..
Think of it... a SINGLE F-1 engine from the Saturn V first stage had a bit more thrust than all three Space Shuttle Main Engines (not counting the solid boosters) and consumed THREE METRIC TONS of propellant per second! That's ONE engine!
The S1C first stage had FIVE F-1 engines... so that's FIFTEEN TONS(!!!) of propellant PER SECOND burned, transformed from hundreds of degrees below zero liquid oxygen and warm kerosene instantly into a 5000 degree F. flame blasting out of the nozzles at over Mach 4 and generating 7.5 million pounds of sea level thrust (which increased to over 8.5 million pounds of thrust at altitude).
I'm filled with awe every time I think about it.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
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