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5 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

I believe I was there in July 2001 when it happened the time before. I recall because the guide said it was unusual. I also recall getting annoyed at her for not having heard of the Enterprise.

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12 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Wait... so does this mean the Heavy will do The Roll after liftoff??

I really hope so, but all the animations have showed it horizontally aligned on its way up. Not really too surprising, not with how tough SpaceX builds their rockets.

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3 hours ago, .50calBMG said:

I really hope so, but all the animations have showed it horizontally aligned on its way up. Not really too surprising, not with how tough SpaceX builds their rockets.

Right,  but if you look at the pad (I hadn’t before), the flame trench and TEL are aligned north-south... so if the FH is going to fly horizontally aligned, it’ll have to do a 90°-ish roll. Maybe the F9 does this already, but it’s a lot harder to spot on a single stick. 

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Actually on the site:

OMpH2he.jpg

(Sorry for the pitiful quality of the phone)

The sky is pretty clear right now, but there is some nice wind gusts, and a good number of cumulus are coming from the East-South-East. Let’s hope it will not change anything.

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2 minutes ago, Julien Kerman said:

Will they land the first stage again?

No, this launch is expendable.

Of Course I Still Love You could not recover the stage, get back, then be back out for FH. In addition, it's an old booster.

Edited by tater
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2 minutes ago, Julien Kerman said:

Will they land the first stage again?

EDITS No. In the pics @tater shared, you can see the grid fins/landing legs, but it's not being landed, I think this will be it's 3rd relaunch judging by the 'sooty' look of the booster, am I correct?

Edited by Spaceception
I'm dumb
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17 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

EDITS No. In the pics @tater shared, you can see the grid fins/landing legs, but it's not being landed, I think this will be it's 3rd relaunch judging by the 'sooty' look of the booster, am I correct?

It is the second launch, not the third. The Block 3 and 4 boosters can't really be used for more than 1 reflight without extensive refurbishment. Block 5 will be a lot better in this regard

They aren't washing the boosters at all now, though they do clean off the soot in lines to do weld inspections.

It has landing legs and grid fins for re-entry and controlled propulsive splashdown, but it will not be recovered. My guess is that they'll use this flight to test their recovery margins with a shorter entry burn, just to see what performance improvements they have. The last few tonnes of fuel are always worth the most, from a dV perspective, so if they show that even a Block 3-4 booster can handle a 50% shorter entry burn and still touch down safely, that's a few tonnes of extra fuel they can push into the upper stage before separation.

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