ThatGuyWithALongUsername

Yes, it is the the one from the first successful recovery. It's displayed at the SpaceX headquarters.

That... doesn't seem safe or legal. Cool footage, though, I guess.

Ok... what are we looking at here? Was this at McGregor or was it from TESS? In other words, is this... the new landing legs? EDIT: NVM I'm very smart and definitely read the article. Very exciting, though!

yeah but nobody posted them here and I didn't want to ruin the hype... *shhh* TBH I hadn't seen them in high resolution. From the small leaked clip it looks like the video is an updated Mars transit animation btw, I hope they release that. Aw, c'mon!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AND THERE'S MORE http://www.humanmars.net/2018/04/spacex-big-falcon-rocket-launch-images.html?m=1 UPDATED TED 2018 PICTURES AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Good news on Falcon 9 Block 5: It seems that B1046 (first block 5, Bangabundhu-1, NET May 4) has arrived at Cape Canaveral according to this tweet: This is good news because it probably means whatever kept it at McGregor so long must have been resolved! I was worried that it might have hit a snag on some problem during the test firings, and had to be redesigned for the next 6 months again. Or it could have just been extra testing, as this is the human-rated version, and it is supposed to be reused more often... Can't wait for the launch! Oh and yeah that is Moon Express tweeting this. Huh.

I think it was Zuma, which was this January.

I've never been so excited about a large hollow cylinder in my life!

Ok, I guess I have a little, but that's why they're sending cargo ships first! If those fail, the design could be tweaked afterwards. I can't see that being that much of a problem, as they would most likely only be adding heat shielding, changing the winglets, etc. That isn't too significant, at least not significant enough to drastically change the design. Keep in mind that the design itself, while listed as having a dry mass of 85 tons, is actually 75 tons and the 10 tons are reserved for design changes (source: the transcript).

Of course the design will change, but likely not to the point of it becoming a completely different architecture. A few tones could be added to the mass, it could be about $1M more than the falcon 1- either way, it's still close enough that the current design estimates can be used as a rough approximation. There has certainly been enough development that if anything SpaceX flies to Mars, it would be some derivative of this design, maybe without some of the less necessary innovations (such as landing back on the launch mount). Again, speculating. Also, you seem to be forgetting that we've landed stuff on Mars before. We know plenty about Mars' atmospheric density. Composition may be a bit fuzzier, but we don't need to know that for re-entry.

The BFR isn't quite to the point of having that extensive documentation yet, but it is not "vaporware." Scaled-down Raptor engines have been tested. Early prototypes of the carbon composite tanks have been tested. Yes, the design will slip a bit, but I don't think it will slip that much. The whole reason for scaling down the rocket was to ensure that it gets developed- not only is it needed to colonize mars, but it is also needed for all future SpaceX missions. Also, plans can always change, no matter how detailed they are. Even if a thing already exists, that could change, for example the engines could be swapped out after a failure. We know we're speculating, but we at least have something to base our speculations off of. Remember- that plan you showed was hice and detailed and all... but did it really happen? No.

Sure we do. There are plenty of details easily available from spacex.com/mars. We can even- for example- figure out the delta-v of the BFS using the ISP, wet mass, and dry mass listed- it's about 9415 m/s with no cargo and a full tank and 5676 m/s with a full 150 tons. Not sure how useful that statistic is at this moment, but the point remains that we do have plenty of info.

Not gonna lie, I reeeaaally thought this was dead... good news!

This is actually good news- note that SpaceX HAS A LICENSE! Us space nerd can enjoy our complete coverage once again! That was fast, though. I wonder if the certification process went quicker because they had already done this before? It's still stupid, IMO you should only need a license for a camera with a certain resolution or something. But this discussion sounds like it could get political, so maybe we shouldn't discuss it here.

According to the NOAA website, such a license can take up to 120 days to be issued. I hope NOAA didn't rewen the next 4 months' worth of launch webcasts... Optimally, they have 25 days to sort this out- assuming TESS is also ok because it is a NASA mission, the next affected launch is Bangabundhu-1, which is currently NET April 24 (with the first block 5!) EDIT: Actually, they have even less time! I skipped a launch! EDIT 2: actually nvm I didn't

It took more than 2 tries to stick the booster landing. It's not necessarily harder.

Fifth and sixth sats have been deployed This is getting repetitive

Ah ok. Fixed!

One possibility on Twitter: Edit: there we go

Why would NOAA put restrictions on the livestream? What does this have to do with the weather? Could someone explain?

Okay, how about this- get into orbit with the lowest score and without exploding! ... I have no idea what I'm saying

... 1500 here. New challenge: get into orbit with the lowest score! I knew it was only a matter of time until this kind of stuff would start to appear. Nice job!

1.4.1 is required, but you just have to refresh. I have it now, also!

This may take awhile...

It's available on the store, but the store is down- I managed to purchase it, but then it crashed before I could download it It's been 32 minutes.