cubinator

Lunar Eclipse:

No. Ocean water sucks for rockets.

Lunar Eclipse:

This time they used a better water mod.

"This rocket was meant to test very high retrothrust landing in water so it didn’t hurt the droneship, but amazingly it has survived. We will try to tow it back to shore."

Well you didn't really miss anything because they didn't show it on the webcast and we only found out later.

It says a lot that SpaceX can test all sorts of stuff on the first stage, all as part of the secondary objective on every flight. Their rockets are already extremely versatile compared to others, and that's only going to get better.

Lately on these controlled "expendable" flights I've been picturing the booster flying in a loop-de-loop before splashing down hard with a glorious explosion.

*It stayed determined...

When you see a skyscraper with a glass roof and wonder what they do about micrometeorite impacts.

So what we learn from that video is: "Our company is getting a GEO commsat." At least the video they played in the SpaceX webcast before launch had some details.

Good. Really good. ... Really good.

nevermind

Notice how nonchalant the MC people sound about S1 right now

And there goes the fairings

Probably the fairing boat, as they said "vessel" rather than ASDS

"Recovery vessel AOS" !!!! Fairing boat?

Not showing view from the rocket for some reason..

So despite this flight being expendable, they are having landing legs and fins on it to do a "pretend recovery"? I hope they can show the landing.

Seems likely.

Understood, but are the boosters and barge physically able to do that if they decided it would be useful?

I understand quite well that they don't have enough time between launches to recover both boosters, but it just makes me wonder, just a little bit... ...What if they just landed it a little off to the side, so they had room...

I got very nice views of the partial phase, looked through binoculars until it set in the trees shortly after totality started.

The clouds cleared out! I got a great view of the partial eclipse, and a little bit of totality, but it's below the treeline now (not saying much in northern winter) and will set soon, and it's my usual time to get up and make breakfast anyway. That was very nice! Expect a song and/or some pixel art in the next few days.

The wind is blowing on the clouds, so I might get to see them break up. For now, though, I've tuned into the live stream on Youtube.