sevenperforce

Hold up, word of Elon:

Before S1? I really doubt that. It's higher and going faster. A 2015 GoPro video ran about 2 minutes, and that was from after separation to before entry.

Successful payload deployment. Microsat deployment range is outside of the ground station coverage.

Very visible venting on S2. Does anyone know how long it will take for the fairing to come home?

I'm listening to the hosted webcast; is anyone listening to the net to see if there are callouts for the fairing? How long does the fairing re-entry take?

Direct orbital insertion on this stage 2; no coast period. I hate seeing cores expended, but I keep reminding myself that every time a reused core is expended, it's money in the bank for SpaceX.

"SpaceX will be attempting to recover this fairing today."

MECO, successful separation, and successful restart! First view of Fairing 2! Deployed!

First launch of Fairing 2.0! Lovely contrail approaching Max-Q, and F9 is throttling back up after successfully traversing this milestone!

It was stated on the hosted webcast. I'm guessing they will use the fins to test an entry without a retroburn to see how long it lasts and whether they can afford shorter entry burns. First view of microsats: I see no thrusters. T-30 seconds.

They're not landing it. Grid fins will be used for descent control but no entry or landing burn will be performed.

PAZ is going to a sun-synch polar orbit. So does this mean...what exactly?

Music is "Flight Proven". This is also the first West Coast Sooty.

RP-1 topped, LOX loading started.

One hour to launch of PAZ and Fairing 2.0! Quote from a Redditor about the new fairings: As I understand it, the airstream disturbance from the large and fluffy fairing kept fouling the steerable chutes, so Fairing 2.0 was designed to have chute attachment points that would prevent this. Also, we have eyes on Hispasat, and we've got confirmation of titanium grid fins! So it looks like they may be pretty confident about their chances of recovery. They don't like to risk losing those bigger, more expensive fins.

If they can really bring back a booster after sending a 6.2-tonne bird to GTO, my spreadsheet is wrong in all the right places.

Has anyone had eyes on the booster to see whether they're titanium or aluminum grid fins?

I feel you there. I have just gotten in the habit of "Right-click, Autostrut, Rigid Attachment" after every new part.

Before this thread gets shut down, why not return to the question of whether sharing individual SOIs (with allowing position warp within SOIs) as a way of implementing multiplayer would be a way of avoiding paradoxes?

I'm suspicious of their numbers as well. That being said, the baseline Vulcan is supposed to be pretty darn cheap:

I may be missing something earlier upthread, but has there been much discussion of ULA's "SMART" reuse plan? They claim dramatic cost savings over the booster-landing method.

I don't think it's nearly as high. Remember, also, that the fineness ratio of the F9 on return is much lower, since it is the same width but far shorter.

The tank is still pressurized on its way back, so the strength should be the same, but its load is much lighter.

Realistically, you'd probably want to put the tanker up in elliptic orbit first, fill it by successive fuel runs, and then send up the crew vehicle, rather than sending multiple tanker flights to a loitering crew vehicle. Also, I think I may have spoken too soon. The OML of the Falcon 9 fairing 1.0 is already 5.2 meters, not 5 meters as I misremembered, so this may not be Fairing 2.0 after all.

Oh, indeed. Musk stated the planned lunar mission profile was to place a tanker in elliptical Earth orbit, launch the crew BFR to rendezvous with it, refuel, and then go on to the Moon, land, and come back without refueling. Of course, it would take multiple flights to get the tanker up to full capacity.