CatastrophicFailure

The point remains. If you want to argue the explosive potential of 10,000 tonnes of rocket fuel vs a small nuclear weapon, fine. Meanwhile I’ll be over here ————————> in this spring-damped bunker several yards underground.

Interesting indeed. But I’m guessing it’s not backwards compatible to 1.2.2...

Aw, man. I’m still in 1.2.2. That moment when you have to describe your Kerballing in terms generally reserved for nuclear weapons. Every time I see this I have to remind myself you’re not talking about whales. What mod are you using to get that healthy glow? or maybe it’s just the radiation...

Just this kind of venting was observed on the Zuma mission, over northern Africa, shortly before the upper stage re-entered: So, question here: On this kind of MRS super-synchronous shutdown, they still need to dispose of the upper stage after separation. Any ideas how they actually give it this nudge? They could adjust the burn attitude so that while raising the apogee up to SSO, the perigee on the return also dips into the atmosphere, but that would place the payload at risk if there was some problem and it was unable to fire its own thruster at apogee to begin circularizing. The on-board RCS could probably give the needed kick at apogee to drop the perigee enough, but after the FH launch I kind of got the impression SpaceX wasn't accustomed to maintaining contact/control with the upper stage that long after launch (3 hours or more, after passing the Van Allen belts, too).

I’m reminded of a certain out of date cigarette ad, which, oddly enough, sort of resemble the long, skinny Falcon 9. And also emit smoke and kill you if you get too close.

And now the long wait begins.

Mission success!

I wonder what the plane’s call sign is, or if he’s got a special reg number?

Did the fairing sep look a bit... slower than usual?

Woohoo! According to SpaceFlightNow, we have a NET date for STP-2, the next Falcon Heavy flight! June 13. Which fortunately is not a Friday. Tho it’ll slip anyway, so...

That’s why they’re doing it with an “expendable” booster they don’t need to count on recovering, anyway. I think it speaks a lot to how the design has matured that they can attempt any kind of landing at all with a sat this heavy, and still spare the mass for legs, fins, and a smidge of fuel. Today’s hype train: (just a bit less hypey than usual)

They’re trying to do more with a lot less fuel. This is a big, heavy satellite they wouldn’t have attempted recovery on at all not long ago. So the booster be coming in with no boostback burn, no entry burn, and a 3 engine landing burn. The larger titanium grid fins let them do more aerodynamically to slow it down by “gliding” farther. My personal guess is that this whole landing try is an attempt to verify new procedures after the FH core mishap.

My guess is, they’re still planning to test their previously planned super hot re-entry, even if the booster just goes splash. Note it still has landing legs too.

Since I have a cold at the moment, I’ve just been taking both and hoping for the best.

However: Also:

Also possibly interesting: going thru the launch manifest here, and there’s only two on the books for March. The upcoming HispaSat from the Cape (which will be the 50th Falcon launch ), then another slew of Iridiums out of Vandy near the end of the month. Seems odd. Then in April, there’s currently four five! on the list: CRS-14 on the 2nd, Bangabandhu (and the debut of Block 5) on the 5th, TESS on the 16th, more Iridiums on the 28th, and SES-12 on the 30th. Now obviously somethings going to slip, but that’s a busy month! I wonder what the chances are they’ll move something forward into March, or perhaps the lull is to prepare for B5?

Sparklers. No, really. They’re there for ambience, the hydrolox M1 engine just doesn’t put off the billowing clouds of launch smoke I wanted. That’s (I think) the biggest engine in my save on a 10 meter booster. Finding a payload even worthy of that will be a challenge (although it does show some promise as a moderately useful SSTO...).

. . . ?

Thanks alot, ULA. Hmph.

Year 8, day 343... After a long, dark, cold cruise in deep space, NOVA Otho finally approaches its destination... And include sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen.

B5 is supposed to debut on Bhangbandhu(sp?) launch, which was recently delayed till early April.

There’s two more flights this year. ArabSat 6a is still on the manifest for Soon™️.

Well, it did work perfectly right off the pad... except for one teeny tiny capacity miscalculation, which I’m sure has a certain engineer relegated to scrubbing the coke out of engine bells for the rest of the year...

Like dis guy ^^^^^^ said, especially since they’re Block 5 bits and they didn’t recover the core last time, I’d wager they’ll try again just to make sure they’ve got the bugs out. Also, for the science of tearing it down and seeing how it survived a “max damage” recovery, since the B5 is supposed to specifically address that. Article says all three cores are B5.