Brotoro

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I watched the night launch of the Apollo 17 Moon rocket on TV... the last lunar mission of the Apollo program. Almost 50 years later, I got to see another Moon rocket night launch. My TV screen is considerably larger this time. Yeah, a ground track would be nice.

Perigee-raising burn. It's like they are playing KSP. ...and NOW it's in orbit. Interesting view from the camera on the solar array wobbling during burn.

MECO. Let's see if they can stick the booster stage landing.

Burned out SEBs are spewing sparks like it's 4th of July.

And we have flammin', freakin' liftoff! Not at all like a Saturn V... that puppy moves.

APUs chug chug chug chug...It's like a steam locomotive.

Strap in, kiddies! Here we go!

First stage landed.

Coverage is Live

The separation in timing of the two boosters certainly seemed greater than on the previous FH flights, and it was cool to see the view from the trailing booster as it passed the exhaust cloud of the leading booster's entry burn, and the view of the leading booster from the trailing booster as the leader landed. Falcon Heavy launches are sadly rare, so it's too bad we didn't have better launch weather. But cool none the less.

The liftoff footage was sadly foggy, and the iced-up booster cameras was disappointing, but the view came through for the dual landings of the boosters. Hot stuff!

The lighting on that launch was great. Interesting texture on the booster visible. And the sunlit boost plume visible in the background as the booster landed on the droneship!

Nice landing.

The booster comes in at a lot more of an angle than I expected at that altitude. I guess we normally see the ones coming in for landing on the landing pads at Canaveral looking mostly along the direction they are coming from. This is going to make it even more interesting to see a Super Heavy or Starship come in for a landing at 39A if they follow a similar angle.

Interesting to see the drone ship lights from the onboard video before landing burn.

I made a scrapbook project for cub scouts about the Gemini 6 & 7 rendezvous mission. So I'll feel old along with you.

You can see the deck pitching by looking at the top of the booster shadow after landing. Yeah. It's like we live in the future or something.

Starlink coverage is now available in Estonia. Where's my subscription? Entry burn looked good. Landed. Landing video was great.

Launch coverage live. T-4 minutes Weather looks clear and nice in Vandenberg. Liftoff. Looking fine. MECO. Stage 2 good. Fairing sep. 4th flight for both fairing halves. Interesting tidbits (ice, I assume) drifting off of booster.

Landed. Nice video.

Also, with a reusable spacecraft, I would expect that they don't want to spend more time than needed burning the retro thrusters, since that decreases their operational lifetime.

Did SpaceX explain why they painted parts of the Starship black? Not that I'm complaining, since it will make it much easier to paint a simple model rocket version of it (as opposed to having to paint the ragged edge pattern of the tiles).

Ship 24 needs a little cubesat that it can very slowly spit out before pirouetting so that the cubesat can quickly photograph tile condition before re-entry.

How many strakes does that Heavy have? and what the heck is in the lower right? It looks like giant-sized planks of wood, but that can't be right.