StrandedonEarth

The point being, the Shuttle Orbiter cannot fire its engines without the external fuel propellant tank, whereas the F9 has fuel propellant tanks as part of that oh-so-reuseable first stage. One plan that was considered was to partly refuel a landed first stage on the barge and fly it back to land.

They're live! Edit: And they're done

That is a fantastic read! Thanks for posting that! Lots of great news and info.

Wow! Nice pics! I used to see auroras when I lived up north, and one summer near the 49th parallel we saw a dim green flickering across the sky that lasted for hours, along with satellites and meteors. That was one of my best most favorite camping trips.

Wow, now that will be a huge achievement!

Well, the F9 needs a brand new second stage, and fairings (for now). and, um..... that's it? Apples and really big oranges. I only mentioned the Shuttle before someone started arguing semantics about reflight. And 'lo and behold, we started arguing semantics about reflight. *shrug* This way is much better. But yeah, major Congrats to the whole SpaceX team are in order. So, Congrats!

Agreed. But the Orbiters did refly, albeit after a thorough inspection of the entire bird and overhaul of the engines. Each one also had a major, thorough overhaul and upgrade at some point too.

No idea, this first one would have had more intensive checking than future flights, but I'm sure it must have been less than a Shuttle Orbiter refurb, which had a standing army to work on it Just the tiles alone on that bird.... The SRB's were essentially remanufactured with a negligible cost saving over new motor casings. Salt water is not kind. It's hard to put a price tag on Shuttle flights, but there's this: Major differences: No thermal tiles (35,000 of them!) to inspect, and the Merlin's were not overhauled like the SSME's were.

In Elon's little speech, he said they'd been working on it for 15 years. This day has been a long time coming! Edit: Oops, quoted the wrong person. Fixed

I think it was posted farther up that it will be donated for SES to display. It was hard to hear parts of the hosted webcast over all that cheering!

This is what I find on that. Didn't hear anything during the 'cast, though. Oh yeah, I saw that. It was glowing just like in KSP (imagine that!) Then the camera lens got all speckled and the feed stopped. It was time to worry. Frankly, my dear, I can't give a like!

This thread has used up my allotment of likes for today. The Age of Re-flight has begun! (Ok, Shuttle did reflight too, but with an much, much more expensive turnaround)

Nice little speech from Elon. who looks like he wasn't able to sleep last night! There will be video, it's stored on the ship. The rocket landing makes it lose the live satellite feed. That was simply awesome! Too busy watching full-screen to post during the flight ninja'd, of course

Just got home from work. 30 minutes to go, huh? Time for a hype shower!

I understand all the reasons why there is really no other option but splashing it, but I still can't help but think it's a waste of all that mass-on-orbit (a precious resource, IMO)

Commencing chill-down on the Hype engines...

There's been a remake of It, coming out on my birthday (Sept 8). Can't wait. Looks good! Um, it is a horror movie, so you've been warned. The trailer should be safe enough for the forums. If not, I apologize, and the mods can remove it. Edit: For info on The Dark Tower, scroll down to the later posts.

We don't get much in the way of catastrophic weather here, but it's getting to be about that time for a once-in-400-year magnitude 8+ earthquake.

I'm going to go get some copper. Cu later!

Now that is fantastic to hear! First I'd heard about it.

That's how the BattleStar Galactica survived the Cylon attack. Since its many computers were not networked together, the Cylon virus couldn't shut down the whole thing.

But a GP hull doesn't protect against EM radiation (unless coatings are applied to the inside). Or tidal effects

This. While I use mods, I would prefer not to have to, at least not for some things. It's a hassle, finding them, updating them after patches (CKAN helps), etc. I haven't bothered getting EVA 'chutes, but that will be nice to have. It's one thing to go looking for extra challenges (life support, construction time, etc.), or pretty scenery, or more parts, but there are other useful things that haven't found their way into the stock game for one reason or another. Mods I would happily pay for if stockified include: A dV/TWR readout is something that was hinted at and then quietly dropped (I realize edge cases make it complicated, but even just a disclaimer could be a workaround). Felipe (Harvester) wanted "seat-of-the-pants" rocket building and flying, which is fine fun at the start of the game, but quickly gets frustrating later in the game. TriggerAu, I know you've been conspicuously silent about getting KAC and TWP into stock, but those are also incredibly useful to have. I know they added "Warp to.." to stock, but that's a poor substitute and doesn't help multi-mission planning. Navball Docking Alignment Indicator is a tiny little mod that makes docking so much easier for rookies (I think that was my first mod, if not that then KAC). KIS/KAS has been incredibly useful for all sorts of things on the fly, and would also be nice in stock. All of the preceding stuff can be tied into the tech tree for when you actually need them, since they're not needed right at the start. If they were all packaged into one DLC, I would happily pay for it. I really must check out @RoverDude's construction mods one of these days. Looking them over, his mods could be DLC's unto themselves. Construction ports would be an excellent addition to stock, helping to reduce part-count-induced lag. I realize there are licensing issues and such, but if they want still more of my money....

Well, yeah, they did, and travel up to 0.8c is common in the Nivenverse, but I dunno about 0.9999c....