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Skylon

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Finally! After all these years! I can't describe how beautiful, powerful, and wonderful it was! Peoples from all around the world were here to assist to this inaugural launch! The sound, the vibrations, the sight were simply impressive. I will never forget that day for sure!

Here are some of the shots took this afternoon:

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  On 2/7/2018 at 12:25 AM, Leszek said:

That earth looks like it is getting bigger again.  I wonder if they are going to boost and perigee or apogee. To bad I don't know what the orbital period is.

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At perigee, almost certainly, thanks to Good Sir Oberth.

  On 2/7/2018 at 12:24 AM, HvP said:

Very good point @Starman4308

BTW how's the view from up there?

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I'm halfway tempted to change my avatar for that, but I am not, sadly, the Starman.

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  On 2/7/2018 at 12:29 AM, XB-70A said:

Finally! After all these years! I can't describe how beautiful, powerful, and wonderful it was! Peoples from all around the world were here to assist to this inaugural launch! The sound, the vibrations, the sight were simply impressive. I will never forget that day for sure!

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You're one lucky Hombre! I'm jealous.

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  On 2/6/2018 at 9:21 PM, DAL59 said:

He's planning on 2024.  How could something get delayed by a factor of 5, especially now that he just proved the FH works?  

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Shall we enumerate the ways?  First off, SpaceX has a long track record of missing their announced target dates by wide margins.  (Let's not forget that FH was announced in 2011 with a target launch date of 2013.)  Second off, there's a whole [censored] lot more to a Mars mission than reaching LEO.  Pretty much none of which SpaceX has demonstrated.

2050 may be a bit much, but I wouldn't expect anything in 2024 except a delay to the next window.

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So now that we have a couple hours until TMI reignition, thoughts and impressions?

 I played hooky from a work- related class to witness the launch as it happened, and it was everything I expected it to be. Doubly- exciting since there were no spoilers. I was cheering like a maniac during all of the landmarks that went right, plus the absurdity of watching Spaceman chillin' in his roadster :D. Simultaneous booster flyback in formation... How cool was that??

Best,
-Slashy

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  On 2/7/2018 at 12:18 AM, HvP said:

Falcon Heavy is capable of sending payloads directly to Pluto with no gravity assists needed. I did not expect that.

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You should - New Horizon's 400 kg spacecraft was launched direct on Atlas V 551. FH should even be more capable.

 

I'm not sure, but I see listings of 3.5 tonnes to Pluto direct on FH's wiki. Is that just something that flew off Elon's words ?

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  On 2/7/2018 at 12:56 AM, YNM said:

You should - New Horizon's 400 kg spacecraft was launched direct on Atlas V 551. FH should even be more capable.

 

I'm not sure, but I see listings of 3.5 tonnes to Pluto direct on FH's wiki. Is that just something that flew off Elon's words ?

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Actually, New Horizons used a Jupiter assist to get out to Pluto. It wasn't launched direct.

 

In other news, holy moly that launch was the coolest thing. Well, okay. Maybe not THE coolest - F9 flight 20 was pretty good too. Still.

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Ok, so multiple articles confirm that New Horizons did indeed use a gravity assist at Jupiter. edit to add: although it wasn't strictly necessary.

The Falcon Heavy is reported to carry twice the tonnage of any existing launch vehicle. But of course that must come with the assumption that we are comparing similar mass payloads and similar mission profiles or else the comparison is meaningless.

Edited by HvP
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  On 2/7/2018 at 1:00 AM, IncongruousGoat said:

Actually, New Horizons used a Jupiter assist to get out to Pluto. It wasn't launched direct.

 

In other news, holy moly that launch was the coolest thing. Well, okay. Maybe not THE coolest - F9 flight 20 was pretty good too. Still.

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Clarification: New Horizons did use a slingshot, but if they missed their launch window, they could have made a later, direct window that would've taken a few more years to get there. In terms of capabilities, though, the Atlas 551 is known to be able to do a direct Pluto transfer, and there's no reason to think FH can't do the same.

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  On 2/7/2018 at 1:07 AM, munlander1 said:
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It would have been nice to have a flawless 3 booster recovery, but not mission breaking, fortunately.

Apparently, 2 outer engines failed to reignite upon reentry, leaving too little thrust from the center engine and it splashed down beside the barge as required by its fail-safe programming.

Also, the boosters are 16 stories high, so there's that!

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