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Someone needs to animate it with stick figure arms and a face 
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Already highly requested here -> https://www.reddit.com/r/reallifedoodles/comments/4dskxt/request_thread_please_make_all_requests_here/ 
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Hey guysâŚIâm a nerd and stayed up for thisâŚ
Here she is! Screenshotted myself on the stream!
Note the ants of people on deck of the barge! That sucker is massive!
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Where was it streamed?
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Sorry!
http://www.portcanaveralwebcam.com/
Still live! The Cam operator is doing great thingsâŚyou can listen in on any radio here as well: http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/21054/web
The screenshots donât give the rocket justice to itâs scale. I really encourage checking this out now if you can.
Edit: If it doesnât load, disable your adblocker, or try to stop your page from loading after refreshing to cancel that script from runningâŚ
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Awesome, thanks.
For anyone still interested, the webcam is still occasionally showing the rocket as they work on it through the day.
Looks like theyâve got the crane attached to the rocket in the webcam, getting ready to take it away. Not sure what the plan is. But it is amazing that we now have an inflatable module going up and a rocket landing on a barge.
Excited for the first reuse attempt, as well as the cost, improvement estimates as well as other data.
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Very nice video of the Falcon 9 history, from Elonâs Twitter.
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What will happen in another 4 years? a very good question. A lot I hope.
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Deviating from the rockets momentarily, I found a particularly interesting thread on Reddit in regards to the satellite internet constellation Musk soft announced in January. (Also included in the post are open job positions in Seattle for SpaceX).
A lot assumption is contingent to its success, yet insofar the capitalist engine Musk has engineered is only gaining velocity. Skeptically, I think 2040 might be optimistic for a Mars colony. Yet the past two decades have progressed tremendously, and I havenât really been alive that long (barely a few years after those two decades), so who knows?
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If the EU does go for the Moon as they recently announced, the benefits for NASAâs Mars objective would also work for Muskâs own efforts.
2040, I sure hope Iâm still alive around that time to see the first successful mission to Mars. And then the subsequent follow up missions.
Not to mention China and India are also itching to get to the moon for resources. Iâm hoping that will become a political drive for governments to invest what is needed to get there.
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I think many people are equating âSpaceX wants to go to Mars by 2025â with âSpaceX wants to start a Martian Colony in 2025.â The latter is insanely optimistic while the former is entirely possible.
The Martian mission in 2025 will probablyâ˘(read:speculation) be nothing more than a flag planting mission ala Apollo. Even more, it wonât be self funded by SpaceX. If anything, SpaceX will have built the rocket and the craft, and this will be bank rolled by NASA. There is no way SpaceX can do this on their own in 9 years. Iâve been trying to not to speculate on it recently, or at least unstil Sept. when SpaceX plans to release itâs Martian Architecture for future missions.
Keep in mind, Iâm ignoring the satellite constellation as factor when making these assumptions. If it goes up, then they will be bringing in ever more money to accelerate the pace.
Honestly, there arenât many resources to be had from the Moon. Itâs a gravity well thatâs arguably farther away in energy spent that Mars is, despite the distance to Mars.
The only resource the Moon has to offer is He-3, and the only real reason to need He-3 is for deuterium + He-3 reaction, or He-3 + He-3 reaction in fusion. Unfortunately, the simplest type of fusion, deutrerium + tritrium, is still years away and both the deuterium + He-3 and He3 + He3 reactions require both higher temperatures to acheive than det + tritrium. Basically, Itâs only necessary for fusion, but we canât do fusion, and the type of fusion it is useful for is even harder than the basic type of fusion.
This brings us back to the question, why go to the moon other than a political dick waving contest?
Believe me, I want to see space exploration take off as much as the next person, maybe even more, but some things just arenât reasonable right now on an economic basis. If it isnât economic, such as flag waving nationalism, the desire to live offworld, or science(most likely in the near future) then a case can be made.
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For NASA, yes the Moon seems a waste of time at the moment. The Chinese will be there in the next 10 years if all goes to plan for them, so let them have their moment. The act of doing that will I think add to the push to Mars for NASA and the public at large will âhopefullyâ get behind this idea. A international Moon base will come in time Iâm sure. Once the Chinese plant a flag, the Indians will want in on it. and so on. Nothing like a little healthy competition to push things forward.
If you want to go to Mars (or anywhere else), the Moon has one fantastic resource to offer: propellant.
Send it to a Lagrange point, which wonât require that much energy from the Moon surface (particularly if you have launch installation, if it industrialize enough), and suddenly big crafts become way, way easier to launch from Earth to other planets.
Thatâs why NASA and SpaceX would really benefit from that EU-led Moon base project. Interestingly, contrary to the US, the EU has no qualms working with the Chinese or anyone else (well, maybe not anyone - I donât see North Korea be welcome), which would help a more efficient international effort.
Note that this would also apply to mining asteroids, so long-term, there are actual economic interest for entrepreneurs back down here.
Thatâs why I really, really want to see this project go somewhere (though I fear that my fellow Europeans wonât be better than the American public about how spending â20% of the budget!!â in space is a âwaste of money!â that should âbe spent on useful project on Earth!ââŚ)
Only from h20 to make liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. That puts a requirement on all future interstellar craft to be hydrolox.
Not only that, there is difficulty in reaching the frozen water. The ice is only found on poles of the Moon. Plane changes are pretty expensive from a dV perspective.
Yes in the far future it may be better to have a refueling station at the LM-1 point. Today and in the near future itâs still cheaper to launch fuel from the Earthâs surface into LEO. Resuable rockets are becoming a thing, why would you put the craft you want to refuel farther away from its tankers. For now, there is no reason.
In my previous post I was arguing that the case for resources from the Moon would only be economic in the future when we have technology that doesnât exist today. This is still limited by that factor.
I was looking at where should we go in the next 10 years. Moon or Mars. Mars is my answer and what I will argue for since it counter-intuitively is slightly easier to get to, much easier to utilize ISRU, at the cost of longer travel times(which adds mission complexity), and lower solar output. The biggest factor is that itâs easier to get to Mars on an empty fuel tank, fuel there and come back, than it is to create an even more complex infrastructure that isnât really important today.