For anyone else who has been trying to figure out what they’re actually doing, they’re launching a car out to the orbital distance of Mars. It won’t go near Mars because of legal issues.* Instead, it’s going into a highly-elliptical orbit around the sun that loops out roughly 1.5 AU from the sun. (The next launch window for Mars via Hohmann transfer starts in April of this year, so they’re too early to go near Mars)
I’d love to see what happens to the Roadster after a few years in that orbit.
*Something about 99% chance of not hitting Mars initially and a 95% chance of not hitting it after 50 years. It’s a concern about contaminating the planet. So SpaceX would have to sanitize the entire car - which would be a significant waste of resources. The car is just taking the place of a test mass for the launch.
EDIT: Launch delayed two hours to 3:05 eastern time.
EDIT: Launched delayed another 40 minutes to 3:45 eastern time.
After the launch we were discussing this in our lab. Despite the fact were 2 months early for the optimal window it’s ‘only’ about 500-1000 ish m/s more launching now according to pork chop plots. Thats a substantial amount but with a small enough payload that different can be negligible.
That launch was gorgeous though and so cool to watch. Stage separation was so much more aggressive than I expected and the synchronous landing was great. First display of rockets flying in formation too!
If they can do this now, then it can’t be too long until Elon sends the empty crew capsule on a return trip to Mars orbit and back again. As a round trip test. I hope they place a dummy crew or two in the capsule and have lots of HD cameras and hot microphones so we can listen in on all the sounds throughout the flight. Like the Blue Origin video with the live mic, but this time 24/7 for the whole flight mission, with views out of the crew window.
Given that the payload was not significant compared to potential payload, and even with the less-than-optimal geosynchronous burn prior to the Mars departure, would this launch be capable of that?
I don’t expect them to change it, given the lack of sterilization of the payload, but it would be pretty cool to park it in a Mars orbit forever.
Edit: being the geo statement from the Scott Manley video, but he also said the two side boosters would have ~15 second delay, so…accuracy unclear.
Also, a little disappointing that the center booster failed, but a minor hiccup overall.
FH will not be manrated. In the post launch interview he said BFR should be coming online soon enough anyways that it’s not necessary.
The payload mass decreases the farther in the solar system you want to send it. Yeah it’s possible to get it out to Mars. If they wanted to fly by they only had to wait 2 months. Hell, they could have done it now if they had the precision.
The hard part is manufacturing a spacecraft that can last many months or more in interplanetary space. It’s a lot harder than using your second stage to put you on a ballistic trajectory. The Falcon second stage has just had it’s longest operational life time in space ever at 6 hours, which was one of the mission objectives for this launch because it’s necessary for direct GEO insertions.
I hope the party went well, what with delays and such. I was thinking about the subwoofer idea as all those enthusiastic idiots were drowning out every element of interesting audio during the launch. I know that SpaceX tries to convey a sense of excitement over their launches, but the level of noise really detracted from enjoying that amazing experience.
If anyone finds a recording without the screaming, please link it here.
A couple more tidbits.
They overshot Mars and the Tesla will be headed out towards the asteroids. Apparently people are champing at the bit to find out what the new orbit will be so they can perform a risk assessment on other bodies. The overshoot is disappointing.
The rocket was built from block 3 and block 4 parts, so they’re not going to reuse either of the landed cores. Only block 5 components are to be used multiple times and there are no plans for development of a block 6. The BFR is the focus of work beyond block 5.
One last mention is that I was wondering what they were going to do with the massive crossbars that secure the three cores together. Any other organization would just eject them. Not SpaceX. They rotated those babies up and stowed them against the center core. It’s stuff like that that warms my heart.
That was great launch.
I was curious about the landing if they going to risk landing the boosters together or with some slight delay to minimize the risk of bumps and such.
Now i wonder whether they will start making some aerobatic displays with them, since they nailed it so much
aquabelles :-)) with rockets …rocketbelles
I was thoroughly impressed by the synchronization of the two side boosters - until I realized that it was the same video feed twice. Somebody at SpaceX goofed, and it fooled a lot of people. Matt’s video has both booster feeds, and the video again makes sense. They have great automatic flight control, but not the perfection suggested by the live video.
Here’s another interesting take on the launch from the guy who does Smarter Every Day.
He’s standing on the VAB, so there’s a definite delay in the audio, but it’s free of all that cheering. Also, he focuses on the sound of the launch - which I brought up - and you also get a little bit of the sensation of the rocket going from the ground all the way into space. I wish he’d thought to try to convey that sensation a bit more clearly.
As a bonus, he documents the triple sonic boom that comes off each booster as it returns to the pad area. Its very clear, so I think you’ll enjoy it.
I wasn’t able to get my hands on any big speakers in time, but I don’t think that would have mattered all that much given the audience. Nobody there had seen previous launches (or the live launch earlier that afternoon) so they really didn’t know what to expect. We watched the full broadcast starting at T-22 minutes, with full commentary for context, and the sounds of the SpaceX team cheering in the background.
As we neared the final stages of the countdown I could feel the excitement from the people around me… the significance of what they were about to see, and the build up of excitement in the presentation. (SpaceX does an excellent job here)
During the launch my “Non-Space Geek” friends became “Space Geeks” as it were… their faces were locked in a state of awe, and the energy in th e room was excellent. The Launch was wow, the tesla reveal was spectacular… and the landing of the two boosters had people shaking their heads in disbelief…
Follow that up with video of Starman floating out above the earth… A evening of win all round.
I will be hosting more private Launch parties in the future, everyone loved it, and quite a few people were asking for links to the YouTube channel, asked questions about other companies, what SpaceX was doing all this for, etc.
I definitely recommend hosting one in the future, even if you can’t watch it live
Speaking of the boosters landing, anybody noticed (in that video, at 30:30) how the thrusters were firing on both sides to stabilize the booster ? For a second that reminded me of the eternal discussion in our space games how thrusters firing in opposite directions doesn’t “look realistic” ^^
I meant to respond to this because I think I know the reason. Typically for cold gas thrusters you have a minimum impulse possible based on the minimum time you can actuate the valving. If you wanted to thrust below this minimum impulse based on accuracy you would actuate multiple thrusters(basically valves in the case of cold gas thrusters) to offset. Say you wanted .5 units to the right but you were only capable of thrusting in units of 1 at minimum. You could thrust 1.5 to the right and 1 to the left to get the accurate .5 net in the right direction. It obviously uses more fuel than just thrusting .5 to the right but we couldn’t in the first place because we don’t have the control authority to make that work.
I can’t see where 30:30 was in the main video to see the reference though because of the new video so I’m not sure if that’s the case or they were just venting after the fact. 30:30 in this video is them just venting the gas afterwards. Pressurized fuel is dangerous.
@Mattk50 They fixed the dual video during landing. Before they had the same camera from the view on the left as the right. They must have reuploaded with the correct second booster video pasted on the right view.
That was great launch.
