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Not to diminish that feeling, but there was a kind of funny mistake made in the livestream for the Falcon Heavy launch (which was actually attempting to land 3

Not to diminish that feeling, but there was a kind of funny mistake made in the livestream for the Falcon Heavy launch (which was actually attempting to land 3 stages at around the same time, but one of them had an issue and suicided into the ocean as designed). Turns out, both of the video streams for the 2 side rockets were actually of the same rocket! You can go back and watch the corrected footage of both landing at once, but it was funny when many watching along (myself included) were like "wow they are so identical" only to find that it was the same footage!

dEnigma 8y ago
Haha, no worries, I was aware of that while watching. What impressed me was the footage from the ground based (or helicopter?) camera that showed them landing side by side. Edit: I didn't know that three boosters were supposed to land. That probably would've blown my mind if it had succeeded ^^
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Yeah they were attempting to land all 3, but the center booster (which would have landed on a barge at sea) had issues relighting it's engines during the landing burn. They setup the landings so that they are on a trajectory to hit the ocean, and only if everything goes right do they then adjust course to the landing pads. This gives them an additional failsafe which the center booster took advantage of here. Instead of crashing into an expensive barge in the ocean, it just splashed down into the ocean purposely missing the barge. [1] is a diagram that kind of shows what this looks like for land based landings, but it's very similar for barge landings too. And don't worry, they are going to be flying Falcon Heavy again soon-ish, so there's another chance to land all 3! [1] http://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png http://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png
- gpm 8y ago
  > or helicopter? Probably a quad/octocopter - I know they've used one before for footage. Third booster was supposed to land on a droneship - it was a near miss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXd5UHFuZVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXd5UHFuZVI It needed to relight three engines, it ran out of igniter before lighting more than one.

dEnigma 8y ago

Haha, no worries, I was aware of that while watching. What impressed me was the footage from the ground based (or helicopter?) camera that showed them landing side by side. Edit: I didn't know that three boosters were supposed to land. That probably would've blown my mind if it had succeeded ^^

Klathmon 8y ago
Yeah they were attempting to land all 3, but the center booster (which would have landed on a barge at sea) had issues relighting it's engines during the landing burn. They setup the landings so that they are on a trajectory to hit the ocean, and only if everything goes right do they then adjust course to the landing pads. This gives them an additional failsafe which the center booster took advantage of here. Instead of crashing into an expensive barge in the ocean, it just splashed down into the ocean purposely missing the barge. [1] is a diagram that kind of shows what this looks like for land based landings, but it's very similar for barge landings too. And don't worry, they are going to be flying Falcon Heavy again soon-ish, so there's another chance to land all 3! [1] http://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png http://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png
gpm 8y ago
> or helicopter? Probably a quad/octocopter - I know they've used one before for footage. Third booster was supposed to land on a droneship - it was a near miss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXd5UHFuZVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXd5UHFuZVI It needed to relight three engines, it ran out of igniter before lighting more than one.