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SpaceX's First Official Cargo Resupply Mission to the ISS - Launch Webcast
- Reltair 14y agoLaunch webcast begins in T-1 hour!
- leeoniya 14y agoanyone know what that background tune is?
- jordanthoms 14y agoI just wish it'd stop repeating.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoNo, but it is SUPER annoying after the 25th or so repetition. I'd mute it except that I want to keep the thing open in another browser tab so I can switch to it when the show starts. Lesson learned: don't use repetitive audio crap while waiting for a web cast to start. Just have silence, then start talking when it's actually starting.
- elisee 14y agoOn the other hand, having no sound until it starts means people might get startled when you actually start (or have them not realize their speakers are off).
- Turing_Machine 14y agoA very short voice announcement every minute or so would be okay.
- stcredzero 14y agoAnd/or just 1 iteration of the music.
- derekp7 14y agoSerious question -- in the past, when NASA wanted to launch a rocket, they would contract with a commercial company such as Lockheed, Douglass, or some similar. Now they contract with companies such as SpaceX. Why is this considered a commercial / private space launch, but the others in the past were considered government funded? NASA is paying for the launches in either case. Or is it the level of involvement and control that NASA has in this case?
- mikeash 14y agoIt's a lot like the difference between contracting to have a piece of software built, and buying a copy of a piece of software that's already built. You get a lot of control with the former, but also a lot of cost, and the result often doesn't generalize well. Previous systems had heavy input for specs and design from NASA. With this, NASA basically says, "X pounds for Y dollars to ISS" and SpaceX is figuring out all the details.
- jlgreco 14y agoMy understanding (I may be mistaken) is that the level of involvement and control in the two cases is different. SpaceX runs their own mission control for their launches, and the amount of NASA involvement in creation of the vehicles is different (from what I understand). As an example, the Space Shuttle was built by Boeing, but was operated by NASA. von Braun's crowning achievement at NASA, the Saturn V rocket (about as pure a "NASA" rocket as you normally think of) was built by Douglas/Boeing/etc. Beyond that, the interesting bit I think is the difference in the contracts that SpaceX has, and the contracts that have traditionally been given to space contractors. Traditionally overruns would be covered by government funding, but in the case of SpaceX they eat their own overruns. The result of this seemingly minor change in funding is that they are far less "quasi-government" than space contractors traditionally have been.
- mkramlich 14y agothe pricing is a big diff. the big prime contractors tend to cost more per payload mass than SpaceX. plus the primes do pricing based on "cost plus" which means a general incentive to increase costs in order to increase profits. SpaceX is doing firm fixed price quotes, and builds their profit margin into that (at least in long run, after R&D costs recovered), and eats risk, as you mentioned. Also, and this is big, frankly SpaceX is operated in a much more nimble and entrepreneurial fashion. The primes, while having lots of very smart and well-meaning people working for them, have BDC-itis. Musk wants to dramatically improve the world and the species, and put a colony on Mars. The leadership of the primes seem to just want to make money. Musk/SpaceX is more exciting and compelling for a lot of folks, plus they're more likely to lead to spin-off missions down the road.
- bengl3rt 14y agoIs this supposed to work on iPad? It taunts me with the promise of a QuickTime-looking play button, which unfortunately doesn't actually do anything when I press it.
- DavidSJ 14y agoTry the NASA TV feed.
- Reltair 14y agoThere's a Livestream app you can get which I assume would let you watch this. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/livestream/id379623629?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/livestream/id379623629?mt=8
- shadowfiend 14y agoOdd. It works on my iPhone. May want to try it again.
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- mixmax 14y agoI have a favour to ask of HN. I'm responsible for webcasting Copenhagen Suborbitals launches, and we're having a lot of great discussions about what works and what doesn't in a live webcast of a launch. We obviously want our webcasts to be as interesting as possible, and so I'd like to ask you a question: What do you think could be done better in this Space X webcast? Is there something you're missing? Something you think would be cool? Something that's bothering you? Are the speakers good? Why? I'm sure we can learn a lot by asking potential viewers what they think, and implement it for next summers launches. And good luck to SpaceX!
- luke_s 14y agoSubtitles - Not all the world is sleeping, now we are currently sitting here in an office. Many of us have the webcast up on their screens, but we either don't have headphones or don't have the sound on. A timeline of what is supposed to happen - Since we had no sound we were left wondering what was happening, and when the next event should be. It would be nice to have something like: T-30 - XXX T-5 - YYY T-0 - Launch T+2 - ZZZ
- waterlesscloud 14y agoI would love to see a channel or webapp that had the real-time telemetry feeds. As techy as possible.
- mixmax 14y agoThat's actually one of the things we're working on. We're hoping to have a fighterjet-like heads up display showing altitude, roll, pitch, etc. that will be overlayed on the stream.
- bradgessler 14y agoYou may consider showing the rocket in relation to the Earth. I tuned in at T+7 and just saw an engine burning, now at T+10 the engine cut off and the thing is in orbit. I have no idea where the rocket is at this point. Would a live Google Earth feed be a possibility? Very cool stuff.
- vasco 14y agoWow, they're going to land the ignition rockets in future launches! That's great and sounds like it would be cheaper than the NASA space shuttle. Can't even begin to imagine the amazing feedback control that'll go on in that thing.
- jessriedel 14y agoWell, not for a couple years, right? Anyone know when the first powered return-to-lunchpad can realistically be expected?
- kunaalarya 14y agoYeah - definitely a couple years. They're in early testing right now. It was just "proved" through computer simulations a few months ago.
- rst 14y agoNot yet scheduled. They now have a test rig ("Grasshopper") with one engine, first-stage tanks, and extremely heavy, fixed legs, which they'll presumably be using to check out flight control algorithms for return and landing; it just took its first, very brief hop off the ground. It's not likely that they'd schedule any launches with a reusable first stage until they had a pretty extensive series of suborbital tests with rigs like this.
- ericcumbee 14y agoWhile that sounds great, i wonder what the advantage to that is over using parachutes and making a water landing like the Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters did.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThis question always comes up. It's about turnaround time and precision. Parachutes are messy. They use pyrotechnics to deploy, they have to be packed very carefully and precisely, etc. They also don't lend themselves to precision landings well. They're fine for landing in an enormous landing zone in the ocean or in some unpopulated, featureless desert, but otherwise they're not so good for targeted landings. Now, compare this to propulsive landings. You "waste" a lot more fuel and cut into the payload of your vehicle but on the other hand you get to streamline the turnaround process to just a matter of refueling and inspection, which you would do regardless of the landing mode. More so, by landing the vehicle in a designated spot you dramatically lower the cost and time necessary to put the vehicle back into service. You don't have to drive out to the desert and retrieve the vehicle (which could take a day at least) you just pick the thing up with a crane and you move it a few hundred meters to the hangar / processing facility.
- memset 14y agoThe condensed gas that we see shooting off perpendicular to the side of the rocket, in 2 locations near the top - what is that?
- whatshisface 14y agoI recall them saying it was liquid oxygen venting.
- jaggederest 14y agoSince it's a kerosene-fueled rocket motor (RP-1), there's only one kind of cryogenic tank per stage, and that's the LO2 tanks. So you're correct, that's the only possibility.
- eranation 14y agoCongratulations, exciting
- DaniFong 14y agoit was so unbelievably beautiful, how the rain caught the rocket's glow. what a beautiful way to leave the earth
- RVijay007 14y agoThis is absolutely fascinating, like being an astronaut without leaving my desk!
- tisme 14y agoYay! SpaceX scores again, congratulations to Elon Musk and the whole team there. Every time I watch one of these I feel that I'm watching history being made. And I wished I could stop holding my breath through the last 20 seconds or so. I also feel like I'm 6 years old again.
- mik4el 14y agoWe have liftoff and in orbit... Nice! I got nervous. Best tech news since Curiousity =)
- Reltair 14y agoCongrats to SpaceX on a successful launch and a great webcast!
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- ChuckMcM 14y agoAnother awesome SpaceX launch, very nice. Instead of hats and t-shirts from the SpaceX store I'd love to see them offer that 'launch workstation config' (three monitors, wrap around table) I'd get one of those for my lab in a heartbeat.
- joezydeco 14y agoI just think it's pretty damn cool that space launches have gone from the old 50's mission control room to something that looks like a very boring LAN party in a student lecture hall.
- nkoren 14y agoOne of the best things to happen during this launch is that an engine exploded. You can see engine 1 eat itself at 1:31 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTYh71D9P0&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTYh71D9P0&feature=youtu... [Edit: First the video was public, then it was made private, now it seems to be "unlisted" but viewable. So no guarantee that it'll still be there in another minute...] Why is this a good thing? Because it proves a point: the rocket automatically adjusted its trajectory, and continued on its course as if nothing had happened. The Falcon 9 is the first American rocket since the Saturn 5 with an engine-out capability. Its multiple symmetrically-arrayed engines allow for it to compensate for a sudden loss of thrust from one side: the other side reduces thrust as well to stay balanced, and everything else just burns a little bit longer. That was the theory, anyways. Today they put it into practice. For any other rocket that you've seen launched in the last 35 years, that would have ended the mission catastrophically -- but the Falcon shrugged it off like nothing had happened. They always said they could do that, and now they've done it. Congratulations, SpaceX! Creating a fault-tolerant rocket is much better than creating a faultless one (since that's impossible). [Edit]: In the absence of the video, the engine anomaly is being widely reported on Twitter: https://twitter.com/spaceteam/status/255128401927610368 https://twitter.com/spaceteam/status/255128401927610368 https://twitter.com/visionik/status/255128010653593600 https://twitter.com/visionik/status/255128010653593600
- gwern 14y ago'This video is private'
- wizard_2 14y agoThe video is now private, does anyone have a mirror?
- SpacemanSpiff 14y agoI checked out the video you linked. It's now all of a sudden marked Private for some reason... Is there any corroboration from SpaceX that there was indeed an engine failure? It looked to me like it could have been ice breaking off near max Q or some kind of shockwave interacting with the exhaust plume. I'm not questioning your observation but it didn't look definitive to me. I agree that having redundancy is good though.
- bfe 14y agoI watched this launch live with my children under the giant maple tree in front of our library. I was surprised when they called me out on my predictions of the timing for first and second stage separation. They are learning from this. I love that my daughter, who wants to be a scientist, could watch Gwynne Shotwell comment on the launch afterward and know that she is a world-class engineering executive. On the way home, my son spotted a home with a new rack of solar panels on the roof and a fresh Solar City sign planted in the yard. And my kids are dreaming of getting Teslas for their first cars. What an amazing set of accomplishments set into motion by one great founder.