Sticking the landing.

As long as the ocean does its part in staying relatively calm I think they got this one.

Great article, loved the longer video of the last attempt. Excited about the launch coming up!

Grid fins, cold-gas thrusters, boostback burn... marvelous stuff!

Gotta love the names of the drone ships:

"Just Read the Instructions" (RIP)
"Of Course I Still Love You"

Knowing the back story on the ship names has inspired me to pick up one Iain Banks' books (The Player of Games) and see what the fuss is all about.

adiggs said:

Knowing the back story on the ship names has inspired me to pick up one Iain Banks' books (The Player of Games) and see what the fuss is all about.

Click to expand...

Just finished "Consider Phlebas" and have "The Player of Games" with me on vacation. The family will pause our European vacation tomorrow night, gather round the IPAD in Heidelberg and watch SpaceX writ large stick the landing.

adiggs said:

Knowing the back story on the ship names has inspired me to pick up one Iain Banks' books (The Player of Games) and see what the fuss is all about.

Click to expand...

One of my favorites of the Culture series. It's easy to get hooked and devour them all. Utopian future with the exciting bits done on the fringes. "If Only It Were So".

Culture Series

For my convalescence, a good friend got me hooked on one of his two favorite authors - Terry Pratchett - and his "Discworld" series. It's been a great set of reads for me over the past five weeks.

His other favorite....is Iain Banks. Now I definitely am keenly awaiting whatever next period I have to indulge myself in a read-fest.

For those of you following SpaceX and their "BFR" aka Raptor planning, I've been wondering if the whole point isn't so much being able to lift larger masses to orbit, but rather lower cost launches through greater reusability. The increased thrust of the Raptor first stage could be used for larger payloads, but it could also be used to lift more fuel for the upper stage which would allow it to deorbit itself and land much as the first stage does (hopefully today). Pretty much 100% reusability, plus perhaps more easily refurbished engines due to using methane rather than kerosene, hence less coking, might wind up with a lower cost per launch than the smaller F9. Of course, for a customer willing to pay for it, the BFR could lift a much heavier payload to orbit in partially or fully expendable mode.

I looked at the list of upcoming launches (link: http://spacexstats.com/upcoming.php).

There it doesn't mention "Falcon 9 will attempt to land back at SLC-4W, marking the first land landing."

Why is that?

The top two launches are:

28 Jun 2015 14:21:11
The seventh cargo resupply mission of Dragon to the ISS, also carrying the first International Docking Adapter in the trunk of Dragon, for use in Commercial Crew missions.

and

9 Aug 2015 04:30:00
Jason 3 is a scientific Earth observation satellite designed to monitor and precisely measure the world’s oceans. Falcon 9 will attempt to land back at SLC-4W, marking the first land landing.

Does this mean that the landing back on earth has been postponed to 9 aug 2015?