Spacexstats has been a little slow to post launch times during the sequence of pushed-out and failed attempts. But this time they have something up before I spot it on the company's own site.
Currently showing 11:35:00PM March 4, 2016 UTC. Which is a very similar time of day to the beginning of the launch window on the other attempts for SES-9.
The Spanish company Deimos Imaging operates some imaging satellites. Deimos-2 recently caught the landing platform ship and at least one tender waiting close to position to be a target after today's launch.
Considering that SpaceX has said they don't expect this to work this time (fuel limit, presumably, or perhaps a dangerously high re-entry speed--because of inadequate fuel to do more braking), it interests me that they have spent the resources to set out and maintain the landing fleet. I think they want to learn as much as they can from this, even if it "fails" to snag an intact launch stage.
SpaceXstats has recently posted that worrisomely high winds aloft have been dropping, and currently look likely to be acceptable for today's window.
Reminder: it is a Windows, which opens at 4:35 MT, and does not close for an hour and a half. If the winds are dropping, I could imagine they might delay propellant loading for a bit, to bias further into the window for better winds.
Here are the youtube links for the two versions of SpaceX webcast for the March 4, 2016 SES-9 attempt:
Full webcast with lots of talking heads, background, ...
technical webcast this time without John Insprucker, who was the sole talking head last time. Your choice if you like the sound of silence, and are not enamored of watching hyped-up SpaceX employees describe their excitement.
Just before dropout, I thought maybe I saw the vehicle very close to the ship, but rather tilted. My guess is a "close but no cigar" crash, but maybe it different.
Well, yes. I'm getting a wee bit suspicious of these dropouts just before the landings. I think we are getting a time delayed signal from the ship with the plug getting suitably pulled. So this is PR I reckon.
I say that because with the last sea landing attempt - which failed - I saw several of the control room guys looking at a monitor in apparent real time looking surprised, going oooh etc with one of them making a motion with his elbow on the desk and his forearm indicating something falling over gradually and then the open face of his hand slapping the desk. That was concurrent with the voice over saying they had lost contact with the drone ship.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Hmm. One thing I learned tonight is that the spacex.com/webcast website is not real time, but has a build in ~20 second delay. How do I know? At t-10 I walked out to my back porch. At T-4 I looked north looking for Phoenix rising but all I saw was a monster orange con trail. I followed it up and SpaceX was well down range by this time. I am thinking that SpaceX wants control over what we see on their feed so it is delayed for what ever reason. Also I found it interesting that over Africa we could watch the 2nd stage startup but somehow lost the video for the barge. Call me paranoid. But still an outstanding effort.
It's their business and their call to publish whatever they choose. I'm just saying that the feeds ( IIRC with all attempts so far ) have been very reliably dropping out just moments before the interesting bits. Technically there is really nothing special ( in 2016 ) about getting reliable real time video from anywhere on any ocean on this planet. But this is a nothing whinge ....
Other than that I note the final velocity of the payload was 9.53 km/sec @ 606km ( I read that at the moment of payload release ). This is probably a SpaceX record and certainly an excellent GTO insert. Recall that LEO is typically around 8 km/sec @ 350km. So SpaceX has really delivered on the power punch with this launch.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Spacexstats has been a little
)
Spacexstats has been a little slow to post launch times during the sequence of pushed-out and failed attempts. But this time they have something up before I spot it on the company's own site.
Currently showing 11:35:00PM March 4, 2016 UTC. Which is a very similar time of day to the beginning of the launch window on the other attempts for SES-9.
The live feed for SpaceX is
)
The live feed for SpaceX is showing "Mar 4 2016 6:35 PM EST" as the next launch. Same "time" as the previous 3 failed attempts.
The Spanish company Deimos
)
The Spanish company Deimos Imaging operates some imaging satellites. Deimos-2 recently caught the landing platform ship and at least one tender waiting close to position to be a target after today's launch.
Considering that SpaceX has said they don't expect this to work this time (fuel limit, presumably, or perhaps a dangerously high re-entry speed--because of inadequate fuel to do more braking), it interests me that they have spent the resources to set out and maintain the landing fleet. I think they want to learn as much as they can from this, even if it "fails" to snag an intact launch stage.
SpaceXstats has recently posted that worrisomely high winds aloft have been dropping, and currently look likely to be acceptable for today's window.
Reminder: it is a Windows, which opens at 4:35 MT, and does not close for an hour and a half. If the winds are dropping, I could imagine they might delay propellant loading for a bit, to bias further into the window for better winds.
Here are the youtube links
)
Here are the youtube links for the two versions of SpaceX webcast for the March 4, 2016 SES-9 attempt:
Full webcast with lots of talking heads, background, ...
technical webcast this time without John Insprucker, who was the sole talking head last time. Your choice if you like the sound of silence, and are not enamored of watching hyped-up SpaceX employees describe their excitement.
Good photo ! It really is a
)
Good photo ! It really is a small target. "Big Ocean Theory" indeed. More kudos to SpaceX for getting anywhere near it at anytime.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Just before dropout, I
)
Just before dropout, I thought maybe I saw the vehicle very close to the ship, but rather tilted. My guess is a "close but no cigar" crash, but maybe it different.
Well, yes. I'm getting a wee
)
Well, yes. I'm getting a wee bit suspicious of these dropouts just before the landings. I think we are getting a time delayed signal from the ship with the plug getting suitably pulled. So this is PR I reckon.
I say that because with the last sea landing attempt - which failed - I saw several of the control room guys looking at a monitor in apparent real time looking surprised, going oooh etc with one of them making a motion with his elbow on the desk and his forearm indicating something falling over gradually and then the open face of his hand slapping the desk. That was concurrent with the voice over saying they had lost contact with the drone ship.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Hmm. One thing I learned
)
Hmm. One thing I learned tonight is that the spacex.com/webcast website is not real time, but has a build in ~20 second delay. How do I know? At t-10 I walked out to my back porch. At T-4 I looked north looking for Phoenix rising but all I saw was a monster orange con trail. I followed it up and SpaceX was well down range by this time. I am thinking that SpaceX wants control over what we see on their feed so it is delayed for what ever reason. Also I found it interesting that over Africa we could watch the 2nd stage startup but somehow lost the video for the barge. Call me paranoid. But still an outstanding effort.
It's their business and their
)
It's their business and their call to publish whatever they choose. I'm just saying that the feeds ( IIRC with all attempts so far ) have been very reliably dropping out just moments before the interesting bits. Technically there is really nothing special ( in 2016 ) about getting reliable real time video from anywhere on any ocean on this planet. But this is a nothing whinge ....
Other than that I note the final velocity of the payload was 9.53 km/sec @ 606km ( I read that at the moment of payload release ). This is probably a SpaceX record and certainly an excellent GTO insert. Recall that LEO is typically around 8 km/sec @ 350km. So SpaceX has really delivered on the power punch with this launch.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Elon posted this comment on
)
Elon posted this comment on twitter
I take that as official kablooey confirmation.
Regarding the transfer orbit insertion, he said this
I think this was a good day, so far.