Comment by mmaunder
Comment by mmaunder a day ago
Anyone care to give the non spacey folks like me the highlights of this launch?
Comment by mmaunder a day ago
Anyone care to give the non spacey folks like me the highlights of this launch?
Yes, about 2m longer. Also some modifications to the heat shield, including testing new types of heat shield tiles. Also non-structural versions of new catch pins to see how they perform on reentry
Edit: also, they are reflying one of the raptor engines that was on the previous flight (Engine 314, because pi).
Preparing to launch 4:37pm CT (~45mins after this comment)
First 10mins watching gets you to space with engine shutdown.
38mins after launch engine turns back on. 10mins after that reentry starts. 1:06 after launch is the landing.
I think that covers it.
Space X has failed after 3 billion US tax payer dollars to take a banana into low earth orbit. Needless to say we aren't going to Mars last year watching a woman in a long dress floating in the cargo bay behind a curtain of glass windows playing a violin for entertaining the dozens of astronaut's which don't have space for food, water, belongings or life support.
> Space X has failed after 3 billion US tax payer dollars to take a banana into low earth orbit
Literally just lofted some satellites.
No, they successfully sent two to the Moon on Weds. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/14/science/nasa-launch-firefly-i...
It's similar to last time if you saw that, the first stage will come back towards the launch site and they will try to catch it with the landing tower chopsticks, while the second stage does a soft landing in the ocean after going halfway around the earth.
As far as new stuff, they are trying to deploy some simulated satellites from the second stage and will try to relight one of the engines.