The mission seems to have gone flawlessly so far.
But even if it’s a complete success with the recovery on Friday, some will still want to slow walk the first crew flight this year.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here you go. pic.twitter.com/6X1ODdIRna
— Raumfahrer.net (@Raumfahrer_net) March 3, 2019
[Update a few minutes later]
Lot of links and pics at NASA Spaceflight.
What am I looking at? Zero-gee indicator?
https://www.celestialbuddies.com/
Mysteriously, Earth is sold out and on backorder.
A little bit of the SpaceX fairy dust falls on Celestial Buddies.
Hmm. We thought the New Space economy was about mining the Moon and asteroids, but apparently it extends to plush toys as well.
Spin-offs, my good man. Spin-offs.
A rising spaceship lifts all boats?
The serendipitous discovery of new markets as humans expand into the unknown.
Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising!
That’s simply fantastic.
Once this D2 is back on the ground I expect SpaceX to be all arses and elbows getting it ready for the in-flight abort test. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a very early hot fire of the in-flight abort test stack as was done with this vehicle’s first stack. That will, I think, be part of a strong push by Elon to yank D2’s remaining development schedule back to the left as much as possible. He’s already been “preparing the battlespace” for this with all the talk about doing the in-flight abort test in April rather than June. If he proves able to arm-twist NASA into allowing the in-flight abort test in April and DM-2 in May or early June, say, I expect the two upcoming FH missions to slide to the summer.
Manned flight is definitely more important than spectacular Falcon Heavy missions, but I understand the Saudis are really getting grumpy about the delays in Arabsat.
There were no comments allowed on the NASA live stream but people were commenting on dissenter.
It was one of the most boring things I have ever watched but it was interesting to see camera shots from ISS and CD as the docking took place.
I found it fun during the countdown to hear how great the weather was and then see lightning strikes in the background. The launch showed that the weather wasn’t a problem, but still funny. Many a shuttle launch was scrubbed because of poor weather at the return to launch site runway, while the pad was fine. I’m glad those days are over.
I’m all for spaceflight being boring from the ground perspective. That should make it all the more exciting for those onboard in the future. They can enjoy the flight without the worries.
One step closer. Now on to the return and splashdown.