SpaceX and Orbcomm have put out a press kit. A successful landing (along with Blue Origin’s recent successful flight) would be a nice early Christmas present to space enthusiasts.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Congrats to SpaceX obviously. Here are some nice photos of the landing. Here is Tim Fernholtz’s story.
[Update mid morning]
Here’s a detailed technical explanation from Spaceflight101, and Lee Billings has the story as well.
No water required? Not sure how this relates to the recent stories about liquid water.
Bob Tisdale takes a deep dive into the data, which seems to indicate that NOAA is continuing to try to cook the books.
…has been postponed. Elon tweeted that their Monte Carlo runs had indicated a slightly higher probability of landing success tomorrow, and Orbcomm said that they wanted to continue to analyze static-fire data and allow an extra day to pre-chill the LOX. Someone at NASASpaceflight indicated that it might be that, though launch conditions are slightly worse tomorrow (80% chances of good weather as opposed to 90% today), it might be less wind, with less convection to warm the oxidizer. as Jonathan McDowell points out, this may be the first time they’ve ever delayed a launch to improve the chances of a landing, but the customer seems fine with it. As I noted to him, every aircraft operator takes into account landing conditions prior to takeoff.
Is it time to abolish it? This would help resolve things like the ongoing battle over the Warthogs. But he doesn’t address what to do with the space stuff. Or the missiles.
And then there’s all the mutual-admiration society with Vlad, while endorsing the murdering of journalists. Yes, let’s make him Commander-in-Chief.
We were told there would be no arithmetic. https://t.co/KBQddrglwx
— HealthCaliphate (@HealthDotGov) December 18, 2015
Yesterday was the anniversary of the first flight, and I put up a post at Ricochet with links to my centennial essays from a dozen years ago.
…and why he will ultimately fail. An interesting Boydian analysis of the race.
Chris Bergin has the latest on the next flight, which has been delayed due to issues with the slush LOX. I wonder if they’re running into problems at the Cape that they didn’t encounter in McGregor, due to the different environment.