SpaceX Tuesday...

[MartG]

Eric Mc said:

Nobody in the media knows anything about aerospace technology any more.

Nobody in the media knows anything about anything other than the media - except maybe politics :/

[annodomini2]

Rumours are they're going to try a Land based 1st stage landing at the next launch. Scheduled for mid Dec atm.

[Eric Mc]

Hard hat time

[MartG]

annodomini2 said:

Rumours are they're going to try a Land based 1st stage landing at the next launch. Scheduled for mid Dec atm.

I guess that they have already demonstrated that they can get the booster back to a specific point and zero velocity, so a lot of the safety concerns about it coming back to land have been addressed. Also if it all looks like it's going pear shaped the range safety officer can still send a destruct signal to prevent it hitting a populated area.

Coming back to land removes the difficulty of a relatively small landing area on a barge ( at least for early landings - later ones should be more precise as they improve their technique ), and won't cause a launch to be scrubbed due to a bad sea-state in the landing area - if weather is good enough to launch it should also be good enough to land

[MartG]

Article on the planned landing

http://www.americaspace.com/?p=89127

[LivingTheDream]

Same day as Tim Peake launches - should be a fascinating day!!

[LivingTheDream]

Aiming for the 19th now.

Rumours of an attempt to land the first stage on land rather than the barge - but nothing confirmed as far as I can see.

[Beati Dogu]

It's scheduled now for Sunday, December 20th at 8:29 PM ET from Cape Canaveral.


http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/19/10626798/spacex...

[MartG]

Postponed until 01:33 Tuesday

[London424]

MartG said:

Postponed until 01:33 Tuesday

Let's hope they can stick the landing!

[Simpo Two]

I think you mean 'nail'...

[Beati Dogu]

The landing site is 9 Km (about 5.5 miles) south of the launch site. Quite a detour though.

[MartG]

Video will be here http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

[RobDickinson]

Launch going well

[Russ35]

They've only gone and managed a successful landing!

[RobDickinson]

Nailed it!

[moribund]

Well that was well worth staying up for!

[MartG]

Yes

[Beati Dogu]

Incredible. I think some space dust got in the room when it landed.

ash73 said:

So can they actually re-use that stage 1?

Yes, that's the whole point. To make launches cheaper.

[ninja-lewis]