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Old 02-06-2018, 07:05 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ltvscout
That was awesome! The shot of Starman in the Tesla was reminiscent of Heavy Metal.

Since it's almost 30 minutes later and we still haven't heard anything my guess is there was an issue with the center core landing on the drone ship.


Yeah watched part of the livestream press conference... he said it ran out of fuel and hit hard, might have done some damage to the landing ship. He also said that it was the boosters they REALLY wanted back, because they're equipped with the fancy new titanium grid fins-- if he had to pick a part of the rocket to blow up, it would have been the core.

Now it's just a waiting game to see if the second stage will reignite after traversing the Van Allen Radiation Belts... He said that the electronics aren't specifically hardened against radiation and *might* fry, but they're optimistic that they won't. It will be several hours before the TMI burn and he said they're also worried about excess oxygen boiloff and things like that, but they're optimistic that the final burn will go off as planned...

He also said that Falcon Heavy is powerful enough to launch a space probe directly to Pluto-- no flyby gravity assists needed... so it really opens up the possibilities for planetary exploration because the costs are so low for that much capability.

Later! OL J R
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