SpaceX

[GrahamW]

Incredible!

Congratulations SpaceX !!

Hope Starship follows now with a textbook wet-landing on the spot!

[Patrick AL]

Elon confirmed that Ship landing was precisely on target too.

Definitely still some heat shield issues, and still need to demonstrate on-orbit engine relights. FAA will probably require at least one more flight with a re-entry burn, before they allow a ship catch attempt (in order to catch the ship, it has to overfly populated areas to reach the launch tower from the West).

Outer ring of Raptors on the booster were also damaged by reentry heat/forces, so some work to do there as well.

But HUGE progress - far more than anyone would have predicted.

Flight 5 license allowed for multiple launches with the same profile, and flight 6 hardware is fully tested and ready to go. So we may see some minor tweaks and another launch shortly.

[NewGroundPounder]

[media][/media]

[Snitch]

This shot brings back almost 5 years worth of memories

[Patrick AL]

This shot brings back almost 5 years worth of memories

Yep!

Been watching SpaceX progress since this giant beerkeg first did its low-level hop!

It is fantastic that Elon is so open ( 99% ) with his their engineering technology, and allow progress to be followed in such great detail.

Looking forward to what the next 5 years bring!

[Patrick AL]

And, of course, Europa Clipper gets very little love:



I think this is the 1st max performance launch of a Falcon Heavy?

[Patrick AL]

Some great pics of the launch and landing here:

https://www.johnkrausphotos.com/Galleri ... ght-Test-5

[ijacobs3]

Spectacular, landed where it needed to!

i have a sneaky suspicion , flight 6, will test orbital relight, which might give it the oomph to do a full lap and come back in for a catch

[ijacobs3]

The size of the booster that was caught, is still something that boggles my mind a bit. Here is a photo with humans for scale

Capture.PNG

[Patrick AL]

Racking up the next one for pre-flight testing:

[Patrick AL]

Flight 6 earliest 18 November:

[Patrick AL]

Flight 6 earliest 18 November:

Superb footage and presentation!

Cannot wait for Flight 6!

[V5 - LEO]

.....so will the stranded astronauts be home for x-mas?

[V5 - LEO]

.....so will the stranded astronauts be home for x-mas?

Nope. And they are not 'stranded'. They have a ship to return on (SpaceX Dragon), and it is docked at the ISS.

But due to the long term logistics requirements, they are replacing the current crew rotation on the ISS, and will only come back when the next crew rotation comes up in February 2025 (or earlier, but only if there is an emergency).

[Patrick AL]

.....so will the stranded astronauts be home for x-mas?

Nope. And they are not 'stranded'. They have a ship to return on (SpaceX Dragon), and it is docked at the ISS.

But due to the long term logistics requirements, they are replacing the current crew rotation on the ISS, and will only come back when the next crew rotation comes up in February 2025 (or earlier, but only if there is an emergency).

Well, technically they are 'stranded' -but for having only an extreme escape option -

- since only one Dragon Capsule is currently available to evacuate the ISS -which means that in an emergency they would have to be able to use the 4-crew capsule to evacuate 7 astronauts - next crew-capsule only due Feb 2025 -there is a un-crewed supply capsule due soon to take up supplies

-at the moment Sunita Williams is not doing too well on her long-extended mission due to extreme weight loss

-also a bit of a worsening leak from the ISS at the moment-they cannot seem to find and stem this leak, so for now they isolate those affected modules 'overnight', and sleep near the capsule in case of emergency evacuation.

Good luck to them all!