LIVE: SpaceX Falcon 9 (Flight 2) - COTS-1 - Launch Updates - December 8, 2010

[rdale]

Those came in on her cellphone and she forwarded to NASA PAO!

[rklaehn]

Can somebody please post the complete press conference after it is over? I am getting no audio here (germany) :-(

[teetlebomb]

Elon: This is better then expected, almost too good. Says all 18 engines worked flawlessly (hmmm, not what we've got).

18 engines?

9 first stage
1 second stage
8 draco thrusters?

[rdale]

Can somebody please post the complete press conference after it is over?

John44 always does on his site, and NASA usually puts on YouTube within a day.

[Halidon]

Elon looks like he hasn't slept since the test fire.

[Robotbeat]

Elon looks like he hasn't slept since the test fire.

Agreed!

[iamlucky13]

Elon: This is better then expected, almost too good. Says all 18 engines worked flawlessly (hmmm, not what we've got).

18 engines?

9 first stage
1 second stage
8 maneuvering thrusters?

18 Draco thrusters on the Dragon.

[SpacexULA]

Elon Musk
"It's hard to be articulate when your mind is blown."

[kevin-rf]

11000km apogee for the second stage.  It doesn't take much more power to go from 11000km to 230000km for a free return trajectory around the moon and make good use of that PICA heat shield!

That was a stage with no payload attached. Would not have been possible if the Dragon was still attached.

[Jorge]

Elon: This is better then expected, almost too good. Says all 18 engines worked flawlessly (hmmm, not what we've got).

18 engines?

9 first stage
1 second stage
8 draco thrusters?

There are 18 Draco thrusters.

[edkyle99]

Repair guy, Marty something, apologies for missing the last name. He hand cut it. Fantastic, deserves his pic posted, imho.

Marty Anderson, flown in from California to do the job. 

 - Ed Kyle

[Chris Bergin]

Ha, Bill Harwood's already tapping away a story for the CBS site.

Marcia asking about his feelings and detractors.

Says it was mindblowingly awesome to see the chutes come out. Apologizes for his mind being blown.

Pity's the detractors. Fighting on the wrong side of yesterday's war. Some skeptisism is warranted.

Notes the difference between his 1200 people and China/Russia.

Seems to be having a go at SD HLV, about legacy components inheriting legacy costs.

[joshcryer]

"Some skepticism is warranted, because what we're doing is very difficult."

"This was done with 1200 people [not entire nations]."

"If you don't become vertically integrated you can't change the equation."

Paraphrase: "Legacy components = legacy structure"

Basically saying vertical is better than horizontal.

[rdale]

Bill asking a real question this time... Maneuvers they conducted are very similar to what we would do to go to ISS. All thrusters worked exactly as expected.

[K466]

Recovery pic via SpaceX PAO:

Uh oh! They must have bumped into space and some of the black rubbed off on it. It was white when they took off!

Slide on NASA TV announcing press conference about to start

LOL!

Great mission! congrats to SpaceX!

[Chris Bergin]

Notes any two thrusters can fail and they'd still have authority. Hopeful NASA will let them go to the Station on the next mission.

[nickyp]

Confident that the second flight will go to ISS in the middle of next year.

[Chris Bergin]

We not able to recover the first stage.

[Robotbeat]

"
Did you recover the first stage?"
Elon: "oh, Bobby! Why did you have to ask that question?"

...
(later says he wasn't able to recover the first stage, but was able to get a lot more data, says there is a black box)

[kevin-rf]

Did not recover, but got good data on reentry...

... had a blackbox