LIVE: SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 - CRS-3 Dragon - ATTEMPT 2 UPDATES

[Star One]

Congratulations to Space X on the launch.

[Chris Bergin]

Good F9 flight. Dragon has a bit of a hiccup with the quad thrusters, but all ok now.

Waiting for news on landing burn on Core Stage. Was high sea state.

[Chris Bergin]

Gerst is happy with how the conducted the flow and launch.

Likes SpaceX's can do attitude.

[Prober]

captures

[AJA]

Is anyone else amused by the sartorial styles of a third (or rather, two-thirds) of the panel?

[Mongo62]

‏@elonmusk  1m
Last known state for rocket boost stage is 360 m/s, Mach 1.1, 8.5 km altitude and roll rate close to zero (v important!)

Hard to imagine a soft touchdown, this time anyway, if the last known state had the F9 at 28,000' going straight down at over Mach 1. Still, the very low roll rate is encouraging, and one can't wait to see yesterday's "Grasshopper II" video recreated after a live F9 launch.

Actually this looks encouraging to me. From that altitude and speed, the first stage would need to decelerate at less than 2 gees to reach simultaneous zero altitude and velocity.

I calculate 45 seconds to zero altitude and velocity at 8m/s/s, or 0.8g

I added 1 gee for Earth's gravity that must be countered as well.

[John44]

SpaceX-3/Dragon Launch Replay
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8843

[Chris Bergin]

Hans looks like he had a long day!

Says it's a really good day.

[sdsds]

Hans.

[Ben the Space Brit]

The feed keeps on bleeding onto a VT.

AP asks, is there any Easter chocolate on CRS-3? Elon says that he doesn't know! 

[Chris Bergin]

First question is about any Easter Eggs on board.............Elon doesn't know. Gerst doesn't know.

[dcporter]

"Any Easter surprises?" Nobody knows

[sdsds]

Irene Klotz from Reuters. Clarifying odds of one piece retrieval of first stage. Elon mentions 20ft seas.

[Chris Bergin]

20 foot wave heights in the splashdown area. Elon thinks its unlikely the rocket splashed down successfully. But they are waiting for trajectory data from the plane. Happy with zero roll rate on the way down, mitigating aerodynamic torque. Legs didn't have any negative impact on ascent. Waiting for data through transonic.

Longer coast and restart of the second stage was conducted. Coasted for 35 mins. Restart for two seconds. Went to zero liquid option.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Elon states that improved thrusters on the core nulled roll and he's happy with that. He also said that they've proved that the legs don't impact the ascent performance.

[AJA]

"When you say you give the rocket high odds for a splashdown.. do you mean in one piece?" - Irene Klotz(!). Wow. Ok. Vicious, IMO.

[sdsds]

Elon: coast and restart of upper stage. Optional kind of thing. See residuals; depletion shutdown. Restarted and went to essentially zero LOX.

[mikes]

The feed keeps on bleeding onto a VT.

It's been doing that for weeks! I think it flicks to the Education channel.

[dcporter]

@planet4589 17m

Falcon 9 stage 2 will be deorbited SW of Australia shortly; first time the second stage has been deorbited on an F9 flight

I wonder whether this is being driven more by orbital debris considerations, wanting to practice relights on the second stage (building up experience for GTO missions), or if they're trying to use it to start gathering data for F9R upper stage reuse, or something else entirely.

~Jon

Elon says burn to depletion for data. Nice thinking everybody.

[Mongo62]

Musk: 35 minute US coast before burn to depletion, amount of residual propellant was as expected..