SpaceX FH : Falcon Heavy Demo : Feb 6, 2018 : Discussion Thread 2

[john57sharp]

I took, as I guess we all did, a few screen grabs of Starman last night, but this one has a rather unusual object visible through the windshield. Any suggestions?

Cheers all and huge congratulations to all at SpaceX, what a ride!

John

[OxCartMark]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

[OxCartMark]

Give it a few years to settle in little minds and that will become evidence that Stanley Kubrick made those images.

[Cinder]

I took, as I guess we all did, a few screen grabs of Starman last night, but this one has a rather unusual object visible through the windshield. Any suggestions?

Cheers all and huge congratulations to all at SpaceX, what a ride!

John

Volcanic cloud trail?

[Rocket Science]

Miles O'Brien report 

Miles still waiting for his ride, I know the feeling... Hope he gets to fulfill his dream, great guy!

[cebri]

Miles O'Brien report 

Miles still waiting for his ride, I know the feeling... Hope he gets to fulfill his dream, great guy!

It would be awesome if they let him get a seat in the BFR. He truly deserves it.

[fthomassy]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

Not that ... look to the right.

[ppb]

Elon Musk is a human Crazy Eddie.

Not to put down recent acheivements, but Bono and others had ideas for making rockets reuseable back in the 60s. Even the first concepts for Collier's magazine in the 50s had a booster that would be recovered for later use.

Space X has acheived great successes and have revolutionised spaceflight. It's sad that nobody has acted on the possibilities  within the last *FIFTY YEARS*.

A few of us tried. 

Did you work on DC-X? A real shame that couldn't have been followed through. I suppose the demise of MacDac had something to do with it.

Look up "Roton" as well.

Ah yes, the who could forget the Rotary Rocket Company? Is there an NSF thread that discusses the pros/cons of that unique approach? (I still can't believe the test pilot survived)

[cebri]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

Not that ... look to the right.

Yes, it's the camera mount. You can see it here too.

[john57sharp]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

... just to the right, a long black object against the Earth

[yokem55]

See you later Starman 



https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/961359174230773765

I know that there is little concept of up or down in space, but I cringe a little bit realizing the trajectory Starman and his ride are on makes a lot more sense if you flip the picture upside down.

[Cinder]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

Not that ... look to the right.

Yes, it's the camera mount. You can see it here too.

No, there's a dark streak down in the atmosphere.  If you go back and look at the video footage you can't miss it.   It looks a lot like a volcanic streak. 

attachment edit :

[ugordan]

I took, as I guess we all did, a few screen grabs of Starman last night, but this one has a rather unusual object visible through the windshield. Any suggestions?

Looks like an island mass in the ocean, but can't identify it without knowing where the vehicle was at that point.

[fthomassy]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

Not that ... look to the right.

Yes, it's the camera mount. You can see it here too.

The mount is obvious. Look to the right of the mount.

[missinglink]

Give it a few years to settle in little minds and that will become evidence that Stanley Kubrick made those images.

Or maybe 'Oumuamua snuck back when nobody was looking 

[Cinder]

I took, as I guess we all did, a few screen grabs of Starman last night, but this one has a rather unusual object visible through the windshield. Any suggestions?

Looks like an island mass in the ocean, but can't identify it without knowing where the vehicle was at that point.

iirc it was north and a bit east of Australia.  Mount Mayon on Luzon erupted recently, but that was almost a month ago.  I don't know if it's still that active.

[OxCartMark]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

Not that ... look to the right.

Oh, sorry to have derailed your original question like that.

But while not intentionally spinning it off the tracks again it does remind me of this space object, the color and aspect ratio are similar -

[Cinder]

Back on topic, it's really cool for so much of the public to have had such a relatable bit of footage.  The car and spacesuit (a lot like seeing lakes thru the cloud haze on Titan + the smaller probe's descent and landing footage), and the video quality.  Non space geeks are often disappointed by the low priority for footage more like what they watch on their brand new TVs:  high resolution visible spectrum video, more like the JAXA probe's HD low altitude footage of the Moon.

[ugordan]

Posting this for the sake of the commentary.

Dude.

The commentators appear to be fueled by different hydrocarbons than RP1.

They also had an awesome spot picked out to watch. Can anyone ID the location?

Dunno, but for reference that clip was taken from this Twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/226489966
Description said "live from NASA press causeway. 6 Miles from launch pad... 4 miles from booster landing zone."

All joking aside, it was actually a pretty good quality stream at 1080p@60 fps and the launch obviously wasn't this guy's first rodeo, I even heard a sentence that was obviously a reference to Walter Cronkite's comment during the Apollo 4 launch and that gave me a smile. Can anyone pick it out?

[Oersted]

Posting this for the sake of the commentary.

Dude.

Still doesn't hold a candle to the (original) train guy...  :-)