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

[llanitedave]

Did I see a shot of a fuel tank interior in that livestream?

[Lee Jay]

I wonder if the Guinness Book of Records will take the Tesla's 24,606 mph as the absolute world speed record for cars?

That's in km/hr and that's no where near as fast as the lunar rovers went.

Roadster might catch up on TMI, though.

[cletus]

Are there any videos up yet showing off the twin sonic booms?

[Flying Beaver]

Prop tank!

Prop will be on the walls due to BBQ roll.

[RoboGoofers]

( on the cameras, I agree that the two cameras are slightly different views BUT the pic I posted pretty clearly shows the same landing zone being targeted)

One of the announcers at 37 mins says the views "represent" different boosters. I'm probably reading too much into his word choice, but maybe it was intentional?

or maybe he was confused as well. nobody was sure what the launch and landing would really look like, after all.

[speedevil]

~5 min ago, I timed it roughly, and got 180s of space, and ~45s of earth as it crossed the diameter of the earth.
Giving the obvious altitude that I have written in the margin.

[Prometeusz]

Does he have enough energy to carry the message from the orbit of Mars ?

[lcs]

Suggest the plastic materials of the car's interior are outgassing as they are exposed to solar UV.

That new car smell just went out the window and is thousands of miles behind you now.

[Welsh Dragon]

Rewatching the webcast, you can see the reentry burn of the other booster. Pretty cool.

[Prettz]

Suggest the plastic materials of the car's interior are outgassing as they are exposed to solar UV.

It does look like quite a lot of flecks of stuff are continuing to come off of the car.

[Kabloona]

~5 min ago, I timed it roughly, and got 180s of space, and ~45s of earth as it crossed the diameter of the earth.
Giving the obvious altitude that I have written in the margin.

My margin says around 3500 km altitude, very ballparkish. For comparison, apogee should have been 7000 km about 20-30 minutes ago.

[cartman]

It could be frozen O2 from the second stage

Suggest the plastic materials of the car's interior are outgassing as they are exposed to solar UV.

It does look like quite a lot of flecks of stuff are continuing to come off of the car.

[Greg Hullender]

Does he have enough energy to carry the message from the orbit of Mars ?

I'm not sure how far away the car will be before we lose the signal, but I doubt we'll get much from it past the orbit of the moon. Someone here probably has a more precise idea.

[Lars-J]

Suggest the plastic materials of the car's interior are outgassing as they are exposed to solar UV.

It does look like quite a lot of flecks of stuff are continuing to come off of the car.

It could be frozen O2 from the second stage

Certainly... it is common to see the F9 upper stage shed small flakes frozen oxygen.

[Jim]

Does he have enough energy to carry the message from the orbit of Mars ?

I'm not sure how far away the car will be before we lose the signal, but I doubt we'll get much from it past the orbit of the moon. Someone here probably has a more precise idea.

The batteries will die in about 12 hours or so, long before the moon

[vulture4]

Is there a tracking page? Any idea how far out it is now, and what the likely path is?

[kevinof]

Paint beginning to peel or shadow?

[catdlr]

Rewatching the webcast, you can see the reentry burn of the other booster. Pretty cool.

So that proves that the two lower screens are identical from one of the boosters.  The other booster either wasn't transmitting or SpaceX got excited and feed one of the booster video streams twice to the screen.

[daveglo]

Starman out for a cruise!

[Kabloona]

Is there a tracking page? Any idea how far out it is now, and what the likely path is?

No tracking page, but the orbit is now roughly 200 km x 7000 km, with a period of about 2 hrs 45 minutes.

We expect it to orbit Earth twice, then perform the Mars injection burn around 9:45 pm Eastern time.