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

[wrvn]

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

Wow, you can see there is quite vertical separation between boosters as they are coming down. Then they intentionally time booster landing burns so that they both land almost at the same time. 

[litton4]

Paint beginning to peel or shadow?

Reflection of camera mount, I think.

[Basto]

Paint beginning to peel?

Looks like the reflection of the side camera rig to me.

[Rocket Science]

"Zero g and I feel fine... Oh, that view is tremendous"

[vulture4]

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.

Will there be another burn, or is that it for the second stage? I was under the impression it would be departing Earth orbit.

[Julius]

Tracking page for Falcon Heavy/ Tesla Roadster:
http://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=43205

[allfiredup]

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.

I think they were showing the same booster views until they switched from 3 to 4 video windows at about 34:55, and then its showing different booster views.

[FDekker]

Why are they referring to "PY" and "NY" when talking about the side boosters?

[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.

Will there be another burn, or is that it for the second stage? I was under the impression it would be departing Earth orbit.

Yes, the final burn will happen around 9:45 pm Eastern sending it out of Earth orbit towards Mars.

[ArdWar]

Why are they referring to "PY" and "NY" when talking about the side boosters?

Positive Y-axis side and Negative Y-axis side booster.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Will there be another burn, or is that it for the second stage? I was under the impression it would be departing Earth orbit.

Yeah, SEI3 is scheduled for about T+9hrs and will fire the upper stage and the Roadster into an Amor-type heliocentric orbit with a perihelion of ~1AU and and aphelion of ~1.5AU.

[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.

I think they were showing the same booster views until they switched from 3 to 4 video windows at about 34:55, and then its showing different booster views.

Nope, after 34:55 it's the same view.  As analyzed by Welsh Dragon, you can clearly see the other booster in both views lighting up for the landing burn.

[longboard1210]

So tesla is very lightwieght no front brakes fitted sugests they have the bare min to keep it looking like a car

[joshcryer]

Elon Musk news conference update: NET 6:45pm ET.

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/961015865503289346

Hopefully they'll get a stream out, seems really like an anticlimactic thing to not stream it as well.

[jamesh9000]

Just FYI: The Blue Danube Waltz is a great song to play while watching the live Starman feed.

[Doesitfloat]

So tesla is very lightwieght no front brakes fitted sugests they have the bare min to keep it looking like a car

Electric cars brake through the motor..Called regenerative braking.

[tea monster]

They are streaming.




Just check that out. Holy heck!

[inonepiece]

"Zero g and I feel fine... Oh, that view is tremendous"

I guess that screenshot, given the shadow, shows that the "Don't Panic" is indeed not a powered screen, just a reflective surface.  Fake! 

[joshcryer]

Some people figured out the TLEs of the FALCON HEAVY/TESLA: https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/961016772391563265

Would help answer the question if the refire will happen in night / be visible from the surface (click link and read replies to get a link to a mapping of it; I do not link it here because it will crash the site it's on, already very slow).

[Fractalizer]

While watching the SpaceX launch video stream after the fact, I noticed a printed script on the desk at time 38:52.  They were talking at the time about the center booster and drone ship.  Curious, I took a screenshot, flipped it, and tried to enhance the script.  It appears to be a script for if the rocket had exploded on the pad.     Glad they didn't have to use it!  What I can make of it is:

It appears we have had some sort of
explosion on the pad pile......a
....... to ...........  but ...... this
was a test ........ so this is
...... not preferred but .. entirely
unexpected.  We're going to take a
quick break and then
see if we can get more information...
hang tight and we'll be right