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

[tleski]

T+5 hours. I wonder how SpaceX is getting continuous coverage? TDRS?

My supposition is that since this extended-coast part of the mission is to demonstrate the ability to satisfy DOD requirements, SpaceX has arranged to use TDRS for continuous telemetry and video coverage, since presumable a priority national security payload going straight to GEO would have access to or might itself require such coverage.

They lost coverage for about 10 minutes before and after the last perigee. When it's not close to perigee, it's above the horizon for much of the world (see how much of the surface is visible in the Tesla cams), so they might be using ground tracking and comms.

So we might not get to see the TMI burn, if it does happen at the next perigee.

They lost coverage again, presumably 17 minutes before the perigee burn. Consistent with your theory.

Edit: It back up again. Let's see what happens in the next few minutes.
Edit2: The stream seems to be over.

[Metalskin]

How far out are we now? Are we past ISS altitude yet?

Based on these screenshots, it's WELL PAST ISS altitude

EDIT: Elon Musk tweeted about 5 hours ago that the Tesla was deep in the Van Allen belts

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/960988527159795712

I captured this screen shot hours ago, as I thought that the object to the right of the top right screen shield was the ISS. I'm not across relative distances and orbits for these things, but the object appeared static against the surface of earth (as the earth rotated due to the BBQ roll) and it looked too big to be a ground based object.

 :edit: time is Aussie, so was just on 2.5 hours ago.

[JWag]

Really good view through booster sep... and telephoto tracking of boosters all the way back...

This is really exceptional.

[ppb]

I response to Tim Fernholz from Quartz, Elon said they might be able to catch Dragon-2 the same way they plan to catch fairings. This was the most surprising answer, IMHO.

From update thread: seems a little risky if the D2 is manned.  I can see trying it on cargo runs.

[Kabloona]

Craftyatom in Phoenix, AZ says in the update thread that he was tracking the orbit and thinks he saw the burn overhead at around 9:30 pm Eastern  (2:30 am UTC), which is a bit earlier than the predictions here, but not far off.

[Flying Beaver]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

[Kabloona]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

AStick says he saw a glowing red dot in the sky, so that sounds like more than chilling. Fingers crossed.

[ArbitraryConstant]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

[Flying Beaver]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

Yeah that looks more like it. To a keen eyed space observer venting could be very faint, but that's more pronounced. Just waiting for Elon-confirmation now.

[the_other_Doug]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

Umm... if the stage was supposed to be over South America at perigee, how could it have been visible from that far north of the equator only about 30 degrees further back on its orbit?

[jupo]

I was tracking from Tucson and saw a faint "cloudy" glow for a few minutes before the apparent burn at 9:30ET. I also only had crappy phone photos of it, but there was a distinct moment it became a more conical plume. And then disappeared presumably into shadow about a minute later.

[Lars-J]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

Umm... if the stage was supposed to be over South America at perigee, how could it have been visible from that far north of the equator only about 30 degrees further back on its orbit?

The burn did not occur at exact perigee, that’s why.

[tvg98]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

Umm... if the stage was supposed to be over South America at perigee, how could it have been visible from that far north of the equator only about 30 degrees further back on its orbit?

The burn did not occur at exact perigee, that’s why.

Seems like they timed it so that the folks at SpaceX HQ could see it depart to interplanetary space.

[the_other_Doug]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

Umm... if the stage was supposed to be over South America at perigee, how could it have been visible from that far north of the equator only about 30 degrees further back on its orbit?

The burn did not occur at exact perigee, that’s why.

OK -- what I guess I was thinking is that, by the time an orbit that is going to overfly Quito in 15 minutes' time crosses the west longitude of the California coast, it would have to be below the horizon to the south, even if it was still 400 to 500 miles high.  But I can't find a good map to tell me where the orbit passed that point, in terms of north-south or in terms of how high the vehicle was at that time.

[Johnnyhinbos]

And the webcast had the second highest number of concurrent viewers in YouTube’s history at ~2.3MM viewers. Nicely done!!

[envy887]

Quite possible I just watched Burn 3 over LA. I don’t have a legit camera, so my only picture is awful. Seemed to be a pretty significant duration, didn’t get a new exact time though. Too busy looking up!

Could just be chilling in the MVAC. A burn would be REALLY obvious. Think December, LA.

This looks obvious.

https://twitter.com/tacticalskyguy/status/961066498964955136

Umm... if the stage was supposed to be over South America at perigee, how could it have been visible from that far north of the equator only about 30 degrees further back on its orbit?

The burn did not occur at exact perigee, that’s why.

OK -- what I guess I was thinking is that, by the time an orbit that is going to overfly Quito in 15 minutes' time crosses the west longitude of the California coast, it would have to be below the horizon to the south, even if it was still 400 to 500 miles high.  But I can't find a good map to tell me where the orbit passed that point, in terms of north-south or in terms of how high the vehicle was at that time.

It was probably almost 1000 km high at that point, and visible much further than that.

[the_other_Doug]

It was probably almost 1000 km high at that point, and visible much further than that.

It would really dive 800 km over only about, what, 1,200 km of groundtrack?

[coypu76]

Facebook SpaceX group member Alexei Karpenko posted this photo and one other from Palo Alto by FB user Dan Bowen to the FB group.  Facebook doesn't retain metadata, but this would be consistent with other reports of the TMI burn.

[the_other_Doug]

No more live feed from the roadster?

Man!  I was *really* looking forward, as the piece de resistance, to seeing the disk of the Earth shrink in the Tesla's rear-view mirror, so to speak, as she left the environs of Terra.

You don't imagine nothing is being said or tweeted, etc., because the TMI burn partially failed, thus bringing into question that DoD demo Musk mentioned, do you?

[RanulfC]

Isn't it really a "IIP" rather than "TMI" since it's only an open interplanetary injection rather than an actual "Mars" injection?

Nit picking I know

Randy