SpaceX Falcon 9 / Dragon 2 : SpX-DM2 : May 30, 2020 : DISCUSSION

[Chris Bergin]

DISCUSSION Thread for SpX-DM2 (crewed demo) mission launch day and Flight Day 1.

May 30, 2020 at 15:22:45pm EDT (19:22:45 UTC) on Falcon 9 (new booster 1058) from LC-39A.

NSF Threads for SpX-DM2 : Pre-Launch Updates
NSF Articles for SpX-DM2 :
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/?s=DM-2
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/?s=Demo-2


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Discussion thread, but be useful with your posts. No party chat (we have a party thread)

[rdale]

Happy Saturday! It's a Florida summer-like day, which means -- storms are going to fire up. For now the flow over Florida it out of the southwest keeping the storms over the water well away from KSC. Into the afternoon we'll see the sea breeze come onshore, helping storms to form after lunch. I expect the initial formation to tend more to the west of the pads, but it's going to be hit-n-miss. It may storm 15 miles northwest and stay mostly sunny overhead, or one could fire up over Titusville and spend an hour dropping lightning all around. The 50/50 odds look good.

Winds aloft are good, recovery weather looks good, and from what I'm hearing the abort zone weather looks good. I'll start updates on the UPDATE thread each hour at 1pm EDT.

Here's my bio from the old thread if you missed it. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46110.msg2089073#msg2089073

[kanno41]

Thanks rdale for your updates. They are much appreciated!

Following up from the previous thread about lightning strikes, Elon posted this cool tidbit:

Falcon/Dragon are designed to withstand multiple lightning strikes, but we don’t think it would be wise to take this risk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 30, 2020
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1266695491879911424?s=20

[ZachS09]

It looks like the weather is clearing up a small bit with some blue skies here and there.

Don't know if it still makes the POV 50%.

[ZachS09]

I heard Behnken say, "Let's light this candle!"

[rdale]

It looks like the weather is clearing up a small bit with some blue skies here and there.

No change - that’s normal for Florida in the summer.

[libra]

I heard Behnken say, "Let's light this candle!"

Go, hot dog, go !!

[rdale]

Showers now firing off along the sea breeze and drifting east.

[leovinus]

Question about glasses - I see Doug is wearing glasses inside the Crew Dragon. Therefore, I assume he wears them on the way up as well pulling a few Gs. Are these "special" NASA glasses to deal with G-stress, or plain prescription glasses? Just curious, thanks.

[ZachS09]

Will the showers dissipate while moving east?

[rdale]

Will the showers dissipate while moving east?

Yes, they are dying already and haven't even made it to the VAB. This is what we'll see all day - showers form, some get strong, most die.

[rdale]

FYI The SpaceX Mission Control stream does have audio! It seems to be literally only the Mission Control side. I'm not hearing Dragon or many of the other transmissions that I'm hearing on the Media Channel.

[Craig_VG]

Some shots of the astronauts heading to the launch pad waving to the press and visitors! (under the watchful eye of this heavily armed NASA helicopter)

[Hog]

The helmet appears to be annoying when in the open position as it's hitting the headrest portion of the seat.

[meekGee]

SMS exchange from earlier this morning:

"Do you when the launch is today?"

"Yes, right after the car commercial"

[rdale]

1pm EDT - 17Z

No notable changes in the big picture. Showers are forming along the sea breeze as expected. There is not much support for the storms in the upper levels of the atmosphere so they are doing what Florida showers do - drop a lot of rain and die as they move east.

Some may be a little stronger than others, but having them form early is good. We want to keep temps in the 80s which reduces the threat of significant storms.

Pic 1: Upper air sounding from the balloon observations at 11am EDT. VERY weak winds.
Pic 2: An upward-looking radar that shows the winds aloft over time. Newest (1230pm) on the left side. It's showing us that the low level southerly winds aren't going as high up as they were earlier, which is pushing those showers to the east.

Here's a brief video of the rapid-scan (every minute) satellite imagery along with WSR-88D radar imagery. https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/video/164843?key=25a969aa57927efec399ba79b650b759

Future hourly updates and/or breaking weather news will go into UPDATES, I'll be more informal and answer any questions here.

[Hog]

My weather updates will go here as I don't have Update rights

You should now.

[Herb Schaltegger]

My weather updates will go here as I don't have Update rights

To whom may we address the strongly-worded letter? Your weather updates are great.

[rdale]

It's fixed

[haywoodfloyd]

For those of you not in the local area you might want to check out the Port Canaveral Webcam to get a good idea of the weather situation that something like Wundermap can't.
I can't post the link due to legal issues.