There&#x27;s something awesome (in the literal sense) and unsettling about watching something and being able to say &quot;I am witnessing history&quot;.

I&#x27;ve not smiled so hard in quite a while :)

Watching both boosters come back to land in person was straight out of sci-fi.My non tech interested wife was cheering for both boosters to land safely. “What world am I in!?”Thanks SpaceX for making us excited about space again.

The floating Tesla was pretty cool too...

A link to the official YT... much better: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=37m17s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=37m17s</a>

I am pretty sure at some point in history, launching two rockets at the same moment must have been a big achievement. And now you have two rockets (in some sense boosters are rockets) landing back at the same time.

Is it just me, or are those both the same landing pad but with different cameras?

I get a headache watching Star Wars like sci-fi where everything is manually controlled by the pilot. How did sci-fi get so disconnected from the actual future?

Ya, was stunning.. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;SpaceX&#x2F;status&#x2F;961084879432597504" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;SpaceX&#x2F;status&#x2F;961084879432597504</a>

Official picture of the landing:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;DVZ0NPoU0AAMWk6.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;DVZ0NPoU0AAMWk6.jpg</a>

Can confirm this was the greatest thing I&#x27;ve ever witnessed in my life.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;AGPH_i0ZlyM?t=56" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;AGPH_i0ZlyM?t=56</a>

It&#x27;s unbelievable how precise the landings were: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;570TgAI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;570TgAI</a>

They were the same. In the end you could see both of them heading for the same landing pad before they cut to fullscreen.

Pretty sure they were, as at the very end they both dial into the same landing pad.

They were the same. Don&#x27;t know if they did this intentionally. I actually watched them for two minutes for that, and was 99% sure they&#x27;re the same image, just translated a bit. The final confirmation came near the end, when the other booster entered the view, and you could see for sure, both rectangles streamed from the same camera.

For some time both streams looked like they were the same. That synchronization!

That was absolutely insane.When I saw that, all I could think about was seeing hundreds of those and that scene being as mundane as a plane landing.

These are only baby steps at the beginning of the adventure.

Wouldn&#x27;t landing rockets vertically show that we have mastered in-atmosphere conditions rather than space?I&#x27;m not trying to be negative, just trying to understand how you came to the conclusion you did.

Space rockets are 1960s technology, so I think we entered that era 50 years ago.

It feels like the human race is starting to master space travel.  It&#x27;s probably just an illusion, but I feel like we&#x27;re entering a new era.

Open a chapter about &quot;History of the 21st century&quot; and this image will be there.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=37m48s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=37m48s</a>

Yea, unreal. One of those rare moments when you&#x27;re watching history unfold and completely aware of it.

Almost brought me to tears! What a historical event! Wish I could&#x27;ve been there.

Musk has said there is no reason they can&#x27;t attach two more in the future.

I guess they&#x27;d have to make the center rocket stronger to handle the added force of more rockets.  Also, there may be diminishing returns when it comes to adding more boosters, and at some point it makes more sense to just redesign the rocket to be bigger (hence the BFR, which is the planned successor to Falcon Heavy).

The fairing diameter would not be much larger than it is right now and that is a limit all by itself. A bigger rocket would support a larger fairing.

Yes, that was pretty SF.So, whats to stop them attaching an additional two (or more) to the existing rocket now that they have the basic synchronization worked out.

Watching that made me realize I now have to re-evaluate many &quot;bad sci-fi scenes&quot; into &quot;pretty accurate predictions of the future&quot;!

Well they do separate at the same time and fly the same path back to earth so not a coincidence (though it&#x27;s really satisfying)

So true. Was that just a happy coincidence? I wonder how much work went into coordinating there landings.

I looked around my office expecting that someone else was watching and as stunned as I was. No one else was watching :(

It was almost a brain stack-overflow for me. I made a weird, bleating laugh noise and tried to open my eyes wider than design spec.  A sincerely surprising and amazing sight.

Seriously, I was in awe, it looked so futuristic. The future is here now. It&#x27;s crazy what we humans are capable of in this year 2018.

They should name the landing &quot;Double Eagle&quot; or &quot;Double Falcons&quot;.

In the past few years we&#x27;ve gone from not even having a reusable launch vehicle to synchronized spaceships as performance art. (Oh and sending a car to Mars for fun.) What a time to be alive.

I remember watching the artists impression animation video of how the the falcon heavy launch and landing would proceed, and when it showed both boosters landing at the same time I thought &quot;heh, I wonder if they&#x27;ll be able to pull that off in real life&quot;, and they did! Almost identical with the animation.

My skin went in chicken skin mode automatically :)

Even when we know that each one is fully automatic, and really (after staging) the booster return is just two instances of $booster, it&#x27;s still absolutely magnificent.

There was something doubly awesome about the two falcons landing at the same time right next to each other!

And both boosters landed simultaneously!That was seriously impressive to watch. Congratulations to all the SpaceX engineers who made this a reality.

That was thrilling. An incredible accomplishment. The first time in my life I thought I had an inkling of what it had been like to watch the Moon landings.

That was incredible. Watching the double landing of the boosters I couldn&#x27;t help but feel like we live in the future. It was actually a little emotional.

Watching those boosters land side-by-side made me question my reality. Beautiful.

The main argument for Falcon Heavy over Ariane 5 is cost, not reliability.  Ariane 5 remains the most reliable heavy launcher, so that&#x27;s the launcher you want for JWST.

1 successful launch vs 1 launch anomaly in 16 years and 80 consecutive succesful launches.I know where I&#x27;m putting my money.

Yup that was amazing. Slightly related, I&#x27;m already nervous for the James Webb Telescope launch. Maybe Spacex should launch it :)

My understanding from the diagrams they showed is that the orbit is a wide one (oval) around Earth that passes near Mars.

Hmm, I think it&#x27;s still in parking orbit around earth, no?

&gt; car is in orbit.That is correct...but NOT in orbit of our home planet!

What are the particles flying with different speeds when the camera points away from the Sun?

Same here.Might I suggest pairing it with Pink Floyd&#x27;s _Echoes_[0]?- 0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;open.spotify.com&#x2F;album&#x2F;468ZwCchVtzEbt9BHmXopb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;open.spotify.com&#x2F;album&#x2F;468ZwCchVtzEbt9BHmXopb</a>

And I&#x27;m playing this in the background <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8lERqGULWxs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8lERqGULWxs</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;VrBII8Y.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;VrBII8Y.jpg</a>I&#x27;ve had the same running all day, to be honest. Having the 2001 a Space Odyssey soundtrack and Interstellar&#x27;s soundtrack in the background is quite pleasant.

I only just noticed the &quot;Don&#x27;t Panic&quot; on the center console. I presume that&#x27;s there in case Starman picks up any hitch-hikers.

It seems unreal - like some sort of advertisement. In fact, they should put that in a commercial! :D

Watching the car orbit and the Earth&#x27;s reflections in the windshield and paint and Starman&#x27;s visor is sublime (sometimes goes to cameras of the engine&#x2F;orbit overview)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M</a>e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;Yu6gRar.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;Yu6gRar.jpg</a>This is all I&#x27;m watching for the rest of the day <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;oKWTAQk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;oKWTAQk</a>

&gt; I don&#x27;t remember being so nervous watching a launch video sincelanding of the mars mission was pretty big in the spectacle sense.

I. Am. Just. Speechless.Perfect takeoff, 2 simultaneous landings (still waiting for confirmation on the droneship landing), the car is in orbit.I don&#x27;t remember being so nervous watching a launch video since... Space Shuttle missions, I think.Great job, SpaceX!

The core was supposed to land on the barge, but the video footage got disconnected and they said they don&#x27;t know what happened to it yet.

I&#x27;d assume if they are landing it, it is reusable. It&#x27;d be sort of wasteful to pack fuel for landing, if we were just going to dump the module.

Is the core designed to be reusable or is that a one-time-use part?

Impressive! But what happened to the core?

That was really impressive. Does anyone know what happened to the core? Seemed to lose feed to the drone ship.

No. Watch SpaceX&#x27;s twitter feed. It might be a while though.

any link to the center core landing video?

Yes! Just that one piece of information short of calling it perfect. Can&#x27;t wait &#x27;till we know what happened to the center stage!

Absolutely amazing. Just watched it live, gave me goosebumps. Although:&quot;SpaceX also attempted a recovery of all three of the first stage boosters it used during the launch. It has recovered two of those thus far, and we’re waiting to hear back from SpaceX on the official status of the final, third booster, which was landing at sea.&quot;

It&#x27;s reference to the HHGTTG. Tesla has Hitchhiker&#x27;s Guide to the Galaxy  installed.

of course they did :-)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;936782477502246912" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;936782477502246912</a>

Apparently they stuck in the glove compartment ‘a copy of Douglas Adams&#x27; book &quot;The Hitchhiker&#x27;s Guide to the Galaxy,&quot; along with a towel’.Source: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;what-you-need-to-know-about-the-falcon-heavy-launch&#x2F;a-42466661" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;what-you-need-to-know-about-the-falcon-he...</a>

They did. 
The glove box has a copy of the &#x27;The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy&#x27; plus a towel

Makes my day that much better. Giving approval to that kind of lightheartedness shows great confidence in the team&#x27;s ability and makes overall morale palpable. Well done.

Saw the don&#x27;t panic. Wondering if they packed a towel.

Loved it. Absolutely amazing.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;KF87gOR.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;KF87gOR.jpg</a>I posted more screen shots of launch: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;gh410" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;gh410</a>

It would be cooler if it was going to be in Mars orbit, but it is just going into an elliptical solar orbit that will vary in distance from the sun between Earth orbit and and Mars orbit.

Part of me enjoys it, but a big part of hates that he put a car there. I don&#x27;t associate cars with anything good, only bad.

It&#x27;s not going into Mars orbit. It&#x27;s kind of weird that Musk never corrected that. Even his tweet from December said &quot;mars orbit.&quot;

Is it okay to put unnecessary stuff in the orbits around our or other planets? Isn&#x27;t this space trash that can potentially be problematic for future endeavors? Are we creating problems for ourselves to satisfy our vanity?

It&#x27;s not in orbit around Earth, and won&#x27;t be visible from Earth. As soon as it boosts out of its parking orbit, it will be orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars.Also, there is not any danger of stuff &quot;crowding&quot; out there because the amount of space between Earth and Mars is really quite extremely huge.

it&#x27;s in orbit around the sun:&gt; Following launch, Falcon Heavy’s second stage will attempt to place the Roadster into a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.

It&#x27;ll become a touristic attraction.

I absolutely love that Musk is putting a car into Mars orbit. Assuming mankind doesn&#x27;t have an extinction event (or dark ages event), it is extremely likely we&#x27;ll populate the solar system over the next millenia. In 200 years, Martian children can look up in the sky and know that one of the quickly moving visible satellites is a hilarious, old-Earth car. Depending on how accessible orbit is from planets over the next couple hundred years, it could very well be some sort of space station museum.Or, imagine we hit a dark age and bounce back, and this event is lost to history. Five hundred years later we manage to get some people to Mars orbit and they find a fucking car in a capsule with a little mannequin stuffed into it flinging around the planet at hundreds of kph.All while it&#x27;s blasting David Bowie over their radios.

Considering the historic significance of Musk&#x27;s mission, a little extravagance is entirely deserved.

ADVERTISING.The amount of coverage both Tesla &amp; SpaceX got from launching the Roadster equates to advertising costing considerably more than the cost of the car.

The Roadster was in use by Musk for years. They didn&#x27;t build it for the occasion

It&#x27;s a test flight. Can&#x27;t put paying cargo on a test flight, so you might as well put something on there that&#x27;s going to give you press.Also, space is big once you leave low earth orbit. It&#x27;s really hard to actually understand how big it is. Putting a roadster out there isn&#x27;t exactly junking up the place.

Think of it as performance art.Because if all you can think of is utility then all art should go as well. After all, it&#x27;s all just a waste of resources. &#x2F;s

It is not a waste of resources. The car was built, it was used for its purpose. Now it is being sent out of the planet so you could argue that the overall amount of trash was reduced.Also &quot;Space is big. Really big. You just won&#x27;t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it&#x27;s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that&#x27;s just peanuts to space&quot;

step back a moment, friend.  your sense of perspective is completely out of whack.   maybe take a moment to consider that everyone else is not wrong about this.

Still don&#x27;t understand this waste of ressources. Waste of ressources to build this Tesla Roadster. And then the waste to kick it into space. It is not that we are littering our earth itself. We now do it in space as well.

Anybody saw the &#x27;Don&#x27;t panic&#x27; thing on the Tesla? Made me chuckle, they sure have a sense of humor.

Yeah, that&#x27;s sort of how I feel as well. It seems odd that they didn&#x27;t immediately know or say, then they cut it off immediately.

Perhaps they have to &quot;structure&quot; a more formal statement even though the rocket could have been observed exploding. Purely speculation though.

I&#x27;ll bet it blew up on the droneship. It was weird they didn&#x27;t have an immediate confirmation; I thought they have a boat or heli within visual range for the photo.

I feel the same! Suddenly I think I can grasp a bit of how it must’ve felt to watch the Apollo missions back in the day

Considered the same with my 4yo, but she was fast asleep since hours before. I&#x27;ll be sure to show her tomorrow though! Not every day you see someone launch an astronaut in a car into space, then land two boosters next to eachother.We already dig other nice videos on youtube with rocket launches and the like. &quot;How it&#x27;s made&quot; and so on. Some manufacturing videos have, believe it or not, caught her attention for half an hour! I think it was especially a video from manufacturing the Mini (car), lots of robots and automation.

I watched last evening alone (my wife wasn&#x27;t interested, sadly) and this morning again with the entire family.

Where i live it was 21:45 and i couldn&#x27;t help but told my son that was on bed to come and see it, cause IMHO it&#x27;s a significant moment for space exploration. He went to bed later than usual but has a nice story to tell tomorrow at school.

The quote from the video is: &quot;We lost the center core.&quot;For those like me unfamiliar with the terminology used in this context, is this wording reserved for situations where the rocket is destroyed or could it also mean they lost contact&#x2F;video feed with the center core?

It’s a command center of a complicated operation, nobody cares if someone has a camera issue on a side goal, it’s all about situation. I vote the booster was lost, and it was not worth using more bandwidth on it.

It sounds like it was lost: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=2304" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&amp;feature=youtu.be...</a>Although there hasn&#x27;t been an official statement by SpaceX yet, and whoever said &quot;we lost the center core&quot; could have just been referring to the video feed from the drone ship.

Also, as she starts saying &quot;We are waiting to hear what happens&quot;, he says &quot;Scratch that...&quot;.

in the background you can see the feed from the drone ship - they see that it comes back on and the smoke is clearing but there&#x27;s no rocket.   They were a bit surprised. :)

I felt like they were trying to redirect people to the main site for more information. I think the presenters were instructed not to give people more news so they could gain more traffic to their site. Seems like a smart way to gain more interest.

I think it was the right move, even if they knew then the main core had blown, it is too easy for the naysayers to make that the story. Taking away from the real and powerful narrative SpaceX must tell. That for the first time since the Saturn V we have a rocket powerful enough in active service to take us to the Moon&#x2F;Mars, at a 1&#x2F;3 of the price of the next heaviest lifter.

&gt; Do we know the fate of the centre core yet?I might be reading into something that&#x27;s not there, but the presenters (I didn&#x27;t get their names) acted like they received surprising news in thier monitors at 39:03[1] just as they were about to report on the drone ship landing.Dude: &quot;We&#x27;ve just gotten confirmation...&quot;Lady: &quot;oh!&quot;Dude: &quot;Oh&quot;Lady: &quot;[laughs] We are waiting to hear what happens...&quot;1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=39m5s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=39m5s</a>

Can&#x27;t fault them for sure, but it&#x27;s strange for them. SpaceX tends to be very upfront with their failures, and tends to broadcast and in many cases re-upload video of their failures.Doubly so when the &quot;failure&quot; isn&#x27;t part of the primary mission.

Center core lost, announced on internal feed <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=2304" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&amp;feature=youtu.be...</a>

The feed quality drops in a way that makes the shaking antennae explanation seem plausible. I doubt the announcers knew then (why not just say so unless there was some ambiguity?), but it must have been a distinct concern, hence their &#x27;smile nervously&#x27; reaction.It is a bit odd they haven&#x27;t announced that it was lost yet, but I agree that seems very likely.

I noticed on the top right screen when landing the 2 outside boosters that they did a 3 engine landing burn. Previously they&#x27;d only done this over the water, but considering that the last one went well on 31 Jan, perhaps they also tried a 3 engine landing burn over the drone ship this time and something went wrong.Just speculation, but it makes sense to me...

Of the centre core, these are the last few moments before it is lost from the feed. Smoke can be seen...<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=38m20s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=38m20s</a>... and then back to the presenters. As someone said to me, &quot;That&#x27;s their lying face!&quot; :)Can&#x27;t fault them for wanting to dwell on the positives though, was an amazing moment to watch.Edit: You can switch cameras on the above youtube video to the countdown net; you can clearly hear them saying &quot;We lost the centre core&quot; at 38m30s - not sure if that means &quot;lost signal of&quot; or otherwise. The people in the control room appear to become more muted at that point, though they still seem composed. It&#x27;s really not clear.Edit: On the countdown net you can hear some minutes later &quot;suspected loss of signal&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;-B_tWbjFIGI?t=42m21s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;-B_tWbjFIGI?t=42m21s</a>

Texted a friend who works at SpaceX, it didn&#x27;t make it

I heard center core boostback burn shutdown

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=34m8s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c?t=34m8s</a>You can hear &quot;Centre core defect on shutdown&quot;. Definitely didn&#x27;t make it.

That was like watching a sci fi film when the two cores landed.... I watched it with my mother (who is 80!), and she said it was as significant as the moon landing.Do we know the fate of the centre core yet?

The stream cut out before they were able to report on the main engine recovery. Anyone have more info?

still waiting for CORE to land but ohh boy..was that awesome to see both the boosters land together at the same time.

I hope the main core landed successfully too.

Elon Musk just confirmed in a press conference that the third core was lost; two of the engines that should have slowed it down failed to re-ignite and it came in too fast. I predict either success or a more interesting failure on the next flight.

Absolutely amazing, we watched science-fiction today.Anyone knows what happened to the core booster?

One of those &quot;this must be the future&quot; moments for sure. I&#x27;m really amazed that there is a Tesla Roadster on its way to Mars at this point. That blows my mind.

Cried proud human tears today.Even if the droneship didn&#x27;t work out...

The booster landings were incredible, however, the initial shot of it clearing the pad looked like a scifi movie intro.

Amazing to see. Hard to imagine if not for Musk, we&#x27;d be stuck with ULA garbage and a realistic Mars tripped planned for 2050+

It was so captivating to watch the launch production. Just watching this test launch you can see how SpaceX is recapturing the hearts and minds of the world and generating the same level of wonder that NASA did in it&#x27;s hay-day.  It&#x27;s a proud day in annals of mankind and engineering.  What an absolute feat. Congratulations to everyone on the team at SpaceX.

There aren&#x27;t any nearby ships, for obvious safety reasons. Plus, any nearby ships would have the exact same issue - where exactly would you &quot;feed&quot; to, when any ship that far out is going to be using a commercial satellite data feed (ie, very slow and unreliable)?

Yes, very hard to believe this was a technical failure&#x2F;limitation. My money would be on a deliberate cut, possibly even automated, when the systems became aware of impending failure. It&#x27;d be important for SpaceX that any negative outcomes are delayed from public release in order to control what makes it into the headline news. The fate of the reusable components would be a particularly sensitive aspect of the PR campaign.

I do find that super weird. You would think one of the nearby ships would have a feed as well no?

Keep the camera and antennas on the boat instead of the platform with a zoom lens?

Tow a cable from the barge to a nearby ship, buoy, or platform on which the antenna sits, that&#x27;s out of range of the vibrations and faces a different direction?

No, but I&#x27;d guess that the guys that land rockets like it&#x27;s nothing would. I&#x27;m on the bungee-cord-and-duct-tape level of engineering.

I wonder if their internet constellation would help at all with that.

On the pictures of the droneship the quite distinctive Inmarsat BGAN (which is in essence 3G bounced of geostationary satellite) antenna pod is plainly visible.Edit: inside the pod is fairly high-gain directional antenna mounted on motorized positioner, but it is designed to track the satellite from slow (ie. ship) or predictably moving (ie. truck) platforms and certainly cannot cope with vibrations from the landing reliably. Man-portable BGAN terminals usually have fixed antenna and officially require quite lengthly positioning process (on the other hand it will work for some value of &quot;work&quot; when you just throw it into car trunk and park with trunk vaguely pointing to south, but you will be lucky to get reliable phone connection, not to mention video stream, in that case).

How about a camera feed from the tow ship (with a view like the two other boosters landing)? If you can film a rocket 300km in the air, you can surely spot a rocket landing 15 miles away. Unless ofcourse you don&#x27;t want the world to see it crashing into the ocean live.

I don&#x27;t find that surprising. The communication link back is presumably by satellite since it is in the middle of the ocean, and probably a directional antenna because of the high bandwidth. You have any good suggestions for having a reliable connection via directional antenna on a flimsy barge that a rocket is landing on in this middle of the choppy north Atlantic?

They could perfect it, by having say an underwater wired data feed going to an ancillary ship which transmits it, which then is out of the thrust cone of the rocket. But it&#x27;s probably just not worth it to get the footage 5 minutes early.

Yet another incredible show from SpaceX. At this point, if they said they were going to build a football stadium on Europa, my only question would be when does it open.But I couldn&#x27;t help but laugh at the fact that they can launch a massive rocket on the first try and land (at least) 2 cores, but the camera STILL cuts out on the drone ship.

I was just assuming it was going to blow up.

Well, but to be fair to the Soviets, they had to do it with really &quot;stone age&quot; electronics and technology and not knowing the many things we know today.I am pretty sure that SpaceX was able to achieve what they did today also because they studied the Soviet N1 rocket and learned from what the engineers at that time had to figure out from scratch.The other thing is that the N1 Moon rocket was a very different design - a single booster with many small engines, so incredibly difficult system to control, especially given the state of technology 50 years ago. Falcon Heavy is more similar to the successful Energia booster - core + strap on boosters - that was originally designed for the Russian shuttle. Or the Angara series.

This definitely feels incredibly significant. The Soviet Union tried and failed 4 or 5 times to launch a rocket with this many engines, but now we&#x27;re able to nail it on the first try aaaand land the boosters.

The ISS should count as major progress as well.

To be fair, I think the Space Shuttle was substantial progress as well. An evolutionary dead end maybe but still a lot was learned.

ish. I mean it&#x27;s not the most powerful ever rocket - so in some ways they are still catching up to the Saturn V.

&gt; this seems likely to be one of the most important launches in modern rocketry historySpaceX&#x27;s Falcon project is the first major progress we&#x27;ve made in the field of human spaceflight since the Apollo program.

&gt; Also, something nobody has talked about yet. Falcon Heavy is capable of something no other US rocket is really able to do yet, launch new space station modules (or new space stations period).I&#x27;m pretty sure one can launch space station modules on regular Falcon-9 as well. Russians launch some on Soyuz rocket.Surely FH is more convenient for big stations.

It&#x27;s definitely another inflection point. The Falcon 9 is 75% reusable by cost of components, the Falcon Heavy is 90% reusable. And it&#x27;s capable of much, much more. That might open up the heavy lift launch market to a whole new gaggle of players and begin really expanding out what is done there. It&#x27;ll certainly put a lot more missions on the table that weren&#x27;t there before, like low cost outer planets space science probes.Also, something nobody has talked about yet. Falcon Heavy is capable of something no other US rocket is really able to do yet, launch new space station modules (or new space stations period).

I&#x27;m just an amateur following along, but this seems likely to be one of the most important launches in modern rocketry history. This sets the stage for deep-space missions with reusable launch materials, which can greatly reduce the cost of future space exploration. Absolutely incredible achievement by the SpaceX team.

Absolutely outstanding! Incredible footage watching the simultaneous landings!
Landmark achievement

It got a little dusty in my house when those two boosters landed. I think someone was cutting onions too.

Yes, there were two or three moments during the livestream when my mind literally said &quot;nah, they spliced in that promo video from few days ago; this can&#x27;t be real&quot;.

Even the modeled exhaust in the rendering looked almost identical to reality. Top minds.

It seems SpaceX has even perfected its tests to the point that their simulations are doing an amazing job at predicting real life situations. Great job on spaceX. Today History was made, and the new generation of children is inspired to choose space-focused careers

Man, the lift off, separation, landing, and don&#x27;t panic sugared with Bowie. How great was it to witness that?

The official YouTube live broadcast video by SpaceX is at: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;wbSwFU6tY1c</a>

Seeing both boosters land side-by-side was absolutely an epic moment. Showing Star Man in the Tesla Roadster with the text displaying &quot;Don&#x27;t Panic&quot; was just amazing. Very grateful that SpaceX allows us to join in on the excitement. I can&#x27;t wait to see what comes next!

Maybe a house with solar tiles, powerwalls, and a Tesla or two :)

Hopefully they put some of those solar tiles on it?

Just curious. They did not put solar panels? Too bad... :D

By 2020 the super charger will have an arm to dock with the Tesla and recharge it

Next test flight will put a Tesla supercharger in the same orbit...

I wonder for how long we&#x27;re going to get images from that tesla. there&#x27;s no power source so the stream will end, but it does sit next some very huge batteries so let&#x27;s hope it&#x27;s going to last and we&#x27;ll be able to check with the spaceman every now and then!

What an amazing feat! Well done SpaceX. Hope the core made it too!

Source? I was poking around for the orbit&#x27;s parameters last night...

Someone has a GIF (or explanation) of the Earth-Mars Orbit?

According to SpaceX, the orbit could potentially last for a billion years if the timings work out.

The target orbit will be a ellipse around the sun.The closest point to the sun will be about 1AU (Earth-Sun distance). The furthest point from the sun will be something like 1.5AU (Mars-Sun distance).This orbit will precess, meaning that it will slowly rotate its axis around the sun, rather than staying locked into the exact same path.

I think right now the car is in a low Earth orbit. There will be a second ignition of the top stage later to shift it to the Mars orbit. The timeline ends with…Mission continues on an experimental long coast and third stage two burn to target a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun… which I can&#x27;t completely decode.Update: SpaceX says &quot;Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours getting zapped in Van Allen belts &amp; then attempt final burn for Mars.&quot;

So the car is supposed to be in an Earth-Mars orbit. It it stable or is it designed to fall to earth at some point soon (say one or two orbits)?

Elon agrees. He’s complained publicly about this law.

Consider that the SpaceX team can simultaneously be team USA and team humanity. They are after all exactly that.People outside the US want to feel part of the accomplishment, which is understandable as there are only a few nations that are likely to ever have the resources to do something like this. So the USA cheering feels exclusionary, naturally. I chalk it up to them being proud of the immense work they&#x27;ve done to get the US back into space properly again.

But even to be a dishwasher, which I wouldn&#x27;t mind:&gt;To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.I mean, I understand, but it still puts a damper on the &quot;Team Humanity&quot; vibe. :&#x2F; Same as when the SpaceX team were chanting &quot;U!S!A!&quot; at one of the Falcon launches.(Hope this doesn&#x27;t come across as petty.)

Elon over there landing rockets on drone ships, I&#x27;m over here finishing a new photo app.Elon over there going to Mars, I can&#x27;t even get this dang app to build.Might be time to move....<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spacex.com&#x2F;careers" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spacex.com&#x2F;careers</a>

How about dat snow tho? Hope you made it home safe! :)

I am stuck in the worst traffic jam in Paris since 10 years. Bah. Who cares? :D That was insane!

&gt; they gave me a job offer but withdrew it after I got badmouthed by a referenceWhy in the world would someone agree to be a reference and then bad mouth afterwards? Some folks...

It’s like that at BlueOrigin too. I visited twice (they gave me a job offer but withdrew it after I got badmouthed by a reference, gah). They have an avionics software engineering room right next to where they assemble the engines.

You&#x27;re showing your biases here. The other people on the livestream are also rocket scientists. They aren&#x27;t PR people. They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. So you might want to re-evaluate what you think a rocket scientist &quot;looks like&quot;, because your notion is outdated.Sorry to call you out like this, but these kinds of prejudices about who is the &quot;correct&quot; kind of person for tech jobs are harmful and discouraging to the people who don&#x27;t fit the stereotypes, and helps contribute to keeping them out of the field.

&gt; The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I&#x27;d believe it.Because they are young and good looking and good at public speaking?

I went to school with one of the other hosts. He&#x27;s legitimately a genius, top marks and well-decorated in academia. Kind of weird to see the guy I used to hang out with livestreaming to 2.3mm people.

At the start of the video they introduced themselves as Lauren Lyons: Flight Reliability Engineer and Michael Hammersley: Materials Engineer. All rocket scientists it seems

Take Lauren, for example, she&#x27;s a super accomplished mech&#x2F;aero engineer who also happens to be a really good host.EDIT: Of course she&#x27;s also involved in FIRST :P

&gt; He doesn&#x27;t look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real.Which is funny because, reading the job titles given to the SpaceX announcers, my first thought is always &quot;wow, SpaceX hires some really attractive engineers.&quot;

Seeing how a harmless comment on a man &#x27;look[ing] like an engineer, a rocket scientist´ leads to yet another long thread about &#x27;bias&#x27; and similar concept is worrisome. The more speech is stifled, the more people have to weigh every word, every expression before they dare to utter it for fear of being accused of violating something, somewhere, making someone feel &#x27;harmed&#x27;, the less open and welcoming society will be. Less open to new ideas and new concept, less welcoming to those who come forth with those ideas and thoughts.It also does not mean people will actually change in such a way that they won&#x27;t think someone &#x27;looks like an engineer&#x27; or &#x27;looks live a TV star&#x27;, they just won&#x27;t say it out loud. Instead they&#x27;ll say it among friends they know they can trust, more vehemently than they&#x27;d have done if this type of speech were not taboo.I can only hope that the hyper-sensitivity currently found in the public sphere will pass when enough people from enough parts of society speak up against it. If it doesn&#x27;t we&#x27;re in for troubled times as it touches something which lies at the core of the enlightened western society, freedom of speech and expression. Those are precious things, too precious to squander.

This is why I love the live streams hosted by John Innsprucker. He doesn&#x27;t look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real.The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I&#x27;d believe it.

Should have been written: &quot;Love that SpaceX announces, shoots, and leaves live production in-house.&quot; Not because it was grammatically incorrect, but because I wanted just one more chance to make an Oxford comma joke. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;a.co&#x2F;gc5Izsa" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;a.co&#x2F;gc5Izsa</a>

The 4 presenters were also engineers. And by doing it that way, they got to show that some engineers are black women. Let&#x27;s hope this inspires a generation of black girls to seek a career in space or tech.

It makes sense, as publicity is central to SpaceX&#x27;s &#x2F; Musk&#x27;s mission. SpaceX evolved out of Musk&#x27;s Mars Oasis concept, with the aim being to inspire and reignite interest in space with a greenhouse on Mars.

Love that SpaceX’s own team shoots, announces, and switches the live production in-house rather than hiring a production company.Also love seeing machinists side by side cheering with software engineers, standing by a mission control which is placed feet from where engines are assembled on the shop floor.Open company culture well-executed.Congratulations to all there!

Good for them. There was a good amount of production value in the broadcast. It seemed an odd creative choice to leave the audience audio feed maxed the entire time.

Yeah.. sorry you were inconvenienced by the cheers of the people who built it...

Yes, for each launch they tend to do &quot;Hosted&quot; and &quot;Technical&quot;.

There&#x27;s a non-hosted webcast which, I believe, is just rocket footage.

I could&#x27;ve done without the constant clapping and screaming on the webcast. Kinda took away from the experience for me.

Unbelievable. The simultaneous booster landings were incredibly impressive feat. Outstanding launch and spectacular landings!Screen shots from live feed: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;gh410" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;gh410</a>

Wow, beautiful and moving to see people building wonderful things. Have been focused on politics for a while and it&#x27;s really a breath of fresh air.  Made my day!

I think it&#x27;s worth noting that NASA wasn&#x27;t the one to accomplish this, it was a private company. It makes me hopeful that there might be a real possibility of huge infrastructure development by private companies, because it seems like the government is unable to organize itself to accomplish huge infra projects like in the past.

&gt; What&#x27;s the difference in how SpaceX is run vs Musk&#x27;s other companies?One, this is his baby. I believe he spends more time at SpaceX than his other companies. Two, B2B. The public only sees breathtaking videos. The contract negotiations, sales process, pricing, support, insurance, et cetera happen behind the scenes. Finally, nothing has been on time. Years&#x27; delays don&#x27;t feel that bad because (a) space is hard, (b) space is awesome and (c) everyone else going to space is even worse at keeping to timetables.

Yeah, it must be really hard on you that world changing, incredible technologies have unknowns and sometimes take longer than expected to deliver. You should let us all know how to do it right.

I think this is a big point. SpaceX has a solid business just with their Falcon 9 rockets. Delays to the Falcon Heavy really only impact them for payloads that require the bigger rocket and their overall R&amp;D costs.Landing and reusing the Falcon 9 cores is probably a much bigger benefit to their bottom line overall.Tesla on the other hand has to be able to deliver tons of reliable cars to people all over the place in a competitive market. Delays to the Model 3 mean they&#x27;re burning money they can&#x27;t afford to lose while their competitors are rapidly catching up to them.While SpaceX could continue their successful Falcon 9 launches during the 5 year delay on Falcon Heavy, Tesla will likely be gone in 5 years if Model 3 delays are even close to that long.

NYTimes article mentioned their initial target for a heavy rocket launch was 2013 due to being &quot;naive.&quot;  Safe to say SpaceX isn&#x27;t all that different from Tesla or Solar City in that regard.

What&#x27;s the difference in how SpaceX is run vs Musk&#x27;s other companies? It seems to succeed doing the hardest things whereas the others have struggled to meet their goals.Would Musk focusing only on it make any difference?edit: This is not a complaint, just a question, why the downvotes? I&#x27;m used to getting downvoted for no reason, but this is basic a question, with great answers. Come on HN! We can&#x27;t ask questions?

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches