On the left, you see the booster, now a used rocket that's experienced one flight, standing in the circle marked on the deck of OCISLY. On right, you see the view we've never seen before: Commander Doug Hurley (l) and pilot Bob Behnken (r) at their control screens. Instead of rows of big toggle switches, almost everything is on a touchscreen.
The entire flight went like it had been done a hundred times before. I think this was the 85th Falcon 9 launch.
Yep, the mission won't be over until they're safely back on the ground.
ReplyDeleteI watched it on Discovery, and recorded it on Nat'l Geo, which I haven't watched yet.
Discovery's coverage is a bit too overly dramatized for my taste, but then I've done this 25 times before, saw one blow on the pad, and had one splash down a mile away which really shook things up.
Didn't *quite* feel the hair on the back of my neck rise up about T-00:30 like it used to, but I still had my fingers crossed.
Guess I'm an old, grizzled veteran who's a bit jaded.
Nice to see Chris Jacobs has another gig besides Overhaulin'!
At T-00:30 I got all blubbery. Silly reaction, but...
DeleteYou're not alone. Brought back lots of memories watching Saturn V's hurl people into space. Ever seen a Saturn V up close? There was one lying on its side at the Air and Space museum in Huntsville when I was there once 30+ years ago. Longer then a football field and taller than a two story house in diameter. Pretty impressive.
DeleteAs to the launch, after the initial coverage, there was next to no news when Dragon mated up with the space station. Overshadowed by all that ugly business going on throughout the country. Sad that.
Nemo
*Mike drop* in zero gee.
ReplyDeleteIt was an exciting launch and booster recovery. Let's see the Russians try THAT.
ReplyDeleteAnd around 6pmish, the astronauts got to manually fly the capsule to ensure that the manual systems worked. Which they did.
ReplyDeleteSuck it, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Lockmart, Bezos, Virgin Galactic...
When it got down to around twenty minutes to go. The rain was pouring and lightening flying here in Melbourne... Sure didn't think it was gonna fly !
ReplyDeleteMust have been a close call.
Great job Space X !!!
Caught myself in a paradigm shift: First launch of my life where I don't know the last names of the astronauts but I know the names Elon Musk and SpaceX.
ReplyDeleteOne small launch for 39A, one giant leap for America's private sector.
We can do this stuff. We have to WANT to do this stuff! So damn giddy right now.
ReplyDeleteWatched both the launch yesterday and the docking today on NASA TV. Kinda felt like old times. The docking was really cool and in real time HD video instead of crude animation like the Gemini and Apollo missions.
ReplyDeleteHaving designed more than a few automatic control systems, I got a kick out of watching the autonomous station keeping and then hands off docking. Then I watched them take a couple of hours to equalize pressures, open the hatch and actually go into the ISS. Maybe that ought to be automated and hands off, too.
DeleteHave you seen anything about their manual controls and backup for if their screens and computers go down? The pictures I have seen seem to show surprisingly few backup gauges and dials.
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven't really looked into the Dragon capsule and how all that works. I figure they couldn't sell a craft with no redundancy and no backup systems, so it has to be there but I haven't seen anything about how they manage that.
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