I have an appointment I scheduled 3 months ago at 10:30 am PST March 14th.
The odds of it launching between 10:30 and 11 are close to 100% :-)

All set to go for 1200z tomorrow morning.

Can’t wait. Already got my alarm clock set

Any bets on how far this one goes? I'd sure like to see a complete flight and booster touchdown (is that the plan?).

Any bets on how far this one goes? I'd sure like to see a complete flight and booster touchdown (is that the plan?).

New T0 of 1325z coming up shortly this morning.

Very cool. Still have some tweaking to do on booster recovery, it seems.

Nice job so far, 15 mins. into the mission.

From a post I made earlier, around 8:40 EDT (just after initial 8:30 scheduled launch):


The YouTube live feed from SpaceX via NASA TV went down to T-5 seconds or so around 8:30 EDT, with a cheering throng as liftoff was only seconds away, then switched before liftoff to a video of Elon hawking his new venture into cryptocurrency (really?!) and encouraging clicking on a QR code. I see on the NYT site that at least 30 mins. previous Space X had actually pushed the lunch back to 9:30 or so EDT. Terrible coverage. Elon sounds like the Pillow Guy.

There is a remote possibility of viewing re-entry in a bit.
The final act is coming up.

Pez door worked.

These commentators/presenters on the SpaceX site are much better...not reading as much as talking. GREAT images of earlier phases of re-entry, plasm glows growing.

Awesome views of reentry. Looks like we need some work on the Ship’s RCS and landing burn, but an excellent flight.

Loss of vehicle on re-entry.

Darned good show.

Very impressive flight.

On reentry it looked to my untrained eye that the angle wasn't quite right - the plasma didn't seem symmetric around the heat shielded area. Maybe an optical illusion? Anyone else notice that? I'm wondering if some of he unshielded surface was exposed

So hard to tell if it was a lens issue or was it orienting itself around to test responsiveness or what.

Im sure they got a bunch of that data stuff.

So hard to tell if it was a lens issue or was it orienting itself around to test responsiveness or what.

Im sure they got a bunch of that data stuff.

I'm guessing that they have the data that they need.

The booster had a problem restarting the engines for the landing burn. If the graphic was correct, among other things it was trying to light engines that weren't supposed to light, and of the three that were supposed to light they got one. I don't have a guess as to what went wrong there, but starting a rocket motor with several hundred kph of wind up the pipe is probably not that easy.

The ship loss on re-entry I think was the result of an unchecked rotation of the vehicle. You can see that in all of the video, which cuts out as the antennae rotate toward the planet and then is restored as they rotate back upward. I think the rotation was intentional as part of the orbital fuel transfer experiment, but it was supposed to stop before re-entry. Since it did not, instead of a heat shielded rocket, you had a sort of rotisserie effect that eventually claimed the vehicle.

Fix the engine re-light issue and whatever caused the unstable re-entry and we're good to go.

IFT4!!!