pic: SpaceX 3:44 AM History
 

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I wish I could have made it there Barry! I was also there on the first night it scrubed! Much dissapointment with FLASH then.. what just happened? I'm glad it finally took off and only wish I could have seen it this morning.

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I believe that the issue was traced to a faulty valve in Engine 5.

- Sunny G.

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Thanks for the pics, Barry ! :cool:

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I too was up both Saturday morning and this morning to watch the launches....My only issue is they aren't visible from Indiana, so I had to rely on NASA TV. Part of the fun is watching the difference in the SpaceX and NASA guys, or as I noticed, jeans/shorts/t-shirts vs. suits and ties.

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Oh to live close enough to see a launch... The one time I saw one was when I was 5yo and I barely remember it. But hey it inspired me and that is all that matters right? I mean it is pretty much the only thing I remember about that vacation to Florida.

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I watched it online!!! It was soooooooo cool!!!

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I watched it live from cocoa beach, got a good picture of walle waving goodbye I'll put up later

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That's what the official release said, I'm going to go with that.

I was up early enough, and in Titusville--but not quite in time to make it out to the nearest good viewing, so had to settle for webcast.

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If you were in Titusville you could have just walked outside and saw it.

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Two problems with that. One, I'm often a tad bit directionally disoriented by the time I get to where I'm staying. Two, I'm not exactly in Titusville proper--I'm staying at The Great Outdoors with some of my teammates for Lunabotics, and it just so happens that a lot of the lower-sky directions are blocked by either trees or houses. The group that went out to watch it went to the Merritt Island causeway.

Re: pic: SpaceX 3:44 AM History
 

Dang, well it wasnt as pretty as a shuttle launch becuase normally you can see the body of the shuttle but since this rocket had 9 engines it was super bright so all it looked like was we were launching a star into orbit.

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I must say I'm very luck to have been able to snag this picture, weird time to be happy a rocket* launch was delayed.

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That is an epic picture. Send it to SpaceX and I bet they would put it up on their website.

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Winner of coolest picture I've seen yet is this one, where EPCOT's Mission Space building makes an X with the path of the rocket.



More cool facts:
The Falcon 9 had on board the ashes of Mercury Astronaut Gordon Cooper, the 6th American in space. It also carried the ashes of James Doohan, who played Scotty in the original Star Trek series.


Check out the official launch video from SpaceX. The coolest part isn't the launch, its at 12:50... go there, and keep watching.



Want to witness for yourself history and the making? Go to www.heavensabove.com and track when the dragon capsule goes over your house. You can see it with the naked eye. In a couple days, you'll see both the space station and dragon go by together.

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http://i.imgur.com/MTNgx.jpg

picture is huge, but this one pretty cool to guys.

- Andrew

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Cool photo. Do you know who took it?

After the launch, a portion of the celebration moved to the SpaceX headquarters roof, where Dragon was visible three hours after launch. It was pretty epic.

I'm not sure if it'll be webcast and/or on NASA TV, but early tomorrow morning we start the C2 demo phase of the mission, where we demonstrate that we can navigate and move around ISS successfully. Once this is done and we get the okay from NASA, we'll berth with ISS the next day, which I believe will be shown on NASA TV.

-Kevin

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I found it on Tampa Bay Channel 9 News website, they give credit to
Matt Stroshane / Disney Parks Blog

Keep us posted Kevin, I'm rooting for you all like you're my sports team.

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I sent the photo to Elon & Gwynne (our CEO & President) and a bunch of other folks. People are digging the double SpaceX "swoosh".

Dragon is doing great and we're preparing for operations with ISS over the next couple of days.

-Kevin

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Random thought: Any FIRST alumni involved with this?

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Kevin Meissner, alumni of 11, is currently a structures engineer for SpaceX. He's the only team alum I know of working there. I trust there's plenty of people from FIRST involved though, including Kevin Watson ^

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Aisha Ayoub Malik who has judged in LA and at CMP works at SpaceX as does Andrew Keisic from 294

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Yes, there are quite a few FRC alumni here.

-Kevin

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Do you care to mention who and their teams?

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Why School? Why Finals? at 3:25-ish (three hours from now) it is passing over Narraganset, RI with a magnitude of .9. I've decided not to check to see if it will be visible from Providence since I need to sleep before exams start tomorrow. If the launch had happened a month later, I could be setting up the telescope right now.

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The ISS has captured the Dragon module. This is very very cool. Congrats SpaceX/humanity.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

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Dragon is now berthed to the space station! I believe they are openning the hatch tomorrow to receive the supplies

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In addition to mentoring 294, I'm also a 217 alumn.

Robert Leibersbach from TorrBot (1197) and Ben Seipser from El Segundo Robotics (1759) also work at SpaceX.

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Jadon Smith, team 45 alumni and 1998 driver, is the "Lead Propulsion Systems Analyst" at SpaceX.

Andy B.

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Thought everyone would enjoy this. some of the Apollo astronauts signed a congratutory poster to SpaceX.



This is really cool, as some of the astronauts have criticized government spending on commercial space. Elon Musk stated in an interview that he considers these critics some of his greatest heroes, and sources of inspiration.