pic: SpaceX 3:44 AM History

[Barry Bonzack]

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[Andrew Remmers]

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.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Joyride_67_1902

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.

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

- Sunny G.

[EricS-Team180]

Thanks for the pics, Barry !

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

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

- Sunny G.

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.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by EricH

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.

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

[EricH]

Originally Posted by dodar

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

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.

[dodar]

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.

[Aren_Hill]

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.

[dodar]

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

[Barry Bonzack]

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.

[Andrew Remmers]

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

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

- Andrew

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Barry Bonzack

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.

Cool photo. Do you know who took it?

Originally Posted by Barry Bonzack

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.

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

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by Barry Bonzack

www.heavensabove.com

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.

[Barry Bonzack]

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.