Shyster's thread of Spaaaace.

[shafnutz05]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajZojAw ... e=youtu.be

[robbiestoupe]

My brother works at SpaceX...

I used to go to the SpaceX office in El Segundo (I guess technically it's in Hawthorne) a couple times a month for food trucks. I've never seen a group of employees more openly enthusiastic about their company. There were so many people wearing company swag that I thought it was a dress code thing, only to be told that nope they just like wearing the stuff.

A current coworker's husband works there now (as did she before joining this company) and a couple times a year she solicits interest in SpaceX wear. I have a Falcon 9 t-shirt and a hoodie. Woop woop.

I have quite a bit of SpaceX swag of course, but my favorite was my son's onesie that he wore as an infant.

It may be different in Cali, but I think the shine has worn off on the polish at SpaceX for the employees in McGregor. 12 hour days, 6 days a week is the norm, as well as switching constantly between day and night shift. Most people are bailing at 5 years service time when they are fully vested and selling their stock for a huge payout. They freeze the price for stock based on the stock's price the day you were hired. So say you were hired in 2008 and the stock was $2. You can buy stock today for $2, even though the actual price is $70+. It's not uncommon to have guys in their late 20's/early 30's "retiring" from there as millionaires.

[Shyster]

Scrub for today's launch attempt. It sounds like the timing was off for the propellant loading. SpaceX has switched the Falcon 9 to using fuel and liquid oxygen that are both subcooled (i.e., the liquid oxygen is cooled below its usual liquid temperature). Subcooling the propellant increases its density and lets you get more performance out of the same size tanks. But if the propellant sits in the tanks for any significant time before launch, it will heat up and you'll lose the extra density. So SpaceX has to time the propellant loading so that the last gallons of oxygen and kerosene are pumped onboard only seconds before launch. This means that any significant delay on the launch will require a scrub, because the propellant will warm up too much. That is esepcaially significant for this launch because SES-9 is a really big honkin' satellite (over 11,000 lbs.), and every bit of perforamce is required to get it where it needs to go. It sounds like for today the prop loading wasn't going fast enough to have the vehicle full at t=0, and with no margin to extend the loading time, they had to abort.

[dodint]

Source of the post I used to go to the SpaceX office in El Segundo (I guess technically it's in Hawthorne) a couple times a month for food trucks.

Friend of mine from the Marines works there. My wife is friends with his wife and is flying out there for 10 days in August. Was going to poke you for food recommendations when it got closer. The only place I know for sure that she's going to is...the food trucks.

[Shyster]

SpaceX and SES are going to try again tomorrow:

https://twitter.com/SES_Satellites/stat ... 8237517824

As an aside, one will note that every launch attempt has been for roughly the same time of day (around 6:45 or so local time), and there's a reason that a lot of satellite launches occur early in the evening. By launching around that time, the launch vehicle will wrap around the Earth and reach orbit just in time to come out of the Earth's shadow. That means that the freshly-launched satellite gets the maximum length of exposure to sunlight to accomplish setup tasks that might take extra power, like unfolding receiver dishes, extending antennas, etc.

[Shyster]

Launch abort due to fouled range—most likely some dumbass boater or pilot in the exclusion zone. They have not called a scub for the evening.

[CBear3]

Back on, T minus 6

[CBear3]

And scrubbed.

[Shyster]

I was rather surprised that a post-ignition abort did not immediately result in a scrub. We'll have to see what prevented liftoff.

[Shyster]

According to a tweet from Elon Musk, the delay caused by the boats gave the LOX time to warm up, and the warmer LOX triggered a "low thrust" warning that aborted liftoff. Everything would have been fine for the original liftoff time. That dimwit on that boat just caused a loss of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of wasted time and effort.

[Silentom]

How can you live near a launch site and have no idea what's going on? You can't tell me that guy had no idea what was going on.

[Shyster]

It looks like the next launch attempt will be March 1st at roughly the same time (around 6:45 pm).

[Shyster]

No SpaceX launch attempt tonight due to excessive high-altitude wind shear. Those winds are expected to continue for the next few days, so SpaceX has announced that the next attempt will be NET (no earlier than) Friday.

[tifosi77]

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Returns Safely to Earth after One-Year Mission

After 340 days aboard the ISS, he is now 1/100 of a second younger than he would have been had he stayed on terra firma.

[Shyster]

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Returns Safely to Earth after One-Year Mission

After 340 days aboard the ISS, he is now 1/100 of a second younger than he would have been had he stayed on terra firma.

He might have been a little bored there toward the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFc1XWEkhpM

[tifosi77]

That's outstanding! lol

[Viva la Ben]

Repeating radio signals discovered

Repeating radio signals coming from a mystery source far beyond the Milky Way have been discovered by scientists. While one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected in the past, this is the first time multiple signals have been detected coming from the same place in space.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/frbs-mystery-r ... ce-1547133

[Silentom]

Pretty sure that telescope is where they keep the second Goldeneye.

[Viva la Ben]

The first Fast Radio Burst was detected 15 years ago, and they never repeated. The speculation was they were created in some massive cataclysm. Something is making those bursts happen from the same place repeatedly.

[tifosi77]

Are they prime number sequence bursts of a carrier wave?

[Shyster]

SpaceX trying (sigh, again) to launch the SES-9 mission. Liftoff set for roughtly 6:35 pm, or about 20 minutes from the time I'm typing this:

Hosted webcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muDPSyO7-A0


Technical webcast with no commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU

[Shyster]

Good launch, good staging, good fairing sep, and nominal performance of S2.

[Shyster]

The video feed cut off, but I'm pretty sure that landing attempt was "swing and a miss."

[Shyster]

And a clean payload deployment. SpaceX's job is done.

[relantel]

Nicely annotated video. Thanks for sharing!