Octopus Overlords

Enough wrote:So amazing, totally gave me the chills. Here's an HD sequence from a helicopter.

Great backgrounder here on the significance, don't miss the comparison (or more accurately how there is no comparison) to Blue Origin.

Zaxxon wrote:Yeah, Bezos totally walked into the fire with his asinine tweet...

Zaxxon wrote:Agreed on Musk's tweet. I do think he had a bit more reason to go there though, as there were a lot of articles somewhat incorrectly stating that Blue Origin had beaten SpaceX to the punch at the time.

SpaceX completed an historic vertical landing of its Falcon 9 rocket on Monday night — the first time such a feat had been achieved.

The launch and landing in Cape Canaveral, Florida, were the first from the private U.S. spaceflight company since its rocket exploded on liftoff in June.
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SpaceX had not previously attempted to land a rocket on land, and it marked the firm's first successful attempt to recover a rocket from an orbital flight.

Previous attempts, all unsuccessful, were attempted on floating landing pads.

Zaxxon wrote:Successful landing tonight. https://youtu.be/1B6oiLNyKKI

Hrdina wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:Agreed on Musk's tweet. I do think he had a bit more reason to go there though, as there were a lot of articles somewhat incorrectly stating that Blue Origin had beaten SpaceX to the punch at the time.

Both of these guys pay a lot of money to PR people for their companies. They should let them do their jobs.

Enough wrote:

Hrdina wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:Agreed on Musk's tweet. I do think he had a bit more reason to go there though, as there were a lot of articles somewhat incorrectly stating that Blue Origin had beaten SpaceX to the punch at the time.

Both of these guys pay a lot of money to PR people for their companies. They should let them do their jobs.

In some ways I don't mind the posts, it's great to see competition thriving, we need it to!

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:I just watched that launch from the beach in St. Augustine! Pretty cool!

SpaceX had its second successful rocket landing at sea on Friday, lending validity to the idea that private space companies really can make dreams soar.

The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket carried a communications satellite, which it put in orbit. Less than three minutes later, the rocket turned around and headed back toward Earth, ultimately landing on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX didn’t expect a successful return landing because of the rocket’s high altitude and speed. Elon Musk was jubilant about the mission on Twitter.
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The company is the only one so far to recover a rocket following an orbital launch. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has also performed rocket re-launches and landings, but has yet to put anything into orbit.

Daehawk wrote:Are the British on their way?

Zaxxon wrote:Give me reusable rockets or give me death.

coopasonic wrote:Lucky. That death thing was coming due in a couple months.

Zaxxon wrote:I imagine we can kiss that re-flight and any Falcon Heavy 2016 launches goodbye.

Kraken wrote:Bummer. No details yet and only video/pics of heavy smoke from a great distance. I guess it's marginally better to lose the vehicle and payload on the launch pad than in flight.

The Amos-6 communications satellite reportedly cost $195 million and was built for Spacecom by Israel Aerospace Industries to serve as a replacement for Spacecom's Amos-2 satellite, which is expected end its mission this year. In October 2015, Facebook and the satellite communications company Eutelsat also announced a $95 million agreement to lease broadband capacity on the satellite from Spacecom, according to SpaceNews.