04-08-2016, 07:40 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by BEC
The Dragon is in orbit and the first stage is standing on the drone ship, just a little to one side of the center of the landing circle. Amazing stuff!
The video of the webcast right at the first stage landing: https://youtu.be/7pUAydjne5M?t=35m47s |
Thank you for posting this! I don't watch television (the internet is my 'television'), but I'm an avid radio listener, and the hourly and semi-hourly international news reports mentioned Dragon achieving orbit, but *didn't* mention the first stage landing attempt at all. Until I saw your posting, I was wondering if it might have been omitted from this mission due to rough seas in the landing zone. Speaking of which:
The drone ship was visibly pitching up and down in that video. I hope the landed first stage doesn't tip over due to the pitching and/or the wind before they can secure it, although I imagine they've calculated all of those load factors (and the stage probably has a low center of gravity, with its heavy Merlin engines and their thrust structure at the bottom). Also:
The stage was significantly off-vertical even as it was quite close to touchdown, as the photo here shows (this page also contains another landing video link, see: http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/0...-status-center/ ), and SpaceX's website www.spacex.com has a full launch and first stage landing video for this CRS-8 mission up now. Below are links to the other "space...com" (including space.com itself, of course :-) ) websites' reports on this much-anticipated historic event:
http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/0...for-first-time/
http://www.space.com/32517-spacex-s...gon-launch.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/S...ti me_999.html |