Watch SpaceX launch people to space for the first time live

Which also happens to be when we heard those ominous words: "Challenger, go with throttle up".

 

Space X arrives and docks with the space station

 

Exactly.
In early rocketry they discovered the problem, but had no way to throttel up or down. When they lit the candle it was just go.
So they under powered the rockets to escape maxQ.
Today with the heavy lifting capacity and going orbital, they need as much power as possible. They accelerate so fast, that they go supersonic at a rather low altitude and the density of the atmosphere is like a brick wall.
SpaceX had a failure in the early Falcon 9 flights, when a strut of beam collapsed after start. The engines just pushing throw the rocket, so to speak, when the aerodynamic pressure started to built up.
Made for good fireworks

 

Absolut well done. Flawless.

They are showing Boeing off in a big way.

 

Calculating the orbital velocity or speed, is easy. We only need Isaac Newton.

We know orbit occurs when the force due to gravity acting on a body is equal to the centripetal force required to maintain that motion.

The centripetal force for an object in circular motion is given by


where m is the mass of the orbiting body, V is the orbiting velocity [speed], r is the distance to the center of the earth

Next, the force due to gravity is given by:


Here m2 is the mass of the orbiting body and m1 is the mass of the earth.

When is the centripetal force is equal to the force of gravity? To find this we just set the two equations equal

G x m1 x m2 / r^2 = m2 x V^2 / r

so that G x m1 / r = V^2

and V = square root [G x m1 / r]

 

with all the cost to the taxpayer from elon musks company to nasa, this boring launch didn't appear to be worth it.

not sure if a moon landing or trip to mars would impress most Americans either

time to keep taxpayer money within orbit.

 

It never gets old or boring. It is amazing how they nail those landings on that barge.
How flawless this mission has been up to date.
This is human ingenuity at its very best.
It is not about impressing most Americans, it is about advancing technology at the highest level.
Most Americans do not have the basic education to understand what SpaceX has achieved, since founding 18 years ago and what a mile stone this Launch was.

 

NASA's budget is less than 0.5% of our federal budget. I agree that our spending needs to be reduced, but I don't agree that NASA is a promising place to go for dollars. There are too many other budgets where what we spend on NASA can't even be detected.

Plus, NASA's budget includes contributions to DoD as well as the study of Earth - weather, global warming investigation, and information that is used by agriculture. It also contributes to education. Cutting NASA really doesn't make sense.


While I agree that sending men to the moon makes no sense, I do believe this launch is an amazing and important opening of opportunity for both business and science.

The amazing reduction in cost of launching mass into space by being able to reuse the equipment (rather than tossing it into the Atlantic or watching it burn up on reentry) is fantastic - estimates are at 30% cost reduction. We were able to reuse our space shuttles, but the rocketry required to lift them was stupendously expensive and sophisticated equipment that was destroyed at every launch.

 

The fuel seems cheaper too. Kerosene and lox.

 

it is not good for business, they won't have a Trump hotel on the moon for another 100 years.

 

There will never be a trump hotel on the moon.

Low-earth orbit is critical on a practical level now. We need access without having to hitch a ride with the Russians.

 

Yes. There might be a hotel in Earth orbit.

If Musk really achieves having everyone in the world have fast inernet access that would be huge.