SpaceX's Dragon coughs

[Grall]

...Sputters, now apparantly back on track to docking with the ISS: http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/watch-spacexs-next-launch-to-the-international-space-station/

Didn't even know it was about to launch until after it'd already launched, yesterday. Fail! Then, after a fully successful launch - unlike last time when a Merlin engine blew up during the ascent - the flight computer aboard the capsule glitched for some undisclosed reason, refusing to enable all thruster quads.

Now that issue seems corrected, and docking with the ISS should be able to proceed (after they've checked out for roughly 50 times that everything is indeed OK, no doubt...)

 

[Grall]

SpaceX has released video from their drone barge of their latest Dragon 9 landing attempt (which as you probably/might know ended in a "RUD" - Rapid Unshceduled Disassembly.) What's interesting is that we see the rocket coming in pretty much diagonally through the air, the engines smashing into the deck and causing a bigass explosion, which then sends then entire first stage of the rocket shooting over the side of the barge and into the ocean, much like a swimmer diving into a pool, lol... Pretty darned impressive in a way if I may say so.

Read Ars' write-up about it here (and watch the Vine of the event):
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/spacex-releases-video-of-falcon-9s-explosive-landing/

Elon Musk tweets that the next attempt "in 2-3 weeks" will carry more hydraulic fluid onboard (to prevent the grid fins from failing partway during the descent), "At least it shd explode for a diff reason", he concludes - wether it's black humor or sardonic realism remains to be seen.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Cute, I had only seen a not-so-great GIF. It was really close to working and the way it failed is impressive, it's not like the rocket obliterated the barge.

 

[Grall]

So they finally performed a soft-landing of the first stage on a barge, after successfully launching a dragon capsule. Pretty amazing, that video! I watched the webcast - after the fact - and it was really great. Haven't seen SpaceX do a webcast before, and the excitement as the rocket hit performance milestones during ascent (and later, descent, heh) was really awesome to behold.

Only similar thing I've seen was the NASA control room video of the Curiosity landing sequence, and SpaceX had loads more people lined up to watch. It was pretty incredible.

Now all that remains is to bring the capsule in to the ISS and dock it to the station. Hopefully all of that also goes off without a hitch!

Gogo SpaceX!