SpaceX Launch of Iridium-8 Mission

What time is launch set for Astro?

10:31 am eastern, 15:31 UT about 8 minutes from now.

Liftoff!

Iridium CEO did the 10 second countdown, that's cool. He's been an early supporter of SpaceX's reusable rocket program.

First stage sep, boostback and coming up on re-entry burn, second stage continuing on.

Stage 1 entry burn done, coming up on landing.

First stage landed on the drone ship, no camera view yet.

Bullseye, they landed dead center on the drone ship.

So does this mean satellite phones will be a lot cheaper?

Very cool.

I wish. Launching nearly a hundred satellites like this is still an expensive process, even with re-usability. Iridium has completely replaced its satellite fleet with this final launch, and those are costs they'll have to recoup. It does mean more bandwidth and better coverage though. It also means much better ADS-B coverage over areas with no ground infrastructure. These new Iridium satellites have Aireon receivers.
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

Second stage completed its second burn, about to start releasing satellites.

I don't know why you get such a low star rating, I always find these launches interesting. I never get tired of seeing the rocket return to the earth and land like that.

How about a conspiracy angle for the Iridium Next. The best place to use this network will be Antarctica. Plenty of satellites always in clear site and hardly any bandwidth being used down there (other than the secret alien base).

The Iridium sats talk to each other too so they can downlink even when not in sight of a downlink, they just ask another one to pass the info on. Pretty interesting stuff.

I think I heard him say they deployed all the satellites safely over the last 2 years, 75/75.

Last Edited by Human Garbage on 01/11/2019 12:06 PM

Lol. Poor Astromut. There are a lot of haters on here it goes back years all about a telescope and bunch of drama long forgotten save for a select few it would seem. I’ll give it 5 stars !

I was just at Kennedy space center over Christmas break, it never ceases to amaze me that place. Most of it was off the tour because of the shutdown most of NASA is furloughed but Space X and Lockheed are there in force. I was actually quite surprised at how little NASA mentions Space.X in the tours or in any of the exhibits at Kennedy. Lockheed is very prominent, I think there’s a little bit of animosity between the two entities. Might have something to do with Space X sending a Tesla into outer space making them all look like a bunch of amateurs lol. Still incredibly fascinating to go see that place in person. The Saturn exhibit never gets old. And they now have the actual space shuttle Atlantis on display you can literally go touch it. Very very cool stuff! Thanks for what you do around here Astro! Some of us find it very fascinating

Thank you for saying it for me; and thank you Dr. Astro for posting the launch. I have been around long enough to see the general acceptance of the very informative and intellectually challenging posts that you make. Do you have any interests in going main-stream? Again, thanks and keep us informed, please.

Where is Hugh-the ex-mil 'sun guy'?

Astro gets haters here because he so easily pokes holes in many astronomical DOOM memes and the trolls who make them: from Planet X to Solar Doom, to the posters that would cry wolf about the Sun rising and setting too far North or South, to Comet or Asteroid DOOM, among many others. He'd do so unapologetically, called a spade a spade, and not only post to factual places, but also learned to do the observations and math himself. That *really* turns doom-boners off.

Anyway, I largely stick around GLP for his threads (but I'm also considered in the debunker-government-agent doghouse, so YMMV).

The Bin Laden Group still major shareholders?

Yea, we're actually that dumb our Mil Coms on the Iridium/Bin Laden Network.

I was born in the same city as Elon Musk! :beer:

:herosdancing:

It predates that. SpaceX has been the new kid in town since they first started launching Falcon 9's. I went on a bus tour there wearing a SpaceX shirt and hat before they had successfully landed any of their rockets and received some ribbing from the bus driver.

Keep in mind that the tours are all run by Delaware North in cooperation with NASA, not NASA themselves. They have to turn a profit to stay open, which means selling tickets to see NASA equipment, NASA rockets, and NASA facilities. They don't have the job security of a government employee, but they have to rely on the popularity of NASA for survival. From a business standpoint, SpaceX does bring in a lot of tourists especially for big events like Falcon Heavy, but I think the employees there feel like it's a threat to their main bread and butter by stealing the lime light from NASA missions. Atlas and Delta launches never caught the public's attention the way Falcon launches do, so they were never threatened by that.

Bottom line, they'll gladly host special events for SpaceX launches but I do get the feeling that the average employee at the visitor center is less enthusiastic about SpaceX than the average space enthusiast. The shirts they sold at the Falcon Heavy event were a perfect example; they had the slogan "I was there" printed on them, but the picture on the shirt was from an Atlas V launch, not even a SpaceX rocket. They also gave away champagne glasses that were supposed to be souvenirs for those who bought the $200 tickets to see Falcon Heavy launch from their viewing area at the Saturn V center. It had a Falcon logo on the glass, only it wasn't a Falcon. Whoever was responsible for creating that souvenir used a parody version of the Falcon Heavy logo which looked more like a rooster than a falcon. Check it out:
[link to pbs.twimg.com (secure)]

No one caught it, and it was on all the glasses they handed out at the launch. It was originally posted on a thread of a site that is dedicated to humorous SpaceX memes and parodies. It only has 9 comments and 63 upvotes even today, and 2 of those comments are discussing how someone used it on the champagne flutes. So it strikes me as rather obscure and deliberate. It never went viral, yet some rogue employee found it and used it.

If they were smart they'd capitalize more on people's interest in SpaceX launches and landings. It's the return of sonic booms and reusable spacecraft to Florida, it ought to be celebrated. Instead they seem to fear it, I guess because SpaceX owns the trademarks on their own stuff and they sell their own t-shirts and other items. The visitor center can't merchandise it as hard as they can with NASA related items, so you rarely see SpaceX stuff for sale (and when you do I guarantee 90% of the revenue goes right back to SpaceX - the champagne flutes were technically "free" with the tickets so that didn't count).


The Atlantis exhibit is honestly the most impressive display of a spacecraft I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

An ancient prophecy says that teh peeps from Pretoria will one day rule the galaxy.



:startreknod:

Wow. Lol yeah I guess you know what I’m talking about then. I asked our bus driver about space X at one point and she turned everyone’s attention to an eagles nest and deflected my question. Sigh.

One cool side note though, as we all waited in line (Christmas week we decide to go to all the parks what were we thinking!) well as I stood there for an hour I happened to notice all of the displays and interactive kiosks at Kenedy Space center all run on Raspberry Pi :). That cracked me up. The form factor is unmistakable and upon closer inspection to the back of one of them I actually saw the pi logo on one of the devices lol.

Haha, that's funny. I noticed that their backend for managing the accounts for the kids playing the "CosmoQuest" thing was written with Visual Studio. They left the default icon for visual studio programs in place and I saw that when they brought it up to make a change to someone's account.

darn was waiting for this, missed it lol

5 * from me!

I think the low rating comes from the fact that lots of people here don't believe in:

Rockets
Orbits
Gravity
Space
Antarctica

This types of posts are offending to their faith!

Last Edited by JADR+ on 01/11/2019 06:40 PM

shackles, pls show me the shackles.




oops i mean sheckles