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SpaceX Grasshopper Video: Now THAT is a Rocketship

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 13, 2013
Filed under , ,

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

68 responses to “SpaceX Grasshopper Video: Now THAT is a Rocketship”

  1. Jackalope3000 says:
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    Watching that amazing video I kept thinking about all the safety reviews NASA would have about operating that tiny helicopter right next to a flying rocket. In the end, the video helicopter would be deleted as too unsafe.

    • Joe Cooper says:
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      For what it’s worth their footage of the Shuttle flights near the end was really astonishing.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        True, but I believe it was all done with fixed-mount cameras, some of which had to be replaced every time. The hexacopter at least can be reused repeatedly. IIRC, the Shuttle cameras were there for the engineering people, not PR; we just got the benefit after the fact. What was really cool was that you could see the Shuttle launch from so many different perspectives with all those cameras.

    • npng says:
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      Patrick,
      I love that they used a hexacopter to capture the entire launching and landing sequence. You’re right, NASA would never do this. I’d like to see a separate article on the hexacopter, what model and video system was used to capture the sequence, who did it, how they approved it, etc. Obviously it all worked perfectly and without any safety issues. I hope SpaceX does this again and again in more extensive ways.

    • Anonymous says:
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      To be fair to NASA, they get to be scrutinized by Congress and the public, neither of which is likely informed about real dangers. When NASA has made mistakes, they’ve paid a big price in the public and Congressional eyes, so I think it’s easy to understand why NASA may be overcautious.

      On SpaceX’s side of the ledger, they answer to no one but Elon and those under Elon. They’re not publicly traded, so that gives them a lot of freedom, freedom that NASA doesn’t have. In a perfect world, NASA would have that freedom and would have no worries about funding.

    • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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      NASA is using a quadcopter at Marshall to film the flights on the NASA Mighty Eagle testbed lander.
      http://www.youtube.com/watc
      (The hidden first half is the flight of the quadcopter.)

      I notice that there is a long distance between the rocket’s launch pad and the control tent for the video helicopter.

  2. Steve Whitfield says:
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    That’s one more small (744 m) step for a Grasshopper, one more giant leap for mankind.

    I really like the way that these SpaceX updates are just sort of quietly posted for us to see, unlike all the fanfare that often accompanies a NASA story ( In a historic move today, NASA officials announced that another bolt has been tightened in the Orion’s framework, bringing to six the total bolts tightened to date. Plans for next week call for applying the torque wrench to at lease two of the six bolts, completing their installation, and bringing the US one step closer to the day when its first manned BEO mission will actually have to be decided upon.)

    NASA program updates would be so much more enjoyable if they were simple, without the flash and fancy HTML, and a little easier to find and see in chronological order.

    • Rocky J says:
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      Great looking but what caused that yellow plume during descent? It was present during ascent; some excess, bypass or something. It doesn’t look desirable.

      NASA spent about 40 years operating the Space Shuttle. SMD aside, not all that was wasted by HEOMD but one can fairly say that NASA should have perfected and implemented this technology 20 years ago. The electronics and detectors of that era would have sufficed.

  3. Mark_Flagler says:
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    I wonder if Grasshopper has used the same engine throughout its life. If so, that says very good things about the reliability of the Merlin.

    • John Gardi says:
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      Mark:

      Like helicopters, it might be the same ‘engine’, but just how much of it is the question. I would expect them to examine that Merlin carefully and replace what they no longer trust. This may lead to improvements in reusability as they can make modifications without risking an orbital flight.

      At a couple minutes each flight, that engine must be pushing half a dozen ‘full missions’ worth of run time.

      tinker

      • Mader Levap says:
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        Not really. Conditions and environment of real launch is different than during GH jumps. There is no basis to count these as “real flight time”.

  4. majormajor42 says:
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    Makes me want to see any 1st stage retro and recovery videos from VAFB even more. Are they coming? Did on board videos survive? Did the airplanes or boats get it on video? I want…

  5. Peakview says:
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    No words, no music, no voice-over – but when was the last time you were so attentive to a video? Time to watch it again.

  6. Spacetech says:
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    After 19 years with NASA, maybe its time to jump ship and go to work for SpaceX. There just has been nothing exciting or inspiring the last 6-7 years and I just don’t see anything changing in the near future.
    Very impressive! Good job SpaceX

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      I guess inspiration is a pretty subjective thing, but off the top of my head for the last 6-7 years.. Kepler collected a massive amount of exo-planet data, Deep Impact explored multiple comets, Messenger is two years into the first long-term exploration of Mercury, New Horizons is on its way through the outer solar system, the Stardust mission brought samples from a comet back to Earth, Juno’s on its way to Jupiter, Dawn is on its way to Ceres, and the upcoming Osiris-Rex mission will attempt to return samples of an asteroid to the Earth.

      Could we do more? Certainly. The cumulative costs of all those missions I described is less than two years worth of SLS development. But that still seems to me like some pretty cool achievements.

      • Andrew Gasser says:
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        That is all subjective – that is all SMD.

        • kcowing says:
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          Its about space exploration.

          • Andrew Gasser says:
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            Well I would say the success of COTS is pretty damn inspiring then. Everything that Orbital and SpaceX has achieved in spite of Congress (House and Senate) is a good thing.

            As nimble and flexible as the private sector is – its still going to take time and resources.

            There are still many sacred cows.

          • kcowing says:
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            Everything that OSC and SpaceX has done in COTS and ISS resupply has been with NASA funding. The public is not inspired by this. They are inspired by what NASA does – however it does it.

          • Andrew Gasser says:
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            I completely agree with this Keith. However, it is not enough to simply say “it was NASA’s money”. Clearly – both SpaceX and Orbital have their own skin in the game.

            Moreover – Elon has said he would have pushed on with F9 but at a much slower pace. NASA has undoubtedly “pushed to the left” SpaceX’s timeline.

            Why has COTS and the CCDev program cycled along so smoothly when being underfunded by House Republicans and Senate Democrats?

            I feel this is the important thing to focus on.

            JMHO

          • kcowing says:
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            It most certainly is simple enough to say it was NASA’s money. There would be no existing flights to ISS by OSC, SpaceX , or anyone else without NASA’s seed grants. Will they be cheaper in the long run? Hope (and expect) so. Will it spawn other business? Hope (and expect) so. But to suggest that COST would exist sans NASA’s funding requires citable proof on your part. Otherwise you are just guessing – at best.

          • Andrew Gasser says:
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            It is certainly not simple to say that NASA’s money is the reason for SpaceX and Orbital success. It was the contracting methods used to obtain those results.

            Cost is proven as provided in The Commercial Market Assessment for Crew and Cargo Systems report which none of us can download right now. This is where Ralph Hall and the House Science Committee staff tried to bury DDT&E on page 43 in Appendix B, or maybe it was page 41 (I forget now).

            This is where I am saying limited government works. NASA did provide the money but limited its bureaucracy in the DDT&E which lead to F9 v1.0.

            Moreover I would add that we did have a commercial launch of F9 v1.1 – most of which was SpaceX’s doing. The fairing worked. We also know the relight on the second stage didn’t go as fragged.

            SAAs are the way to forge the path ahead. It is a new contracting model that spares the producers a lot of headaches and heartaches. We need look no further than CxP, SLS, and CEV (I mean Orion(I mean MPCV(I mean MPCV-Orion)))

          • kcowing says:
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            So, if NASA gave $0.00 to SpaceX and OSC we’d have full up cargo service to ISS today? You keep going in circles but cannot answer that simple question. You’ve made your point. Move on.

          • Mark_Flagler says:
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            Personally, I am inspired by what SpaceX, et al, have been able to do despite repeated attempts by Congress to un- or under-fund these programs. I would also conjecture that relatively few people were thinking of NASA when each Falcon 9 launched, but the launches WERE inspirational.
            There seems to be a growing sense that SpaceX, Orbital, and the rest have set about to do things which NASA, for whatever reason, isn’t able to do. And many people seem fine with that.

          • Rocky J says:
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            However they do it? Whether citizens are in the mid-west, west coast or are easterners, the waste of taxpayer money and time to get something done is unacceptable and a tarnish to everything NASA does. I am sorry I did not speak up sooner – the 35+ years of NASA manned flight – in summary is a disaster to space exploration. First of all, mandates on NASA and forbidding projects must be taken away from congressional committees. A long term vision and plan is needed. A 5 or 10 year plan is needed. Congress needs to provide a inflation adjusted fixed budget over that period. If NASA fails to meet the plan deadlines or ones set by themselves for specific projects, then at the end of the plan period, objectives and funding can be re-assessed. This would provide accountability and the framework in which NASA could try to function.

      • Spacetech says:
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        Matt,
        As far as NASA as a whole, yes there is still inspiration to be found but working as a contractor at NASA there isn’t.

        • The Tinfoil Tricorn says:
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          When I came to Houston my Dad was working on the Shuttle Cockpit avionics upgrade, it was amazing, I was inspired to get involved with the Aerospace scholars program and even seriously think about doing a CO-OP while attending Clear Lake University, had the transfer program lined up and everything, then it all went fail, shuttles were ended, the upgraded ended, and the slow but steady shutdown began. For me the writing on the wall was clear, by the time I graduated in 2012 there would be few if any new job openings for recent graduates. I would have debt so deep that the only real choice would be some consumer oriented public job.

      • Ryan says:
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        Very telling that everything you point to is Science Mission Directorate work, which isn’t where the majority of funding goes.

        • mattmcc80 says:
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          Indeed. If only the majority of NASA’s funding actually went to science instead of trying to become a government launch provider.

  7. Aristotle120 says:
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    Bravo!

  8. Steve Pemberton says:
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    Besides going higher, this flight also had much higher speeds than previous flights. Maybe the actual numbers are posted somewhere but using a stopwatch I estimate an average vertical speed during ascent of 60 fps (40 mph), and during descent it was about 80 fps (55 mph). That’s about twice as fast as what I estimated for the two previous flights. That probably explains why we see so much upward flames during descent on this flight, something which you don’t see on previous flights. I am guessing that starting with this flight they will get to see what effects if any that plume impingement might be having.

    • John Gardi says:
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      Steve:

      Yes, they want that higher velocity on the way down. It gives them more aerodynamic control on approach. On final approach, positive control is provided by the decelaration, effectively placing the Falcon stage at the bottom of a ‘cone’ instead of sliding on a flat surface if it were just hovering. That’s why they want to still be decelerating when the landing gear touch concrete.

      tinker

  9. Laka says:
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    Holy Freaking Moley!

  10. Denniswingo says:
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    Very very good job! The method of thrust vectoring looks extremely interesting.

  11. DTARS says:
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    When will Spacex hop grasshopper from the cape? I don’t understand why they are testing in new Mexico when they could be practicing where they will do the real thing as well as be building their integration architecture now??

    • John_AnotherContractor says:
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      See PsiSpuared reasoning above for why. And they already are doing Falcon launches from the cape. So, all they might need to do is pour a square of concrete somewhere remote for a landing pad, or rent a jack up rig and park it offshore (my choice for testing).

      The hexacopter decision was probably easy. They calculated that should they collide at a whopping 60mph, or whatever max vel was, that no damage could be done to the rocket. Elon, or some empowered manager, says “Fine, do it. Next topic?” I do wonder though if anybody would have even bothered calculating.

      Anyone care to guess how many people would be involved and man hours consumed in the NASA version?

    • John Gardi says:
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      DTARS:

      SpaceX might be too successful for their own good. Maybe they didn’t expect to nail both engine restarts on the first Falcon v1.1 fight!

      If my skyliner pans out, it could fly from New Mexico Space Port, first stage could land on a pad, the skyliner using the runway. Lots of desert around to absorb the odd first stage landing failure :).

      tinker

      • DTARS says:
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        Tinker
        Dragon 3
        The first space liner

        It has wings why?

        Is its diameter the same as a falcon?

        Does it fly throw the atmosphere like the shuttle/ x-37
        Can it use the same second stage engine as falcon V 1.1?

        How far could a falcon heavy push it?

        Why doesn’t Spacex second stage have multiple engines and engine out ability??
        Should Dragon 3 have the ability to use a standard merlin engine with a super draco system as backup which of course is also your abort system?

        So isn’t your dragon 3 basically mating a falcon second stage to a dragon 2 that’s 4 or 5 times as deep 6 seats per section and shielding the cone the same as they do the X-37?

        I remember us all holding our breath on Apollo missions for that one service module engine to fire on the back side of the moon. So the dragon orbiter should be able to burn its main engine or its draco system as backup to get it to orbit as well as its de-orbit burn right?

        I don’t think that even if a dragon 3 needs wings to deorbit that it should have to land on a runway shouldn’t it land on legs like dragon?? Maybe it could land both ways using airports for emergency landings or vise-a-virsa
        Why would you want a spaceship landing at a standard airport anyway? Don’t you want it to land on it’s integration pad near its launch site?

        if you did land it horizontally you could taxi it over your strong back which could be

        Doesn’t Spacex test each booster stage on a test in Texas now before each flight? Well instead of testing the stages, why don’t they just hop them before shipping them for flight.

        I just read your tweet that said the this space liner/ orbiter will be boosted by two falcon cores a falcon 18.
        How does the orbiter mount on the two boosters?
        Don’t you have Y shaped faring so you can have orbiter safely on top??
        How would you save this faring?
        I see 🙂 the faring is part of the two boosters that are recovered together.

        How long does the first stage boost the orbiter before the orbiters main engine/s takes over?

  12. Spencer Whetstone says:
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    As God and Robert Heinlein intended.

  13. Littrow says:
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    Hard to believe that carrying the amount of fuel required to perform a soft landing on rocket power alone could ever be efficient.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      Fuel is rapidly expended if the rocket is not accelerating (“gravity losses”), so a slow, constant-speed descent would rapidly run out of gas. The only efficient way to perform a powered landing is to drop as fast as possible until the last seconds and then use the engine at high thrust to decelerate. Ideally you come to a stop just as you touch down.

      • Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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        The return profile for a Falcon 9.1 calls for reigniting three engines to do the heavy work of getting the booster turned around and significantly slowed. Only the single center engine will be needed to land a returning F9 , as Grasshopper so magnanimously illustrates.

        Falcon 9.1 stretched the first stage fuel tanks by 30 percent, which increases the payload capacity and provides a surplus of kerosene after MECO for the powered descent and landing. The Merlin 1-D’s are ~40 percent more powerful than their predecessor, and require more fuel volume coming and going.

        Fuel management is tricky , but doable. I don’t think a returning F9 is going to have a lot of loiter time on final approach, except maybe to just hang there and burn off the excess fuel till they hit optimum landing weight. . I’m sure the SpaceX controllers will have many re-creations of the Neil Armstrong ” You gotta bunch guys about to turn blue” moment before touchdown. Armstrong landed Eagle at Tranquility pretty much on fumes.

        • John Gardi says:
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          Dwedle:

          Grasshopper won’t hover at any time during it’s descent to the landing pad. That’s the last thing they want.

          During the sub-sonic part of descent, aerodynamic forces keep the Falcon stage stable with the heavy engine section pointing down. Once the center engine restarted, they want the stage in constant descent (aerodynamic control) and/or constant deceleration.

          Let me explain. During deceleration, you can imagine that the Falcon stage is at the bottom of a cone, the little dimple of gravitational forces holding it in place. During a hover, imagine that the Falcon stage is on a flat surface where it could easily slide sideways, susceptible to drift and requiring more control.

          Also, the less fuel used, the more payload to orbit. They want to light that Merlin at the right height, jam the throttle and then lightly kiss concrete. The less time they burn the more fuel they save. If we knew the free fall (terminal) velocity of the stage, the altitude they restart the Merlin would be easy to work out. My best guess is a relight at a mile and a burn of 30 seconds.

          For crew landings, you’d want a bit more margin and, yes, time to hover if necessary! If they intend to land on SuperDraco thrusters like they’ve suggested, the hypergolic fuels are self-igniting and there will be eight thrusters for control, making the whole operation much easier and safer.

          tinker

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            It’s clear that to conserve fuel you should avoid slowing down earlier than you need to. And I can understand that stabilizing aerodynamic forces work better at faster speeds. So those are two reasons to maintain as high a descent rate as your hardware will tolerate. But I don’t really get how gravity plays into the horizontal aspect. From a physics point of view vertical forces don’t affect horizontal forces. It should take the same amount of force to move left or right regardless of your vertical speed, or the effect of gravity.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            It does, and thus the near-vertical flight profile for the first stage to avoid having to use additional fuel to accelerate horizontally toward the pad. As to descent, the minimum amount of fuel needed is what is required to decelerate from initial velocity to zero. Fuel spent to keep the stage hovering or even descending at constant velocity does not contribute to delta-V, instead it is spent fighting gravity, hence sometimes referred to as “gravity losses”.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            To avoid gravity losses it would seem that you would want to do most of your post-separation retrograde thrusting above the atmosphere. That way when you are thrusting you can maintain an orientation that is parallel to Earth regardless of the direction of travel at any particular moment, so that you don’t waste any thrust modifying the vertical component of the trajectory.

            You would then enter the atmosphere coasting towards the landing site in free fall, with the tail oriented in the direction of travel, and allow atmospheric drag to kill off the horizontal velocity, which if you do it just right you will reach zero horizontal velocity directly above the landing site, you then drop straight down like a rock and then begin powered descent at the last possible moment.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        That doesn’t make sense to this non-scientist. Isn’t the delta-v the same? I get the atmospheric effects but are they critical?

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          but are they critical?

          Yes, sir. The aerodynamic effects keep it vertical for free, as long as your center of gravity is low enough and something, fins or legs, are there balancing the air flow. The alternative is thrusters to correct and maintain your vertical attitude which have to fire over and over, adding fuel mass for the whole trip and then burning that fuel only on the way down. Also, the thrusters require a sensor and control system in addition to the extra plumbing. The trade off is that if you’re relying solely on aerodynamic attitude control you can’t hover, but in this case you’re not likely to want to hover anyhow. If you’re landing on unknown terrain (like Apollo 11 did), then you want hover capability, but not to do a preplanned stage 1 return.

          As for Delta-V, forget the name and think of it simply as fuel being burned. If you hover you’re burning fuel continuously, fighting gravity, but you’re not getting any movement of your stage for that burned fuel. For lateral (side-to-side) movement, which is called translation, if you’re literally moving sideways at a fixed altitude, then the same fuel-burned loss applies as for hovering. Ideally, your computer combines the vertical and horizontal movements required into a single slanting decent. This gives you the maximum movement in the minimum time and using the minimum amount of fuel, and gravity is working for you (aerodynamics) instead of against you (hovering).

          Hope that helps.

  14. Ryan says:
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    It makes me kinda sad that it is SpaceX developing the next generation of luanch vehicle technology, not NASA.

  15. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    I think they’ve done a divert this time too. Grasshopper seems to loop away from the HexCopter on the way up and towards it on the way down.

    tinker

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      I found it hard to tell for sure. I think lens curvature and changing camera-to-Grasshopper slant angle might give the same impression, but that’s just an idle thought on my part.

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      it appears that the hexacopter actually flew towards the Grasshopper after it lifted off, thus the change in perspective.

  16. Saturn1300 says:
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    Elon said there is a 30% penalty with flyback. It can only be used with light loads. Like CRS. Looks like he will have to use heavy on some payloads. I guess that is why USAAF signed up. I said there was plenty of room at the KSC Shuttle strip. The skid strip at the tip of Cape Canaveral is more correct. Elon said there was several good places there. It looks like my little image to the left will be SOP next year. Everything that I thought might cause trouble, was not in the test flight. All these years talking and someone is actually doing.

  17. olafva says:
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    Cool SpaceX launch viewd from Helicopter!

  18. DTARS says:
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    Great comment Sir!!!!!

    Lololol

  19. hikingmike says:
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    Sweet moves hexacopter! And not bad Grasshopper 🙂

    I like how they got close this time. Who cares if a hexacopter gets burned. It’s not going to do any damage. Just make sure there is one up there stationary as well so you get the shot.