Boy it is fun teaching the rocket engineers here at Florida Tech. Many of my past and current students work at SpaceX and at Blue Origin.

Brings back memories. I was fortunate to work at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Test Facility, and Edwards AFB in the early 60's starting with Gemini and ending with Apollo. Then in '66 the Army took me to go to Vietnam so I missed the moon landing while I was gone. Saturn V still remains the biggest, with the possible exception of some of the Soviet stuff. 1st Stage was 7.6 million pounds of thrust, slightly less that the weight of the vehicle fully fueled. I kind of like that Tesla Roadster, might consider a Crystal Red one if only it ran on gasoline, or maybe water. I've always thought about adding calcium carbide (CaC2) to water for transportation fuel. Acetylene should produce quite an efficient fuel for vehicular transportation.

Laughing

I kept dreaming of Chuck Schumer, behind the wheel and Nancy Pelosi in the passenger seat.

They could flip a coin for who gets the spacesuit...

Falcon Heavy side boosters use throttleable engines, which is also how they were also able to slow it sufficiently to reduce structural strain during MaxQ, (which is the cusp between air resistance and density during acceleration (or deceleration during reentry) thus lessening additional weight of the structure otherwise required.) The shuttle launches used solid fuel side thrusters that once lit burned at the same rate until exhaustion. To my memory the only prior throttleable engine was the Luner Module Descent engine (LEM) designed and built by TRW for the Apollo missions. SpaceX Merlin engines are all throttleable, a standard feature which accounts for much of their versitility. The spent modules could not be autonomously recoverable otherwise.

This is fantastic! The first 18 mins is an explanation of what is going to happen. The rest is just sooooo exciting!

This is literally another step to a dream come true. The modern day East India Company with colonies in space.

Saw that, watched it several times.

The ad shows people doing service-oriented tasks set against audio of King's speech, which urges people to be "great" by serving the greater good rather than being successful. It was supposed to highlight the volunteer program Ram Nation.

EMP like the Carrington Event is a great danger and should certainly be planned for. A large x class flare or CME will happen again as we become more vulnerable with the weakening Magnetisphere.
I also would like more research and promotion of indoor farming.
BTW Ben Has an anomaly in the spacex launch it looks like a secret deployment occured.
https://youtu.be/GFdVZyGUwI8

The Chrysler add, believe it or not was hailing the American people a few other add were doing the same.
I thought Elon's humorous response was interesting. wish I could find the whole interview...don't even remember what channel was on the TV...I was getting ready for work.

Would really be interesting if they could retrieve the car after a while to see if the electronics survived (unshielded) CME's.

Just bugs the hell out of me that no one is working on shielding our electronics.

Yes the socialistic brainwashing is 24/7 . Chrysler had an add with a MLK Qoute and the message was distorted to the greatest accomplishment is self-sacrifice or service to others. Then, the local TV news editor had a special message that illegal
Immigrants are not criminals and rapists. Special report at nine showing they are looking for the American Dream.. Blah blah blah.
Working closely with NASA means get your pocketbook out US. The cost effective reuse of expensive equipment is brilliant, and the landing of those boosters was right out of science fiction it was about 8 1/2 mins or so after launch.
It is truly spectacular.

Too bad we couldn't have put some of our worst lefties in that tesla.
Briefly saw an interview with Musk on TV...he wondered what an alien would make of the car. "Did these people worship this car?" is this their God or something to that effect.
Couldn't find the interview.

The launch is 18 mins in to this video. It is quite a spectacular feat .https://http://youtu.be/99llRhH71vA Don't miss this!