
SpaceX lands Falcon 9 booster on Just Read the Instructions drone ship - AiaMD13
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/25/spacex-lands-falcon-9-booster-on-just-read-the-instructions-drone-ship/
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slenk
I feel like 1 year ago this would have a lot more points.

It's pretty cool that recovering used rocket boosters is becoming a norm

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dmreedy
As too went the government space programs, until the disasters in each started
happening.

The sense of awe sticks around though. I don't know, I still will from time to
time get a little sense of vertigo when I'm in an airplane and the landing
gear leaves the runway. The scope and scale of human accomplishment to get to
the point where this miracle has become mundane will occasionally hit with the
peculiar warmth that accompanies the loss of meaning of a word spoken one too
many times. It briefly becomes new again, and _amazing_.

It is pretty cool indeed.

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martincmartin
Have you seen "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy"?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4)

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djsumdog
ah I remember that. I can't help but think in a modern context that this bit
falls into the whole, "nostalgic for a better time that never existed fallacy"
though.

For example: old crufty rant about how no one talks to each other and everyone
is on their phones. Get a video from the 1960s of people on a train in NYC.
Everyone has their head in a book or newspaper or magazine. By the 1980s, some
nerds have walkmans. By the 90s everyone has discmans, plus their book. Today
every has their phone, on which their either reading a book, a magazine or
listening to a podcast or music. The media is different, it's a bit more
interactive, but it really hasn't changed that much.

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stcredzero
_Get a video from the 1960s of people on a train in NYC._

Of course people don't interact on mass transit.

 _The media is different, it 's a bit more interactive, but it really hasn't
changed that much._

It has been a progression. More and more interaction has been mediated
electronically, where it's been widely known since at least the 80's that
interpersonal cues do not work in the same way. Of course non-interaction on
mass transit is going to be a constant. It's socializing in the home, day to
day, where things have changed.

Things have changed.

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jchanimal
If you like the ship’s name, you should read this sci-fi:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Cult...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series)

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greglindahl
This particular ship's name (Just Read The Instructions) is deliciously punny,
given that "read" might be present or past tense. So is the ship's AI saying
that it just finished reading the instructions for the first time and what-
could-possibly-go-wrong?

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solipsism
That's not a pun. That's just an ambiguous word. And it's only ambiguous for a
person reading the written form. There's no indication in the book that the
name is considered ambiguous by any characters.

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mhb
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhOUkBZrO1E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhOUkBZrO1E)

But difficult to see anything.

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ftcHn
Just before the landing at 85s in:
[https://youtu.be/zhOUkBZrO1E?t=85](https://youtu.be/zhOUkBZrO1E?t=85)

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kowdermeister
This reads like some kind of weather report. I love the future we are living
in.

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andygates
The most interesting thing about this flight _was_ the weather: it was windy
enough that the booster was (gasp!) a few metres off-centre.

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mikeash
And this is really important! As SpaceX goes from “recovery is a nice bonus”
to “recovery is a standard part of every launch,” they need to be able to
handle challenging conditions. Weather delays for launch already cost a lot of
time and money, and requiring perfect weather at the launch site _and_ out at
sea could make it much worse. I think this is a really important milestone for
them, even though it doesn’t look that way at first.

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LandR
Did they mange to catch the fairings?

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ohitsdom
No they didn't. They said the wind was too much.

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ufmace
Very awesome. Now just waiting for the price to drop and launch frequencies to
increase enough that it's basically impossible to compete in the launch market
if you don't recover your boosters.

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greglindahl
SpaceX says they're currently selling reused-booster GTO launches < 5.5 metric
tons for $50mm, which is plenty low enough to screw up everyone else's
financial plans. Ariane 6, for example, appears to cost more than SpaceX's
current price.

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Diederich
> Ariane 6

Also, the first Ariane 6 test flight is currently scheduled for 2020.

Meanwhile, the next generation SpaceX platform, the BFR/BFS, is also expected
to start orbital testing in 2020. BFR/BFS is 100% reusable, and will bring
lift costs down at least an order of magnitude.

Now, everybody knows about 'Elon time', but the 2020 estimate comes from their
COO, Gwynne Shotwell, who is without a doubt far more realistic with
estimates.

I'm obviously a pretty huge SpaceX fan, but I really hope there is some
meaningful competition for them in the future. It seems to me that Blue Origin
might be the only possibility there.

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nickik
I don't think Gwynne ever said orbital testing by 2020. They will start upper
stage hops in 2019 maybe and potentially. However the booster is unlikely to
be ready by then.

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Diederich
Well noted. I pulled 2020 from the Wikipedia article, which is sourced from
Elon:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFR_(rocket)#cite_note-34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFR_\(rocket\)#cite_note-34)
And several years ago at that.

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vidanay
Has there been any talk of a night time booster recovery? I can't think of a
reason this wouldn't be possible; I don't think the landing system uses
visible wavelength cameras (other than for human consumption).

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cloudwalking
Today's recovery was at night.

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detritus
As was last week's launch of the Telstar 19 satellite.

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Orangeair
The name of that ship gives me the impression that Elon (or someone in SpaceX)
wanted to name it RTFM but had to compromise.

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wetpaws
I'm pretty sure it's a Banks reference

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andrewbarba
The TechCrunch mobile experience is just so infuriating. If you scroll even
slightly too far past the last paragraph it does this ridiculous jump
animation to the next story and then you can’t scroll back up to re-read
anything from the story you were just on.

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larkeith
I disabled Javascript in my mobile browser a year or so back for privacy
reasons, and it's made my browsing experience much better - no more ads,
subscription popups, or bloated pages that grind my phone's cpu to a crawl -
and, of course, no more "helpful" mobile-specific behaviors. While I fairly
frequently have to make exceptions for sites that are nonfunctional without JS
(anything video-related, for example), I recommend trying it out.

Of course, that does not excuse poor web design.

Disclosure: I have a vested interest in getting more people to disable JS, as
it means developers are more incentivized to design with us in mind.

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vowelless
OMG, thank you for this! It has greatly improved my mobile browsing
experience.

For chrome on Android, go to setting -> site setting -> JavaScript and then
disable it.

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larkeith
(This is also where you can add exceptions to allow Javascript, or block it
for specific sites if you'd prefer to leave it enabled in general.)

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ForHackernews
Elsewhere, flagged off HN frontpage:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17604933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17604933)

