
SpaceX/ISS fly-under, coverage starts at 11:30 pm PDT - DavidSJ
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html
======
Mizza
All the NASA guys are wearing ties and all the SpaceX guys are wearing black
t-shirts and jeans. Interpret as you will.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Ya know, that could be as simple as East coast vs. West coast office attire.

~~~
Lambdanaut
Anecdotally as somebody sitting on the east coast in a start-up's office right
now, everyone in this room is wearing a t-shirt with jeans/shorts. I see some
flip flops peeking out here and there too.

I think it's more of a Start-up vs. Corporate office attire. SpaceX's culture
is more Fresh Silicon Valley Startup than it is corporate.

And of course there is a huge concentration of Start-ups on the west coast.

------
jonah
NASA has paid SpaceX $381mm to date for the 37 of 40 tasks in the COTS
program.

So, private industry, yes, but a lot of public assistance in achieving this.

[edit]: Not bashing the arrangement at all. Just pointing out the deep history
and current support, both technical and financial.

~~~
sasha-dv
The NASA's decision to support SpaceX with money and expertise is a step in
the right direction.

NASA (and Roscosmos) should delegate to private companies all of the
operations in LEO. They should focus their efforts on sending humans deeper
into space.

I want to see a day when docking at the ISS is considered a boring affair.

~~~
lucian1900
I agree, except about sending humans deeper into space. It seems much cheaper
and more useful to send many, many machines deeper into space.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The goal of spaceflight is not merely exploration, it is also colonization,
and adventure. The rest of the Universe is just a place, and humans will go
there. Not because it is the only way to learn about it, but merely because we
can.

------
sneak
It's been a minute since I've watched NASA TV. Do you think they have enough
US flags on the desks there in Mission Control?

I'm a fan of American industry and the private sector, but man does that sort
of overt ueber-patriotic nationalism give me the willies.

Maybe it's because I live in Berlin and it's pretty obvious what becomes of
countries in the period right after that becomes widespread. Ugh.

~~~
evride
I wouldn't fear any uber-patriotic nationalism from them just because they
have flags on their desk. HR probably just hands them out with the name plates
to everyone when they're hired.

My mother works for a city government office and they handed out those flags
for birthdays last year. She wasn't happy about it at all.

What it's a sign of is some Chinese company making a lot of money off cheap
trinkets.

~~~
sneak
No, it's symptomatic of a growing and powerful trend in thinking and attitudes
of the members of the US Government.

[http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1779544,00....](http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1779544,00.html)

------
kristofferR
Here's a low-def link for people on sucky connections. The HD stream didn't
exactly work very well here in Cambodia.

<http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-mobile>

------
jacquesm
I was watching 'The Aviator' just the other day and I realized that at some
point someone will make a movie called 'the Astronaut' or something like it
about Elon Musk.

If SpaceX goes public I'll buy stock. To me it will mean investing in humanity
and in our collective future.

~~~
Arjuna
In a _60 Minutes_ interview [1], Scott Pelley [2] asked Garrett Reisman [3]:

 _Pelley_ : "You know, I'm curious... you have so much background in
engineering, you could have easily gotten a job at Boeing, or at Lockheed, but
you came here..."

 _Reisman_ : "If you had a chance to go back in time, and work with Howard
Hughes when he was creating TWA, if you had a chance to be there, at that
moment, when it was the dawn of a brand new era, wouldn't you want to do that?
I mean, that's why I'm here."

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU#t=425>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pelley>

[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Reisman>

------
kristopher
Countdown Timer via TimeAndDate.com:

[http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?msg=S...](http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?msg=SpaceX+Falcon+9+%2F+Dragon+COTS+2+Fly-
Under&day=24&month=05&year=2012&hour=01&min=43&sec=0&p0=224)

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Thanks for that, converting time-zones is a huge pain.

~~~
kristofferR
<http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/> makes it quite easy.

------
picklefish
Could someone explain the steps until docking? What exactly is the fly under /
first burn / second burn?

~~~
marvin
Today, SpaceX is just testing/demonstrating to NASA that the Dragon capsule
is, in fact, capable of performing the precise navigation required to dock
with the ISS. So the diagram they keep showing on NASA TV is the scheduled
"test track" which will take the capsule around the space station. Additional
and more precise maneuvers will be tested tomorrow before the docking takes
place.

Due to the vaccuum of space, firing the rocket engines (a "burn") is required
for any change in direction (the effects of gravity nonwithstanding). The
burns we are looking at right now are to move the Dragon capsule closer to the
ISS in the vertical dimension: First one burn to accellerate it upwards
towards the ISS, and then a second burn to level it off and stop moving
upwards. It will still have its _horizontal_ velocity relative to the space
station after the second burn.

~~~
picklefish
Exactly what I wanted to know. Much appreciated.

------
jonah
First burn now scheduled for around 1:00 am PDT, second burn (for 2.5 km
approach) at 1:43 am PDT.

------
phoboslab
It's weird how much time they spend with copying (talking) numbers back and
forth over a crappy voice connection. Wouldn't a simple text chat (IRC maybe)
make this way more efficient and less error prone?

~~~
ColinWright
Typing in weightless conditions is tricky, and when you're also performing a
task, talking is way, way easier. The back-and-forth is a formal protocol
designed to minimise (prevent!) errors, and the rate of communication is
rarely the limiting factor, and for many, speaking, even with the repetitions,
is faster than typing.

Especially in micro-gravity.

With your hands full.

~~~
phoboslab
Interesting. It never occurred to me that typing with your hands floating
around may not be as easy as on earth.

I was just watching as one crew member was calibrating a camera, probably by
using a laptop(?), and he had to repeat a number 3 times till ground copied
correctly. I just thought "damn, he could just copy and paste these numbers
into a chat session". But then again, why aren't these numbers transmitted
automatically in the first place?

~~~
ColinWright
It's really, really hard to figure out how to get absolutely every possible
thing you might ever want to be accessible all the time. It's really, really
easy in a given instance, with hindsight, to say - "Why not just transmit that
all anyway?"

Yes, it's a good question, but it's a better question when you think to ask it
10 years before you need the data.

I work remotely with safety-critical systems, and sometimes I curse the lack
of foresight on the part of the engineers and designers who came before me.
Then I wonder what equipment people will be using 5 years from now to
interface with the systems I'm trying to get out the door on time and on
budget.

------
sparknlaunch12
Looks like those guys in mission control are having a blast. One guy appeared
to be sleeping.

Slightly unrelated but underneath the video it has a live counter of views.

"1159 current / 944428 total views"

~~~
DavidSJ
I was hanging on the edge of my seat after Mission Control requested of the
ISS cosmonaut to restart his Outlook.

~~~
sasha-dv
So did I.

But, I think, doing dangerous stunts like that is just a small part of their
daily duties.

------
Mithrandir
[http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplication...](http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/JavaSSOP/JavaSSOP.html)

^ Tells you when you can view the ISS outside. I guess sky-viewing isn't as
detailed as the webcast, but it's still pretty cool.

------
ColinWright
Dragon module spotted by the ISS cameras.

Stunning.

~~~
Mithrandir
<http://i.imgur.com/BnUKf.png>

Edit: Here it is again, 1 and 1/2 miles below the ISS,
<http://i.imgur.com/KngeN.png>

------
damncabbage
Friday 6:30am UTC, with first burn at 8am and then second at 8:43am.

(That's Friday 4:30pm, 6pm and 6:43pm for Sydney-siders. :D )

~~~
ColinWright
Do you mean Thursday?

~~~
johnchristopher
I wished worldwide events were announced with local time and some unique
universal time the whole world would agree on (gmt ? umt? utc? sw@tch ?) that
could easily be converted once you know your location's offset. It would make
my life easier.

edit:

 _man date

date -u

jeudi 24 mai 2012, 11:00:31 (UTC+0000)

TZ='America/Los_Angeles' date

jeudi 24 mai 2012, 04:00:55 (UTC-0700)

date --date='TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 11:30pm'

vendredi 25 mai 2012, 08:30 (UTC+0200)_

Might be handy to keep that under my belt for future references. Of course
events reported or announced at the time they are happening are going to throw
me off by a day.

~~~
ColinWright
My point is that he said:

    
    
        Friday 6:30am UTC, with first burn at 8am
        and then second at 8:43am
    

The burns took place on _Thursday_ 8am and 8:43am UTC.

Many NASA and SpaceX announcements do include UTC times, although not all. I
also wish there were consistency, but it's not as bad as you seem to be
implying.

~~~
ash
"...am UTC" sounds awfull for those of us who don't use am/pm system. And we
are the majority!

------
obilgic
Lady@NASA is continuously eating something.

