https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/705917924972736512

Edit - text of tweet: "Rocket landed hard on the droneship. Didn't expect this one to work (v hot reentry), but next flight has a good chance."

Very impressive nonetheless. I am wondering if they had a loss of the drone ship?

http://www.mcdonoughmarine.com/recent-news.html

That ship has a cargo capacity of over 13,000 tons. I believe an empty Falcon 9 first stage is around 20 tons. Totally different scales.

And rapid de-pressurisation.

A mostly empty can. And it should be moving slowly when it hits.

So suspenseful!

The last frame before video cut out http://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png

Edit - looks like stage 1 did not survive landing (this time).

https://twitter.com/MatthewBTravis/status/705908015711518720

The Drone Ship says, "Sorry guys :(" https://twitter.com/TheDroneShip/status/705907706209693696

I've only been posting here for a bit over a year. Has HN always had an issue with these sorts of pragmatic speech mis-queues where one posits that the experts are not aware of some painfully obvious solution? I find it to be condescending, but I'm not sure that such commenters realize it, and so I struggle with pointing it out - in case they didn't honestly realize the issue - or keeping my mouth shut, thereby avoiding potential conflict with someone who either can't be swayed or may actually be smarter than the group whose collective knowledge is being challenged.

EDIT: I asked a legitimate question. Down votes don't teach people who want to learn, people.

It does seem to me that the rocket scientists would have had their hands full with all the other issues around the launch and recovery. My guess is that the live feed isn't a priority for them, knowing that they can get what they need after the fact.

Yes.

Mod dang has spoken about it a few times. Here's one example, but there are others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8769453

Note the way he talks about it is less harsh than the way you talked about it, which may explain some of the downvotes.

You demanded answers. There's a big difference.

EDIT FOLLOWS

From your profile:

>Hi, I'm Bucky. I'm sorry if I've come off as a jerk, communication on the internet is really tough.

It sure is, so thanks in advanced for your helpful response.

The "rocket scientist" that is responsible for landing the craft previously worked on NASA's SMAP satellite, on the control team. One challenge faced with controlling that satellite was that several systems had to share an antenna for different purposes, and the hardware needed to be steered as part of its scanning duties. Dr. Lars Blackmore (said rocket scientist) has authored many papers on control systems, several of which discuss communications as part of it.

I would submit as my "argument from authority" (appealing to Dr. Blackmore's authority) that this particular rocket scientist is likely to have ruled out the ideas posited by any given armchair quarterback engineer, a role I know many of us like to play. The premises behind the argument are not in danger of being flawed, that I can tell; my conclusion may be, but that would just be an everyday incorrect conclusion and not an outcome from a logical fallacy.

When "have you guys always screwed up this way" is your only non-rhetorical question, I call shenanigans on intent to learn. You solidly earned that downvote by being so patronizing.

That said, it's very easy for a solution to be both painfully obvious and at the same time not worth the effort. The rocket scientist is busy doing rocket science. If they give a flippant answer, it's okay to point out that the answer is flippant. It's not condescending. It doesn't imply they are "not aware" of the solution. They simply lack infinite spare time to implement every solution to everything.

My child has pragmatic communication issues, and I've experienced that he (and others, adults and children alike) generally appreciate being told when they're speaking in a manner that suggests superiority even when I know they're not intending to sound that way. On the other hand, people who are just arrogant will become hostile. That's my gamble, and my question would help me to quantify the nature of that gamble.

Many people in certain segments of information technology, for example, are frequently challenged by social cues and pragmatic speech. I don't know if those groups are more concentrated here versus, say, in a community focused on space. And I don't like to piss off the communities that I have enjoyed being a part of. I learn from mistakes and, when I'm not sure, I ask.

Please don't project a hostile intent; I didn't accuse anyone of anything negative and I was sincerely trying to better understand the people in this community because, for better or worse, I identify with it.

The term "rocket scientist" is often used euphemistically, and I wanted to make sure my usage of the words rocket scientist could not be interpreted any way but literally. Perhaps the phrases "he's no rocket scientist" or "it ain't rocket science" aren't used in the milieu of the community here? I know humor is generally dismissed in this community, but if there is an in-built assumption that euphemistic language isn't expected either, then I can certainly see how my use of literal could be misinterpreted.

When you ask if it's possible that [insert conclusion], when your conclusion is worded as to be super obvious and something your conversational partner really should have thought of, you're not writing the nicest sentence in the world. When you add the "I'm sorry, but", well, you're not actually apologizing for anything. A non-apology is one of those polite veneers that are put on sentences to pretend they're not insulting. Which magnifies the condescension.

Probably 1/10th the viewers clicked the link. The link is at about 6k views in 2 hours. Kind of mindblowing how much viewership a toplevel comment gets, especially compared to the number of upvotes/downvotes.

http://imgur.com/StUjcAc Maybe, maybe not

I mean they can make a robotic rocket and sea-based-landing platform, but they cant take good video with $100 cameras? Why are all vids cut off as if it was some lame redditor's crappy gif repost?

Edit: I was clearly misinformed. My question was bad and I feel as.

We’re targeting today, Friday, March 4 at 6:35pm ET for launch of SES-9. The window extends to 8:06pm ET. The SpaceX webcast is scheduled to go live here (on http://www.spacex.com/webcast) and on YouTube about 10 minutes prior to launch. For rocket views, launch countdown audio and telemetry info, use this link for our technical webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU

The Falcon Heavy launch was supposed to be next month, but that's slipped to late 2016, maybe.

I'm glad the launch is going well. After all those false starts a first stage failure would have been depressing.

Imagine someone saying the same thing about a delivery service throwing boxes away. They're not burning money and getting away with mass failure. It's a perfectly ordinary way of handling things.

a) The scales are not the same in aerospace as in software, they are still very much the minnows in that industry.

b) It does not matter if they have 5,000 staff or $1+ Billion revenue today,What matters is the high growth plan they are following, In the next 10-15 years they could be easily doing $100 Billion + i.e. if they are successful with cost costing and can expand the market for it support companies of that size.

Any company looking to 100x or more their revenue is a startup. Size notwithstanding, simply because whatever they do now will be nothing similar to what they need to do to get the remaining 99%. Every single business and technology process would have to be continuously innovated and thrown out to get there. That really requires a startup mind frame and startup culture

That's a perfectly nice point, but it's also obvious. Were you stating such an obvious thing "because we're all a bunch of fucking idiots"?

Your original post's wording really seems to be wishing other startups could get away with that kind of waste as long as their core product is good, not wishing they were trying to massively eliminate waste.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384297

Do you think I don't understand why SpaceX is using a barge in the ocean? I'm trying to dig deeper and you seem to be stuck in the mundane.

You seem to enjoy the more mundane, which is fine. However, I'm really trying to drive home the point that some people want more. Perhaps you can take notice and not insert drivel into conversations?

If you want to raise the level of discussion, look at the beam in your own eye first.

Certainly I'm not helping by continuing to grow this gigantic pointless argument, so I think this will be my last post here.