Anyone else watching it tomorrow?

Nope, because it's been postponed.

Bugger.

So!

Anyone else watching it on Thursday?

[Edited by - JoeCooper on December 6, 2010 1:13:11 PM]

Falcon 9 flight 2/COTS 1 launched this morning. I was asleep during the launch, unfortunately, but I've been watching the

">replays and following along with the mission. Dragon splashdown should take place sometime within the next couple of hours.

Beautiful launch, it looks like they fixed basically all the issues they had on the first flight. No more scary roll at liftoff, no more roll control issues during second stage flight. There was a rather frightening looking ignition of one of the umbilical hoses, but that didn't affect the actual flight itself. I was surprised by how well the second stage performed given that they hacked off part of the nozzle yesterday to make it shorter.

I watched it as well. It was glorious. I noticed that umbilical detonation. It was a perfect launch; only one thing exploded.

Cost to tax payer: 250 million dollar grant for three demo flights.

Considering JAXA got a similar program together for 800 million excluding the cost of the rocket, I'd say this whole COTS scheme is looking pretty promising.

Though of course I don't wanna speak too soon... 15 flights later we'll be able to look at it with some real hindsight.

Watched this morning. The cool thing is that I think this really sparked the interest of a lot of people who stopped caring about the space program. Reminds me of October Sky, like a homebrew rocket test.

Can't wait to see civilians in space!

Landed!

Quote: The cool thing is that I think this really sparked the interest of a lot of people who stopped caring about the space program

It feels like everything is coming alive again.

A few days ago the USAF just landed the first new space plane since the Buran in '88.

RSC Energia is building a new space station, an Almaz station is being launched, Bigelow has launched two transhab prototypes and is on the way to making that a space station, China's making a space station...

And Boeing is joining in too.

Interesting times. Hopefully it'll work out this time. A lot of this is 50+ year old technology, but figuring out the business end is the next step and fresh minds are workin' on it.