CRS-8 Dragon: Hosted Webcast

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It’s steps like this that move the space program forward. Notice this wasn’t done by NASA or ULA or the ESA. It was done by a private company that didn’t exist 15 years ago. 37 minutes, including the launch, recovery of the 1st stage, and deployment of the Dragon capsule.

BTW, very cool to me that Spacex did not require the help of a traditional media company for any of this. And it’s actually much better than anything they typically produce. In addition, the people in this video are in the Hawthorne, California, SpaceX facility where these rockets are designed and produced. They designed and built this rocket. And they’re watching it perform almost real time. How amazing is that?

One of the early developmental tests:    GRASSHOPPER 325M HOP | SINGLE CAMERA (HEXACOPTER)

18 thoughts on “CRS-8 Dragon: Hosted Webcast”

  1. I have posted a link several times here of an Air & Space article on how Musk is completely changing the space industry. We are still paying for putting all of our eggs into the Shuttle basket.

    When on a car club event last Saturday and a club member, retired Aerojet engineer, too me on some cool back roads behind Aerojet where he showed me one of the buildings that designed the Lunar rocket that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts. That too was cool but Musk is doing pioneer work for a cost exponentially less than the govt shoveling money at contractors 40 years ago. If I could post pictures here I would show you.

  2. I sped it ahead to 27 minutes to see the landing – really awesome and that barge is bouncing on the water! What an achievement! Having grown up during the space race to me this is as momentous – or even more – as watching Alan Shepard on the Redstone way back when…

  4. I worked at Douglas back in the days when the Gov’t was the only game in town. We were testing Nike Zeus configurations in a one foot wind tunnel that was located across the street from the Douglas plant. I drive by that site on days when I work examining military recruits in El Segundo. The only things on the east side of El Segundo Blvd then were TRW and the wind tunnel building that was built while I worked there. Originally we were in trailers.

    Now it is all high rise engineering buildings. I guess the DoD is funding all that stuff, just like 60 years ago. Innovation is a few miles up the road.

  5. I’m somewhat surprised that the EPA hasn’t shut this down as all that fuel burning MUST be contributing to AGW. Comrade Sanders will make sure of that after he hosts Comrade Castro who spent the night in the Lincoln bedroom.

  6. “BTW, very cool to me that Spacex did not require the help of a traditional media company for any of this.”

    I don’t understand, why would a media company mean anything? Spacex was heavily funded by NASA and it gave it both $250 million for initial development and it’s first contract. Since then many of NASA’s billions have aided it’s rise.

    I am pleased by commercial space flight but lets not pretend Spacex is a gutsy bootstrap company, doing all this on it’s own.

  7. Tuvea – Falcon runs off of liquid oxygen and RP-1 which is a specific form of kerosene. I somewhat recall that XCOR’s move from California to Texas was, in part, encouraged by some CA kerosene regulation nonsense.

    PenGun – The production of the video was done by SpaceX and not hired out to a media company. That’s small beer compared to a rocket launch but still worth noting. Why SpaceX’s media operation has anything to do with NASA’s early stage funding of SpaceX eludes me.

  9. Any money Spacex has received from NASA is from contracts to launch satellites not investment.
    I have a friend who works for NASA at Goddard, and he told me early on- about the time of their first launch to the ISS- how skeptical he and others he worked with were about the likelihood Spacex would be successful. There was apparently some tension over retiring the shuttle, the off-the-shelf design of these new privately made rockets, and what engineering control NASA would have over them. I get the impression Spacex recent rise has been quite a surprise to NASA and not something they were shepherding through or anything like that.

  11. Grurray – You seem to be right about SpaceX and its financial relationship with NASA. They had a rocket before they got their first NASA dollar and those NASA dollars are for product. You don’t stop being wholly private because one of the people entering your shop to buy stuff from you is the government. That would be daft.

  13. “Why SpaceX’s media operation has anything to do with NASA’s early stage funding of SpaceX eludes me.”

    Anyone can make a pretty pro video these days.

    I just went to the wiki and looked at how much money they took from NASA. The idea they just did this by themselves, as a plucky start up, is what I found amusing.

  14. Cool. I remember this kind of stuff from the sixties. A couple of pointers though. Get a male voice-over to do the narration, have the guy in a tie and get a bloody shave, this isn’t Tehran (or is it?) Also, she knew she would be filmed, why the t-shirt? And stop with the jerky gesturing while speaking, it’s played out and reminds the viewer of something else. Oh, and MPH please, we’re not in kilometerstan.

  17. I was distracted by her lovely tresses whilst carefully checking for the Adams apple, dint even see the script.

    Dang, them Occupy people get around. “one of these days, to the Moon, Soros!”

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