The water sprayed at launch is for sound suppression to protect the rocket and other equipment.

[QUOTE=Dubslow;431305]
And of course, thousands of other people online have written about watching Florida launches, e.g. [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/faq/watching#wiki_i.27m_at_cape_canaveral._where.27s_the_best_place_to_watch_the_launch.3F[/url] Also [url]https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/launch-info/launch-scrub-policy.aspx[/url] (the policy kinda sucks, a lot, IMO)
[/QUOTE]

[url]http://www.launchphotography.com/Delta_4_Atlas_5_Falcon_9_Launch_Viewing.html#e9[/url]

Awesome landing video from on board the rocket.
[url]https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/718605741288894464[/url]
and the 4K video
[YOUTUBE]sYmQQn_ZSys[/YOUTUBE]
The pad abort test video for the Crew Dragon is cool. 0-100 mph in 1.2 seconds is a heck of an elevator ride.:anurag:

The stage is due to arrive back in port in ~1 hour. [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4ee2zy/crs8_ocisly_returning_to_port_canaveral/[/url]

I have reason to believe that SpaceX is going to try to move their recovered first stage to the horizontal position tomorrow.

Someone gathered up all the stupidity in one place. [URL="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/meet-the-truthers-who-believe-spacex-faked-its-rocket-landing"]Meet the Truthers Who Are Certain SpaceX Faked Its Rocket Landing[/URL]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;431077]Try that Jeff Bezos!

So many people that I talk to can't grasp how much harder it is to do what Space-X is than the Blue Origin folks.

Take a rocket that is separating the second stage at about 80km in altitude (260,000 feet) at a speed of Mach 10, with an ultimate apogee altitude of around 140km.
B-O is vertical only and has peaked at 101 km.
The Falcon first stage does 4 total burns. 2 are need because of the horizontal speed that B-O does not have.

Then stick the landing with less than 30m error on a moving craft that can hold position with only 3m of accuracy that is pitching on the seas.
And the landing legs have to deploy and lock. B-O does not have to have deployable legs.[/QUOTE]
I bet watching these things land is like being a fan at a sporting event, with everybody trying to make it land properly through sheer willpower. Maybe with some added hand motions like in golf. GO LEFT GO LEFT!!! NOOOOO...NOT THAT LEFT, THE OTHER LEFT!!!.

While watching the people work on the recovered first stage at Port Canaveral, everyone seemed to be strictly business except in one little scene that I liked: Two guys were working to put some kind of grommet protection on some kind of access hole. I don't know what the hole is for and one of them reached into the hole a few times as part of the preparation. As I was saying the work was strictly business except that this hole was a few feet below a USA flag on the side of the stage. At one point the worker on the right paused, looks up, and then reached up to touch the flag. Kinda cool.

1:32 into the video.
[url]http://youtu.be/mDoyWcLtBC4[/url]
[YouTube]mDoyWcLtBC4[/YouTube]

[QUOTE=only_human;431503]Someone gathered up all the stupidity in one place. [URL="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/meet-the-truthers-who-believe-spacex-faked-its-rocket-landing"]Meet the Truthers Who Are Certain SpaceX Faked Its Rocket Landing[/URL][/QUOTE]
I immediately started passing this muttering nonsense around. :cmd:

To boldly go where no spacecraft has been before.
 

Yuri MIlner, backed by Mark Zuckerberg, has announced a $100M research effor to kick-start a laser-sail project. A few square metres of sail carrying a ~1g spacecraft will be accelerated to 0.2c by a ground-based laser array.

This lot hit the news all over the UK yesterday, making the front pages of [I]The Times[/I] and the [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36025706"]BBC[/URL].

Question about soot on recovered Falcon 9s
 

Perhaps someone here can shed some light on a question I have...

The recovered Falcon 9s have a great deal of black soot on them, very clearly visible when comparing the white surface protected by the landing legs during re-entry vs. the surfaces not protected. I assume most of this is from the incompletely burned fuel in the gas-generator turbo pump (the Merlin engines are an "Open Cycle" design) which washes back around the rocket during re-entry.

My question is: why is there such a well-defined difference in the bottom 2/5ths of the rocket compared to the top 3/5ths? Is a different material used there, or is it a function of the aerodynamic flow?

[URL="http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/13/new-views-of-falcon-9-landing-from-on-board-spacexs-drone-ship/"]These pictures should clearly show[/URL] what I'm wondering about.