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The Stratosphere Lounge

Bob and Doug’s Excellent Adventure

Space Race 2 begins with a picture-perfect, flawless, BORING flight. Space Age Apollo-kid freak-out commences at 16:55. God Bless America!

17 replies on “Bob and Doug’s Excellent Adventure”

I’ll have to reread the Harriman stories. I was thinking about Heinlein’s story “Columbus Was a Dope” which I re-read recently.

I serendipitously discovered this live yesterday, and was able to watch w/ Bill’s excited commentary (w/ a 30 second delay on the livestream I was watching, so I had to remember what Bill said 30 sec later…).

Also watched the docking this morning, while trying to livestream church services (their technology didn’t check out, so I had to watch it later).

Great! It reminded me a lot of watching Apollo 11 on black-n-white TV!

Bill: I didn’t get to watch you live but I watched this last night after it appeared on YouTube. I had watched the launch live, though, so I had the odd yet enormously satisfying experience of seeing in my mind’s eye what you were seeing on the screen as you had watched it live. Your excited schoolboy reaction both mirrored my own and gave me a new experience that felt like I was sharing it with you.

Go go GO!

I was somewhat depressed watching not only the riots but also lack of police protection. This SpaceX launch could not have come at a better time for me and hearing Bill’s commentary gave me much-needed hope for a better society.
Thank you, gents, for being the beacon you are.

After Docking, during the interview, Bob said that the Dragon pulled lower G’s and was smoother on initial launch. However, he said that after launch, the Dragon was “Livelier” than the Shuttle, and that it was “huffing and puffing” on it’s way up. Wonder what that meant?

I’m wondering if all cameras on board had stabilization, which can make a mountain bike ride look smooth.

And OUCH! Doug Hurley, immediately upon entering the space station, bonks his noggin so hard, the first few minutes we see him trying to see if he’s got blood dripping from the blow. What an embarrassing move that could have been. Looks like after one of the crew members got him a tissue, and he saw no blood, he seemed to relax a bit.

I was quite buy yesterday and didn’t know exactly when the launch was going to be anyway. Nice to live in an age when I can watch things on my schedule… So I watched it, and by the end I felt the tear pressure in my eyes, I really did. And I just HAD to come here to watch Bill’s reaction, because he’s more of a kid about this than I am, even though we’re pretty close to the same age.

I grew up the same way Bill did, just fascinated with Apollo, and I wasn’t really even conscious of it, being a few years younger, until Apollo 11. I was a doodler and drawer all my life, and a part of my “play” well into my teen years I would draw the different stages …. my favorites were drawing the command and lunar modules, command orbiting the moon and lunar on its final burn to landing. I was such a geek… no wonder I got so few dates 🙂

This was beautiful to watch — it kind of looks the same, but it is also SO different. They have done so much more with technology to make this thing happen safer and prettier and the reusable bit is … it’s just beautiful.

Did they pick guys named Bob and Doug on PURPOSE? 🙂 Too much fun. TAKE OFF!!!

Fun watching with you. I’d love to sync this up with the video of the launch, that’s the only thing I missed by not watching it live.

Yes, that was also my question. It actually is not recovered, but “deorbited” by using a little remaining fuel in it to bring it into sub-orbit and crash into the sea. Usually out from Australia. The 2nd stage booster is much simpler and less expensive than the main thruster.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7814/what-happens-to-the-falcon-9-second-stage-after-payload-separation

It will take a little over 19 hours to get into synchronization with the ISP and then dock. Two crew members from the ship will return in the module at a later date.

There is a lot of space junk on the sea bed off the west Australian coast. It actually made searching for that lost airliner much harder (they are all searching in the wrong place anyway. The plane is down off Christmas island). Most of the valuable bits on the upper stage are cheap and replaceable and have floatation.

I believe you are right about the Malaysian Air 370. They were not searching in the right places. The few pieces of debris that have been identified (starboard flaperon and a front stabilizer and some passenger and cabin items) were in the Indian Ocean off the island of Reunion and on the coast of Mozambique. This was like 4,000 km from the original search area. There are some good theories on what happened, but I suspect it was the pilot and it was deliberate. His home autopilot setup in the basement mapped out almost the exact scenario to several destinations. Now why a pilot would do this? That is the real question to be answered, but it has happened before.

Falcon 9 is only partially reusable, specifically the Booster and sometimes the Fairings. I believe they’re going to try to reuse the Capsules as well. However, Starship which is currently in development will be 100% reusable, as well as being a Super Heavy class rocket, bringing the price of space access down to be the least expensive it has ever been.

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