SpaceX launches

They are loading the propellant now. Latest estimate is launch at 4pm ET.

Official stream for today's run. It went live about 4 minutes before takeoff yesterday. Currently showing 4:00 ET as noted.

Spacex feed is live! T minus 5 minutes and counting.

We have a hold for (possibly) an aircraft in the restricted flight area.

Oh, the antici

For those who aren't watching quite as closely as mussle and I - they're going to try for launch at 5:40 PM Eastern.

Yeah, I meant never happened at the time you mentioned. 1:30 I think it was. 

Will be watching at 5:40 eastern. 

Gotcha. 1:30 was an estimate based on the NASA observer plane flight plan. Then something went wrong with the airplane and it didn't fly anyway. A lot of this information is extrapolation from behaviors and other clues, SpaceX isn't providing all of it. But the 5:40 target is theirs, so it's pretty solid.

Wear your mittens if you're going to watch from outside :)

Bump! under a minute until launch hopefully

WELL THAT WAS berkeleyING AWESOME!!!

Spoiler, it almost made it but lost an engine right as it was about to set down, then boom. Watch the replay, it was pretty cool with some awesome camera views. Seeing the engines gimbal as engines shut down and that thing do controlled flips, wow!

The wreckage is nicely centered on the pad though.

Really cool. Somewhat late on the brakes but soo cool. 

I'd call that a pretty successful test. I think it lost two engines on the way up so it couldn't slow down enough to land, but all of the new flight modes were tested and they got an enormous amount of good data. Landing is the one thing they have lots of practice at.

That was a LONG burn on the way up to 12.5k.

So everybody wins. The engineers get their data and the onlookers get their RUD.

Good launch and watching it maneuver in flight was pretty damn impressive.

The landing didn't go as planned but it made it back to the pad.

I'd call that test a success despite not landing very gracefully 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Yeah, I noticed the engine cut out on ascent as well. It was cool watching the engines gimbal around though.

I hope they got a ton of data from that flight.

SN9 is up next 

Two engines lit on the way back down but they quickly lost one. Everyday Astronaut has some really cool slow motion footage of it on their Youtube livestream, they'll have more published soon . I'm looking forward to Scott Manley's breakdown of the flight.

If you want to know why the Raptor is such a cool engine check out his video below, he gets into it around a minute in.

I can't get over how fast the final flip was. As a friend said, it looked just as absurd in real life as it did in CGI.

Elon Musk sez: 

Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!

That was a concern before launch. Heck, as racers we know all about the need for surge tanks :) I suspect the engine shutdowns on the way up was to test stability with 1 or 2 engines out. And they got all the data.

Man, that was good. I am happy.

I watched the whole thing.  That was amazing!

So the engine shutdowns must have been purposeful. The two engines that shut down were the two used for landing. They both lit off and then flamed out due to starvation problems. The thing was actually hovering at apogee for a while, they were gathering all the data.

And this is just the first stage. I really want to see the big one launch. 

Snowdoggie said:

And this is just the first stage. I really want to see the big one launch. 

I think technically this is the second stage. :)

I watched the whole thing with KazooJr. during dinner.  It was pretty interesting because he's a bit of a space geek (he's working on an aerospace engineering degree).  He was getting all geeky as the various surfaces, engines and thrusters were working to hover it.  (Apparently, this is quite an achievement for something that big)  As soon as the flame turned green, KazooJr. said "uh oh".  As he explained later, that basically means the engine is burning something (likely a metal of some kind) that it isn't supposed to be burning.  Shortly thereafter, it lost thrust and went boom.  None the less . . . it was awesome!  

As far as the boy's credentials go, he's been to the moon and back on Kerbal Space Program. 

Wow. We had a launch here in Florida the other day. We couldn't see it due to clouds, but we did hear the rumble. Always fascinating to watch. 

Flight analysis by Scott Manley