I happened to be up late last night and saw they were webcasting the launch, which I watched. I was surprised at how excited I was by the whole thing TBH. In a world where everyone seems to be trying to create the next social network for cats it's truly exciting to see something as revolutionary and innovative as what SpaceX is doing (to the economics of launching into orbit).
I was disappointed to see the launch aborted but also impressed to see that they could abort the launch after ignition and not lose the vehicle ("safe'ing the vehicle" as they said a number of times).
Oh they made one factual error in the Webcast too (or one is on their site). A pre-launch question came up about what they look for in hiring. A representative said they must be US citizens. According to the site, you can be a US citizen or permanent resident.
> I happened to be up late last night and saw they were webcasting the launch, which I watched. I was surprised at how excited I was by the whole thing TBH.
I also watched the webcast, and few years ago I used to get up in the middle of the night to watch Space Shuttles take off and land live on NASA TV streams. It always was exciting to me. The awe and wonder of technology we use to send things into space, the joy of a successful launch, and (in case of Shuttles) the worry for the crew, because as you watched live you never knew if they'll launch/land safely or end up as a big fireball.
To quote a song[1] about the first Shuttle launch,
"Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife
Technology...high, on the leading edge of life"
It's impressive, but a fairly standard technology for launchers to have. The Space Shuttle did the same thing five times: main engines would ignite at T-6.6 seconds, and there was a brief window until the solid rockets ignited at T-0 when sensors could safely shut down the main engines. Four times it was done at T-3, the remaining time at T-1.9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Space...
But once those SRBs were lit, it was going up, or blowing up...
While it's not a capability unique to Falcon, it's still neat that they're able to be sure every engine providing thrust is operating normally before they let it go.
I was disappointed to see the launch aborted but also impressed to see that they could abort the launch after ignition and not lose the vehicle ("safe'ing the vehicle" as they said a number of times).
Oh they made one factual error in the Webcast too (or one is on their site). A pre-launch question came up about what they look for in hiring. A representative said they must be US citizens. According to the site, you can be a US citizen or permanent resident.