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Comment by manaskarekar | Hacker News Reader

As for the first stage:

"Following stage separation, the first stage of Falcon 9 will attempt an experimental landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship. As with other GTO missions, the first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing difficult."

Mission Press Kit : http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/spacex_eutelsat_abs...

EDIT: Sounds like they lost the first stage, still not very clear on the details.

EDIT2: Confirmed loss of first stage by Elon Musk.

"Ascent phase & satellites look good, but booster rocket had a RUD on droneship"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743096769001578498

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I had to look it up: RUD is "Rapidly Unscheduled Disassembly"

This might be my favorite acronym of all time.

Rapidly or rapid? Is in the unscheduled part that is rapid or the disassembly?

that would be a rapidly scheduled disassembly. "yeah, we totally planned that in half a second".

Was it caused by a lithobraking maneuver?

I believe in this case it was a skafobraking maneuver. Not many lithos out in the Atlantic to brake with.

Did the "experimental landing" work this time?

No clear word yet. Feed froze as usual and whatever was on the screen was covered in black smoke.

I did see something upright though, so who knows.

Meanwhile, for anyone looking for one of the most epic moments: https://youtu.be/L0bMeDj76ig?t=29m28s

It's not clear. The video feed cut off at landing. There was a lot of smoke, and possibly a standing rocket.

Feed died.

I hope the next-gen of communications satellites improves the broadband-over-satellite situation.

If only there was a company in this day and age that is launching satellites often and at lower cost. :)

Apparently the broadband out there is great. The issue isn't lack of satellites or speed.

The issue is that when you have a Merlin 1D (or 3) firing directly at a mobile platform, it's going to shake violently. And when you have sensitive equipment on that platform shaking, you're going to have a satellite misalignment and signal cut outs while the lock is reacquired.

Considering this is a pretty unique scenario (I would imagine 99% of satellite internet connections don't have rockets landing on them), I doubt it's a high priority to resolve somehow.

On the telecast they just said it appears the vehicle was lost.

Seems like one engine was low on thrust:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743097337782763521

I love the commentator's wording: "We'll see whether yes, we landed, or no, we've got more experimental data."

No. It appeared briefly on the deck, but Elon tweeted it was a RUD, and that they'll be releasing video once they get access to it later today.

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