Hacker News Reader

Comment by corv | Hacker News Reader

"This rocket was scheduled to launch the Amos-6 communication satellite, which among other functions included the capabilities for Facebook to spot-beam broadband for Facebook’s Internet.org initiative"

Bad karma

View on HN

a facebook satelite doesn't sound too good anyways.

Well, right now it is more of a faceplant satellite.

It's hard to imagine that this sort of scheme is the best way to provide broadband to most parts of Africa. Why can't they just put microwave links on their cell towers? This is some sort of speculative play by FB to bypass local influences.

They got rejected in India by activism among users and the regulator TRAI. So, I also wondered the exact same thing.

No payload on rocket while hotfire test.

Payload is sometimes mated, just depends. No word yet on this payload.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77134295079838924...

UPDATE: payload lost. https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/771352111657385984

That confirmation is so strange. Why would you confirm something with the screenshot of notepad "officially" when you have a twitter account?

He's a space news reporter at Ars Technica. It makes sense they'd be one of the first to get the SpaceX news release. It has too many characters to fit in a tweet, and even if it could fit, embedding an image of the text sets it apart from the tweeter's introduction and makes it more readable. It's standard practice on twitter to use images for blocks of text.

> It's standard practice on twitter to use images for blocks of text.

Yep. The best of 1997, Web 2.0 style.

To keep it out of search results. They can delete the image of the text whenever they'd like, and poof

> Why would you confirm something with the screenshot of notepad "officially" when you have a twitter account?

I figured it was because they didn't want to be constrained by a character limit. It allows them to use very specific language.

"SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload. Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries."[0]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g

According to the Reddit the payload was on the rocket. https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/50n5cl/rspacex_cape...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com