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Comment by generj | Hacker News Reader

It helps that the broadcast team is comprised of the more photogenic engineers.

I'm curious to find out what they changed. One of the problems they previously had was that the vibration from the rocket landing was too much for a satellite connection on the barge (or it's nearby support ship); there were other issues on the rocket. Maybe being right next to the coast the whole time helps on a polar launch?

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Well, vibration of the barge wouldn't have been a problem this time as there was no view from the barge during the landing (only after). But I had the same thought regarding the launch profile to be much easier to track. GTO launches from the East coast are about 600 km off the coast. This time the drone ship was about 370 km away from the launch site, and also much closer to land in general.

We'll see how it'll be for the Echostar 23 launch (and landing).

> Well, vibration of the barge wouldn't have been a problem this time as there was no view from the barge during the landing (only after).

There was a live view from the barge on the technical stream through descent.

The issue with the last few was that the barge was over the horizon from the high bandwidth stations receiving the data from it. The vibration is certainly a factor, but it causes more of what you saw on this launch, artifacting, rather than a full disconnection of the feed.

> It helps that the broadcast team is comprised of the more photogenic engineers

John Insprucker is far more of what you'd expect of a typical engineer. Reddit r/SpaceX went wild for a few minutes when they saw he was back doing the live broadcasts. People like his authenticity.

The engine exhaust ionizes the air as well, which can be a problem from what I've heard.

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