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Comment by Denzel | Hacker News Reader

> (like a better video recovery system [...])

I can't tell by your wording, and I was similarly confused about their video recovery system, so maybe this will be helpful for you.

The only thing SpaceX hasn't invested in is a better downlink. The video is fully recorded and stored on OCISLY, so they will analyze and post later.

The rocket merely interrupts the realtime feed.

Which leads me to believe SpaceX just doesn't care about a robust realtime feed since they can analyze offline -- or they just don't care about one for the public.

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If that video exists I'd love to see it some day.

Given that the downlink is reasonably stable when OCISLY is just sitting there (with our without a booster sitting on it) I'd love to see them back up on the locally recorded video and then send it via the downlink once the link has restabilized. We're talking about 18 seconds of video here, not hours :-)

I would be interested to hear how SpaceX internally views sharing video with the public. I could imagine a range of feelings from "why waste time showing them" to "an essential part of our marketing and outreach." I personally see it as fascinating stuff that touches on so many interesting questions about rocket design, future space feasibility, and the design limits around cost optimization.

Usually SpaceX does share the video after the fact, so there's some precedent. Although on occasion they have opted not to share the video as well.

So time will tell. :)

> The video is fully recorded and stored on OCISLY, so they will analyze and post later.

Can you link to any posted-later videos of landings? They pretty consistently either drop frames or cut out entirely on the live stream around the moment of touchdown, so it'd be great to see decent quality footage of some landings.

I mean, it's not like a really robust realtime feed would be much help for them anyway. As far as I know the rocket is completely autonomous, so even if something was going wrong during the landing a higher-quality feed would just give them higher-quality reasons to tear their hair out etc.

I disagree with this. Having diagnosed a number of problems in nominally 'autonomous' robots through the use of video. There are also instances of many issues being diagnosed by video, consider the loss of protection tiles on Columbia which was diagnosed (or at least confirmed) by watching video of the lift-off.

That said, SpaceX has a phenomenal number of video feeds and I really enjoy them. Early in the Falcon 9 project we would see on the web cast a cut to a video shot with no explanation of what it was, but we know now that they were looking a fuel settling and other effects during re-entry.

And yes, given that you can learn a lot from said videos about how it is done, and there is at least one high profile (Blue Origin) and a no doubt a number of low profile efforts on going to duplicate what SpaceX can do, there is some competitive advantage from not sharing all the video they have.

I still want to see them though.

I'm not saying that video wouldn't be helpful, just that realtime video wouldn't be helpful. They surely record the video for later analysis as others have mentioned.

Fair point, I was just trying to say that even near real time (record then replay once the barge had stabilized) would be useful for me.

None of the benefits you mentioned requires a real-time feed. They just need to capture and store the video for later analysis.

Unless they want to, you know, analyse the landing before they launch another rocket two days later :-) . But of course that doesn't require realtime, just the ability to download via satellite while drone ship is on the move.

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