I grew up in Florida watching Space Shuttle launches, and let me tell you, it doesn’t get any less cool with age.
If you missed it, today was a big day for SpaceX, the commercial space flight company led by Elon Musk. They successfully launched the Falcon Heavy rocket in a test off Cape Canaveral. Watching the live stream was pretty exhilarating; I can only imagine how the engineers that worked on it feel.
SpaceX has launched plenty of rockets before; today’s flight used those rockets, the Falcon 9, as boosters for an even bigger main core. The coolest part for me was seeing these two boosters split off and then come back to land at the Cape.
The core itself was to land on a floating platform in the Atlantic; unfortunately the feed cut out, so we are still waiting to hear its fate.
And what was the payload on this test rocket, you might ask? Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster. I am not kidding. You can watch “Spaceman” live here as he drifts towards Mars.
The Falcon Heavy will probably never carry people, but SpaceX is working on an even bigger rocket, the BFG, that hopefully someday will.
Jedi by Knight 
Hi Mei-Mei, I am just watching a news article on BBC News at Ten in the UK about this! You are sooo lucky having gotten to see live launches. But as soon as I saw the roadster I couldn’t help but think of Obi-Wan and Anakin chasing Zam Wessell in an XJ-6 Airspeeder in Attack of the Clones!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha, it’s like we are seeing science fiction coming to life! That’s one of my favorite scenes in AotC. So much character development on top of the action.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi again, I just realised that “Spaceman” looks eerily like ASIMO the humanoid robot from Honda so the line between science fiction and science fact are more blurred than we realise! And the AotC scene was brilliant, it had everything from humour all the way through to Obi-Wan’s frustration with Anakin. Yet all of it woven into a real chunk of the story, you have a great sense of drama!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Elon Musk is one of my heroes. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know, right? He’s nuts, in a good way. I’m amazed by his vision and what he’s done with his companies.
LikeLike
I watched that yesterday, loved it. I can’t help thinking things are being developed today, because of ideas they’ve had seeing science fiction.Those boosters landing were straight from Thunderbirds.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cool; thanks for sharing!!
LikeLiked by 1 person