SpaceX
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2018–2026
34:19 · 34M views · Feb 6, 2018
SpaceX's livestream of the Falcon Heavy test flight, including the launch, side booster landings and Tesla Roadster payload. It was the first launch of the most powerful operational rocket at the time.
HN commenters cite it as a landmark launch broadcast, and also dissect details like the duplicated booster landing feeds.
20 comments from Hacker News
Falcon Heavy has been launching commercial, government, and military payloads successfully for years now. [1] I'd strongly encourage checking out their first successful test launch of it, from 5 years ago. [2] Skip to about 29 minutes in for the money shot. Still gives me goose bumps! So let's compare the two! Falcon Heavy was developed with completely private funding, at a cost of ~$500 million. The prices of the launches are listed in Wiki. They start at $117 million, as NASA paid in 2023 to launch their Psyche craft. The SLS has been in development for more than a decade now, fully paid by the taxpayer, at a cost just about to break the $30 billion mark. The nominal cost per launch is still unknown but will almost certainly top a billion dollars. The last NASA administration gave an estimate of $800-$900 million per launch in 2019 dollars. And SLS cost estimates only go one way. And what do you get for $30 billion, and then another billion per launch? Ideally up to almost twice the capacity of a Falcon Heavy. The reason people are so cool on the SLS is that it's already a very poor value against existing technologies. And will be completely obsolete by the time Starship comes to pass which should not only be able to launch for a fraction of the cost of Falcon Heavy (which is already a fraction of the cost of SLS), but also launch well over the ideal launch capacity of SLS. [1] - [LINK] [2] - this video
It's hard to measure objectively but I feel I was dramatically more impressed seeing first Falcon Heavy come down than I was seeing the first successful (non-heavy) landing. I've shown a lot of people (who aren't otherwise into space) the original Falcon Heavy landing video: this video The most common response, by far, is: "Is that real?" It really is just that amazing. Even look at the YouTube comments. It's enough to make even the internet become a place of shared awe, wonder, and inspiration. Makes one wonder what the world would be like if we had media that focused more on things like this and less on things that divide and agitate people.
> I think everyone forgot about early SpaceX product quality. This was 8 years ago and is one of the greatest stuff I've seen in space launches. The footage is so epic that it even got replicated in SciFi series! ... this video This was 9 years ago, first droneship landing - [LINK] And this is 18 years ago, their first Falcon1 launch - [LINK] More live video from the ascent than we got on Artemis2 for sure...
Just to link that: this video Such an unbelievable moment. And I also think an indicator of how much better society could be if we focused more on doing amazing things. The comments on YouTube are just filled with hope optimism and general awesomeness. FWIW that link goes straight to the moneyshot - it's always so much better if you watch it all the way through. It's an amazing broadcast.
I remember seeing it around or just after midnight when I was visiting a customer in Taipei. I had fallen asleep two hours earlier, but set a timer to wake up just for this historic event. Totally worth it. That was one the best executived live streams of all time: this video