SpaceX live webcast is up, launch at 3:25 pm Eastern

[bananas]

http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

[tridim]

1. Thanks for the reminder! It's on NASA TV too. :D

[bananas]

4. SpaceX and NASA TV have different streams - watch both!

They're both covering it, but from different places.

[DrDan]

2. very cloudy around here today -I would be surprised if it stayed anywhere near scheduled launch time

40 miles north of the launch site

[Atman]

7. There is only a 1 minute launch window.

There are big storms over Central Florida. They claim it's still clear enough, but there is very little margin here. They have 60 seconds to get it off the ground or else it's scrubbed.

[bananas]

9. These launch windows seem impossible. nt

[malthaussen]

11. Launched on time.

The bird is moving.

-- Mal

[DrDan]

16. amazing - 30-40 miles north - not a speck of sun all day, windy, just went on an errand and was

rained on

good for SpaceX!

[NuclearDem]

3. What are they testing?

[bananas]

6. 3rd ISS resupply mission, testing propulsive soft landing of first stage

The landing is part of R&D, they say only a 50-50 chance of success.
So they're going to land it on the ocean instead of making a crater on land.
Ocean waves will lap at it's feet until they turn the engines off and it sinks.

[XRubicon]

5. Thanks!

[Atman]

8. Very cool hearing all the communications between various teams.

I've been in the VAB when the Saturn V was being built, and in blockhouses because my stepfather was one of the heads of the Delta Missile program, but you don't usually get to hear all the stuff Spacex is showing on their live feed. Very interesting!

[bananas]

10. T-5 minutes. nt

[tridim]

12. That staging shot was so cool! I hope we get HD video of it later.

[LongTomH]

13. Perfect launch!!!!

[bananas]

18. Elon Musk: Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas.

5:00 PM - 18 Apr 2014

[joshcryer]

19. Holy shit, historic!

[Atman]

14. Well, that was mighty impressive.

Just thinking about the difference from seeing the moon launches and fuzzy b&w video from the moon. Although I'm still not sure how a private for-profit company doing this is saving the taxpayer one thin dime. A lot of my friends lost jobs...although a lot of them are now working for SpaceX.

[CFLDem]

15. Damn

Missed it...

[bananas]

17. Archived video

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8842

[backscatter712]

20. K&R for this!

Things couldn't have gone better for SpaceX.

A picture perfect launch of Dragon and all the secondary payloads.

And a successful test of the Falcon 9's first-stage landing capability - for the first time, a Falcon 9 first stage sent its payload to orbit, then reentered the atmosphere and soft landed. A water landing, but in the conditions of the test, this was a hell of a success.

Next few Falcon 9 first-stages will attempt soft-landings closer to the Cape, and they'll be trying to recover them each time.

Eventually, a Falcon 9 will launch, deliver its payload to orbit, then the first stage will come back to Cape Canaveral, make a soft landing on a landing pad, and be used to launch a payload again!

This will cut the price of access to space by an order of magnitude!