Webcast should be live any minute.

Scrubbed. winds

Boo. I'll update the OP shortly.

Looks to me like they imposed the building and the water tower in to be closer to the pad than it would really be.

What are they launching?

A rocket!

Or....from the Next Launch Details in the OP:


Feb. 21 Falcon 9 • Paz
Launch time: 06:17 PST / 14:17 UTC
Launch site: SLC-4E, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Paz satellite for Hisdesat of Madrid, Spain. Built by Airbus Defense and Space, Paz carries a radar imaging payload to collect views of Earth for government and commercial customers, along with ship tracking and weather sensors. Multiple smaller secondary payloads will also launch on the Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch with a previously-flown first stage.

Na, that's where they're located. The angle makes the building (HIF) look a little closer than it is, but it's only a quarter mile away. And the water tower is what powers all of the "rain birds" that deluge the base of the pad on launch, so it's very close.

You can see the layout on the satellite view. HIF is straight south, water tower is northeast.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ke...!4d-80.6041086

I went ahead and added the next launch to the OP (for late Saturday night) since these two will be pretty close together. Could get even closer if Paz continues to have weather issues.

That is a really interesting article. Musk shaking things up big time!

be able to deliver some 70 tons to low-earth orbit, or less than 20 tons to Mars, while costing around $150 million per mission. According to Musk, the rocket cost somewhere north of $500 million to develop.

Then look at the Space Launch System (SLS) being built under NASA’s instruction by Boeing, also to explore the solar system. According to the new NASA budget released last week, it will fly for the first time in 2020, capable of carrying some 77 tons to low earth orbit at a cost of about $1 billion a flight.

LMAO

yeah, the cost of SpaceX is shockingly cheap compared to NASA.

https://www.airspacemag.com/space/is...ion-132285884/

I don't think SLS is quite dead, but it's got some major issues moving forward. It's pretty clear at this point that there's just too much bureaucracy involved at NASA to be competitive with commercial launchers. Once there's another heavy lift vehicle out there (New Glenn most likely), SLS is gonna be pretty damn useless.

This article lays it all out in (almost nauseating) detail.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018...eavy-launches/

Sigh.

So what are the collective thoughts on how Neil Armstrong and Neil Degrasse Tyson have been so damning of Space-X?

I think those guys have been douchebags, and I'm really happy Elon keeps proving them wrong.