Hot damn! I realize that it's likely to have a major malfunction, but it's great to see it getting ready. Next step to BFR!

The two "boosters" are previously-flown? Wow.

Yep. They wanted to do all three, but apparently they had to do more modification on the central core than they'd expected, so it wasn't easy to "convert" it.

Love it. Musk's a madman.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E4FY894HyF8" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Iridium is up tomorrow evening. This will be a previously-flown booster, but sadly they appear to be ready to start moving out some of their old cores in storage, so they aren't landing this one.

This is by choice - they could easily do it within the mission parameters - but the scuttlebutt has it that they're wanting to get rid of most of their "block 3" cores to make room for the block 5 cores which will, theoretically, be able to fly 10+ times.

Still sad to see a perfectly good booster destroyed. :(

Today is the 2-year anniversary of the first landing. Crazy how mundane these have gotten to be. It's kind of fun to watch the video of the first landing again and seeing how excited everyone was.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O5bTbVbe4e4?start=1935" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Oh yeah. It's happening.

https://i.imgur.com/A4YSU6R.png

And user-submitted illustration.

https://i.imgur.com/TC1RKZB.png

Wait, your launch description in the OP says they are landing on the droneship. Did they recently decide against that?

He needs a booster graveyard. But I suppose it's cheaper to just let it fall into the sea.

Bahahahaahah!

Yeah, everyone thought they'd land it as usual, but apparently not. Interestingly, it still has grid fins but no legs.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRng3I0UMAAsm__.jpg

Aside from storage, I'm sure there are quite a few costs to recovery like the drone ship and crew, extra fuel, the legs, etc. that they just decided to save rather than recover another one that won't ever be used again.

The closet is getting full. Needs to make some room for the shiny new toys.

Poor little naked rocket.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Falcon 9 and Iridium-4 went vertical last night on SLC-4E at Vandenberg AFB. Today&#39;s launch is at 5:27 p.m. PST. <a href="https://t.co/ahwXNprr5Z">pic.twitter.com/ahwXNprr5Z</a></p>&mdash; SpaceX (@SpaceX) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/944250423904428032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 22, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>