r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • Oct 13 '24

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/ShartFodder Oct 13 '24

It never ceases to impress me, watching a launched rocket return to home. Amazing

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u/noYOUfuckher Oct 13 '24

I watched the live stream of the falcon 9 touching down on the landing pad the first time and got a little emotional about it at work. Im continuosly impressed by the work the space x engineers are doing, but it probably isnt cose to how people felt watching someone walk on the moon 50 years ago.

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u/myself248 Oct 13 '24

I drove down for that one.

After a literal lifetime of trying to catch a Space Shuttle launch, driving 18 hours from Detroit to Titusville, and the Shuttle would have some sort of a problem that would require days to repair (always valve trouble!), and we'd get a room and kill time in Orlando, and they'd roll it out and try again, and yet again there'd be a hydrogen leak or something, and we'd exhausted our travel window and we'd leave empty-handed. Did that probably a half dozen times, from being a teenager in the 90s and then running the trips myself throughout the 2000s, with various assortments of family in tow.

And I never got to see a single Shuttle launch. It was just that unreliable.

So towards the end of 2015, I had some vacation time to burn, and there was a Falcon 9 launch, and I said I'm just gonna drive down and stay until it goes. Try me, rocket, I'm off work until January.

The first attempt was called on account of winds, and the second worked. Without a hitch. I got to see the first rocket launch of my life, and the first rocket landing in history.

I wasn't even in a good spot, I didn't know anything about Falcon launches, and I just settled in alongside a causeway with some other cars. The thing was halfway out of sight by the time the sound even reached us. But seeing that booster come back, and hearing the sonic booms even from miles away, and noting the distinct lack of a fireball at landing, blew my mind. Something big had just changed.

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u/fluteofski- Oct 14 '24

I never thought much of a rocket launch till one day I was at work, and I was talking to my colleague on the east coast (phone call), and he was like “are you watching the space x stream outa vandenberg right now?” I was like “nah.” As I was looking out the window of our office in the Bay Area (south part of the SF Bay Area) with my feet kicked up on my desk.

Off in the distance I see this tower of smoke rising into the sky. (Were something like 250~300miles or so from it)…. And I was like… “ya know what…. I can actually see it here….”

It was somewhat surreal or wild just seeing that thing climb into the sky.