Part Stays Up; Part Comes Down

After the unfortunate explosion of an Antares supply rocket to the space station, more than usual seemed to hinge on the upcoming launch of another Falcon 9. When the scheduled launch before Christmas was delayed after the rocket's firing test, I decided I could agree with comments about how everything ought to be checked and double-checked and waited along with everyone else. The next scheduled launch time turned out to be not that long after I got up on a weekday, so I started up the official stream only for a hold in the countdown to be called just a minute before ignition. By this point, I was getting worried that after all this double-checking and preparation something going wrong would be that much worse than before.

The way launch windows shift day from day meant the rocket would now be launching too early in the morning for me to see it live, but I checked the NASA site right after I got up and saw with some relief the liftoff had been a success. Even with the Dragon cargo capsule on its way to the space station, though, another part of this particular launch involved the first stage braking its fall back to Earth to land on a giant platform on an automated ship out at sea. I'd taken note of the previous experiments where the first stage just slowed down to ditch at sea (where it would inevitably fall over and be lost), but thoughts of SpaceX trying to reuse parts of its rockets by having the first stage somehow hold enough fuel to cancel out all of its "downrange" velocity and hover back to Florida pretty much outraged my sensibilities; putting something solid out where a ballistic arc would take the stage made a lot more sense by comparison. It's already been admitted, though, that the landing was "rough" (although not recorded to be shown to the world); I suppose there's still room for improvement.