To infinity and beyond...

Something huge happened this week. The launch of SpaceX Falcon Heavy. I have been following it recently, and a lot more earlier this week when the launch date was approaching. Genius and Absurdity has a fine line separating them and it was well proven with this launch. Something so complex that sounds so simple, something that looks so simple is in fact, so complicated. The cherry on top was Elon's Tesla Roadster that was shot into outer space.

I watched the live stream of the launch and it was a mind boggling experience. I just re-watched it again and had a wide grin on my face, ear to ear, as it launched, recovered the two side boosters in an ultra precisely choreographed manner. I just watched Elon's post launch press conference today and hearing him speak makes me want to go start a new life working for him on his future endeavors.

I would highly recommend watching the launch when one has 30 minutes to watch something I believe is a pretty significant event in recent times:

Elon's post launch conference here. He talks about how and why they were not able to recover the center core. It was supposed to land on the drone ship but didn't land because 2 of the 3 engines didn't light up.

Here's Spacex's "Blooper reel" -- It includes the many failed attempts at recovering the boosters from their flights in the past. Pretty funny footnotes on the videos are an added bonus. They have been successfully able to recover over 20 boosters between land and drone ships so far. The two side boosters on the Falcon Heavy test flight were in fact recovered boosters from prior space flights!

Still have that silly grin. Smart guy, that Elon guy...wow...just...wow...