LMAO

I've always loved engineer-speak.

It's actually a joke of sorts. Elon is well-known for hating acronyms, so it's ironic that he uses that one (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly) rather than just saying "it blew up."

--

OP is updated for the next launch in 30 days. I BELIEVE this one will be a landing at LZ-1 (on land), so hopefully that means it'll be a high probability of success!

And with that, time to actually get some work done today. :)

I had to look to see what RUD meant. Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. ROFL

Really cool video of the landing elon posted on Twitter.

Check out @elonmusk's Tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/...226653184?s=09


The other ones didn't hover like that as far as I can remember. It's almost like they were seeing how long they could do it for, kinda showing off or something.

Yeah, I definitely don't recall seeing it come to almost a complete stop like that. I wonder if they were trying to slow it down a little more after the last one almost broke a leg and overdid it. I still hope we'll get on-board video at some point to see what exactly happened and why it looked like it had landed safely for a few seconds.

Here's the full string of tweets about it from today:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Turns out the landing was not as fast we thought, but still hard enough to destroy the primary airframe and accordion the engines</p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743602229307805696">June 17, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Looks like early liquid oxygen depletion caused engine shutdown just above the deck <a href="https://t.co/Sa6uCkpknY">pic.twitter.com/Sa6uCkpknY</a></p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743602894226653184">June 17, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">As mentioned at the beginning of the year, I&#39;m expecting ~70% success rate on landings for the year. 2016 is the year of experimentation.</p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743603466631733248">June 17, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Here's a stabilized version of the video. It's pretty clear that it ran out of fuel and just dropped the last few meters onto the deck.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p5_hvVbxAAo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The joint Mars venture they're doing with NASA is an exciting next step in space exploration. Very cool to see and hopefully SGSS sees some benefits.

I wish I could have a year of experimentation with multi million dollar spaceships.

Musk is such a badass.

The beauty of it is that it's not really even costing them anything (at least in terms of how you'd normally think of it). They're still getting paid the same price for these launches as they were when they were just letting the booster burn up in the atmosphere.

There are still plenty of costs involved (R&D, costs of the ships, crew, added costs for the landing-specific stuff like legs and grid fins, a little extra fuel), but those are insignificant compared to the cost of the rocket itself.

If you're feeling like a night owl, the next launch attempt is slated for Sunday night/Monday morning at 11:45pm Central. This one is an ISS-bound launch, so the launch window is instantaneous (meaning that scrubs are a little more likely than the past few).

For the first time since the first successful landing back in December, they're trying to land this one back at "Landing Zone 1" in Cape Canaveral rather than on the barge, so it should be quite a show for anyone fortunate enough to be down there to watch.

If it's not up already, I'll be sure to bump the thread on Sunday, but I figured some might want a heads-up if you care enough to plan to be up a little late that night.

In!

I started putting together a glossary for the OP to help new people figure out WTF we're talking about in here. Let me know what other stuff I should add (preferably in the same format as in the OP so I can just copy and paste stuff in there).

I also cleaned up the OP a bit for the same reason - just to be clear what info is there. Let me know if there are suggestions for improvements.

That looks a lot better than it did.
I'll probably stay up and watch the launch and hopefully the recovery.