SpaceX confirms successful Falcon 9 soft landing on the Atlantic Ocean
 

[url]http://www.gizmag.com/falcon-9-landing/31797/[/url]

[QUOTE]SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that boosted the [URL="http://www.gizmag.com/crs-3-launch-spacex/31671/"]CRS-3[/URL] Dragon spacecraft into orbit made a controlled power landing on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The historic first controlled landing of a liquid booster was tracked by telemetry and recorded on video. Unfortunately, heavy seas destroyed the rocket before recovery operations could retrieve it.[/QUOTE]

(With 20 foot waves, not even the Coast Guard would put out.)

[url]http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/[/url]

cool article on something I had never heard of--or at least I don't remember this happening.

[QUOTE]
[B]Orbital Evaluating Mission Status[/B]

[COLOR=#292f33]Orbital Sciences Corp. is currently evaluating the status of its mission. Visit [/COLOR][URL="http://t.co/6Bo6KBRWnG"]http://1.usa.gov/1r42Ssu [/URL][COLOR=#292f33] for the latest information.[/COLOR]



[/QUOTE]
That usually means the rocket blew up, doesn't it?
Fortunately, this one has no people aboard.

[youtube]MZ0SgAU9LXI[/youtube]
view from the press site, might be nsfw as coarse language is used

Good pictures! There is now a statement on the NASA website:
[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/orbital.html[/URL]

Another viewpoint from the Beeb, starting with a close-up of the launch itself.

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29813109[/url]

[QUOTE=Nick;386392]Good pictures! There is now a statement on the NASA website:
[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/orbital.html[/URL][/QUOTE]
I wonder if the RSO had criteria that they followed to let the rocket fall if it was below a specific height. Once it goes pop and begins to fall, I would think that that is the time to hit the button.

[QUOTE]
At least one person is dead and another injured after Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft crashed in a California desert, the California Highway Patrol has said.
The craft was undergoing manned testing when it experienced what the company described as "a serious anomaly".
Television images shot from a helicopter showed what appeared to be wreckage bearing the Virgin logo.
SpaceShipTwo is carried aloft by a jet, then launched into sub-orbit.
In a statement, Virgin Galactic said the "vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo".
[/QUOTE][URL]http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29857182[/URL]
[URL]http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/statement-from-virgin-galactic/[/URL]

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30102343"]Boldly going where 12 men have been before.[/URL]

To be serious, I hope they get this thing off the ground. A £600K (approx $1M) kickstarter sounds eminently reasonable.

[QUOTE=xilman;388065][URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30102343"]Boldly going where 12 men have been before.[/URL]

To be serious, I hope they get this thing off the ground. A £600K (approx $1M) kickstarter sounds eminently reasonable.[/QUOTE]

I'm in! Now, I got to figure out what to put in my digital locker. I could start recording my voice speaking the largest known Prime numbers...I wonder how long that would take? :)

[QUOTE]The lander will also contain a public digital archive of human history and science which will be compiled as a legacy which will survive even if our species becomes extinct.[/QUOTE]Will they also be checking whether such a thing is already there from some previous (and now extinct) species on earth?