Thus Spake the Trailer Park.....
I trust that will find it's way to another forum as well!
That video got a thumbs down from me. I'm sitting here on directly on the coast about 78 miles north of Cape Canaveral. Last summer, SpaceX launched an ISS resupply mission on a clear night. Those head north from the Cape to match the 51.6 degree orbital inclination of the ISS. We watched the launch from our deck. It appeared above the horizon seconds after launch. Stage separation was clearly visible directly off the coast, as was the boost-back burn, the re-entry burn, and the landing burn. Shortly after the landing, twin sonic booms rolled past. So unless someone has figured out a way to introduce CGI directly into my optic and auditory nerves, what SpaceX is currently doing is entirely real.
Some of those guys can be a bit off. There were more than a few of those vids posted recently, some with some pretty convincing video analysis that screamed some of the shots shots were less than genuine. The commentary on the professionalism of the commentators and presentation of the events did seem more like a CNN Studio sound-stage than a serious attempt at credible Reporting.That video got a thumbs down from me. I'm sitting here on directly on the coast about 78 miles north of Cape Canaveral. Last summer, SpaceX launched an ISS resupply mission on a clear night. Those head north from the Cape to match the 51.6 degree orbital inclination of the ISS. We watched the launch from our deck. It appeared above the horizon seconds after launch. Stage separation was clearly visible directly off the coast, as was the boost-back burn, the re-entry burn, and the landing burn. Shortly after the landing, twin sonic booms rolled past. So unless someone has figured out a way to introduce CGI directly into my optic and auditory nerves, what SpaceX is currently doing is entirely real.
Oh, and the notion that the moon landings were faked is also absurd. The Cold War was full-on back them. The Soviets may have given up on beating us there by 1969, but they certainly had the ability to track and monitor the transmissions, and they would have screamed bloody murder if those were faked.
The vids from the drone-ship landings are not the best, and I can see why some folks might believe they're fake. But the LZ1 landings back at the cape are clearly visible by way too many civilian eyeballs to be anything but real.You saw it personally, so I will gladly accept your credibility over theirs sir!
The premise was those perfectly understandable failures prompted some creative revision of subsequent events. I will say some of the landing speed decelerations, look of the deceleration burns themselves and fuel efficiency demonstrated can give one pause when viewing the videos. Gotta admit, it is a high stakes operation that might motivate an embellishment of performance reporting to preserve a contract, particularly after a major failure..The vids from the drone-ship landings are not the best, and I can see why some folks might believe they're fake. But the LZ1 landings back at the cape are clearly visible by way too many civilian eyeballs to be anything but real.
Since it's actually more difficult to turn the first-stage booster around and bring it back to the Cape rather than leave it on a more-or-less ballistic trajectory to a drone ship, I have a real hard time with the notion that the drone ship landings are fake either, particularly in light of the fact that the first couple of attempts didn't work out quite as hoped for, and SpaceX made no attempt to hide that.