THAICOM 8 Hosted Webcast
Why Space Exploration Stack Exchange recommends it
Space Stack Exchange answerers and commenters cite it as primary footage for specific moments such as the apogee-raising burn, the drone ship landing approach, cold gas thruster puffs and second-stage camera views.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2016 to 2020.
What it is
The full hosted webcast of SpaceX's May 2016 Falcon 9 launch of the THAICOM 8 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral to a supersynchronous transfer orbit. It covers the launch, first-stage drone ship landing and the second stage's coast and burns, narrated by SpaceX hosts.
What people said
Recommends jkavalik · 2016-11 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Inclination change to Geostationary Orbit”
@Puffin you can see for example in SpaceX Thaicom 8 webcast [this video] at 48:50 how the inclination slowly changes during the apogee raising burn. When you go to GEO (or even only GTO), you will find yourself in almost circular LEO at some point. Afaik most launchers make it a parking orbit, waiting with the GTO burn until the vehicle crosses the equator, because that ensures apogee is over the equator too for the final GEO. And as I understand it, the geometry is such that doing small inclination change with it is more efficient than separate burn.
Cites hshib · 2016-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How does the Falcon 9 know where the landing barge/pad is?”
According to Musk at the post CRS-8 briefing [LINK] : Both (ship and rocket) is going to an absolute position. So the ship is holding to the absolute GPS position, with relative GPS and today it was holding to the accuracy of below a meter. It has four engines all of which can rotate 360 degrees and operating continuously to hold the position, to hold both attitude and position in the ocean. I assume that means that there is no communication between the drone and the rocket and they simply meet at a set GPS location. I caught following during the THAICOM 8 launch [this video] : Recovery vessel has AOS. AOS means Acquisition Of Signal. That means that the recovery.. the drone ship has reached comm
Cites user12102 · 2016-05 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Are rocket exhaust flames ever opaque?”
Flames are complicated and interesting. They can emit light from atomic (and molecular) excited states recombining ("blue part" of flame), and, especially if there are particulates from incomplete combustion, they can glow white, yellow, or red from something similar to blackbody radiation if the incomplete combustion products agglomerate to make particulates (soot). If the flame is in air, those can continue to combust and stay hot and glow. In a vacuum, the un-combusted material cools quickly and there is no more thermal glow. That's why the LOX/Kerosene engines make bright flames near sea level, but you don't see much of anything once they are above most of the atmosphere. BUT : Bright is
Cites user12102 · 2016-05 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How does the SpaceX Falcon 9 first-stage straighten for landing?”
While the [this video] does indeed call the "white puffs" cold nitrogen (a few seconds after 27:44), I'm not sure why they would be visible here in space. Are they becoming liquid nitrogen droplets? (@ForgeMonkey calls them $CO_2$ making "dry ice" crystals). Here is a GIF of it [LINK] . Do the grid fins do much at "final approach" to the drone ship? I thought they were only effective at fairly high velocity.
Cites user12102 · 2019-02 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How does the camera make the exhaust of the Electron's RP-1/LOX exhaust transparent?”
tl;dr: There's no reason to believe that RP-1/LOX exhaust is opaque just because we haven't notice details behind it in photographs we've seen. The exhaust column here is narrower than "popular kerolox rockets" and the shot is underexposed (as far as the overall scene) so it's no surprise that detail is seen. Merlin exhaust in space (sans atmosphere) is nearly transparent! Until a better answer comes along, I'm going to concur with @Uwe's answer as comment 1 [LINK] Compared to the F-1 engine, the Rutherford engine is tiny. Due to the very small diameter of the exhaust beam it is partially transparent, but the very large beam of a F-1 is not. Just as a thin layer of a colored liquid may be tr
Cites user12102 · 2020-09 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Roughly how many self-viewing cameras are present in a Falcon 9 LEO mission?”
@JoeJobs SpaceX YouTube videos routinely switch between two different cameras on the second stage engine. My linked video above of the Thaicom 8 launch seems to have been deleted by SpaceX but you can see the switch at `24:41` in [this video] and then switch back again at `24:51`