To be fair, you have no proof of landing with the original full payload. You can't tell the load from the vids, or can you?
For some reason memo is not showing the second video link. Here it is.
I forgot the /s!
Just saying that if anyone thinks its a scam they should consider what these rocket launches are actually about. Those two objects in the image that I was commenting on are the side boosters. There would be no point in those things taking off individually, because they have no payload. When the main rocket launches those things are attached. As it ascends, they detach and return to earth, leaving the later stages (and payload) to continue. During the launch that sent the Tesla into space there was a 3rd part of the main rocket that also returned to earth, but I believe that failed to land successfully. (Was attempting to land on an ocean based platform).
The following video shows a history of the SpaceX testing and how they progressed to the design that is able to land itself. In those tests they are just testing the side booster rockets. The started initially by launching off the ground a little way and trying to land. Every test got more and more complex, until they achieved what they have today.
So what actually happened with the main stage 1 landing on the drone after 31:00 ? They lost signal and no more info till the very end.
I believe it failed to land successfully. They pretty much avoided covering it in the video IIRC. I was watching the launch videos for the Iridium sattelites where AFAIK there is a single recovery stage for each of the 8 (I think) missions. I saw someone say in the comments that of the 8 missions, the recovery was only successful 5 times. So it's still not perfect, but for the 5x it was, it saves a lot of money.
Yeah, no, thanks for these vids. Another point, it can not be just a cheap time reversal of the vid for landing because the dust would have to be sucked in toward the rocket 1/
However, I have observed dust in some landing vids and it seems very little, and I'm a bit skeptical about the dust in some of the landing vids. Nothing terribly specific atm 2/
Probably depends on where the landing pad is located. The ocean based pads would have very little dust. Also if the rocket takes off from the same pad and lands back at the same one (like a lot of the tests) then the launch itself blew away most of the dust, so when it comes back, there's a lot less. The falcon heavy video that I linked to shows the return stages landing in a *different* location to where they took off from, so lots of dust.
