Watch A Rocket Engine Test Live This Afternoon

If you want to see something awesome this afternoon, watch SpaceX’s live broadcast of an engine test today at 3:00 pm EDT/12:00 pm PDT/7:00 pm GMT. You’ll see nine Merlin rocket engines power up to full thrust during a test for the upcoming launch of a Dragon space capsule to the ISS.

This is just a static test – hopefully the nine Merlin engines won’t go anywhere. To get an idea of the power behind these engines this is a test of just  Merlin engine being fired at the SpaceX open house in Texas a year or so ago. Today, nine engines will be fired at once.

Check out the videos after the break to see just how awesome the Falcon 9 is going to be.

via boingboing

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMqyS6FWeA8&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfOo7QAoZys&w=470]

25 thoughts on “Watch A Rocket Engine Test Live This Afternoon

  1. There is no PM in GMT. Test at 1900 GMT! Here in Indiana we still don’t know what time it is, we are in the wrong zone and only recently went on Daniel’s Stupid Time. As protest I use GMT.
    Awareness of World Time is necessary is this global age. Business can’t run on confusion. If they can change the time, we simply can use world time and reschedule everything.

  2. Awwww, bummer… looks like the test has been cancelled. I suppose that’s why they run these tests though!

    Man, look at how fast they cut the entirety of their outward facing site: The live stream blacked out less than 5 minutes after the launch failed, and the twitter account is now protected. The main page no longer has a link to the webcast!

    That is a dedicated and well-trained PR team.

    1. Aaaaand I now realize that the static fire link is still up, it was my computer being dumb is that I couldn’t see it.

      The twitter account is @SpaceX (linked to on the front page) not @SpaceXMissions (the one linked to on the webcast page).

      The @SpaceX says “SUCCESS – 2 second burn!” so maybe they were only doing a 2 second run??

      That seems like a lot of hype for only 2 seconds of action, but maybe they couldn’t build a mechanism to hold down that much thrust for a longer period?

    2. Apparently this was *JUST* a hold down test… I think.

      From @elonmusk: “Woohoo, rocket hold down firing completed and all looks good!!”

      It sounds like there’s a full burn (or at least something more interesting looking) on May 7th. There are a bunch of follow-up tweets talking about “waiting until the 7th.”

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.