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Can I suggest that the mods purge this thread of all the crap about whether or not the Falcon Heavy launched Elon Musk's Tesla, or whether the launch itself was real or not? There is a thread where that discussion can take place without destroying this one. It was great having a place where straightforward, informative posts about events concerning space exploration and astronomy were readily available. All the noise just swamps it out.

'Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning' attributed to Erwin Rommel (alternatively, to George S Patton).

You are going to have be a lot more verbose, Woody. I don't really understand what you mean.

‘Cos Space is cold? I was concerned the tires would explode in a vacuum. I guess they deflated them.

I wonder how long the cameras on the Tesla will carry on broadcasting? Obviously some of the cameras are on the second stage, looking at the car mounted on top, so not sure how they will get power, and how they could orientate their antenna once the car separates from the second stage.

The Tesla is in orbit around the Earth and awaiting final boost into a heliocentric orbit.

Absolutely astonishing! Hope the centre booster made it down successfully, but hey, 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Guess we'll find out whether the Tesla is in the correct orbit over the next few hours.

http://www.spacex.com/webcast SpaceX have announced the launch attempt for Falcon Heavy for around 1830 UTC to night. There'll be a live stream, so I'll be watching, If it works, it should be spectacular and if it doesn't work, it will probably be even more spectacular!

Works fine for me. Whole timetable downloads as a PDF, in date order, starting with current day. Formatting is everything I would expect. SteampacketTimetables-4.pdf

TF make your selection on the Timetable page, and when the results are displayed, click save results. It kicks the results out as a nice PDF with only your selected data and in date order.

My reply duplicates John Wright's. So, TF, if even a lawyer can do it, it just shows how intuitive it is!

Just use the pull down menu on the right of the timetable screen. I found it quite intuitive, I must say.

It didn't behave like that at all when I tried it. All nicely tabulated, and it was quite easy to select data relating to a date range or particular route. The Company symbol top left works like a home button, just like the previous version.

The new website looks better to me, all the necessary bits and pieces available on the homepage. I normally plan my journey through the booking option anyway, but timetable doesn't force you to download a PDF unless you want to.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42692673 The engine test of Falcon Heavy has now taken place. Video on the BBC site. Those 27 engines sound, well, pretty loud!

Bit of fake news going on with that video! I think it did the rounds on a shipping forum a while ago and similar questions were raised and a similar conclusion reached. But it does make the point about damage and injury during heavy weather. I vaguely recall that both the Northlink boats to Shetland have the tables bolted down and the chairs tethered, as inclement weather isn't unknown on the route. Incidentally, the Northlink ships (MV Hjaltland and MV Hrossey) are more or less the same length overall as the Ben My Chree, but far superior ships from a passengers point of view, with much more accommodation. The Ben, unfortunately, is a freight ship with passenger accommodation added on. Although the Northlink passenger ferries carry a lot of trucks, they have dedicated freighters to handle the bulk of it instead of trying to do everything with one vessel. I used to enjoy the Pride of Bilbao, a much slower ship than the Brittany Ferries ones. Great for Whale & Dolphin watching, with a wildlife officer doing guided watches on every crossing. In point of fact, I think it was Bretagne that pitched me onto the floor. Long story short, we may bitch about the Steam Packet cancelling services when other ferry routes are operating, but their Captains know the ships, ports and the routes and have the benefit of a Master Mariner's qualification, which I suspect few of us actually have.

That service is run by Serco.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2528810/Ferries-forced-ride-storm-16-hours-battered-ferocious-seas-leaving-hundreds-people-stranded-dozens-injured.html Hate linking to the Daily Mail, but you were clearly very lucky Woody. I've been on the Cap Finisterre in Biscay in considerably less than a force 11 and ended up on my cabin floor having been thrown out of my bunk. I have also worked as a car deck crewman on a ferry and I can assure you that damage to vehicles does happen.

Mezeron don't have passengers to consider. In very heavy weather, chairs and anything else on the ferry that isn't bolted down will be flying around and injuring people. People themselves will be thrown around, sustaining fractures and other injuries as they strike tables, bulkheads etc. It does happen. Vehicles will be damaged - very few are lashed down on the Ben, in my experience. In less extreme weather, as has already been said, the ship would have trouble actually docking. I'd rather be at home or in a hotel than stuck on the Ben waiting for the weather to change.

https://www.cnet.com/news/spacex-falcon-heavy-static-fire-test-launch-elon-musk/ Space X Falcon Heavy has been on launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Centre for several days, and is reported to have been fuelled up for a full engine test, possibly today. Still no published launch date for the demo flight.

The relevance of cats is that they pretend their cats are texting one another, even though it emerges later that he probably doesn't have a cat. Good story, with themes that I have come across recently in several stories. The difficulty of saying no, sex without enthusiasm, the sometimes sadly different perceptions of men and women. It leaves me wondering what the man will progress to next ... Good, striking story and a very relevant commentary on what we are hearing and reading about so often these days.

Truly a wonderful scientific achievement. Although it has to be said that Jenner's original experiment to vaccinate his gardener's eight year old son with cowpox pus and subsequently to expose hime to smallpox infected tissue might not meet modern ethical standards and was based solely on a folksy observation that milkmaids didn't seem to get smallpox. It isn't entirely true that Rahima was the last person to be infected with Smallpox. in 1978, Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, was accidentally infected with Smallpox at Birmingham University Medical School. The virus had been cultured on the floor below her workplace. She died of the disease on 11 September 1978.

Falcon Heavy is a big deal. I'll be glued to the live stream, assuming there is one. Nothing that big or powerful has been launched in the US since Saturn 5b/Apollo. His payload - the Tesla - will be placed in orbit around the Sun if it all works, its orbit taking it close to both Earth and Mars. I assume the car won't have any means of slowing and actually going into orbit around Mars. Elon Musk is also planning to fly some people around the Moon in the Dragon capsule some time in 2018, and that will need the Falcon Heavy as a launcher.

It is utterly astonishing that NASA can still communicate with Voyager 1, let alone control it at this distance. The signal from the spacecraft must be vanishingly faint at 19 billion kilometres distance. Makes me shiver to think how remote and distant that is, and yet, of course, it is still in our cosmic back yard in interstellar terms.

Peak of the Orionid meteor shower tonight. If you are blessed with clear skies, have a look just after midnight. They appear from the direction of Orion, so it's easy to find your way.