In the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 6, Elon Musk’s SpaceX will attempt to land a rocket on a platform that floating in the Atlantic Ocean. No big deal.
And if you want to ask Mr. Musk about that, or presumably anything else about which you’re curious (and there should be a lot), then you should head over to reddit a little before 9pm EST for an AMA session.
Ask me anything at 9pm Florida time (focused on tomorrow's 6am rocket launch) http://t.co/DvCbw4kTJy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 5, 2015
According to Space.com, “the California-based private spaceflight company will try to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, shortly after the booster launches SpaceX’s robotic Dragon cargo capsule from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:20 a.m. EST.”
And according to SpaceX, the chances of this happening according to plan is about 50/50.
“Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles. At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm,” says the company.
Drone spaceport ship heads to its hold position in the Atlantic to prepare for a rocket landing pic.twitter.com/kXYHGVKTfE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 5, 2015
Although Musk says the AMA will be focused on the rocket launch, reddit AMAs tend to meander about. If I were you, I’d get in a question or two about Skynet. I think he’ll bite on those.