I’m seeing a 90% chance of rain here on Tuesday. May not effect the launch but been planning taking our boat up The Banana River (about 10 miles north) to see the launch and landings up close so wouldn’t break my heart if the launch takes place a day or so later.
You want science fictiony stuff? Go here. Little past the 1 minute mark if you’re impatient.
The first Falcon Heavy consisted of earlier versions of the rockets (Block 2/3 IIRC). For ArabSat, all three rockets are Block 5, the latest (and final - hopefully) configuration, which included some performance increases:
Oh, right. I forgot the Block 5 booster aspect.
Amazing how fast SpaceX is capable of working. I would never have thought they could build a test hopper and put a Raptor in it and get it all working by now, but yesterday they already did the first tethered test. And Musk says the full sized Starship is already under construction.
Yeah, private industry in general is a lot faster than bureaucracies, but SpaceX seems genuinely quick about things, even for a private company.
Word on the street is the Falcon Heavy up on 39A became horizontal early this morning. Am thinking this position is not conducive to launching.
Depends on where you’re trying to go. 
Got to put the payload on first…
Weather for tomorrow is still looking bad for a launch. Would hope it could get scrubbed today or early tomorrow as Wednesday’s weather looks all… A-OK-ish. Would like to avoid 2 boat trips north, if possible.
Titusville Police are saying launch has been pushed back until Wednesday. Yes.
Launch Reschedule Notification Space X Falcon Heavy
has been rescheduled to Wednesday April 10th 2019. Launch windows opens
at 6:36 PM. https://twitter.com/TitusvillePD/status/1115247006283456513/photo/1
— Titusville Police FL (@TitusvillePD) April 8, 2019
Five hours 'til launch, Elon Musk put the odds of failure at 5-10%:
That’s called managing expectations. He did the same thing before the first Falcon Heavy launch, saying that it would likely fail and he just hoped it would clear the pad before it blew up.
He says this stuff so that if there is a failure it won’t look like it came out of the blue and caught SpaceX unaware. Managed risk looks a lot better than, ‘Holy crap, we thought it would work and it didn’t!’
Yeah, but it’s still going to be a giant black eye for SpaceX if they blow up the Saudi’s satellite, in spite of the attempt at managing expectations.
Falcon Heavy is vertical, but the launch has been pushed back:
so, two hours later and we’re still five hours 'til launch
Am hearing launch is delayed until 8 PM. Makes for a near perfect post sundown phenomena but yikes. Makes for a tough 11 mile boat ride up and back in near dark/dark. We’ll see.
Launch may get scrubbed tonight:
Spacex just Tweeted:
Standing down from today’s Falcon Heavy launch attempt; next opportunity is tomorrow, April 11.
SpaceX just tweeted the following:
All systems and weather are currently go ahead of tonight’s Falcon Heavy launch of Arabsat-6A from Pad 39A; launch window opens at 6:35 p.m. EDT, or 22:35 UTC → SpaceX
All three cores landed. Woot!
It’s amazing watching four different spaceships all doing their various things simultaneously. Of course it’s all under computer control, but I would think that would make the “mission control” (or even just “mission monitoring”) aspect of the launch substantially more complex.
Anyway, looking great so far! All three first stage rockets have landed successfully, and the actual mission is apparently going well.