Almost everyone I know that I have talked to about SpaceX re-landing a first stage has never heard of it, and knows next to nothing about SpaceX and it's long term goal. The general public is woefully ignorant about SpaceX.
And anything else scientific. They tend to follow whomever brays the loudest (which is why advertising works).
I regularly read posts on this forum about people who "can't stop talking about Tesla" to their friends. I try very hard to know my audience and only dish out as much as they can chew about certain things. I also try to show that I'm not one dimensional conversationally. However, when it comes to the SpaceX landings and mission in general, I find the need to reiterate the same things repeatedly. This is despite the eventual "yes, you already mentioned it". It's such a big deal that I don't think it can be repeated too often.
At current rate of speed, it should arrive at port at 6:30pm EDT today (Monday). They're talking about it in a different forum, here:
By "orbit" I just meant the minimal trajectory where the craft would complete at least one orbit before reentering; this is similar enough for most LEO trajectories. Polar low-earth orbits are only ~10% more energetically expensive than equatorial. Getting into orbit faster reduces gravity losses, so there's some point to it. I think most rockets are acceleration-limited, so they'd have to throttle down somewhat to avoid breaking apart. Otherwise you'll be pushing 20G's at cutoff! I think 5G's is probably a realistic limit for one F9 core. If there weren't a pesky atmosphere to worry about, a rocket accelerating at 5G's continuous could reach orbit in about 2 minutes 40 seconds.
Finally, some hard hitting reporting. I can't believe that they don't go the next step and make the natural connection that Senator Richard Shelby is the aliens' representative on the Earth, retarding space innovation by continuing to funnel resources to ULA! Just look at that mug,
