View from a launched rocket

SpaceX test-launched their liquid-fueled rocket on Tuesday, and have made available this awesome camera feed from the rocket itself; the view from the second stage as the vehicle takes off and flies to 188km above the earth. It's aching to be mashed up with music... (Update: that video link no longer works, but there's a copy on this Techcrunch post -- you can see the wobble set in at about the 6 minute mark.)

More information about the launch at space.com; their article is a bit downbeat, but the live webcast was fantastic to watch. SpaceX aborted their first launch attempt after ignition; being able to do that is extremely impressive in itself. They then managed to refuel the vehicle and successfully launch it an hour later; being able to do that is incredible. So the first stage went very well. After that, separating the first stage from the second seemed to go well, but then the second stage... exhibited a couple of bugs. To be perfectly honest, I've experienced times when software has spun out of control and crashed on me halfway through the second client demo, and it's usually turned out OK soon after.

Of course, because we practice exteme programming at Resolver, we have full functional and unit test suites for our code -- so our client demos never crash.