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How far out to sea was the recovery drone Of Course I Still Love You for the Falcon Heavy test flight?

In the future, if there's a Falcon Heavy night launch with a similar flight profile, I'm wondering if the boostback burn, and even perhaps the landing burn, of the center rocket would be visible. Even though the rocket would be quite a distance out to sea, rocket burns are substantially brighter than the night sky, so I'd like to get a rough idea of elevation and/or distance of the center core from the launch site.

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The Falcon Heavy demo flight simulation on FlightClub.io (produced before the launch with available public information) has the final downrange distance for the center core at 347km. I don't know how closely that reflects the actual placement of OCISLY, but it's a reasonable estimate.

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  • $\begingroup$ Oh wow, excellent site! No way that 350km is visible from the launch site. Good to know. $\endgroup$
    – scottbb
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 1:18

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