Falcon Heavy - Go For Launch

Map visualization of viewers for the maiden Falcon Heavy launch, pulled from https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/

Specifically, this thread.

Running:

• Requires simple http server, & a Google Maps Javascript API key

git clone https://github.com/jackkoppa/go-for-launch.git
cd go-for-launch

• In maps.js, replace MAPS_JS_KEY with your own key (since the default is domain-controlled); can be generated here with any Google Account
• If you don't have a simple http server already in mind, you can use one from npm:

npm install -g http-server

• Finally, run the server. Assuming the npm package was installed:

http-server -p 8080

• Project is now available at http://localhost:8080/

Fetch Most Recent

• Follow instructions in console-scripts/reddit-console-scripts.js, copied below:

1. Go to the reddit thread w/ locations: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7vg63x/rspacex_falcon_heavy_test_flight_official_launch/dttm08w/
2. Copy this entire file (CTRL + A, CTRL + C)
3. Paste into dev tools console (https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/console/), press "Enter"
4. Wait for final message saying "Coordinates are ready!"
5. Paste into ../manually-retrieved-coordinates.js file, replacing everything (CTRL + A, CTRL + V)

Notes

• The site does not auto-update, and requires a fresh crawl of the reddit thread in order to retrieve the newest comments & coordinates, then a fresh push to the repo for GitHub pages to update.
• This functionality could certainly be moved to a server, that relies on the reddit API (as well as the Geocoding API, which is already the case)
• However, the marginal benefits did not seem to justify the additional setup effort (especially since GitHub pages is for static sites only), given that the comments should no longer update if we wish to maintain fidelity to the original content
• As a fun project, though, creating a simple API for this UI to call could be fun, and I would be happy to work with someone on that effort (likely an Express backend)