Posted on 02/20/2017 5:11:52 AM PST by C19fan
Amazing video shows the historic moment the first stage of the Falcon 9 touched down at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on the launch pad. The SpaceX rocket descended through the clouds before landing right in the middle of the pad, a perfect landing after a rocky start. The rocket was supposed to launch Saturday but took off 9:38am Sunday instead because of a technical error. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk captioned the video on Instagram: 'Baby came back'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
So says some smug anonymous poster from the comfort of his armchair. Those who cannot achieve criticize those who do.
Seems like they could do this on Mars.
I’d be more impressed if Musk performed his wonders without massive government subsidies - but I have to admit that he’s the one person in technology today who still thinks big and aims for something higher than incremental changes in a smart-phone or another new social media app.
NASA was/is horrifically wastefull.
When they started the Shuttle program, they had two complete, proven workhorse Saturn 5 boosters. Instead of using them to boost something useful into orbit, they junked them. That was what I got from a collegue during a tour of a NASA facility, where one of the junked Saturn 5 hulks was being used as a display. The Saturn V vehicles cost $110 million each in 1971. That is 1.3 billion dollars for the two vehicles today in constant dollars. If you go to wikipedia, you can read that they built 15 Saturn V boosters, but only used 13, confirming what I was told.
So NASA just scrapped 1.3 billion dollars. No doubt there was politics involved.
I agree. And this little trick they showed off is totally lame. Any of us could build a rocket that touches down. Hell, I could do that will tools in my garage. I don't know why everyone is all giddy about this. This is low-rent crap-technology that a 5th grade shop class could acheive. Why anyone even thought it necessary to write an article about this underperforming circus-clown-car act totally boggles the mind. Somalia could have done it quicker and better. Musk is a scumbag creep who sucks government tit and loves to see his name in print. I'm sick of his crap.
I despise this globalist scumbag, and wish he'd stop pretending to run a good company. The stuff they are producing is utter crap and probably he fabricated the YouTube video. His fake-spacecraft company has become a total laughingstock and everyone wishes he'd just go away.
I think I’ve already retracted my statement. I didn’t realize that it was a booster rocket. Bringing that down the way they is incredible, however, I shudder to think of all the possibilities of something going wrong on re entry. Amazing. Truly amazing.
“I don’t see how this is practical. Don’t they have to take up a huge amount of fuel to be able to land again and doesn’t that seriously impact their ability to launch heavy object?”
My thoughts.
Bezos wants to compare ‘Blue Origin’ to the Dragon launch system as an apples to apples comparison. His system put a single stage rocket to about 62 miles altitude and back for a landing. Pure PT Barnum.
The Dragon first stage separates at about 50 miles with a mach 10 velocity, which must be canceled to recover the stage at the launch site, otherwise the stage would fall into the mid Atlantic Ocean. With the stage much lighter than launch weight, a single engine out of nine decelerates the booster and redirects it’s path toward a landing area. Fuel costs are of much less consideration than the hardware replacement cost per launch. What would air travel tickets cost if a 747 could only be used once?
It’s truly amazing. Truly amazing, but when you think about it, it’s like shooting a cylinder in the air, and then bringing it back down safely. I’m just amazed.
Hmmm. Let’s Solyndra? 500 million dollars down the tubes and in the hands of cronies? Disgusting.
Even in its heyday, NASA used private industry to make its parts.
The real difference between SpaceX and NASA is who is directing the vision of space exploration. For NASA, it is a group of bureaucrats, where at SpaceX, it is primarily Musk and his advisors.
After skimming through the comments here, I’m thinking many have lost sight of the big picture, namely more affordable space travel. Rather than having the booster rocket sitting on the bottom of an ocean, by being able to recover it and reuse it, it reduces the cost of future launches bigly.
We can only imagine what the benefits of cheaper space exploration and travel will bring to us in the future.
Yes...but nearly everything ever produced that is run and paid for by the government uses components produced in private industry.
The difference is that if SpaceX fails at something, it impacts their bottom line, where if the government fails at something, it just sticks its hand back into the taxpayer’s pocket!
I don’t disagree with what you said. My point is why is it surprising when private industry succeeds at launching rockets, when private industry has been doing it from the beginning?
As you and I have pointed out, the big differences are who pays for it and who manages it. Also, remember, SpaceX has contracts with NASA, and has had money from NASA to develop their launch capability.
I think we agree...I guess the difference is SpaceX likely has a budgetary process with a bottom line and contractual agreements and incentives or penalties on delivery of objectives, and NASA...well...they would just ask for more money and I can’t imagine there were any contractual performance agreements. I could be wrong there, though.
For the most part, I think you are right.
Also, I still think it is pretty incredible that they have gotten this far. I’ve seen many other companies try to do mostly private launch vehicles for over the last twenty years ending up on the ash heap of history.
I think the video was of a rocket taking off.
They played the video backwards....
I am ashamed to think I doubted...:(
I harp on this kind of thing all the time, but I was giving NASA a mulligan on this. Rats!
It isn’t. Pretty amazing. Not sure why the demand for a rocket to land back on earth. It must make sense to someone.
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