Videos at link.
See this other thread about it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3375370/posts
Other news articles here.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/21/news/companies/spacex-launch-rocket-landing/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/science/spacex-rocket-landing.html?_r=0
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/news/a18682/spacex-nails-a-vertical-landing-at-cape-canaveral/
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/12/spacex-rtf-core-return-attempt-og2/
If not, they'll probably be outlawed in the USSA.
These guys are the right stuff!
I neve understood why they wasted time trying to land on a pitching barge deck.
Where are all usual suspects denigrating Musk because he just makes an overrated electric car and owes his profits (meager as they are) to government subsidies?
Well done Mr. Musk. A great accomplishment.
The private spaceflight company brought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a soft touchdown tonight (Dec. 21), pulling off history's first-ever rocket landing during an orbital launch. (Blue Origin, the company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, landed its New Shepard booster successfully last month, but that occurred during a suborbital test.)SpaceX successfully landed this way in a suborbital test BEFORE Blue Origin. Blue Origin may have the lead in the development of a methane-burning engine -- for now -- and gets paid more per pound to orbit (that's gubmint for ya). This landing was superb, nailed it, and after the launch failure earlier in the year, SpaceX needed this, bigtime. Congratulations to SpaceX, and I look forward to the Falcon Heavy test in 2016 -- they're the ticket to Mars colonization. Getting this launch down is a necessity, obviously there are no cranes or other infrastructure on Mars, and the methane-burning engine will be needed because methane fuel is available on Mars (kerosene not so much). Thanks Jack!
How much fuel is wasted turning it around and stopping it’s forward momentum.
You think it would be more economical to let it coast 3/4 of the way around and land it in California.
Bezos appears the real deal on space biz, Musk seems just a govt program kinda guy - to me as a barely informed observer.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezo's private space company Blue Origin has completed a 'historic'
test flight, after sending a craft to space before successfully landing it on Earth.
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