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NEWS Space X nails it!
- Thread starter Flash
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Okay, rant on//
Folks like to talk about this country's decline but I think this is a perfect example why we continue to be the greatest country on earth. Here is a South African-born American entrepreneur/inventor/genius who has done something no one, including countries, has ever done. And our government let his private company do it with very little regulatory or governmental interference, even providing support when needed. On top of all that we are going to pay his company to fly our astronauts into space. Had it been China or Russia they never would have let him even start a rocket company, or think about it for that matter. In India he would still be mired in bureaucratic quagmire. In Japan and Europe he would have been blocked by their 'national champions'.
I am one of many who has been disappointed by NASA's drift when it comes to manned spaceflight over the last few years but that is more a result of political indecision and lack of support than anything else. I would hazard a guess that many NASA employees are cheering on SpaceX, Blue Origin and the other dreamers out there just as loudly as those SpaceX folks were in the control room. The simple fact remains though that this country has provided a place, the people and the bucks that has allowed folks like Musk and his company along with others like him to thrive and to live out their dreams.
To paraphrase Scott Carpenter, 'Godspeed, SpaceX'.
Rant off//
Folks like to talk about this country's decline but I think this is a perfect example why we continue to be the greatest country on earth. Here is a South African-born American entrepreneur/inventor/genius who has done something no one, including countries, has ever done. And our government let his private company do it with very little regulatory or governmental interference, even providing support when needed. On top of all that we are going to pay his company to fly our astronauts into space. Had it been China or Russia they never would have let him even start a rocket company, or think about it for that matter. In India he would still be mired in bureaucratic quagmire. In Japan and Europe he would have been blocked by their 'national champions'.
I am one of many who has been disappointed by NASA's drift when it comes to manned spaceflight over the last few years but that is more a result of political indecision and lack of support than anything else. I would hazard a guess that many NASA employees are cheering on SpaceX, Blue Origin and the other dreamers out there just as loudly as those SpaceX folks were in the control room. The simple fact remains though that this country has provided a place, the people and the bucks that has allowed folks like Musk and his company along with others like him to thrive and to live out their dreams.
To paraphrase Scott Carpenter, 'Godspeed, SpaceX'.
Rant off//
I did some quick wikipedia browsing to figure out why this kind of technology is such a big deal:
"Michael Belfiore wrote in Foreign Policy that at a published cost of US$56.5 million per launch to low Earth orbit, "Falcon 9 rockets are already the cheapest in the industry. Reusable Falcon 9s could drop the price by an order of magnitude, sparking more space-based enterprise, which in turn would drop the cost of access to space still further through economies of scale."[21] Even for military launches, which have a number of contractual requirements for additional launch services to be provided, SpaceX's price is under US$100 million"
"Michael Belfiore wrote in Foreign Policy that at a published cost of US$56.5 million per launch to low Earth orbit, "Falcon 9 rockets are already the cheapest in the industry. Reusable Falcon 9s could drop the price by an order of magnitude, sparking more space-based enterprise, which in turn would drop the cost of access to space still further through economies of scale."[21] Even for military launches, which have a number of contractual requirements for additional launch services to be provided, SpaceX's price is under US$100 million"
Imagine if after every commercial passenger flight you had to throw away the airplane. It would be so astronomically expensive that very few would be able to afford to fly anywhere. That's the reality of current spaceflight...until yesterday. Reusing launch vehicles is the logical next step in bringing the price down.
Yesterday was a huge step for the space industry, but I think it will be a little while before we see the ramification. Who knows how economical it will be to refurbish used stages and send them back up. How long will that process take? The STS engines and boosters had to be essentially rebuilt each time they came down before flying again, so there are massive engineering challenges involved that some seem to be overlooking. Musk has a goal of being able to refuel it on the pad and send it back up with a new payload in a matter of days. I'm sure there will be bumps along the road, but a hugely exciting development regardless!
I am a huge NASA / space exploration fan. Rocket companies will start the movement into space, but to do this on a massive scale will require something like a space elevator. The ability to mass produce the materials such as carbon nanotubes does not exist yet, but when it does, it really opens a lot of doors - not just on Earth but also on Mars as well as different moons that all have lower gravity wells.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-elevator-conference-2012/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-elevator-conference-2012/
That's the same stuff from SpaceX's site. Maybe they've got other views/footage that they're still processing - hopefully. The post-mortem footage from their previous barge landing attempts were pretty good.
I love this whole thread.
If only.
They had some footage tonight in the network national news (yes, I still regularly watch and am thoroughly familiar now with every ED drug commercial now) that looked like it was from a drone or two closer the landing site. Much more high-res than what I had seen online, maybe SpaceX has it posted now.
Edit: The video I saw was apparently from a helo, here a link to a page with it and other images.
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