The engines falling back and firing up to land was like something out of an old science fiction movie. That was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I heard the core was lost because only one of the three engines fired up. Musk is an eccentric rich dude, so instead of concrete blocks he used one of his cars for weight. The dummy in a space suit is a tribute to David Bowie. They played Starman during the launch.
To see the stark difference between how Apollo and the shuttle were done compared to a private money operation was just humorous. To go from the white coats, glasses, and pocket protectors to this, was a real change from what I have always seen before. Elon has proven that the private sector can do anything better than any government. A very proud day for us.
To be blunt, you are making a monumental amount of assumptions, and some rather baseless comparisons here.
Space X is able to do what it is now because it's had the opportunity to piggyback onto a ton of expertise and tech they didn't have to develop themselves. The abbitly to land a rocket is not new, this is tech that has existed since long before you were born.
NASA has been burdened with horrible under funding and saddled with stupid requirements to get that funding since the 60s. THe space shuttle was an over budget shitshow because of stuff like initial design being modified so that the airforce could a launch loads into polar orbit, and then modified again so that the shuttle was 20% overweight and now couldn't do that. Huge chunks of money went into designing systems so the air force could steal satellites, something that was as best as anyone can tell, never used. It was also required to be human rated, which most other launch systems aren't. The shuttle is also 1970s tech, NASA should have had a new launch system 20 years ago, no one bothered to fund it. The same issue is coming up again with the SLS with completely stupid requirements.
The comparison to the apollo program meanwhile is utterly absurd. leaving aside the fact the apollo was cutting edge tech (They basically invented modern rockery during that time period), nothing spaceX has, comes anywhere close to the capabilities of the saturn V let alone capable of anything close to the moon landings themselves. And again, the Saturn V was human rated.
Also this should be pointed out: Neither the STS nor the Saturn V were commercial launch systems. Commercial launch systems are things like the Atlas V, Proton, the Delta IV, the Ariane family and so on, all of which are far cheaper to operate than the STS.
It's also absurd to claim that this is a private endeavour. SpaceX has been and will continue to be dependent on public funding for a very long time. While it is "privately funded", that means private parties coughed up the R&D cost in expectation of future profits that take the form of government contracts. Space X's biggest customer is...NASA. it's second biggest company (if you include all those interesting "classified" missions for northop etc) is the USA air force. US tax dollars is what's paid for the Falcon 9 and the Falcon heavy. Because apparently Congress will cheerfully demand NASA pay a private company out of it's tiny budget to do the work, rather than just give NASA the budget to do it in the first place (and do it 20 years ago).
Sign In
Create Account
Back to top
