SpaceX Falcon 9 - Successful Drone Ship Landing

[josephpalazzo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGUQySBikQ

How impressive is that!!

[SGOS]

I heard this on NPR yesterday.  It's going to make space flights cheaper, because they can reuse that expensive booster rocket over and over.  Who gets these ideas, anyway?

[Baruch]

I don't know why the barge has to be so small ... and why the spent booster has to land vertical.  With a larger barge you could land it off-vertical into a big cradle ... and that would be easier.

[kilodelta]

I don't know why the barge has to be so small ... and why the spent booster has to land vertical.  With a larger barge you could land it off-vertical into a big cradle ... and that would be easier.

I'd wager that the smaller barge would cost less in case of a crash. The vertical landing is preferred because the design of the rocket allows for better control upwards and downwards. Thus, a softer landing can be achieved allowing for more uses of the booster. That's my guess anyway.

[Nonsensei]

Last time they tried this they got the vehicle down on target but one of the landing struts collapsed. When I saw that I knew it was just a matter of time.

Still a spectacular video. One of the youtube commenters said it best: so perfect it looks fake.

[stromboli]

Elon Musk is crapping gold dust right now. His Tesla Model III has the largest prior to sale deposit of any vehicle, like 350,000. Yow. If they just made a 4WD truck....

[Baruch]

Popularizing of recent innovations, require tax subsidy thru the government.  Popular access requires that people have money, which they do not ... so the manufacturer gets a subsidy (if they pay taxes at all).  It is said, take away the subsidy, and none of the fracking petroleum plays have made any actual money.  This is also what happened with Solyndra and now with another solar (tax dodge) play.  Any commercial space project, like commercial nuclear power, can only exist with government subsidy (nuclear power plants couldn't afford their own insurance, so the government has them covered).

I don't have a problem with a different mix of private vs government involvement in space ... just don't call it free market.

[doorknob]

Very Nice!


I don't think it matters if the government subsidizes. We need to keep working on space travel. Especially the way this planet is going.

[Baruch]

Very Nice!


I don't think it matters if the government subsidizes. We need to keep working on space travel. Especially the way this planet is going.

The sooner all the millionaires and their lackeys move to the Moon or Mars, the better.  Just don't let these maniacs ever come back.

[josephpalazzo]

Very Nice!


I don't think it matters if the government subsidizes. We need to keep working on space travel. Especially the way this planet is going.

Indeed, but not only the US government, rather all governments should be working at this.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The sooner all the millionaires and their lackeys move to the Moon or Mars, the better.  Just don't let these maniacs ever come back.

Elysium didn't work out so well for the folks who got left behind.

[Nonsensei]

Elysium didn't work out so well for the folks who got left behind.

It did eventually.

[stromboli]

Been reading the "Expanse" sci fi series. If you like hard sci fi, recommended. the setting is largely in the asteroid belt about a century in the future. Not explaining the plot, but a mess of corporations undertaking mining and exploiting the asteroid belt and moons of Jupiter, etc. but the human interplay is quite realistic and I would even say prophetic.

What it shows is human exploitation- people living in bad conditions scraping to earn a living in environments that rely on corporate supply of air, water and mostly food, although some is grown in various places like Mars and Ganymede. I think that is a more realistic human scenario; conning the masses to move outward to find a better life all the while maintaining a stranglehold on their existence. This is a future we could be building toward, sad to say. We have a long history of wealthy men at the head of corporations exploiting the masses. Don't see it ending by going into space.