SPACEX

[Jeepnik]

You no doubt heard of the recent SpaceX launch and the recovery of the launch vehicle. Quite impressive to land a rocket on a itsy bitsy barge. They brought it into the harbor a couple of days ago.
It was hard to get any decent shots with all of the cranes around, but here's one anyway.

 

[Rick Courtright]

Hi,

Nice one, Jeepnik!

That whole program amazes me for a couple of reasons. First is that it's basically private money making the whole thing go, not NASA or Uncle Sam putting their full weight into it. And second, it's actually worked already!

My father was a rocket scientist from the beginning of our space program some time before Sputnik, not with NASA but with a civilian contractor to the USAF. His job involved trajectory and reentry systems. When we were in high school, around '66-'67, one of my buddies asked how hard it was to get a man into space. His answer was it's easy to get the guy up there, the real job is getting him back, in one piece with everything working. He passed a few years before SpaceX came on scene, but would probably be more than impressed at the work they're doing.

Rick C

 

[jeffnles1]

cool.

 

[gramps]

I am impressed that the rocket can find that platform, and land without demolishing everything.
gramps

 

[Don Lovel]

When Scaled Composites and Burt Ruttan first started their efforts, I wrote a paper for a tech class about how their mindset to learn from NASA's mistakes yet embrace that everything they do will have civilian life improvement aspects in the future just as NASA did. So many ideas were routed into a "well it works ok for this, but does it do enough for future development as well?"
Also, the utilization of gravity vs fighting it for re entry through outer atmosphere is a pretty smart approach for recycling the vehicles.
Getting a forward thinking rich guy like Richard Branson on board did not hurt them either.