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.
:’)
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.
...
Hearing all the SpaceX employees chanting USA was great, too.
While I agree that this is an "accomplishment", it's not a "great accomplishment." The real issue with reusable launch vehicles is not whether it can be done, but rather if it can be done to make economic sense.
A launch system is made up of much more than the vehicle -- it's the manufacturing infrastructure, preparation and launch facilities, and the cost and difficulty of refurbishing and reusing the "reusable" vehicle. Reusable does not equal cheap -- Shuttle was a reusable system; the reason it was expensive is because it took a lot of man-hours of highly skilled workers to refurbish the vehicle for reuse.
Because SpaceX is a non-public company, we have no idea what it took to develop the recoverable (and that's all that has been shown for now) first stage. Even Musk does not know how much it will cost to operate a hypothetical reusable Falcon 9 system because he doesn't have one yet. Yes, he has successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage booster and yes, that is something. But it's not what his cheerleaders and the facile analyses of a brainless space media claim.
The determining factor as to whether this is an advance or not is if SpaceX can put a payload into orbit cheaper than what they are now charging. We don't know that now and may not know it for several years. After a single booster flies five or six times, and the price for launching a satellite comes down, then I'll grant you his "great accomplishment."
Oh, and all of Musk's talk about colonies on Mars is still pure BS. He still doesn't have a clue as to what a single human Mars mission would take, let alone the establishment of a self-sustaining settlement there.