Super cool!
Indeed. I haven’t felt this optimistic about space exploration since those days. We’d be a lot further ahead if we hadn’t wasted our time and money on the shuttle, but that’s 20/20 hindsight.
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Well considering the new SLS is actually a combination of designs from both Saturn V and the Space Shuttle’s reusable boosters, STS was a pretty important step in the evolutionary process. I don’t see how building the ISS was a waste of time either since it will be a critical piece of any eventual Mars mission.
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Here you go:
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Plus I think all of SpaceX’s R&D is going into the Super Heavy and Starship these days. Falcon 9 has pretty much reached its final form.
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Holy shit 
Unreal. I mean, I know it’s real, but my brain looks at that and says, “Nope, it’s a bad special effect, not reality.” The more I look at it, the worse the feeling gets.
I keep seeing it that way - that it’s film reversed (and the speed altered).
Oh, the dust clouds are CGI, obviously. Maybe cotton wool.
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If you really want to get into some incredible dick-waggling metrics, this video about the most powerful rocket motor is pretty wild:
The AJ-260 is bonkers.
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Pff. Whatever. Call me when they can get all three boosters to land at exactly the same time. They didn’t even manage it with the two that landed at Cape Canaveral.
Seriously, though, I am pretty much unequipped to deal with how impressive this whole launch and recovery were. Like everybody else, I can’t process the rockets doing synchronized upright landings as anything other than an unbelievable special effect. Elon Musk is a freakin’ loon, but if we need a freakin’ loon like Musk to get something as impressive as SpaceX, bring on the freakin’ loons.
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I just want to know how they handle a windy day?
Simply madness, sucks that untested was well. . .untested.
Falcon Heavy launch = 90 million
SLS launch =1 billion+
Very hard to see how NASA can continue to justify further SLS development. So what if it takes two Falcon launches to get the same tonnage into orbit - that is still 1/5th the cost of an SLS launch and you aren’t littering the ocean with rocket trash to boot. I can just see Boeing’s CEO gritting his teeth while watching those reusable boosters nail their landings.
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Thanks, brother. I think the colorization through me. A fine movie, that.
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In other words, the SpaceX rig cannot lift enough mass to get us to the moon.
“This Island Earth” was infinitely superior.
Very cool and i agree there’s a very uncanny valley quality to watching this that the ol’ wetware can’t quite parse. I would’ve liked to see the one landing on the drone ship though, preferably from a distance to get that extra special ‘living in the future’ feel.
Nothing currently flying will do that. The question is, will (disposable, delayed, expensive) SLS fly before the reusable super-heavies Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn?
I guess Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, and co-pilot Winky are not too far away now.
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Love the way the landing gear lazily engages at the last second, as if to say “I could do this in my sleep”. In fact, this might be a good clip to watch before going to sleep to tell myself I can stop worrying, all is well with the world for now.
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This may be a more British thing of a certain vintage, but put a tilt-shift lens on that gif clip and it would pass for a scene from Fireball XL5 (or any other Gerry Anderson series, to be honest).
So, yeah, bits of my childhood are coming true.
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