Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/30/my-life-on-the-road-accidenta.html
…
9 Likes
A story about a road trip, a happy puppy, a beach, and a rocket? Thank you very much. Seamus.
16 Likes
Looks like Elon wanted to play Lunar Lander in real life.
4 Likes
The Boca Chica area is one of my new favorite hangs on the border - it’s kind of hard to imagine I’d always blown it off. The super-casual attitude at the SPACE PORT is neat.
Make time for doing nothing at the State Park and go to the South Bay. There’s almost never anyone in the park, or the whole area for that matter. Great birdwatching.
3 Likes
I think the pointy bit at the top or nose cone was the part that blew over. Which is why the Starhopper does not have a toque or pointy bit on top. They built a windbreak structure as well.
They are already well along on the Mk1 and Mk2 full size second stage and they should start flying them… errrr soonish. Before SLS for sure. Someone here at BB gave me a new def for SLS: Senate Launch System. It doesn’t use RP1 just oodles of pure unrefined pork barrel squeezins.
Watching hoppy make that 500 ft flight was pretty damn cool. Has Blue Origin’s BL4 actually flown yet? Landed? That methane powered Raptor engine has flown four times now (twice tethered, twice untethered). Time to get taken apart and tested then reassembled and put in a museum. Nice job engine #6.
1 Like
Thicc! Way to go
It flies! It lands! And it still looks like a prop from a Flash Gordon set. What’s not to like?
5 Likes
I wonder if that security guard ever takes the thing on quick suborbital jaunts when nobody is looking.
4 Likes
The SpaceX Starhopper looks very similar to a flying machine that had been made, oh, some 160 years earlier.
Called “Queen of the Air”, it was built in 1859 by Daniel McFarland Cook of Mansfield, Ohio. It’s now on display at the North Central Ohio Industrial Museum.
4 Likes
They say science fiction sometimes shapes the future - read “The Man Who Sold The Moon” by Robert Heinlein. I’m awestruck to see this happening in my time. It’s about time private enterprise stepped up where government has failed.
Can’t see any of these videos in Europe. I went and googled another, and I couldn’t read that either. Is Space Force cracking down on leaks in US technology?
1 Like
As kids, raised on recent NASA awesomeness (the 70’s), we always snickered at “old” sci-fi movies (the 50’s) that showed rocket ships landing vertically. After all, everyone knows rockets have stages, and land as a parachuted capsule (or, later, glide in the like the Shuttle)!
And guess what Elon Musk gone and done?!?
The only drawback is you gotta choose your landing site carefully because you are going to seriously crispy-char it to bits.
3 Likes
The Musk rocket does land vertically. But he could have made it look more like the Tintin one…
1 Like
Seamus, have you seriously never been to Saskatchewan?
You don’t have to go all the way to Texas just to watch your dog run away from home with binoculars for the next 3 days.
1 Like
We don’t talk about Saskatchewan in my family. It’s where the madness takes hold.
Makes sense. The closest shop to buy a pack of smokes from is an hour away, by car.
The full sized thing is supposed to look a bit more like Tintin’s rocket: (test version at left)
I’d say it looks like pure science fiction, but they are already making money from launching rockets and landing them back on their tail (on robotic boats no less), so I guess SpaceX deserve the benefit of the doubt.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
