SpaceX launched 2 satellites into orbit, but its Falcon 9 rocket crashed

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I hate to be that guy, but I’m here for the crash footage.

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Me too, but the previous footage of the successful landing is one of the most incredible things I’ve seen.

The 360 footage is cool, but for me, the chase-plane footage highlights the sheer audacity and quality of this team. Scroll down the page after the jump a bit to see it. I’m simply WTF?

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That’s a very awkward use of a smiley face!

Side note, I love that Elon Musk is so nerdy that he names SpaceX drone barges with Iain Banks style Culture names. I believe this one was named Of Course I Still Love You; their other barge is Just Read The Instructions.

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recover and refurbish the Falcon9 1st stage is a waste of time and money since the average customers can pay $60M for a brand new one _ ghostNASA.com

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Doesn’t matter. It’s frickin’ cool.

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Especially coming from a company trying to convince us that they’re ready to ferry people to Mars.

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Of course they’re not ready now. They’ve announced that they’re planning to try to send humans to Mars eight years from now, in the 2024-25 window, if everything goes according to plan. *

Eight years ago, no privately-built rocket had ever launched a satellite into orbit.

But they’re not trying to convince you of anything. They’re going, no matter what you think. (-:

Because Elon wants to. Because it’s cool. (-:

 

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  • Which it never does, of course.

A lot of people give Elon shit for ‘Elon time’ - announcing planned dates that shift into the future - but when you’re doing things that’ve never been done before, it’s hard to estimate the inevitable delays, even when you know they’re inevitable.

Too many “known unkowns”, and really good odds of “unknown unknowns.” Any ‘fudge factor’ would just be guessing. So always treat Elon’s announced dates as what the rocket boys call “NET dates”: “Not Earlier Than.”

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Yeah daaamn, this is cool!

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I love it when Internet ExpertsTM explain how Elon Musk is wasting his time and money.

I mean, even if they’re right, so what?

It’s his time and money. He can afford it.

He’s trying to go to Mars. He thinks this will help him get there.

Might not work. He knows that.

He might be wrong, but watching him try is way more entertaining than trying to ELI5splain why he might not be, for the benefit of Internet ExpertsTM.

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But I can’t. And I would love to buy a launch from Elon Musk.

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just change “his money” with “US government money”

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Still cool as fuck. And a much better way of spending it than bombing small brown countries back to the stone age. :smiley:

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One: They’re trying to convince us not that they are ready now, but that they will be in the near future.
Two: They’ve only had one actual mission failure so far, so they’re actually doing a pretty good job with that.
Three: Pretty much everyone in the know expected this rocket to crash (even if they were all hoping for a landing). This was one of the “we don’t think we can land this, but we’re going to try, because even if it blows up we’ll get valuable data” attempts. So it wasn’t even really a failure, since it accomplished the intended goal and it was an exceptionally cheap test.

So, I mean, I dunno - maybe they haven’t convinced me yet, but they’re doing a pretty good job at it and aside from the one launch explosion they had their record has been pretty damn good.

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Oh, not this nonsense again.

SpaceX supplies the government with cargo - and soon crew - launch services for the ISS at prices that - even accounting for ALL NASA development money - are about one quarter of what the government would otherwise have to pay the Russians.(or someone else).

And about one tenth what the US itself would pay to launch on the Shuttle.

He’s saving the government massive amounts of money on services they would otherwise have to buy at higher prices, while keeping the resulting jobs in the US.

If you sell pencils, and you make the best pencils at the lowest prices, one of your biggest customers will probably be the government, because the government needs inexpensive pencils, too.

SpaceX sells space launch services, and the government is their biggest customer, because the government needs inexpensive space launch services, too - more than most.

SpaceX is saving the government millions and helping end dependence on Russian-built rockets, while creating thousands of high-paying US jobs.

But Internet ExpertsTM will always find something to complain about.

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Oh, and that wasn’t SpaceX’s smiley - that was in Xeni’s tweet.

Betcha Xeni’s ready to let SpaceX take her to Mars. (-:

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