I'm tired of flying in circles and killing astronauts for the purpose of seeing how their bodies deteriorate in zero G. We could explore Mars for 19 billion. Unlike research into life saving meds, this gets us nothing. Going to Mars would result in massive returns on investment.
im confused ill admit that. but why were those people in the video cheering about as vociferously as a group of people could. and you say it's a complete waste of time? if you were to say that to the engineers in that video what would they say in response?
It's a private company and saying space exploration is a waste is silly. Do you think satellites are wasteful? Do you think new forms of transport are wasteful? Do you think understanding the universe is silly? Do you think it is a waste of money to potentially mine asteroids? I'm just thinking of random stuff, but I think you could create a list a mile long from what we have learned from space exploration.
What space are we exploring? please explain. LEO isn't exploring. Yes the ARM is a complete waste of money. When the public fully understand what the ARM is and how much it costs NASA will be in deep ****.
Practicing gets us nothing. I'm tire of the time, effort and dedication we put into practice. Get on with it already. What a waste of money and time. Why baby steps when we should leap.
I can't understand why anyone would be upset at a private company being able to launch a vehicle into orbit to doc with a space station at much lower cost than NASA and also have the booster land back safely. I mean, it's that the whole argument for privatization. You aren't going to get far in space without private help who not only have to do it, but do it while making a profit ultimately - that's what's exciting about this.
SpaceX is a taxpayer-funded private company. Preferable to NASA for sure, but hardly an example of capitalism.
Good thing he is first, then. To the people who saw this news and immediately went into negativity...**** you! This is a spectacular step forward towards opening space to a much larger percentage of people/businesses. This is a paradigm shift.
Oh yeah...forgot to mention. I mistakenly said that Bezos launched his rocket into low earth orbit. He launched that rocket into suborbital flight then landed it. Again, it was quite a feat, but the fact that Bezos is on twitter acting like he is on the same level as what Musk and SpaceX just did is laughable.
According to Elon Musk, a Falcon 9 rocket costs $16M to make. The fuel costs $200K. If they can re-use a refurbished rocket, then the cost of a launch drops at least an order of magnitude. This is huge for dropping the cost of spaceflight.
Like almost all defense contractors, am I right? And Lord knows, Halliburton has stuck its hands in our wallets as well. For those of you wondering how Casey can grouse about SpaceX... are you new here or something? Don't focus energy on the whiny grandpa. Just let him get his bah humbug on and walk on past.
defense contractors are not capitalism, but defense is a constitutionally mandated function of the state
My post didn't mention SpaceX, what are you talking about? Lockheed Martin and Boeing are also private, they made a freaking space plane in the 80's. It was a rocket that landed on wheels. We are "practicing" LEO now? How many more decades of practice do we need in your estimation? OMG this is the dumbest post ever on clutchfans. You are no where as dumb as sweet tard so this is the result of NASA propaganda. You actually think they want to fly somewhere. They flew 10 Gemini missions and one Apollo before the moon shot in Apollo 8. What steps have been taken besides steps back? They are building Orion that is too big to service the ISS and too small for Mars. A booster for it because why not. The ARM was designed to use that hardware. It isn't a baby step. It is a "oh they are still letting us build this crap after cancelling the moon flights. Come up with something for it to do." Mars 2018 was cancelled for budget even though the budget is minute compared to ARM. Mars Science Laboratory didn't just have a soft rocket landing it had a rocket hover and a god damn sky crane. Oh yea, on mars. Sorry I'm not excited about spending billions to service an albatross that vacuums all funding from real exploration.
Your reaction to this AMAZING, SPECTACULAR achievement is ridiculous to the point of absurdity. It's like you are addicted to outrage or something. Remind me to never invite you to a party.
You need one launch per year to get to mars. The major costs are not the boosters. At least Musk actually wants to go and isn't saying Mars just to keep his funding up. No sane person has ARM or reusable rockets or atomic propulsion on the critical path to Mars. If we don't need it for the moon we don't need it for Mars. That argument is really silly. There isn't even an official mars architecture and we are talking about what is on the critical path.
