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SpaceX Releases Ultra-HD 4K Footage Of Falcon 9 Landing (4k.com)
An anonymous reader quotes 4K.com:
On June 3, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was placed into low-orbit for the sake of launching its Dragon spacecraft into their eleventh Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-11) to the International Space Station... Last week SpaceX shared on their Youtube channel the remarkable 4K UHD footage of the landing, and since many of us are not used to watching this kind of footage except for Sci-Fi movies or video games, the landing seems almost Hollywood-level surreal, especially since it happens so quickly and accurately. You can watch the video at 4k and 60 fps here if you happen to own a 4K TV or UHD PC monitor with the right hardware specs... The footage above isn't SpaceX's first 4K video of one of its launches. The company has also previously released other videos of even more impressive landings directly onto the surfaces of drone ships.
The article also reminds readers that "If you are by any chance looking to send something or someone out of space, Elon Musk's company offers reasonable prices for their launching services, starting at $62 million for its Falcon 9 and $90 million for the Falcon Heavy."
The article also reminds readers that "If you are by any chance looking to send something or someone out of space, Elon Musk's company offers reasonable prices for their launching services, starting at $62 million for its Falcon 9 and $90 million for the Falcon Heavy."
Beyond space and time, the papawos gizilog sat awaiting the launch of his hininon pardithon. Only through his secret alliance with the "Elon Musk" creature could he be sure that it would arrive at is whigog in the fifth dimension. He unfurled his zaaal nervously.
Do they really think they can fool us by reversing the footage of a launch? This has about as much truth to it as Comey's testimony.
Here are some really cool videos of SpaceX landing the first stage of their rockets (on land and on sea). They've done it 11 times by now, and have already re-flown one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (sped up barge landing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (real-time land landing)
Sounds more like that was the streaming quality adjusting upwards. If you use the settings to force HD (whatever your monitor can support), it will be in "focus" the whole time.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Actually, rocket experts all did know that you could land a rocket on its tail. After all, the lunar module landed that way. What they did not know is whether you can re-fly a booster at a net cost savings over just building a new one. And although SpaceX has proven that they can re-fly the booster, it will take some years of operation to actually show that they save money this way.
I think they'll do it. But we've got to be realistic and realize that it's not done yet.
Bruce Perens.
I counted launches this year and got 7. Apparently, each launch is priced at 65 million USD or more. 7 x 65 = 455. We're now in June, so if they got 7 more launches out, that's around the 1 billion you estimate the burn rate to.
Now, I don't know if you include materials in the burn rate, but if they manufacture the rockets in-house, I would guess salaries would be the dominant factor.
False basis.
1) Just because someone (actually several someones) did something fundamentally similar before you means they forever have claim to every derivative work. Furthermore, NASA is a government funded entity. It's R&D (among other things) is for the good of the country and its citizens which include Elon and the SpaceX investors. NASA did, and does, amazing things. SpaceX also does amazing things including some very impressive R&D. Would the situation be different without NASA? Sure. But that's basically asking "so if the USA never had a space exploration program..." then SpaceX very well might be a russian company. (oh wait, who's been doing a lot of our launches?)
2) This is simple misdirection. NASA absolutely funds relevant development efforts but that's not even the case here. NASA bought (committed to) launches from SpaceX. That's not support, that's purchasing services that NASA currently requires and has no means to execute themselves. Was it immensely helpful to SpaceX? Absolutely. Did it save the company? In a manner of speaking but SpaceX still had to be a viable supplier. It was not a gimmie/bail-out at all.
NASA gets a lot of credit for building the US Space program, though a large portion of their work was outsourced so even claiming it all as 'theirs' is a fundamentally flawed argument. They just paid for a bunch of genius engineers to build things that were at (or beyond) the material science of the time. SpaceX has a much easier time of it now with the history of design that the US and USSR went through years back...but that's not to say modern science couldn't recreate much of that work for far, far less effort today.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
On 3 June 2017, the CRS-11 capsule largely assembled from previously flown components from the CRS-4 mission in September 2014 was launched again for the first time, with the hull, structural elements, thrusters, harnesses, propellant tanks, plumbing and many of the avionics reused while the heat shield, batteries and components exposed to sea water upon splashdown for recovery were replaced.
Now, you could be correct that they outright lied about that but I fail to see why they would. Furthermore, that's the dragon capsule not the booster itself.
Yes, exact/recurring refurb costs are still being figured for the boosters but what gives you belief that those costs are going to be similar to building the thing from scratch? Even if it's 50% less, that reduces their capital costs per launch by half leaving fuel (negligible) and support costs (significant, but not exceptional).
Thinking that they can't turn a profit is nonsense though. Sat launching is most certainly profitable. I say that simply because 1) companies are launching satellites and 2) other companies are paying for those launches and then making a profit off having them up there. If the cost to launch exceeded what companies could afford to pay, there wouldn't be launches. Instead the bottleneck isn't paying customers, it's how fast the very limited number of launching companies can blast shit into the sky.
Yes, there's money going into R&D for the next generation (and evolution) of launch platforms. That's what you do when you want to ensure your company has a future. (oh, and your species too if you want to include that viewpoint)
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Shotwell stated the cost of refurbishing the stage used for the SES-10 launch was "substantially less than half" the cost of a new stage, a figure likely to drop rapidly as they gain experience with the procedures required...provided they don't experience any failures that can be traced to damage from previous flights.
Another thing to keep in mind is that their flight rate without reuse is limited by production rate. Apart from saving the cost of producing a new rocket, reuse allows them to perform launches that would otherwise go to competitors due to a lack of launch vehicles.