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Elon Musk Releases Supercut of SpaceX Rocket Explosions (hardocp.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the failure-is-the-first-step-to-success dept.

Eloking shares a report from HardOCP: Elon Musk is demonstrating how one should not land an orbital rocket booster: the video, currently trending on YouTube, is essentially a blooper reel of SpaceX rocket tests that went explosive. While the company has more or less perfected launching Falcon 9 rockets, it is still working hard on recovering as much of the multi-million-dollar system as possible.

1 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. It's about lowering expectations by saibot834 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My take on the blooper reel, as funny as it is, is that it's supposed to lower expectations for Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy was originally supposed to launch in 2013, but the date has been pushed back multiple times in the recent years. Part of the reason is that it never was the top priority -- the Falcon 9 upgrades meant that more payloads could be launched using a single booster instead of three. And SpaceX has to keep NASA happy and fulfill their Commercial Resupply Missions to the ISS & the upcoming Dragon flights (first manned flights).

    But part of the reason why Falcon Heavy was delayed so much is because it is hugely complex. You can just stick two boosters to the side of a core booster and keep it together with some struts, like in Kerbal Space Program. The structural loads are all different and must be accounted for.

    So, I think the timing of the video so close to the scheduled launch of Falcon Heavy in November of this year is supposed to carefully counter the high expectations that the public has, given SpaceX's recent successes. Rocket science is hard, and failures are to be expected. But if you work on the problem for long enough, you eventually get it right. That's the message of the video.