SpaceX Lands the 13th Falcon 9 Rocket of the Year In Flames (theverge.com)

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida this afternoon and, while the rocket successfully delivered the Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, it managed to catch fire after landing on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. The Verge reports: That rocket's mission [was] to send a satellite known as Koreasat-5A into space, where it will hang above Earth for 15 years while providing communications bandwidth for Korea and Southern Asia. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, marking the the company's 16th successful mission of the year -- twice the number of successful missions in 2016. Shortly after liftoff, the first stage of the rocket returned to Earth and landed (flamboyantly) in the Atlantic Ocean on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. (The fires eventually went out.) It was the 13th successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, the 15th in a row, and the 19th overall.

Comments

Re:impressive

[Jeremi]

With that attitude NASA doesn't need to do jack shit while the private industry develops the products and services NASA needs, except fund it.

You say that like it's a bad thing. To me, that sounds like we've finally attained a long-standing goal.

NASA is supposed to do the experimental science, making rovers and probes and testing new propulsion technologies, power sources, zero-g experiments, spaceships, landers, habitats etc. that eventually may become a commercial product.

Perhaps chemical rockets are now a sufficiently mature technology that they no longer need to be a primarily-government-developed technology? I'd like to see NASA concentrate more on the exploration of space (i.e. scientific space probes and alternative propulsion technologies), and (assuming SpaceX and its competitors are now up to the task) let private industry take over the routine delivery tasks.

Government has the resources to operate on long timelines that most private companies cannot, but outside of that it can be awfully slow, inefficient, and un-creative. So as soon as private companies can take over provisioning for a technology sector, they should be encouraged to do so.