That's what people though fifty years ago when Apollo was happening. The film 2001 was totally feasible and just around the corner...... You need to look into why the Apollo missions have never been attempted again in fifty years. We ain't getting stuff into space cheaply, reliably and safely with great big massive rockets.
The whole point is that their life should be more like airplanes than the rockets you're thinking of.
Indeed, that they should be more like aeroplanes to be properly reusable, reduce maintenance and give the turnaround and profitability required to fulfil all those grand visions is a point I've made elsewhere. However, rockets are *not* aeroplanes as should now be readily apparent for anyone who didn't know before. Anyone who thinks they are or ever will be is just not thinking this through properly.
Rather than dredge up why here I'll leave it to someone else far more qualified, probably of anyone, to talk about it. Sound quality isn't great though sadly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Judging from how much many people are seemingly willing to buy Musk's ridiculous bluster, yes.
When you need to get your head down and prove you can actually do something you say you're going to do, and prove you can do it reliably without a large number of vehicles and their cargo being lost being lost, I think talking about Mars is getting a little ahead of yourself. I would hazard a guess that announcement will get delayed beyond 2018 somehow.
The trouble for poor Elon is it's "Show me the money" time, and that doesn't mean money in terms of actual profitability, although that would be nice. It means can you actually achieve what you say you are going to without, and before, jumping off on to another Moon shot? Although we're a little beyond the Moon now. There's only so many times you can completely ignore the fact that you haven't achieved what you should and then start talking about grand visions of the future before investors, the public and even the media start getting weary.
The question is, why? If you have confidence in your engineering and QA it's something you wouldn't want to do with a rocket - certainly of the duration SpaceX seem to fire beyond a few seconds of other tests. Rockets are just not cars or airliners unfortunately and don't have anything like the same life. Wrap them in cotton wool.
The Falcon has thousands of on-board sensors and a high-bandwidth digital data stream of their data during the entire flight. So, it is possible to see a lot more go wrong while you can still do something about it.
Obviously worked very well;-).
They're still rockets I'm afraid (large, incredibly explosive and unstable objects), and when something does go wrong, even if you can see something on the telemetry it's generally already too late to do something about it. You can certainly simulate a lot more then you could decades ago, and test firing like this is still a little unusual.
The Falcon engines can be fired many times...
I think this one has fired for the last time.
....and some of them can re-light in flight. 1960's rockets could not do that.
SpaceX didn't invent the concept of refiring a rocket I'm afraid.
I'm sure they'll get it back together again and I'm sure SES are feeling super confident - if that even happens now:-). Given the scale of the explosions, and there were apparently several, I'd be extremely surprised if anything is left standing, certainly of the rocket itself, nor does it matter what stage the explosion started in.
If you expect it to fail you wouldn't put a payload on it. I'd like to hear more information as to why, which we probably won't get, but it's pretty illogical. Test firing can cause issues when you eventually do launch it for real, so it's not something you'd want to do unless there was a good reason.
"An anomaly on the pad" doesn't mean it had anything to do with the pad. It literally could mean anything, including that the rocket exploded - which is on the pad.
It blew during or shortly after a static firing - that is, a test run of the engine with the rocket restrained. That's a *very* unusual procedure in the modern world, but they used to do it all the time. The reason they don't do it any more is that it tends to reduce overall reliability, and the rocket was designed to work in flight, not necessarily with the back-pressure, or acoustic and thermal reflection from the pad/blast deflector/ground.
Yer, I don't get that, nor with the payload attached. If it's going to fail then it'll fail in flight anyway. I don't know what it would prove, and then a bit Schrodinger the test firing might well cause issues with the actual flight itself. That's the problem we have with rockets in general, and I don't see them as being a viable vehicle to reuse. We need something better.
In this case, I expect, that SpaceX brobdingagian hubris figured that they could get away with it, and it was "designed" for reuse, so it will encounter those effects anyway, and in any case, they have lots of fast computers so they know better than those dinosaur idiots back in the late 50's.early 60's.
Heh. People have been launching crap into space for decades. It amuses me when people think SpaceX are doing something new or incredibly groundbreaking, no doubt fuelled by the Musk flavoured anti-freeze.
I think you need to learn the difference between convincing someone to do something once, probably with a few carrots dangling, and a long-term, viable, profitable and economical way of doing this repeatably and reliably. Space travel had been around for a few decades before Musk turned up, and there's quite a few people who already know what's involved..............
That's the part about blind faith regarding SpaceX, Tesla, Musk et al I find perplexing. People unable to use the grey matter between their ears - and there is a lot of them.
If you are concerned about the "shear violence", I suggest you go to 1 Rocket Rd, Hawthorne, CA, cross-street is Crenshaw. Stand in front of the building. SpaceX has left a rocket right on the front lawn for you to look at, a first stage that returned from lifting the Dragon capsule to ISS. It got to 1/5 orbital velocity (the second stage does the rest), burned its rockets for about 2.5 minutes, was in the air for less than 10 minutes overall.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. I hear this crap constantly. It need to functions and turn around like an airliner for this whole thing to be profitable and reduce costs in the amount needed. That ain't going to happen with a rocket. Ever.
Dude, the US space program in its entirety, regardless of private company involvement, is entirely publicly funded with public funds. They all want to get a snout in that trough.
It's small wonder they were trying to get the RD-180 rocket banned recently. Without a well developed staged/closed cycle rocket they're going to have a hard time achieving the kind of launch costs they say they are.
BMW used to use very old engine blocks to build their Formula 1 turbo engines. Rumour has it that employees used to urinate on them when they were stashed outside.
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That's what people though fifty years ago when Apollo was happening. The film 2001 was totally feasible and just around the corner...... You need to look into why the Apollo missions have never been attempted again in fifty years. We ain't getting stuff into space cheaply, reliably and safely with great big massive rockets.
IMO this was unusual.
You don't say?
Keeping his companies in the air, so to speak, is a primary concern.
Kind of avoiding the elephant in the room I'm afraid.
Yes. Sadly it doesn't alter anything in what you wrote. Put simply it means absolutely nothing.
The whole point is that their life should be more like airplanes than the rockets you're thinking of.
Indeed, that they should be more like aeroplanes to be properly reusable, reduce maintenance and give the turnaround and profitability required to fulfil all those grand visions is a point I've made elsewhere. However, rockets are *not* aeroplanes as should now be readily apparent for anyone who didn't know before. Anyone who thinks they are or ever will be is just not thinking this through properly.
Rather than dredge up why here I'll leave it to someone else far more qualified, probably of anyone, to talk about it. Sound quality isn't great though sadly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Judging from how much many people are seemingly willing to buy Musk's ridiculous bluster, yes.
When you need to get your head down and prove you can actually do something you say you're going to do, and prove you can do it reliably without a large number of vehicles and their cargo being lost being lost, I think talking about Mars is getting a little ahead of yourself. I would hazard a guess that announcement will get delayed beyond 2018 somehow.
The trouble for poor Elon is it's "Show me the money" time, and that doesn't mean money in terms of actual profitability, although that would be nice. It means can you actually achieve what you say you are going to without, and before, jumping off on to another Moon shot? Although we're a little beyond the Moon now. There's only so many times you can completely ignore the fact that you haven't achieved what you should and then start talking about grand visions of the future before investors, the public and even the media start getting weary.
The question is, why? If you have confidence in your engineering and QA it's something you wouldn't want to do with a rocket - certainly of the duration SpaceX seem to fire beyond a few seconds of other tests. Rockets are just not cars or airliners unfortunately and don't have anything like the same life. Wrap them in cotton wool.
The Falcon has thousands of on-board sensors and a high-bandwidth digital data stream of their data during the entire flight. So, it is possible to see a lot more go wrong while you can still do something about it.
Obviously worked very well ;-).
They're still rockets I'm afraid (large, incredibly explosive and unstable objects), and when something does go wrong, even if you can see something on the telemetry it's generally already too late to do something about it. You can certainly simulate a lot more then you could decades ago, and test firing like this is still a little unusual.
The Falcon engines can be fired many times...
I think this one has fired for the last time.
....and some of them can re-light in flight. 1960's rockets could not do that.
SpaceX didn't invent the concept of refiring a rocket I'm afraid.
I'm sure they'll get it back together again and I'm sure SES are feeling super confident - if that even happens now :-). Given the scale of the explosions, and there were apparently several, I'd be extremely surprised if anything is left standing, certainly of the rocket itself, nor does it matter what stage the explosion started in.
If you expect it to fail you wouldn't put a payload on it. I'd like to hear more information as to why, which we probably won't get, but it's pretty illogical. Test firing can cause issues when you eventually do launch it for real, so it's not something you'd want to do unless there was a good reason.
"An anomaly on the pad" doesn't mean it had anything to do with the pad. It literally could mean anything, including that the rocket exploded - which is on the pad.
"An anomaly on the pad" doesn't mean the pad. It's the rocket. It's ridiculous PR double-speak.
Don't worry about the astronaut rating. That's never going to happen.
It blew during or shortly after a static firing - that is, a test run of the engine with the rocket restrained. That's a *very* unusual procedure in the modern world, but they used to do it all the time. The reason they don't do it any more is that it tends to reduce overall reliability, and the rocket was designed to work in flight, not necessarily with the back-pressure, or acoustic and thermal reflection from the pad/blast deflector/ground.
Yer, I don't get that, nor with the payload attached. If it's going to fail then it'll fail in flight anyway. I don't know what it would prove, and then a bit Schrodinger the test firing might well cause issues with the actual flight itself. That's the problem we have with rockets in general, and I don't see them as being a viable vehicle to reuse. We need something better.
In this case, I expect, that SpaceX brobdingagian hubris figured that they could get away with it, and it was "designed" for reuse, so it will encounter those effects anyway, and in any case, they have lots of fast computers so they know better than those dinosaur idiots back in the late 50's.early 60's.
Heh. People have been launching crap into space for decades. It amuses me when people think SpaceX are doing something new or incredibly groundbreaking, no doubt fuelled by the Musk flavoured anti-freeze.
But it's unfortunate that this is being reported as a failure of the SpaceX Rocket, while the malfunction was apparently in the pad.
Yer, just like the "rapid unscheduled pre-launch disassembly". Their language is increasingly not going to help them.
This rocket was brand new it was the first that would have been SCHEDULED TO REUSE later after this launch.
So, it's looking good then?
They should be reusable though, right? ;-)
I think you need to learn the difference between convincing someone to do something once, probably with a few carrots dangling, and a long-term, viable, profitable and economical way of doing this repeatably and reliably. Space travel had been around for a few decades before Musk turned up, and there's quite a few people who already know what's involved..............
That's the part about blind faith regarding SpaceX, Tesla, Musk et al I find perplexing. People unable to use the grey matter between their ears - and there is a lot of them.
They've been around for 10+ years......and alas it's time for Musk to show everyone the money. That's starting to look excruciatingly difficult.
If you are concerned about the "shear violence", I suggest you go to 1 Rocket Rd, Hawthorne, CA, cross-street is Crenshaw. Stand in front of the building. SpaceX has left a rocket right on the front lawn for you to look at, a first stage that returned from lifting the Dragon capsule to ISS. It got to 1/5 orbital velocity (the second stage does the rest), burned its rockets for about 2.5 minutes, was in the air for less than 10 minutes overall.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. I hear this crap constantly. It need to functions and turn around like an airliner for this whole thing to be profitable and reduce costs in the amount needed. That ain't going to happen with a rocket. Ever.
Dude, the US space program in its entirety, regardless of private company involvement, is entirely publicly funded with public funds. They all want to get a snout in that trough.
Once reuse is proven to be economically feasible..
Except it won't be, and hasn't - certainly not with rockets.
It's small wonder they were trying to get the RD-180 rocket banned recently. Without a well developed staged/closed cycle rocket they're going to have a hard time achieving the kind of launch costs they say they are.
BMW used to use very old engine blocks to build their Formula 1 turbo engines. Rumour has it that employees used to urinate on them when they were stashed outside.