FAA grounds SpaceX after rocket falls over in flames at landing
FAA grounds SpaceX after rocket falls over in flames at landing
SpaceX launches are on hold after a booster rocket toppled over in flames while landing. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the company's Falcon 9 rockets and ordered an investigation following Wednesday's accident off the Florida coast.
Hot take alert:
SpaceX has accomplished some amazing things. There are some very brilliant engineers working at that company. The fact that they are routinely landing and reusing first stage boosters is absolutely extraordinary, Starship is one of the most impressive launchers that humanity has ever devised, In a century, when children are learning about space flight, SpaceX will be alongside the space shuttle and Soyuz as groundbreaking achievements in human spaceflight.
The fact that The engineers and technicians at SpaceX have accomplished so much, while being led (on paper) by a man as stupid as Musk, is a massive testament to their skill. I salute those workers who have accomplished so much despite all the hurdles that have been put in their way.
Remember what this article is about. After several dozen, if not hundreds, of successful launches and landings, one booster failed to make a successful landing on a barge in the middle of the ocean after successfully putting its payload in orbit. People who designed and built this system deserve to be proud of their accomplishment.
And we should be grateful, that while Musk is nominally CEO, He's let competent people run this company for him. Because God knows if he were actually running things day to day the falcon 9 would look like the bazinga truck and would explode 3 ft off the ground.
(Of course, their environmental record is not good, their plan to fill low earth orbit with cheap satellites that deplete or ozone is questionable, there are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make about this company.)
Well, vertically landing rockets was a solved problem before Spacex was a twinkle in Elon Musk's stupid eye. He certainly managed to funnel a large amount of federal money into re-solving that problem, though.
I mean that was a one-off prototype and tiny. as far as I can tell it carried no payload, and even if it had been completed, would have had a payload like 1/8th of the very first falcon 9, which has since increased, and frankly is more impressive as a layperson considering its proportions. I get that we hate musk here but bringing that to fruition is a big accomplishment of all the workers involved
Electric cars were a solved problem before modern China was even a country. All BYD and Nio are doing is funneling a large amount of state funding into re-solving that problem.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Commoditizing something is harder than showing a demonstrator (even if it's less cool than the demonstrator)
yeah, let me find the post about how much effort spaceX has to waste on managing Musk
https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd
We should nationalize SpaceX, make them part of NASA, and go back to just building our own goddamn rockets.
If these people can reuse a rocket three dozen times, landing it on a barge in the middle of the ocean, while trying to placate the world's richest toddler, imagine what they could do with an actual budget, part of an actual agency with a mission to explore space instead of make musk more money.
SpaceX will be alongside the space shuttle and Soyuz as groundbreaking achievements in human spaceflight.
China have currently like 8 concurrent projects on this. In 10 years, SpaceX will be fart of history.
China is definitely going to overtake soon. In a few years they're going to have the only operational space station.
Of course, their environmental record is not good, their plan to fill low earth orbit with cheap satellites that deplete or ozone is questionable, there are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make about this company.
Congrats to the engineers on... succeeding in their project to give us all turbo melanoma, I guess?
Seconding all this. And I'd like to add that "rocket stage crashing back to Earth uncontrolled" is the standard practice for every orbital rocket not named Falcon 9. And that this flight was this individual rocket's 23rd.
Also, calling this a crash is pretty misleading. The rocket did land on the uncrewed barge used as a landing platform out in the Atlantic ocean. The problem is that one of the legs collapsed and it tipped over. The residual vapors in the propellant tanks mixed and went boom. This is the aerospace equivalent of a 50-year-old cargo ship springing a leak while moored at a dock in shallow water. It's old hardware that failed at the least-concerning moment possible.
Musk is really good at headhunting and cutting through middle management cruft. He's actually really good at being a CEO, he's just also... y'know
Idk, seems like the company he is most hands-off (SpaceX) is the most successful. There are articles about how SpaceX engineers "manage" him and keep him from fucking everything up, guardrails he lacks at Twitter and Tesla, to obvious effect.
Those astronauts on the space station aren't coming back are they.
What a great example.of capitalism now that we've maximized profit we can't accomplish the same stuff we did 60 years ago.
this one didn't stick the 22nd landing after 23 successful launches, which is a record number of launches for a single booster.
Here's how the savior of humanity is taking it. CW: homophobia.
This moron really is soft and more insecure than i thought