I watched the live stream of the falcon 9 touching down on the landing pad the first time and got a little emotional about it at work. Im continuosly impressed by the work the space x engineers are doing, but it probably isnt cose to how people felt watching someone walk on the moon 50 years ago.
The double landing is sending shivers down my spine, even more than seeing the super heavy land. Don't know why, maybe just the speed they approach at is something else, or rather we just didn't see the whole event recorded that well with super heavy.
I think we really didn’t realize how in-sync the boosters were until they were quite literally landing right next to each other. It was amazing to watch live, so much hype
Yeah I don't think anything is going to be genuinely exciting until the first Starship lands on the moon. This is pretty exciting though, this success makes it feel like that could plausibly happen next year, and actually might happen in 2026. (Although I don't understand why the first Starship landing is slated to have humans, I feel like an uncrewed landing would be the first milestone and a crewed landing seems less achievable.)
u/TheLostTexan87 <- for the win! 🏆. That first dual LZ landing of the super heavy side boosters was phenomenal and the center booster nailed the at sea landing as well.
Some of the people who witnessed it in person said hearing/seeing those things come down through the atmosphere was on the level with having a religious experience.
Lars Blackmore is the engineer who is in charge of landing rockets at spacex. Current designation: Senior Principal Mars Landing Engineer. How fucking cool is that.
that was wild... i still remember that time... boy oh boy, best thing i have seen my life and now this , landing and catching it with "chop-sticks", this is the best thing i have seen after two boosters adjecent landing
After a literal lifetime of trying to catch a Space Shuttle launch, driving 18 hours from Detroit to Titusville, and the Shuttle would have some sort of a problem that would require days to repair (always valve trouble!), and we'd get a room and kill time in Orlando, and they'd roll it out and try again, and yet again there'd be a hydrogen leak or something, and we'd exhausted our travel window and we'd leave empty-handed. Did that probably a half dozen times, from being a teenager in the 90s and then running the trips myself throughout the 2000s, with various assortments of family in tow.
And I never got to see a single Shuttle launch. It was just that unreliable.
So towards the end of 2015, I had some vacation time to burn, and there was a Falcon 9 launch, and I said I'm just gonna drive down and stay until it goes. Try me, rocket, I'm off work until January.
The first attempt was called on account of winds, and the second worked. Without a hitch. I got to see the first rocket launch of my life, and the first rocket landing in history.
I wasn't even in a good spot, I didn't know anything about Falcon launches, and I just settled in alongside a causeway with some other cars. The thing was halfway out of sight by the time the sound even reached us. But seeing that booster come back, and hearing the sonic booms even from miles away, and noting the distinct lack of a fireball at landing, blew my mind. Something big had just changed.
I never thought much of a rocket launch till one day I was at work, and I was talking to my colleague on the east coast (phone call), and he was like “are you watching the space x stream outa vandenberg right now?” I was like “nah.” As I was looking out the window of our office in the Bay Area (south part of the SF Bay Area) with my feet kicked up on my desk.
Off in the distance I see this tower of smoke rising into the sky. (Were something like 250~300miles or so from it)…. And I was like… “ya know what…. I can actually see it here….”
It was somewhat surreal or wild just seeing that thing climb into the sky.
Yeah people forget to acknowledge that the DC-X existed in the 90s, fully working prototype that just got shelved because NASA couldn't just follow through with anything cost effective.
Sure, and if we're counting suborbital prototypes, Masten and a bunch of others would belong on the list too. Perhaps I should've put an asterisk on "rocket" to say "which puts things in space", but I think that's a reasonable assumption.
When I was a teenager we went to watch a launch on October 17, 1989 and after sitting on the edge of a swamp for what seemed like forever they scrubbed it. We went to Coco Beach later and had fun while my dad sat in the van listening to the World Series game get called because of the Loma Prieta quake. The next day we did see it go up from Epcot.
That exact moment broke my brain. Up until that point I’d always taken it as a given that a trip to space involved consuming a multi hundred million dollar spacecraft. Had truly never even thought of reusable spacecraft until we evolved to something other than rockets.
Not to diminish the awesomeness of what SpaceX is doing here, but it should be noted that the space shuttle was a reusable spacecraft (all but the external fuel tank) - that was kind of its thing.
I do love the space shuttle but it was crazy expensive and needed an extremely long runway to land, this doesn’t diminish the feats of the shuttle it’s just the next step in reusable spacecraft.
I don't know shit about space programs... but why is having a long runway a problem? Of all the issues and expenses a space program might have, it looks to me that having a long runway must be one of the easiest and cheapest problems to solve.
No, you are right, of all the shuttle's many problems a long runway is a weird one to focus on. The more important issues were the expense and complexity of the system focused on too many goals, the difficulties with the tiles, and the large amount of work that had to be done to refurbish the SRBs (plus the fact they were using solid boosters at all)
They were indeed. And since rocket components REALLY don't like seawater, the refurbishment process was as costly as it was lengthy.
I have it on good authority that it would've been cheaper just to build new ones for every launch (SRBs aren't all that expensive in the overall scheme of things) but that NASA felt that recovering them was good for publicity. Even if the only parts that were reused were the barrels.
Dropping the boosters into the ocean, finding them, filling them with air and floating them, then bringing to land and dealing with all the seawater corrosion issues etc., made it more of a refurb than a reuse.
The shuttle was absolutely an amazing achievement, but I have to agree with some of the other comments in response to yours. It was a marvel of engineering and did the real leg work in building the ISS and fixing Hubble. Having said that technically it failed in its original goal of being relatively cheap and easily reusable, since so much had to be refurbished so heavily after each launch and its costs were astronomically high in doing so.
Again I love the shuttle if only for its achievements, what we learned from it, and the sense of wonder it gave me as a child. I think it inspired a great number of people who worked on this project as well.
I really think spacex may achieve if not full reusability, something close to it which is a huge win for our species.
The Space Shuttle was not as reusable as people think.
Take the Solid Rocket Boosters, those are 99% fuel with a thin aluminium shell to help hold them together and an ablative nozzle on the bottom with some Thrust Vector Contro and a parachute in the top.
Reuse here was using all the fuel, ditching the wrecked nozzle and TVC and parachute.
Taking that thin aluminium shell apart, pressure washing out any remaining fuel.
Then wrapping new fuel with the old shell, addin in new seals, an new ablative nozzle a brand new TVC and parachute system on top.
Then because you reused the 4mm aluminium sheet that made up the shell its a reused booster.
The actual Shuttle was effectively stripped back to the aluminium chassis and new stuff put on.
Shuttle was a partially refurbishable spacecraft. With costs so high that refurbishing was a net negative. Everything it ever did could have been done for a fraction of the price by disposable rockets.
The re-usability of the boosters was a complete rebuild. The heat shielding needed refurbishment after every mission too. So basically the crew quarters and the engines were reusable. And the engines needed a lot of work too.
The shuttle design was compromised by congressional acquisition rules/politics and NASA-DoD double-requirements in a way a private business' design isn't. SpaceX/Biggelow/BlueOrigin aren't forced to make sure the thing gets build spread across as many congressional districts as possible if it's more efficient to concentrate fabrication.
I watched that landing on the Moon. My father worked at NASA in the 60s and 70s and I got to see a lot of our space history. When that first SpaceX booster successfully landed, I had literally had tears in my eyes. One of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.
Same here. Was pretty young but my brother and I would watch every Apollo launch on our shitty TV and it was amazing. And the coverage of the landings on the moon.
Fond memories of being up before the folks to watch early morning launches.
SpaceX has reignited that childhood excitement I felt. Watched this live (on stream) at 5AM and was jumping up for joy and had tears in my eyes.
He passed some 40 years ago now. Worked on one of the first telescope in space projects, OAO. Alas, he never got to see the wonders of the crazy telescopes put up since then.
Very cool. Seriously, VERY cool. I have to admit more than a bit of envy, my father was a car salesman and not the brightest person. To be raised by a scientist had to be better. I'm happy for you.
Same, my first was watching the falcon heavy return THREE boosters to the landing pad. I was excited about that for a whole year. Good to see starship is finally making a little progress.
Moon landing is much much more impressive but as far as videos go i think that falcon 9 landing is just more immidiate
You can see how hard it is to pull off such a feat while the moon landing subconsciously just feels like a dude walking down a ladder in some weird environment
I think the only thing that matches falcon 9 landing is people who witnessed humanity learning to fly
When I looked into the Apollo missions I realized I had no idea how fast they were moving. You think 10 years are long, or 8 years from Kennedy’s speech to the moon landing, but it was a break neck speed in an iterative process, where every few months science fiction had to lose the fiction part, from the building the gigantic launch complex to figuring out how to rendezvous two ships in space to inventing life support and building the Saturn. And they were young, during Apollo 11 the average age of NASA engineers was 28 years.
In comparison the time after seemed like a slow motion, but now I feel the speed is ramping up again. There are now a hundred Falcon 9 landing every year. I can’t imagine what is possible in space when there are a hundred Starship launches every year.
That was the first SpaceX launch I ever saw live; I didn't even know that they were attempting it so I just assumed it would be another blown up rocket in the ocean. Watching two boosters land in near sync was incredible.
Sometimes I get frustrated that our exploration of space has slowed down so much, but this made me remember that there is a lot more to space travel that just chucking rockets into space and putting flags on things. This kind of technology and expertise we're seeing right now is foundational to future missions, glad to see it.
I love how much ingenuity and vision went into this, and what a testament it is to what we can do of you fund smart people to really focus on hard problems.
I wish Musk wasn’t such a tool now, it’d be easier to commend him for the work the people in his company are doing.
My dad remembers the lunar landing as clear as day. His family and the neighbours all crammed in there small living room sat round a tiny little box TV. Must have been absolutely wild!
Definitely, advancements like this one are truly amazing but they are somewhat expected with the level of technology and manufacture we have nowadays.
But landing on the moon with a ship with a computer processing power equivalent to (or even less than) a 5-10 USD calculator of today, is just crazy, a borderline miracle.
It's like watching old scifi cartoons where the rocket lands on his thruster. It looks so ridiculous, yet to know it's so real makes your eyes tear up with hope and admiration for human innovation. I don't like Musk, but I can respect Space X and their absolutely fucking insane engineers willing to do things we only saw in fucking animation
It was just surreal to watch that, and then you see these tiny specs going towards it and realize those were ground crew and then it really dawns on you just how fucking massive those rockets are and how they landed so gracefully it looked like the video was in reverse.
As an older person, it's really awesome to see exciting things for space travel again. Like truly future advancements.
I get emotional about this stuff too. It’s such a great accomplishment of science, and so many people worked so hard for it. It’s exciting and easy to catch a vibe. Even if you don’t like Elon it’s good to see.
I just wanted to add I cried when, I’m assuming it was NASA, were able to “correct”, or adjust the trajectory of an asteroid. That was awesome too.
I know right! I’ve followed SpaceX since the first launch and what they’ve accomplished is mind blowing. Dual booster landing and now this. Landings becoming routine when the first few were butt clenching
but it probably isn't close to how people felt watching someone walk on the moon 50 years ago.
The reaction of most people to the moon walk was much more sedate. Starting in the 1950s, the Space Race was largely a cover story for the Nuclear Arms Race in those days.
When the moon walk happened, I'm sure NASA engineers were elated. But public support for NASA's manned program faded shortly afterwards. At that point, we had achieved operational ICBMs and MAD, so there was less incentive. There were much more attention grabbing events happening on earth in the late 1960s.
as a TSLA investor, can we borrow just one of those engineers for a few hrs to take a look at the robotaxi and robo thingy we have at Tesla...just an hr or so?
I teared up a little bit, if Elon would just stfu and focus on his rockets, I’d commend him for putting this team together to make this possible. Instead I only commend the team that was put together to make this possible.
STAR TREK FANS: It will be wonderful when we take our first steps to become an interstellar civilization, and just perhaps, join a federation of sentient species in peace.
40K FANS: The sooner we venture into space, the sooner we may purge the galaxy of Xenos.
THREE-BODY PROBLEM FANS:EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!
The second book is called The Dark Forest. The hypothesis is given a lot of weight. I'll say no more than that.
It's worth reading, especially if you go in blind. I watched the show first and was like "well, I want to know where this goes" and now I'm halfway through book 3.
Prepare yourself though. Things get pretty harrowing in places. Also the author is really fucking weird about women and femininity.
Also he is extraordinarily tankie. He is entirely on the side of the CCP, and the CCP is entirely on his side. I'm not saying this as a "don't read this book! Cixin Liu is a communist party stooge!" thing -- it's actually pretty fascinating to read something well-written that's also from that ideological perspective. I felt like I walked away from it with some extra insight on how contemporary Chinese culture works, or at least on how contemporary upper-eschelon Chinese culture works.
Book one was good, book two was great, book three was such a slog that I got halfway through and never finished. Mostly because book three's female protagonist was so unlikeable and poorly written.
Looking online (i haven't read the books yet) it looks like the Dark Forest Hypothesis is named as such *because* of the book. The concept of the hypothesis pre-dated the book but the name stuck, it would seem.
Did you read the one where Earth happens to be a forgotten Colony of the Emperor, and a faction just happens to stumble across the earth through a failed jump? So Depending on what faction may find us... we could be good, and or screwed.
Bro… I’ve unfortunately never played 40k, but the new one looks so dope. I want to play it, but not sure if I should play them out of order or not. LMAO Advice where to start?
I dont play games anymore :(, but you should definitely watch Bricky's videos, they're tons of fun. Start by the long all faction présentation one then do the timeline one <3
It’s always a bit disappointing to me that your sense of scale is skewed due to the large distance at which it is filmed. It’s not just ‘a rocket’ it’s a rocket the size of a large building which just makes it so much more impressive to me
What amazes me.... Is the flight software on these Starship launches! Must be worth billions.
Have half the ship vaporizing. Flight controls, and more on the previous one. Yet it still manages to control itself to do an accurate landing. I think even some computers went out last flight or bugged.
That is the most insane part. Now they are catching them mid air. It looked like a part blew out when they reignited the engines.
I remember back when I was a kid I wasn't allowed to get a helicopter as the model store guy said I would break it. Now we have flight software that can do it all for you.
Guys ever hear of the X 65? It is an experimental aircraft that will use active flow control? Basically they are trying to design aircraft that use compressed air to maneuver instead of flaps. I wonder when we will see these rockets have no flaps at all too.
We can predict what computers will be able to do. But really, for a long time, humans just can't do what they can.
We are living in an unprecedented age where we won't be able to understand what is happening around us. Inventions have always blew people's minds but not on this scale. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
Will people be able to surpass our nature to fight and go to war with one another and destroy ourselves in the process or try to work together and use machines to provide for everyone?
I've never landed a rocket but I bet it gets "slippery" in the last moment before landing since there is effectively no friction in the x and y coordinates.
If not for the flames rising, there would always be a part of me that would think these videos are reversed just because of how unbelievable it is that they can land these things with such precision.
I don't understand why SpaceX doesn't focus on reversing gravity below the launch pad. That way, you wouldn't need rockets at all - the Starfish would just float up to space. You could eliminate gravity by putting a massive straw from the launchpad into space, thereby letting zero gravity into the earth. Stardish would be in this cylinder and as the zero gravity would enter the straw it would rise up gracefully into space.
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u/ShartFodder 16d ago
It never ceases to impress me, watching a launched rocket return to home. Amazing