Hyperbole aside, (no Ars Technica – this wasn’t “the moment SpaceX opened the cosmos to the masses”), it was still a pretty cool launch and the simultaneous landings of the two outer cores (the third middle core was lost at sea) was incredible.
Falcon Heavy test flight
Sure is cool seeing it in person. I live on the space coast, haven’t seen this much excitement and interest in a rocket launch for a good while.
Would love to see a night launch though. Seeing a single Falcon 9 land at night was an amazing thing.
I’m totally blown away every time I see them land rockets. That’s the stuff I only dreamed about when reading sci-fi-fi novels as a kid. I loved the “starman” thing too. Reminded me of the intro to the movie Heavy Metal.
Impressive. But I wish we still had a government that had the will and intelligence to finance and run this sort of project.
Apollo and the Space Shuttle belonged to every citizen—including some wealthy ones who are effectively no longer paying taxes at all.
This project belongs to one billionaire. That’s our future in space.
Great comments here so far. I agree with all of you.
I catch as many live SpaceX launches as I can. Falcon Heavy gave me goosebumps. Ars went hyperbolic, but that obviously doesn’t diminish this historic launch.
Everything about how SpaceX approaches these launches, from their marketing to the return of the reusable rockets, is…well, stellar.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in rocket news, the flat-earther somehow is not quite as successful:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/02/06/a-flat-earther-finally-tried-to-fly-away-his-rocket-didnt-even-ignite/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=nextdraft&utm_term=.1a900432ce9d
You’re not gonna see it here. YouTube has blocked the link. Just go to YouTube and you can see it just fine. OR go to its home site, SpaceX.com.
I love that one guy had the guts and gumption to start this project. The NASA thing was good for a while, but their documentation and engineering was crap, for crying out loud, using PowerPoint to document the engineering changes on the program!
Happy that it left the NASA-dominated cult and was developed around solid and profitable engineering and science. NASA still exists, of course, and the project belongs to all of us who fund the shots.
“Cult”? Seriously? Do you imagine working for Musk would be any less of one—this one a cult of personality—or are you too busy gazing adoringly at his portrait on your desk? 😀
I’m not deriding Musk for his accomplishments. But it was NASA, driven by at least three presidential administrations and the support of an educated public, that put humans in space and on the Moon. NASA was the means by which we could collectively accomplish something that its individual military contractors would never have had the interest or corporate courage to do themselves. As with many public-works projects you and I now take for granted. I doubt Musk and Bezos would disagree with that.
And “profitable”? Is that the only incentive driving our need to expand off this planet? Tell me how much money NASA contractors lost on the work they did, or why they kept coming back for additional projects.
Guys like this are the ones we see in 100-year-old file footage of idiots who strapped rockets on their backs and ended up tumbling across an ice field while sustaining major burn damage.
Many of Musk’s statements sound better in a GLaDOS voice.
Example:
Apparently, some customs agencies are saying they won’t allow shipment of anything called a “Flamethrower”. To solve this, we are renaming it “Not a Flamethrower”.
Isn’t it fair to say that praise for one doesn’t require diminishing the other?
Wasn’t NASA’s major obstacle the fact that it fell out of funding-favor with politicians?
Yeah but now they have followers. Like, large percentages believing their BS.
Pretty much.
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But isn’t the earth flat?
Speaking of billionaires, where does Musk get his from? His big projects are all losing billions currently. Everyone buys a flamethrower? Or do the ex rocket scientists pay him?
Only your little piece of it, sweetie.
“These are not the grown man’s toys you are looking for.”
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You do realise I was pretending to be modern American, no?
Difficult for me to tell the difference these days.