Congrats to Elon and SpaceX employees !
A key critical decision Elon made early in this is using stainless steel (same as Cybertruck) that enabled the ship to survive reentry.
40million all over the world watched the launch on X. Onwards and Upwards !
Cue up to at least 10:35:00, past footage of an older launch and blah blah and “vigil”, to get to useful pre-launch. Then skip along to the launch if you are in a hurry…
I just watched, and it recalled for me the insanely exciting high adventure rocket engineering days of my childhood when Dad was at Canaveral from Redstones through Saturn V… and there were often explosions and worry and then more and more joy as the engineering got that “primitive” rocketry figured out. This is much more advance.
Wonderoous!
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It was crazy ending.
The flaps burnt during the re-entry, camera cracked, lost the starlink connection. Then as it were a movie, the connection came back, landing burn started on time and the skeleton of the flap started adjusting. The crowd went wild.
The woman narrating deserves the “Baghdad Bob” award for keeping a cheery tone of voice as the vehicle is being damaged.
Steve
The cheery tone is because the test flight continued to surpass expectations as it continued to descend after its reentry.
These ladies are aueronautical engineers. They know what they are looking at.
…and to underline the key points:
SpaceX has now (crudely) proven a re-usable space launch system.
(When the a vessel can come and go it is no longer a mere missile, but has become space vessel).
They have a friggin factory in construction to mass produce re-usable spaceships!
SpaceX has broken out and left Boeing and NASA and Russia and China and Japan and India in the past.
Henry Ford, that nasty impertinent genius, is cackling and breakdancing in his grave.
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For those who are interested, The Fool had an article on investing in SpaceX (through Rainmaker Securities). One needs to be an accredited investor (liquid assets > $1 million).
DB2