• Neato@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    In 30-40 more years maybe SpaceX will make progress that isn’t just upgrade existing rockets.

    • ramenshaman@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I mean… They invented reusable rockets.

      Edit: they invented the first reusable liquid-fueled rockets and the first rockets that can autonomously land themselves. NASA used reusable solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle that would deploy parachutes and land in the ocean. Getting a solid rocket booster back into a reusable state seems like a lot of work to me.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          They created reusable rockets. Lots and lots of concepts on the drawing board, but theirs was unique and the first one to get made.

            • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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              11 months ago

              We can argue about semantics, but they were moreso rebuilt from the same parts than reused as is. NASA found that it would have been much cheaper to build new SRBs after each launch than rebuild them.

              • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                The SRBs used on the final shuttle mission were the same boosters used on the first mission. That set was used a total of 60 times. Only 2 sets of boosters were never recovered for re-use. The set from STS-4 had a parachute malfunction, and the set from the Challenger exploded.

            • Strykker@programming.dev
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              11 months ago

              SRB boosters are quite close to literally just a big steel tube, and they reused them by dropping them into the ocean under a parachute.

              They still had to clean out and refurb every booster launched. And that was without the complex rocket engines that would get destroyed by being submerged in the ocean.

          • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Creating isn’t inventing, and there’s wasn’t the first to be flown. Man, the SpaceX fans don’t really know the history of the industry they make these claims about.

            • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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              11 months ago

              You referring to the DC-X subscale tech demonstrator?

              I think inventing is a less well defined term, since anyone with a napkin can claim to invent something to a very low fidelity. The details are the hard part, not the idea itself. So that’s why I specified created, since that is inventing to a very high level of fidelity.

              • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                I’ve had experience with Musk Fans in the past. They all read from the same script, including the “I don’t even like Musk” lie.

      • Neato@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Given that time and money I bet NASA could have that and made ones that don’t blow up every test.

        • ramenshaman@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          LOL… NASA has existed for many more decades than Spacex has. The Spacex Falcon rocket is possibly the most reliable rocket available today, launches payloads more often than any other rocket and it’s much cheaper than its competitors. You’re comparing a brand new rocket design to other, thoroughly tested rockets that have had many iterations. This was literally the second flight of this rocket, they were expecting it to fail.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Given time and money, I’m sure Bob Jones could make a reusable rocket in his back garage. It would just take a lot of both. SpaceX is good at making a lot of progress with little time and money.

        • weew@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          How much are you betting? Because I could use some free money, lol.