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I guess it's like Hilary and Tenzing being the first to climb Everest, and then someone else (can't remember who it was) coming along and doing it without suppl
by grkvlt 11y ago
I guess it's like Hilary and Tenzing being the first to climb Everest, and then someone else (can't remember who it was) coming along and doing it without supplementary oxygen. Just because that was harder doesn't detract from the fact that Hilary and Tenzing were first and anyone else is just joining the ever-growing club of Everest summiters.
Now, if you want to invent an extra category of 'first VTOL landing for a first stage booster for an orbital rocket system that uses boost-back to change trajectory mid-course' or similar, they SpaceX are first with that, and of course it's an awesome achievement.
- JshWright 11y agoOk, in that case, SpaceX was 'first' to land a VTOL rocket with Grasshopper... unless you want to invent an extra category of "first VTOL landing for a ground launched rocket that crossed an arbitrary altitude threshold before returning at terminal velocity".
- lutorm 11y agoActually, that prize goes back as far as DC-X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X), if not farther. Grasshopper and F9R-dev were evolutionary, in that they were larger than what had been done before, not revolutionary. Landing the F9 stage is not even the first "reusable part of an orbital launch system", the Space Shuttle was that. It just wasn't very effective in terms of lowering the cost, which is where F9's true claim of being a game changer is going to be. Let's hope that pans out.