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SpaceX successfully lands a Falcon 9 rocket at sea for the third time
- mabbo 10y agoThe landing video from the rocket[0] really puts into perspective how much this truly is 'rocket science'. They placed a boat 600km away in the ocean, and the rocket moving at 3000+km/h from 80-ish km up landed on it using some grid fins to steer. I get how it works, how you can do it, but it's still kind of incredible that they actually have 3 times in a row. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc Edit: it was 8000km/h at MECO, not 3000km/h.
- nxzero 10y agoIt is incredible, but makes to wonder how many things are possible that we don't do.
- CPLX 10y agoI'd say the answer to that is all the things. Excepting, of course, the impossible ones.
- michaelmcmillan 10y agoI think that's a tautology :)
- TheSmiddy 10y agoAt the end of the day everything is just putting atoms in the correct positions so given enough energy anything is possible.
- jameshart 10y agoHaving got the atoms into the right place, a surprisingly large amount of effort seems to then be involved in persuading the electrons to dance around in the right patterns. 'More energy' doesn't yet seem to help us solve that problem.
- fovc 10y agoEspecially those electrons inside politicians brains
- yetanotheracc 10y agoIt makes me wonder how much does the society suck, or what else could be achieved if more of the humanity's resources were managed the way they are at SpaceX. If Musk had decided to do fusion energy instead of rockets, would it be commercially viable by now? How about curing cancer?
- vkou 10y agoCuring cancer? Which one? Let's not assume that nobody else knows what they are doing.
- yetanotheracc 10y agoDoes not matter which one, does it? Pick any. They know what they are doing all right. For instance, ITER's managerial staff surely enjoys the jet-setting between Barcelona and the French Riviera. But their goals are not aligned with making progress.
- Tharkun 10y agoThat's a load of cynical and simplistic crock. Yes ITER is super expensive, and maybe it's not the best use of research money, and maybe it'll never get anywhere. But the project's aims are very ambitious, and potential payoff is huge. Saying the ITER management doesn't deserve the same perks as other management is just wrong.
- grondilu 10y agoMusk is doing several things apart from launching rockets. For instance he's trying to make electric cars more common and he has quite some success. His solar ventures is less convincing, though.
- dogma1138 10y agoWhile not to diminish what SpaceX has achieved it's really a far cry from "curing cancer". While what they've done too allot of engineering it's not nearly as complex as identifying all of the biological pathways for even a single form of cancer and finding a reliable cure. That said we do have good treatments for the vast majority of forms of cancer, the problem is that your survivability is directly tied to how early it's detected, surgical removal, radiation and more notably modern chemo regiments are very effective in early stages of detection. Many type of cancer today have 90%+ survivability rates if they are detected early enough, detection isn't always easy allot of them can not turn symptomatic till later stages, and many of them won't show up in blood work / body scans clearly either.
- Joeri 10y agoWhenever I read a news article where politicians congratulate themselves on almost balancing the budget after raising taxes a bit, I'm struck by just how low the bar is placed, even for important things. I also keep thinking about the book childhood's end, where aliens land and basically force us to run our things properly, cleaning up the planet's problems in a matter of a few years. I always wonder if we got put to the challenge as a species, whether we could meet it.
- ben_jones 10y agoThink about the bare minimum it would take a software developer not to get fired. It's actually quite low. Now realize how many people do the bare minimum at their job. Including politicians (bare minimum == get elected).
- simik 10y agoWhat would you call a politician's maximum job performance?
- ben_jones 10y agoEnabling policy that helps citizens inside and outside his/her constituency in life-changing ways. Highly ethical, not afraid to make unpopular decisions if its for the greater good (gay marriage in a conservative region etc.).
- chippy 10y agoNote that the video has been sped up.
- agumonkey 10y agoAmazing, they cut that angle on the live feed, switching to the barge view which doesn't give you much. I'd love the normal speed version too.
- rtkwe 10y agoThey might not be able to get that angle during landing given they had so much trouble with getting barge video during the first couple landings.
- riffraff 10y agoI saw the video some hours ago and I have been wondering since: how did the camera survive the re-entry? And how did the lens stay so clean?
- 51Cards 10y agoThey mentioned during the broadcast that there is actually a cleaning system to remove frost, etc. from the lens.
- nxzero 10y agoSort of obvious given the lense gets covered during the clip, then almost instantly clearly up; this wouldn't happen unless something was removing stuff.
- aerovistae 10y agoNeither of these comments answers the question of how did it survive re-entry, which we have all been taught to imagine as the rocket being immersed in a fireball at horrific temperatures.
- jdblair 10y agoIts not just re-entry that makes heat, its re-entry at high speed. The first stage wasn't in orbit. I don't think it had reached orbital velocity and it turned around and fired its engines to reduce its speed even further. Re-entry from orbit wouldn't just destroy the camera, it would burn up much of the craft as there is no heat shield.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rst 10y agoThe particularly high-heat re-entries of manned capsules, the Space Shuttle, and so forth are unpowered; the atmosphere slows the spacecraft down. The Falcon 9 first stage re-entries are powered; three engines light to slow it down. The physics of how this works are complex and a bit counterintuitive, but the upshot is a thermal environment which isn't as brutal as an unpowered re-entry. Beyond that, the glass in front of that camera's probably formulated to take extreme heat. And of course, as jdblair points out, it's starting at a slower speed to begin with; faster than just about any aircraft (except maybe the X-15), but well short of orbital velocity.
- ForHackernews 10y agoIs HN now the SpaceX PR RSS feed? Are we going to have to see this same article and talk about how amazing SpaceX is every time they do anything? I look forward to the breathless comments on "SpaceX successfully lands rocket for 38th time!"
- FeepingCreature 10y agoI'm afraid you'll see an article about SpaceX being awesome every time SpaceX are being awesome. Which is and will continue to be often.
- Tharkun 10y agoI'm sure we'll get used to this awesome feat eventually. But three good runs does not a routine make. Hopefully they'll keep it up, and then we can have manned flight success stories instead!
- raldi 10y agoThe fact that this is getting boring makes me excited.
- untilHellbanned 10y agoI wanted to post same thing but was too bored to type, so thank you.
- codecamper 10y agoAmazing that this is becoming a regular-sh occurrence. Have they announced when they might try re-using one of these rockets? I wonder if the folks putting their payload on will get some sort of discount. I suppose that is the long term strategy.. to lower the price. I wonder if that price discount is already factored into the launch price -- after all they are still sort of a "start-up"
- grondilu 10y agoIIRC they plan on re-using one of the landed first stages at the end of the year, but they did not give any precise date or mission.
- coderdude 10y agoDurr. Was this even necessary to say? It's like reading the little disclaimer on a crash test dummy commercial. "Do not try this at home." To say that this video was 'sped up' is basically telling your readers you think they're handicapped.
- ballooney 10y agoI am a physicist by background and rocket propulsion engineer by career. I am pretty handy at writing signal processing and control stuff on microcontrollers and FPGAs, and writing physics simulation code in C++. I thought, because I am therefore Really Smart (tm), I must be able to knock up a webpage because how hard can it be? I basically died a death within a week, surrounded by sharks in a pool of confusion about javascript and frameworks and doms and salt and pepper hashbrowns and bcrypts. Reciprocally, I have visited a few hackspaces and witnessed vignettes along the lines of someone saying 'I know Javascript, therefore I'm an engineer!' before they then cut their hand open in a completely predictable way with an angle grinder, having just rebuked you for trying to 'interfere' with their use of said angle grinder because you could see the wheel nut wasn't tightened down properly (this is a true story). The moral is: don't assume other's backgrounds, and don't over-assume your own. We all come at this stuff from different directions and a pointer can help some of the audience, even if its redundant for others.
- dang 10y agoPlease don't post uncivil comments here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791424 and marked it off-topic.
- coderdude 10y agoMy bad. Not the comment that I'm most proud of.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoFor what it's worth, I didn't know it was sped up, and I have taken calculus and advanced physics. I had no frame of reference for how high the rocket was when the video started. It wasn't that I thought it was realtime, I just didn't know if it was sped up or if the rocket was just way faster than I would've imagined. I was quite glad that someone pointed out it was sped up, and I think as a matter of journalistic integrity folks should generally mark when things are sped up or slowed down. I am mentally handicapped though, so you got that right.
- untilHellbanned 10y agoPlease somebody justify SpaceX because "Science!" isnt cutting it for me anymore.
- stepanhruda 10y agohttp://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...
- fmihaila 10y agoHow about "Money!". Glibness aside, it's a private enterprise and is profitable, so even without mentioning Musk's ultimate goal of colonizing Mars, its existence needs no further justification. It makes money and its shareholders are happy. And before someone jumps in with the "SpaceX-is-propped-up-by-the-government" canard, the U.S. government also saves money when it launches military satellites with SpaceX. According to [1] (among many other sources), SpaceX quotes around $60m, compared to the United Launch Alliance price of about $125m (or even, depending on how you count, $200m). [1] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/ula-executive-admits-company-cannot-compete-with-spacex-on-launch-costs/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/ula-executive-admits-...
- throwaway_exer 10y ago> And before someone jumps in with the "SpaceX-is-propped-up-by-the-government" canard Well, actually, any flight to the ISS is a total waste of money as virtually no science is done there. It's just a bunch of people trying to stay alive in a bacteria-ridden tin can.
- untilHellbanned 10y agoI'm asking why a company who hasn't done anything novel in the realm of science garners so much attention for its science. The fanboy-ism for SpaceX seems uneducated. Please tell me how I am wrong.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoI wish more space aficionados would admit that it's really about entertainment. SpaceX to Mars is like the world's awesomest reality show. People seem to think it's shameful to admit that something is for entertainment, but I think it's a noble calling to do entertainment well. I think of Elon Musk as a modern day Jacques Cousteau, also a great entertainer. People always make these super slippery arguments about how space research leads to earth inventions and humans need frontiers to stay mentally healthy, all kinds of strange stories to make space exploration seem like a humanitarian pursuit. I think it's just leftover zeal from the U.S. government story that space exploration was important for the country... ... which it was. We needed to stay up on our rocketry game for national defense reasons. I feel it just muddies the true rationale for space when you try to make it about something it's not.