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What was achieved in the 60s built on what had come before. Goddard worked out the principles of liquid-fuel rocketry in the 20s and 30s, John Clark (and presum
by sethrin 10y ago
What was achieved in the 60s built on what had come before. Goddard worked out the principles of liquid-fuel rocketry in the 20s and 30s, John Clark (and presumably others, but he wrote the book) developed rocket fuels in the 50s and 60s, and Von Braun took Army money to build large rockets based on science other people had worked out between 1940 and the 1960s. Setting aside a certain amount of arguing about whose developments were more important, it's probably safe to say that most of the impressive developments of the 60s were actually developed earlier.
- paulmd 10y agoWell, why stop there? Could Goddard have powered his rockets without chemistry that was developed in the 1800s? Literally all science is built incrementally on previous discoveries. In the words of Isaac Newton, "we stand on the shoulders of giants". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g... That said, SpaceX certainly isn't doing anything more than an incremental improvement on previous ideas, of course. Even the Space Shuttle used refurbished boosters, this is just the same idea with a much faster refurbishment cycle.
- geerlingguy 10y agoAnd hopefully magnitudes less expensive refurbishment. That was what really killed the orbiter/shuttle program.
- sethrin 10y agoWell why stop there? The origin of the cosmos... Newton's remark was mostly a backhanded slur against Hooke, as far as can be told. If you can point to some novel development in rocket fuel or rocket engine engineering of the 1950s that somehow contradicts my account, I am sure that I would be grateful of the correction. I wasn't alive then nor am I a particularly good scholar. But I did read Dr. Clark's book, which I understand to be the authoritative work on the subject, and the distinctions in the persons and nationalities involved in the periods in question do seem to be fairly distinct. Von Braun acknowledged the influence of Goddard explicitly, and the post-war and pre-Mercury/Apollo era of rocket science does seem to be quite an interesting one both scientifically and politically. As far as the fundamental science of rocket fuel goes, yes, there is unfortunately not much further to be done, but every science has noted limits to efficiency. But if I may repeat myself somewhat, the point was not that there had been prior art, but that nothing particularly important happened in the 1960s. There are only so many chemical reactions that are suitable for liquid fuel rocketry, and -- pertinent to the news event -- SpaceX is going down a very well-worn thermodynamic road with these rockets. So the impressive point, the reason that anyone is giving these people business, is not that they have any sort of greater chemistry-related insight than anyone else, but that they are planning on re-using enough components to drive launch costs down. But they haven't actually done that yet. They have yet to re-use anything but the barges. So perhaps in that sense, one could consider the achievements of the 60s and SpaceX to be equally lackluster, but otherwise it seems like a poor comparison.
- dotancohen 10y ago> Newton's remark was mostly a backhanded slur against Hooke, as far as can be told. Could you expand on that? I am aware of the feud between the two, but I fail to see how this insults Hooke.
- Natsu 10y agoBasically Hooke was short, so he Newton was backhandedly saying he didn't get his ideas from him. Since then it has acquired a secondary meaning apart from the insult.
- dotancohen 10y agoThank you, nice twist!
- Thimothy 10y agoI knew he was insulting someone! For all I have read Newton seems such an a uppity give credit to none asshole that that phrase always has struck me as completely out of character. Now, if he was dismissing a competitor...
- paulmd 10y agoI hate to smash this concept, but if you'd bothered to read the link I provided: > This has recently been interpreted by a few writers as a sarcastic remark directed at Hooke's appearance.[8] Although Hooke was not of particularly short stature, he was of slight build and had been afflicted from his youth with a severe kyphosis. However, at this time Hooke and Newton were on good terms and had exchanged many letters in tones of mutual regard. Only later, when Robert Hooke criticized some of Newton's ideas regarding optics, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate, and the two men remained enemies until Hooke's death.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoGiven that, what great achievements in space we have pulled off in the 2010s when so much hard work was done before?