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Fantastic!!! Being able to watch a reusable rocket land perfecty, from my mobile phone while casting to a TV, over a computer network​, while located in souther

• eliaspro 10y ago
  It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable - the complexity behind each and every component, process, research and engineering making this possible - and then start bitching about the new Emoji set on their smartphone
  • Cyph0n 10y ago
    And when, say, an amazing archeological artifact is uncovered, we probably won't appreciate the complexity that went into that, and the folks at ArcheologistNews will be pissed. There are so many fields and so many complex processes. I can assure you that any one of: the world of power transmission, or offshore oil drilling rigs, or commercial shipping, or chemical process design and optimization, or tons of other stuff, is enough to warrant an entire "HN". So don't expect people to appreciate it all. But what we can appreciate is the fact that you and I don't need to understand archeology to contribute to society ;)
    • gallerdude 10y ago
      I've always pondered that I'd love to read in on these other fields, see what they find interesting and new.
      • pilsetnieks 10y ago
        Yeah, I think it's not that you're focused on your one field, just that some people have the curiosity to look into things and appreciate the work being done; some people have that for their field only; and some people just don't give a crap at all about things that don't directly affect them.
      • Joeri 10y ago
        You should read the pleasures and sorrows of work by alain de botton. He does a deep dive in several industries to understand what drives the people there.
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Well, not understanding such topics deeply doesn't preclude one from appreciating the complexity. You can't expect everyone to be even interested in everything, but a little bit of intellectual curiosity, as a character trait - is that too much to dream of people?
    • oska 10y ago
      In my experience, archaeological finds get highly upvoted on HN.
    • Joeri 10y ago
      For me one of the amazing miracles is the supermarket. The logistics to get all those products there in time year round are astounding. A supermarket can only exist because of a planet-wide system of incredible complexity.
      • seer 10y ago
        This is definately off topic but I also have thought about supermarkets a lot lately but mostly how they are a regression of the prvious thing which was "the bazaar" - because you limit competition "within the supermarket" - and hide the externalities, you get much worse quality of foods. Individually competing independent producers, put in very close prodimity so you can easily judge their output with a glance is incredibly effective. You can also direclty influence the producers themselves with your cash. Yes its usually "messier" but works gets you so much healthier food in the end. Just market forces at work.
  • flashman 10y ago
    But if all that stuff's possible, I should have the new emoji set, but I don't, because I bought my phone off the grey market so it doesn't get OTA updates. Time to grab Odin again I guess.
  • yeukhon 10y ago
    > It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable Because some people don't actually know much / care about rocket science?
  • afterburner 10y ago
    Recycling a rocket isn't anywhere near as interesting as building the first rocket. Rockets are oooold technology; the rest is automated control systems, whose most interesting breakthroughs came when enabling oddities like stealth planes to fly when they should tumble out of the sky under purely human control. In short, this is more an iteration than a breakthrough. Not to take away from the effort of course.
    • sqeaky 10y ago
      It is an iteration than it seems many experts thought impossible. For everyone else's benefit the F-117 was that stealth airplane, it was like trying to fly bricks in the shape of an airplane and needed constant computer adjustments because it wasn't very aerodynamically stable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk
      • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        I always wondered why the F-117 looked like a low-poly CG model. It turns out that's because it was: shaping a stealth airframe takes a hell of a lot of math, and the computers available could only handle it for a small number of flat surfaces.
  • throwaway74658 10y ago
    All due respect I find little evidence among these posts that people on HN really understands what's going on nor that they can put it in context of the history, current developments or future of the field. Between the tangible nature of launching things into space and the hype of the company, every launch becomes amazing. Which is of course okay, it's good to be excited about things. But don't come dragging with how "people don't understand" when the majority of people here spend much of their time much closer to pushing Emojis than engineering rockets. Next week there's will be about as much amazement here for the world changing potential Amazon changing their packaging to a different colour. "People" will realize that it's amazing when they see the results, but they will also ask the obvious questions like "How many times can you reuse a rocket?", "How much cheaper will it be to put things in space?", "Is that a good thing, a bad thing or both?" i.e. the interesting parts that remain unanswered. At least if there's still decent documentaries around and not only "top 10 extreme mega things".
• deleted 10y ago
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