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An exact replica of Falcon 9 was impossible 40 years ago, of course. But a replica with 50% lower thrust, 10% lower ISP and 60% it's payload capacity for a simi
by yholio 8y ago
An exact replica of Falcon 9 was impossible 40 years ago, of course. But a replica with 50% lower thrust, 10% lower ISP and 60% it's payload capacity for a similar inflation-adjusted price was certainly possible.
It wasn't the computational revolution that made SpaceX possible, the basic technology is more or less the same as it was in the 60s. The Merlin engine has it's roots in the '90s NASA Fastrac design, evolved for performance and reusability.
SpaceX's success relates to things like market incentives, lean business practices, a fail early and iterate quickly attitude as opposed to "too big to fail" public projects, and so on.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoBoth you and I (and hopefully most of HN) know that fusion is safe. But I can't imagine the public perception being great if "fail early and iterate quickly" was attached to anything with "nuclear" in the name.
- pfdietz 8y agoThe main problem that fission has isn't safety, it's cost. Fusion promises to make this main problem worse, not better.
- pfdietz 8y agoOne technology that F9 manufacture uses extensively wasn't even invented until the 1990s. I refer to Friction Stir Welding, the wonderful technique that welds aluminum alloys by plastic deformation below their actual melting points. The landing algorithms for the F9 first stage make use of advances in optimization algorithms that weren't available 40 years ago as well (as well as exploiting faster processors).