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> Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. there's nothing that spacex has done that's "new tech". VTVL ro
by fnord77 5y ago
> Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech.
there's nothing that spacex has done that's "new tech". VTVL rockets were worked out in the 60s and the 90s
spacex does a good job of making it seem like what they're doing is new, though.
- dpcx 5y agoDo you have some examples of VTOL rockets from the early days? I can't find much online other than the Lunar module, and that was designed for VTOL on the moon...
- fnord77 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X I also believe that Blue Origin had VTVL working before space-X in the early 2000s there were one or two other scale VTVL projects that were working, I can't find info on them now. also Masten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5b9LnzjGgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5b9LnzjGgU
- sli 5y agoMusk's MO in general is to make tech look new when it's not. Most of his ideas (that seemed have petered out, strange) are just worse versions of what we currently have. The Hyperloop in particular was a laughing stock of an idea. Nothing but an amusement park ride. We already have something that works better for transit, and so much better than it's ridiculous: trains.