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"Our engine has the highest thrust to weight ratio of any engine in the world, our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the world - and our elec
by mbenjaminsmith 14y ago
"Our engine has the highest thrust to weight ratio of any engine in the world, our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the world - and our electronics are the lightest and have have the most computing power over that of any other rocket."
"The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's pretty cool. These motors can even fire supersonically which is important for Mars: in the higher altitudes of Mars the atmosphere is so thin that parachutes are completely pointless. So retro thrusters have to be able to fire when you are supersonic so they have to be very high thrust."
I've always understood SpaceX's main goal is lowered cost, followed closely by safety. It's pretty awesome that they're also cutting edge in terms of performance.
- Smerity 14y agoI was born on the edges of the 80s and 90s. I missed the entirety of the space race. I never even knew the enthusiasm towards space flight. Suddenly SpaceX appears and in only 10 years looks in place to eclipse NASA. They're poised to achieve far greater things than merely following NASA's footsteps. I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance. I'm genuinely excited by space flight now. I have the new space race (fought between SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace and all these other companies) to thank for it :)
- saraid216 14y agoI trust you've heard of Planetary Resources and their asteroid mining plans? (Just surprised they didn't make your list.)
- pyre 14y agoI imagine that Planetary Resources may just be using someone else's launch tech, though the asteroid mining tech might be developed in-house (vs. out-sourced).
- pjscott 14y agoI'm sure they're going to use other people's launch vehicles, but space races aren't just about how you get to space. Increasingly, they're going to be about what you do there.
- saraid216 14y agoI actually expect that they'll partner with SpaceX and other launchers: one of the key things they're planning to do is to build fueling stations, which is not something I've heard that SpaceX is planning on yet. Build the robots, ask SpaceX to put them in space, construct a station, permit SpaceX to use it to push further to Mars. It makes a lot of sense to me.
- powertower 14y agoFor now, they seem to be in the pie-in-the-sky type of stage, where all they have are "plans" and paper. Comparing the two is a bit premature.
- pjscott 14y agoThey also have preposterous amounts of investment money and a space telescope under construction. Literally under construction; they're making hardware as we speak. Most of what they want to do is still only on paper, but they're a bit further along than your post suggests.
- Tuna-Fish 14y ago> I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance. The stated, immediate goal of SpaceX is to "Make the human race a multi-planetary species." They want to put a self-sufficient colony of people on Mars. Everything else they do before that is a stepping stone to make it happen.
- 3am 14y agoYou should probably look into Apollo 11 and Saturn V and learn more about the rockets that put man on the moon. I love Space-X and I'm genuinely inspired by them and Elon Musk, but they are not very close to reproducing what NASA did 40 years ago, yet. And they have unfathomable advantages in technology, software, material science, and existing body of knowledge.