Posted by ls612 1 hour ago
It blew my teen mind.
This day marks a fabulous advancement for the human species.
Seems that the heavier the rocket the more ground clearance to need to self-land, and so you can’t scale up the dragon’s landing system. I don’t think there’s anywhere near enough weight to shave off of the next rocket or enough specific impulse to add to bring the size back down.
It's about pumping mass into low Earth orbit, partly for commericial, but mostly military purposes such as Golden Dome. Been in the works for decades and finally here. The people who know are very excited.
To be fair to NASA and the astronauts, NASA needed humans who behave like military test pilots. In physiology, in reaction time, in crisis management, in following chain of command. And the armed forces were willing to give them access to known quantities.
We didn’t know how control systems would evolve over the next three decades, but the pilots wanted to pilot, and did not trust the control systems. And the irony of it all is that the Space Race was a proxy war for nuclear armament, so control systems needed to be made autonomous anyway.
Better control systems, wider telemetry, and not worrying about incinerating employees let current generation rocketry iterate faster, and do more fucking around and finding out. We found out twice with the shuttle and it killed the program.
It’s curious how much the upper stage now resembles a space shuttle on a ballistic trajectory instead of a glide angle. Very different landing strategies for those two modes of descent…
Russ Olsen does a great keynote about the life-changing experience for those of us so affected. I happened to be in the audience for this edition and it was something special to be old enough to remember it much as he remembered it.