Guest Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Reusability is a key to any plan to making human life interplanetary, according to the CEO of SpaceX, one of the companies tasked with ferrying cargo, and someday astronauts, to the International Space Station. View the full article Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Reusable is vital for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Yep, Elon Musk -- Two great companies! SpaceX and Tesla Motors! I want one of the Tesla cars so badly! Did you also know that he was co-founder of X.com which merged with Confinity which also operated a subsidiary called PayPal? Much more here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Yep, Elon Musk -- Two great companies! SpaceX and Tesla Motors! I want one of the Tesla cars so badly! Did you also know that he was co-founder of X.com which merged with Confinity which also operated a subsidiary called PayPal? Much more here. By ek it's just like living out a sci-fi novel form way back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webb Posted March 13, 2014 Share Posted March 13, 2014 The Soyuz TMA and Space Shuttle is/was reusable. Nothing that has ever left low earth orbit has been reusable. It seems to me to be a waste of resources to ferry something more than a half a million miles (to the moon and back) just to have some parts left over. The Saturn V F1 (first stage) and J2 (second stage) engines were abandoned but could possibly have been recovered, as Apollo 11's recently were. NASA apparently thought it wasn't worth the trouble to make them reusable and recoverable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 SpaceX is doing amazing stuff, but it is important to note that any tech they develop in their program will not be the property of the American people, unlike NASA's work over the years. The company is for-profit, so they see a future in figuring out a way to lower costs, but it will not be a benefit to society at large. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted April 20, 2014 Share Posted April 20, 2014 SpaceX is doing amazing stuff, but it is important to note that any tech they develop in their program will not be the property of the American people, unlike NASA's work over the years. The company is for-profit, so they see a future in figuring out a way to lower costs, but it will not be a benefit to society at large. Adam That's the difference between publicly funded and privately funded. It should be that way to a very large degree. Although some industries take it to extremes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted April 20, 2014 Share Posted April 20, 2014 Well, you certainly aren't going to go from barely launching into orbit to landing on the moon without spending a lot of money, with overruns. I am thinking back to watching the mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon." They detail only some of the engineering challenges they went through in order to get the anstronauts back safely. It's almost miraculous. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webb Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 Want to have fun? Come over to my house. You stand in the back yard, I'll stand in the front, you throw a tennis ball over my roof and I'll try to hit it with a rock as it comes sailing over. That's what we're going to have to do... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webb Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 good analagy, webb. Credit where credit is due. That's Chris Kraft in the first episode of From the Earth to the Moon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webb Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 Can we do this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZVe8N5uICI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 saw the series, adam, and indeed for the time, it was a miracle. Indeed it was. I'm amazed we managed to do it back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 Yeah, I think my wristwatch was more powerful than the space shuttle computers...... Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Internet Help Desk (not the mp3 version I have but it's close) ... where they talk about the guy having a computer 10,000 times more powerful than what we used to send a man to the moon.... On my version it says I've been here for 8 months ... that's like 25 years in Internet time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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