View Single Post
Dr. Bobsky
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: UK's most densely packed city. It's not London...
 
2015-12-22, 15:04

They had a track record of (mostly) successful orbital insertions, the experimental side of this was the post-insertion mechanics as Grey points out...

What this speaks to is a highly step wise engineering process that Musk or his people recognized would allow them to continue to profit while exploring novel aspects of their space delivery system. Not everyone can think like this (Jobs couldn't or wouldn't, for instance, famously insisting for the delivery of the wholly consistent consumer product in each iteration. And he wasn't wrong in his industry.).

I still believe there is a need and value in non-commercial space exploration and development, and I think that it is great that private corporations are taking on the light weight tasks that would otherwise consume NASA, ESA, JAXA, etc. time and resources...
  quote