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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2022-07-14, 13:25

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777 View Post
Um, what? Was landing and reusing rockets a regular thing before SpaceX first did it in 2015?
It was not. Although some will claim that recovering the Shuttle and its SRB's was exactly that. It wasn't. The SRB's splashed down in the ocean, suffered major damage from impact and salt water penetration, and had to be completely rebuilt prior to each launch. Meanwhile, the cargo pod of that system glided back to Earth and landed on a runway before requiring a major overhaul prior to the next launch. And, while a Space Shuttle launch cost ~$1.2 billion, a Falcon 9 launch costs ~$50million.

SpaceX also got U.S. dependency on Russian rockets canceled — and just in time, too — when NASA was demonstrating an inability to do so.

Has SpaceX done anything? Uh, yeah!

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
I guess the question is whether NASA would've eventually developed it if it hadn't been budget-starved. (But then the bigger philosophical question is whether this sort of thing should be publicly owned or privatized.)
If it hadn't been for Space X, as of today the U.S. would have absolutely no manned space program at all (as had been the case for a decade)! And with current sanctions on Russia, the U.S. would be looking to China to get its astronauts off the ground. I'll take privately owned any day, since publicly owned got its collective ass kicked!

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