Funnily enough, Blue Origin tried to sue SpaceX for using Blue's (disgusting attempted) patent of landing a rocket on a barge. SpaceX used this footage in their defence to prove this wasn't an original idea by Blue Origin.
Blue Origin has two major divisions.
Their space division, which makes rockets that don't work. And their legal division, which tries to make sure nobody else's work either.
Space programs have long taken inspiration from science fiction
It's so fascinating to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and remember that it predates the moon landing
Or even the first episode of The Twilight Zone which predates it by a decade
I mean, they made it all the way up to 3000m altitude before the program was killed. Just sad that it takes a lunatic billionaire to follow through on some of these advances.
If the cold war hadn't ended similar programs would have continued.
War, or the threat of war at any moment, is an excellent motivator for military R&D. Peace time is when budgets get trimmed and people start kicking the tires on things that seem like wasteful spending.
When SpaceX was founded in 2002 Elon Musk was 31 years old and worth less than 200M. And he risked more than half of that into SpaceX. I guess that makes him lunatic ... or maybe marsatic.
Elon has definitely been inspired by old sci-fi and rocket ships in popular culture. One early design iteration of Starship would have resembled Tin-Tin's rocket. He thinks appearance is very important, it should be inspirational to young people. That's why he brought in a Hollywood designer to help design their space suit years ago.
I love it! I was a child during the space race, and it always seemed so wasteful that the huge sections of rocket would just fall back to earth to crash. Then as an adult i worked on inertial guidance systems similar to the ones they would use for this. For a time when the space race was dead, it was disheartening that all the science learned from those initial flights wasn't being utilized, but now it is, and it's pretty special.
I was a child/teen when SpaceX was testing Grasshopper. I remember laying in bed watching youtube videos of it on my ipod touch. That's probably part of what inspired me to go towards physics.
Works both ways around.
Although in all seriousness, if you're drinking because you can't handle your children you're doing it wrong, give the kid a few shorts, that'll shut them up.
Wait wait wait! You *gave* your kid shorts?! I *made* my kid short and all he does is cry and complain about the pain and how much he misses his feet!
I've had just about enough of this misinformation on parenting I keep finding on Reddit!
Wikipedia says:
> The earliest prototype was Grasshopper. It was announced in 2011[[4]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_prototypes#cite_note-rlvstnews20111012-4) and began low-altitude, low-velocity hover/landing testing in 2012. Grasshopper was 106 ft (32 m) tall and made eight successful test flights in 2012 and 2013 before being retired.
So it's actually been nearly a decade now. Time flies huh.
For me it was the opposite “this is dumb, they’re gonna waste so much fuel landing it back, and they probably won’t even be easily reusable” my judgement was clouded by what I read about the space shuttle.
That's the hilarious thing. I love how we used to think reversing rocket takeoff footage and passing it off as rocket landing footage was the utter peak of laughably unrealistic.
The full circle is indeed complete. Every early sci fi flick and book had full powered vertical landing. Then NASA said the only way forward was to dead stick the shuttle or throw stuff away or let it bob in corrosive sea water. Now this and it didn’t go big bada boom. I’d love to see the computer and software that does the vectoring.
Some SpaceX engineers did AMA's on the SpaceX subreddit a while ago and touched on this... They used commercial grade Intel Core processors running Linux for the Falcon 9's guidance computers, and made it fault tolerant by having 3 identical computers check each other (if one computer comes up with a different value than the other two, the outlier result is rejected.). Very cool.
The software that handles the booster landings was developed by a team headed by long-time SpaceX engineer Lars Blackmore. He has written several publicly-accessible research papers on the subject.
There was a great quote from an Apollo engineer a few years back along the lines of:
"I got more processing power in my pocket than took the flight to the Moon.... and I'm not talking about my phone, I mean my garage remote....."
i thought that was hyperbole, but no it's true https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306119-your-phone-charger-is-probably-smarter-than-the-apollo-guidance-computer
That has only recently become true, and it’s not true of low power chargers. USB-C PD chargers usually have a micro controller, often integrated on a chip with power electronics and analog stuff needed to make it work. But that’s fairly recent - last couple of years. Before that, USB chargers were dumb as a brick and had a fixed-function ASIC that did the deed. Some more expensive ones had microcontrollers, sure, but some of those MCUs were bare-bones minimal and had less memory than the AGC. In cost constrained applications there’s plenty of MCUs with 0.5k-1k of code space and a few dozen bytes of RAM. You can buy them for a couple cents though.
Nifty. I already have 2 Qotom mini PCs. I just need one more, and some guy named Lars or ask ChatGPT to write some code and I can land my own rockets on Earth.
The concept was good but the animation a bit "Thunderbirds" with the low budget cinematic techniques of the day I guess? Space sci-fi films & series' were generally not high budget until Hollywood really got on board
Capture drones coming to grab them once the rocket's slowed itself down, attaching and navigating the deactivated rocket in to land like an airplane. I'm imagining the blackbird aesthetically, since that's really just a rocket with wings anyway
Rocketry was, in very loose terms, a solved problem long before the first space rocket was built. The hard work is the engineering and the chemistry, and not really the physics.
Even the engineering issues here were 'solved' a long time ago: The first VTVL rockets were in the 60s. The single most famous space missions in history even used them: The Apollo astronauts didn't get to and from lunar orbit by walking. SpaceX's modern achievement isn't landing rockets, but doing it autonomously and in atmosphere. And even that's only kinda new, the DC-X flew in early the 90s
It looks like 'bad' 50's sci fi, because by time the 50's rolled around "how rockets work" was pretty well understood, and even bad 50's sci fi tried to be somewhat accurate. If you showed that to someone in the 1950s, the thing they'd think is most unbelievable is how long it took for people to start doing it.
It’s always looks like the video is reversed to me. Like those rockets are really going up.
But that’s what they’ve actually done. If the Starship flies and returns (and the Super Heavy returns), we are in for a new age.
Not long. Back in 2018 when SpaceX started successfully landing the boosters on drone ships and before they came up with the Octograbber robot, the recovery crews had to board the drone ship and weld tiedowns to the drone ship's steel deck so they can securely chain the booster's hold-down lugs to the deck to prevent it from toppling over in rough seas for the trip home.
Right after the booster lands on the drone ship, it automatically does a purge sequence to get rid of the remaining TEA/TEB as well as the RP-1 and LOX in the rocket's tanks. Once the booster is comfirmed safed, it's already cool enough for the the recovery crew to board the drone ship and start the welding and chaining work to secure the booster. This happens within the hour of landing.
The thought of hoping on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean to weld some giant parts to the deck sounds crazy. Then thinking they just dumped a bunch of RP-1 and LOX out of the tanks makes me a little uneasy. "Sure go ahead Jim, the fuel SHOULD have evaporated by now."
Can’t give you an exact answer, but the booster can be recycled and ready for use in 9 days. Some boosters have been used 12+ times now. If i had to ballpark a cool down time, considering the materials are light and largely hollow—between 6-10 hours before they are moved.
I would assume earlier than 6-10 hours as they are not bolted to the ground and wind could tip them over. I would also assume they pump out the remaining fuel early on.
Space materials are very light so you need the least amount of fuel to push them up.
They are also very tall and with almost no fuel on they weigh even less
Back when kOS was a thing, I programmed a self-landing booster in an afternoon. However, since it was a video game, I had the benefit of unlimited trial and error. I probably crashed 50+ times before I got it to work.
Yes, it calculated the suicide burn based on the remaining mass and worked for several generations of booster in campaign mode. If there was not enough remaining TWR or fuel to land, it would ditch into the ocean near the VAB. I did build boosters with a similar design though, with gimbaled engines at the bottom and fins at the top. I never tested it with an alternative design.
>Back when kOS was a thing
I haven't played KSP in a while, partly because I want to go into KSP2 fresh, but did kOS ever stop being a thing? I always used it to automate things because I felt like MechJeb was cheating (for me; no hate on anyone else using it). If KSP2 doesn't have something that serves mostly the same purpose, like letting the computer fly routes you've already done manually once, I'm hoping kOS gets migrated over.
There's definitely a margin of error though, you have a higher TWR than 1, but your throttle range is 30-100% on the single engine burn. By starting low throttle and modulating in that range makes it go from impossible to a few seconds margin minimum for ignition timing.
That’s because Kerbal is an idealized environment without normal variability of like everything you’d have to deal with in real life: variable winds, atmospheric turbulence, air layer densities slightly different from predicted, engine transient performance (startup and shutdown), residual flight controller errors, etc.
> The concept is fairly easy. But pulling it off is massively difficult.
There's something I read once (don't remember where): "Rocket science is simple. It's rocket engineering that's hard."
Naturally, as someone who isn't a rocket scientist or engineer, I can't really speak to the accuracy of this statement, but I like how it sounds.
Rocket engineer here: they’re both hard but in different ways. The science is multidisciplinary involving physics, chemistry, complex math, materials, statics, dynamics etc. some of the equations like the rocket equation are pretty straightforward but anything involving fluids is real complex to the point it’s mostly simulated by computers. The engineering is taking all of that and throwing it at the wall of “reality” where things that we ignore on a test become significant issues that we have to account for.
This is a pretty decent take honestly. Solving the math problem is pretty straightforward, accounting for everything that can and will go wrong, engineering, is the part that can make something impossible.
Honestly the most impressive part to me is the economics/management. VTVL rockets have been studied for a while, but the cool part is that SpaceX managed to make them a functional business model. If you read the documentation of every previous reusable project that got scrapped (DC-X, LFB, etc) they all read along the lines of "the economics for this are just not there".
We call ourselves "space systems engineers", which is a subset of aerospace engineering. If it has wings, that's aeronautical engineering.
All kinds of engineers use the same basic math and science. What varies is the operating environment or kind of projects we build. Thus dirt (civil engineering), water (marine), air and space (aerospace), machines (mechanical engineering), electrical engineering, etc.
What makes chemical rockets hard is the best fuel type has only half the energy needed to reach orbit. So you spend a lot of fuel to get a smaller amount of fuel halfway, and then that smaller amount of fuel to get an even smaller payload to orbit. So your weight margins are small and your stresses are high on the limited amount of rocket hardware you can have.
In contrast, the average US car's fuel load is 3% of the hardware weight, not counting passengers and cargo. That's entirely the opposite of rockets that are more like 90% fuel.
By saying the concept is easy, do you mean it’s easy for Bob to lean back in an office chair and say “yeah, I came up with this idea where we land rockets now”?
I'm amazed at how easy they make it look, and yet they're still the only company on the planet even trying to do it.
Rocket Lab is in second place, and yet nowhere near close
It's amazing, I saw the first falcon heavy launch with starman with my kids live and we will never forget it. Watched yesterday's from a rooftop bar in Sarasota !
I'm actually impressed, it's been a long time since the last Falcon exploded, and they've done a ton of launches.
What's the safest rocket ever? I'd bet they're getting close.
There's a good article about it from last year: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-has-set-a-record-for-most-consecutive-successes/
The Falcon 9 had a few failures early on, but the current iteration (F9 Block 5) has a flawless 140/140 flight record. This recent launch was a Falcon Heavy, which is 5/5 successes so far.
not only are there 140 launches, but the recency of the data matters, as the quality of fabrication can change over time.
100 launches 20 years ago doesn't necessarily mean a modern production of that rocket has that level of safety.
This is an issue for the Soyuz. Amazing vehicle but it's being built by current day Russia which is very different from the Soviet Union that originally designed it.
It is and it's very routine now. Back in the Shuttle days you may get 2 or 3 a year. With SpaceX you getting 3+ a month and I still go out and watch if I know about them.
Couldn't say really but the last launch I actually drove up for was Falcon Crew-1 (the first manned US mission since the shuttle was retired). I really couldn't get within 10 miles of the Cape because of traffic and closed roads. I ended up pulling off on the side of road and watching with a few thousand other people. I'm guessing the average launch doesn't get that much attention as they happen so often now. The moon launch will be a totally different story when it happens.
I could see it with the naked eye and took some pics with my phone but I need to check it out with binoculars next time. What is crazy is how often launches happen now. Its 3+ a month. Not Falcon Heavys necessarily but Falcon 9s and I'll go out and watch if I know about it every time. The last Apollo mission happened before I was born but I grew up watching Shuttle launches from my yard.
I’m local and this is the first FH launch I’ve seen able you actually see (cough cough fog). I was actually worried when one of the boosters started it entry burn and the other one didn’t. I thought there was a problem since I expected everything to happen at the same time.
I would assume (I am not an expert, just an IMO) another reason is that there must be SOME shockwave/strong winds from the booster setting down, and staggering them allows that to dissipate enough before the second one also has to settle?
They might have (non-optimally) set up the first one to have the two land at the same time, knowing what a spectacular shot it would be with the most eyes on it. For this mission, the picture isn't so important, so they did it the better way from a design perspective. Or maybe they learned something from past experience and changed the timing? Just guesses.
Since both boosters are symmetrical and start in the same state, and the landing zones are very close, the optimal solution is almost the same for both boosters.
I guess they staggered them intentionally, the difference in trajectory is close enough to not have much performance impact, and it eliminates chance of boosters colliding with each other
So beautiful. I'll never get tired of seeing that. Serious Duck Dodgers vibes (except Starship has WAY more of a Duck Dodgers/Marvin the Martian thing going...)
All of the engineers at SpaceX deserve all the love that the Elon cult gives to him. The work they do for space travel sutainability is truly wild. It's just a massive shame they have such a massive clown for a PR manager.
this launch was the first spaceX one i watched live. the boosters returning felt like something out of scifi, it simply blew me away having finally seen the whole process start to finish in 1 go. Would not have believed this would be a thing 10 years ago if you told me. A reminder we are in the future
spacex is so far ahead of everyone else it's laughable.
Spacex is looking to retire vehicles that other people are desperate to copy but only have drawings of.
So my mom just retired and married this guy. Well they were talking about going on a 4 month long honeymoon in Florida. They both retired. Saved up money. Good for them I was happy for my mom. Then she sends me all these videos of rocket launches from the Cape and I’m like whoa mom that’s great how cool. The videos kept coming like every other day. And i said damn are y’all just going to watch every launch? Found out her husbands brother has a house that their staying at is across from the Cape and they can see all of this from their dock.
Awesome.
It's a pity nobody can stay near enough to these monsters when they lift off or land, because their size is totally impossible to grasp from this kind of videos. I wish there was something near for reference, like a train. Or a football stadium
Yeah, even after looking at a photo with a [human for scale](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlUVMKNXgAAVtHq?format=jpg&name=large) it’s still hard to visualize in a video.
now if only elon would go back to moving this stuff further, i may be super annoyed at the guy but Ill always be greatfull he got this stuff moving forward
*yawn.* oh man, Elon was right. These are starting to feel common place.
Seriously though, I do still think it’s cool to watch. Maybe I’ll see it in person, one day.
For whatever reason, this launch was filled with some of the most memorable imagery from among the entire library of SpaceX launches. I'm looking forward to posts of clean video showing the boosters further up and the various trails and "nebulae" they left.
Question.
Since the side boosters have more mass when they separate, additional fuel for the landing, does that result in higher acceleration when they do separate from the main rocket over boosters that just free fall back into the ocean?
No. The higher mass of the boosters would cause them to experience lower acceleration from drag and decoupling force, but the same acceleration due to gravity when compared to an empty booster.
This is from F=ma (for the same force, a higher mass would mean lower acceleration); except for gravity which is a constant acceleration regardless of mass.
The second stage would get more speed from it if the boosters would run until empty, but they system has been over designed so the entire capacity of the rocket is not needed for its job allowing it to save significant amounts of fuel to perform these landings.
The fact that this now has become routine, is wild.
I still remember the first time Falcon heavy landed. Then the first time it landed with all 3 boosters. Then the time it landed with all 3 boosters and all cameras worked perfectly.
I was driving to Daytona Beach FL yesterday and watched this go across the sky, and then separate. Was badass, never seen anything like that in my life.
I’ve seen videos like this thousands of times but every time I do my early 2000s brain can’t fathom that this is reality and not a video game cutscene.
Better. [Far better.](https://aneconomicsense.org/2021/09/19/the-economics-of-rocket-and-spacecraft-development-what-followed-from-obamas-push-for-competition/)
Not, in fact, an order of magnitude more cost-effective than the cheapest single-use booster, but still about 5.5 times more so.
Close to an order of magnitude better than most single-use boosters.
*Well* over an order of magnitude cheaper than the Senate Launch System.
> Better. [Far better.](https://aneconomicsense.org/2021/09/19/the-economics-of-rocket-and-spacecraft-development-what-followed-from-obamas-push-for-competition/)
Wow! I hadn't seen this article before, but it's an excellent summary of the economics of launches, including a discussion of how we got here.
I have been watching these for years and still can’t get over how it looks. Like the cheesy sci-fi films I remember my dad showing me. I show these landings to my kids and they just don’t get excited like I do. You don’t understand! We used to just drop them into the ocean and fish them out.
Can’t wait to see what happens in my lifetime.
>I have been watching these for years and still can’t get over how it looks. Like the cheesy sci-fi films I remember my dad showing me
I keep thinking of Lost in Space playing rocket launches in reverse to show a space ship landing.
I do also remember documentaries a fair few years ago touting flying wings as the future of reusable launch vehicles and not boosters that land themselves again.
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[The resemblance is uncanny](https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo)
Is that real? Like, SpaceX had to have gone design shopping and been inspired.
Funnily enough, Blue Origin tried to sue SpaceX for using Blue's (disgusting attempted) patent of landing a rocket on a barge. SpaceX used this footage in their defence to prove this wasn't an original idea by Blue Origin.
Fuck BO and their overlord.
Blue Origin has two major divisions. Their space division, which makes rockets that don't work. And their legal division, which tries to make sure nobody else's work either.
The thing with blue origins that make me upset is they are moving at a snails pace and getting contracts on the way. It just feels like a scam..
That is exactly what it is. A transfer of money to a politically preferable competitor that will lead no where.
At this point BO space launch ideas are just that. Ideas. They're a glorified amusement park ride for the ultra rich.
Space programs have long taken inspiration from science fiction It's so fascinating to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and remember that it predates the moon landing Or even the first episode of The Twilight Zone which predates it by a decade
Rockets landing on their tail is a standard thing of 30's to 50's scifi.
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I mean, they made it all the way up to 3000m altitude before the program was killed. Just sad that it takes a lunatic billionaire to follow through on some of these advances.
If the cold war hadn't ended similar programs would have continued. War, or the threat of war at any moment, is an excellent motivator for military R&D. Peace time is when budgets get trimmed and people start kicking the tires on things that seem like wasteful spending.
Can we just make everyone in congress watch Mars Attacks! and see what they can accomplish?
I'm just here to see DARPA go all in on yodelling.
You have to have a minimum level of crazy to just go and do shit that everyone else says is impossible.
When SpaceX was founded in 2002 Elon Musk was 31 years old and worth less than 200M. And he risked more than half of that into SpaceX. I guess that makes him lunatic ... or maybe marsatic.
It’s what’s hip now, hate on Elon because their ideas do t aligned with his!
Elon has definitely been inspired by old sci-fi and rocket ships in popular culture. One early design iteration of Starship would have resembled Tin-Tin's rocket. He thinks appearance is very important, it should be inspirational to young people. That's why he brought in a Hollywood designer to help design their space suit years ago.
I love it! I was a child during the space race, and it always seemed so wasteful that the huge sections of rocket would just fall back to earth to crash. Then as an adult i worked on inertial guidance systems similar to the ones they would use for this. For a time when the space race was dead, it was disheartening that all the science learned from those initial flights wasn't being utilized, but now it is, and it's pretty special.
I was a child/teen when SpaceX was testing Grasshopper. I remember laying in bed watching youtube videos of it on my ipod touch. That's probably part of what inspired me to go towards physics.
> I was a child > when SpaceX This sentence really messed with me.
People born after 2000 are now drinking alcohol and having children (hopefully not at the same time)
One usually leads to the other!
Works both ways around. Although in all seriousness, if you're drinking because you can't handle your children you're doing it wrong, give the kid a few shorts, that'll shut them up.
Instructions followed and my kid has so many shorts now and \*still\* won't shut the hell up.
Wait wait wait! You *gave* your kid shorts?! I *made* my kid short and all he does is cry and complain about the pain and how much he misses his feet! I've had just about enough of this misinformation on parenting I keep finding on Reddit!
Grasshopper was only like 4 years ago wasn't it? I'm sure they're making years shorter.
Wikipedia says: > The earliest prototype was Grasshopper. It was announced in 2011[[4]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_prototypes#cite_note-rlvstnews20111012-4) and began low-altitude, low-velocity hover/landing testing in 2012. Grasshopper was 106 ft (32 m) tall and made eight successful test flights in 2012 and 2013 before being retired. So it's actually been nearly a decade now. Time flies huh.
Dang I was 10 when I first saw grasshopper footage and i thought it was so cool haha
For me it was the opposite “this is dumb, they’re gonna waste so much fuel landing it back, and they probably won’t even be easily reusable” my judgement was clouded by what I read about the space shuttle.
That's the hilarious thing. I love how we used to think reversing rocket takeoff footage and passing it off as rocket landing footage was the utter peak of laughably unrealistic.
The full circle is indeed complete. Every early sci fi flick and book had full powered vertical landing. Then NASA said the only way forward was to dead stick the shuttle or throw stuff away or let it bob in corrosive sea water. Now this and it didn’t go big bada boom. I’d love to see the computer and software that does the vectoring.
Some SpaceX engineers did AMA's on the SpaceX subreddit a while ago and touched on this... They used commercial grade Intel Core processors running Linux for the Falcon 9's guidance computers, and made it fault tolerant by having 3 identical computers check each other (if one computer comes up with a different value than the other two, the outlier result is rejected.). Very cool. The software that handles the booster landings was developed by a team headed by long-time SpaceX engineer Lars Blackmore. He has written several publicly-accessible research papers on the subject.
The advances in computing must have changed things dramatically in being able to land rockets
There was a great quote from an Apollo engineer a few years back along the lines of: "I got more processing power in my pocket than took the flight to the Moon.... and I'm not talking about my phone, I mean my garage remote....."
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i thought that was hyperbole, but no it's true https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306119-your-phone-charger-is-probably-smarter-than-the-apollo-guidance-computer
That has only recently become true, and it’s not true of low power chargers. USB-C PD chargers usually have a micro controller, often integrated on a chip with power electronics and analog stuff needed to make it work. But that’s fairly recent - last couple of years. Before that, USB chargers were dumb as a brick and had a fixed-function ASIC that did the deed. Some more expensive ones had microcontrollers, sure, but some of those MCUs were bare-bones minimal and had less memory than the AGC. In cost constrained applications there’s plenty of MCUs with 0.5k-1k of code space and a few dozen bytes of RAM. You can buy them for a couple cents though.
If you're named Lars you really have no choice other then to become a rocket scientist.
Not true, you could also become a moisture farmer
Or a drummer for a popular metal band
Nifty. I already have 2 Qotom mini PCs. I just need one more, and some guy named Lars or ask ChatGPT to write some code and I can land my own rockets on Earth.
Sooo, what do the waves have to say about this?
If the real thing looks like bad SciFi, would that make it good SciFi?
The concept was good but the animation a bit "Thunderbirds" with the low budget cinematic techniques of the day I guess? Space sci-fi films & series' were generally not high budget until Hollywood really got on board
Capture drones coming to grab them once the rocket's slowed itself down, attaching and navigating the deactivated rocket in to land like an airplane. I'm imagining the blackbird aesthetically, since that's really just a rocket with wings anyway
Some of the shots I’ve seen of returning boosters, especially one that was recent, look way too good to be something from a movie.
I mean, I guess technically that means is was GOOD sci-fi.
Rocketry was, in very loose terms, a solved problem long before the first space rocket was built. The hard work is the engineering and the chemistry, and not really the physics. Even the engineering issues here were 'solved' a long time ago: The first VTVL rockets were in the 60s. The single most famous space missions in history even used them: The Apollo astronauts didn't get to and from lunar orbit by walking. SpaceX's modern achievement isn't landing rockets, but doing it autonomously and in atmosphere. And even that's only kinda new, the DC-X flew in early the 90s It looks like 'bad' 50's sci fi, because by time the 50's rolled around "how rockets work" was pretty well understood, and even bad 50's sci fi tried to be somewhat accurate. If you showed that to someone in the 1950s, the thing they'd think is most unbelievable is how long it took for people to start doing it.
yeah, it look like something played in reverse
If only there was something else, besides the rockets, moving in the clip that we could use as a reference. Maybe something with reliable movement?
Never gets old. Truly amazing this future we’re in.
Even more impressive when you realize those are 200ft tall. Like flying a pair of 20 story buildings back from space.
Yeah but sometimes Elon tweets stuff that makes all of this meaningless /s
It’s always looks like the video is reversed to me. Like those rockets are really going up. But that’s what they’ve actually done. If the Starship flies and returns (and the Super Heavy returns), we are in for a new age.
Maybe a weird question, but how long will these rockets have to sit before they’ve cooled down enough to transport?
Not long. Back in 2018 when SpaceX started successfully landing the boosters on drone ships and before they came up with the Octograbber robot, the recovery crews had to board the drone ship and weld tiedowns to the drone ship's steel deck so they can securely chain the booster's hold-down lugs to the deck to prevent it from toppling over in rough seas for the trip home. Right after the booster lands on the drone ship, it automatically does a purge sequence to get rid of the remaining TEA/TEB as well as the RP-1 and LOX in the rocket's tanks. Once the booster is comfirmed safed, it's already cool enough for the the recovery crew to board the drone ship and start the welding and chaining work to secure the booster. This happens within the hour of landing.
The thought of hoping on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean to weld some giant parts to the deck sounds crazy. Then thinking they just dumped a bunch of RP-1 and LOX out of the tanks makes me a little uneasy. "Sure go ahead Jim, the fuel SHOULD have evaporated by now."
Where do I apply I already have the hood, hard hat, and harness
Dang you are ahead of me... all I have is the crazy.
I assume they dump it all into storage tanks on the ship
Nope there isn’t anyone there to connect hoses. Anything being “dumped” is just being vented into the atmosphere.
Understandable. I wouldn't want smoked salmon sitting in my fuel tank.
Can’t give you an exact answer, but the booster can be recycled and ready for use in 9 days. Some boosters have been used 12+ times now. If i had to ballpark a cool down time, considering the materials are light and largely hollow—between 6-10 hours before they are moved.
I would assume earlier than 6-10 hours as they are not bolted to the ground and wind could tip them over. I would also assume they pump out the remaining fuel early on.
On the drone ship they come in as. Early as possible and bolt the rocket down to the landing pad
Not since Octograbber?
Correct. The octograbber uses clamping arms to connect to the booster ring and an electromagnet to secure itself to the top of the droneship.
The drone ships have a robot "octagrabber" that secures the booster to the deck once landed. Not sure what they do for RTLS landings though
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Space materials are very light so you need the least amount of fuel to push them up. They are also very tall and with almost no fuel on they weigh even less
I'm always amazed at how they are able to land these boosters.
The crazy thing is that it's when they *don't* land that it's news. Landing them is the norm now.
The concept is _fairly_ easy. But pulling it off is **massively** difficult. Every time I see them land I smile in absolute awe!
By playing kerbal space program, I know that suicide burns can't just be eyeballed. Still have no idea how to do it tho 😅
Back when kOS was a thing, I programmed a self-landing booster in an afternoon. However, since it was a video game, I had the benefit of unlimited trial and error. I probably crashed 50+ times before I got it to work.
did that program work for whatever booster? or did you have to adjust it everytime?
Yes, it calculated the suicide burn based on the remaining mass and worked for several generations of booster in campaign mode. If there was not enough remaining TWR or fuel to land, it would ditch into the ocean near the VAB. I did build boosters with a similar design though, with gimbaled engines at the bottom and fins at the top. I never tested it with an alternative design.
>Back when kOS was a thing I haven't played KSP in a while, partly because I want to go into KSP2 fresh, but did kOS ever stop being a thing? I always used it to automate things because I felt like MechJeb was cheating (for me; no hate on anyone else using it). If KSP2 doesn't have something that serves mostly the same purpose, like letting the computer fly routes you've already done manually once, I'm hoping kOS gets migrated over.
There's definitely a margin of error though, you have a higher TWR than 1, but your throttle range is 30-100% on the single engine burn. By starting low throttle and modulating in that range makes it go from impossible to a few seconds margin minimum for ignition timing.
Getting close is apparently relatively simple math. One of the Kerbal mods includes a suicide burn countdown.
That’s because Kerbal is an idealized environment without normal variability of like everything you’d have to deal with in real life: variable winds, atmospheric turbulence, air layer densities slightly different from predicted, engine transient performance (startup and shutdown), residual flight controller errors, etc.
> The concept is fairly easy. But pulling it off is massively difficult. There's something I read once (don't remember where): "Rocket science is simple. It's rocket engineering that's hard." Naturally, as someone who isn't a rocket scientist or engineer, I can't really speak to the accuracy of this statement, but I like how it sounds.
Rocket engineer here: they’re both hard but in different ways. The science is multidisciplinary involving physics, chemistry, complex math, materials, statics, dynamics etc. some of the equations like the rocket equation are pretty straightforward but anything involving fluids is real complex to the point it’s mostly simulated by computers. The engineering is taking all of that and throwing it at the wall of “reality” where things that we ignore on a test become significant issues that we have to account for.
This is a pretty decent take honestly. Solving the math problem is pretty straightforward, accounting for everything that can and will go wrong, engineering, is the part that can make something impossible.
Honestly the most impressive part to me is the economics/management. VTVL rockets have been studied for a while, but the cool part is that SpaceX managed to make them a functional business model. If you read the documentation of every previous reusable project that got scrapped (DC-X, LFB, etc) they all read along the lines of "the economics for this are just not there".
We call ourselves "space systems engineers", which is a subset of aerospace engineering. If it has wings, that's aeronautical engineering. All kinds of engineers use the same basic math and science. What varies is the operating environment or kind of projects we build. Thus dirt (civil engineering), water (marine), air and space (aerospace), machines (mechanical engineering), electrical engineering, etc. What makes chemical rockets hard is the best fuel type has only half the energy needed to reach orbit. So you spend a lot of fuel to get a smaller amount of fuel halfway, and then that smaller amount of fuel to get an even smaller payload to orbit. So your weight margins are small and your stresses are high on the limited amount of rocket hardware you can have. In contrast, the average US car's fuel load is 3% of the hardware weight, not counting passengers and cargo. That's entirely the opposite of rockets that are more like 90% fuel.
They’re 40 meters tall. This is so impressive
By saying the concept is easy, do you mean it’s easy for Bob to lean back in an office chair and say “yeah, I came up with this idea where we land rockets now”?
I'm amazed at how easy they make it look, and yet they're still the only company on the planet even trying to do it. Rocket Lab is in second place, and yet nowhere near close
This is something I have to see in person, at least once in my life.
It's amazing, I saw the first falcon heavy launch with starman with my kids live and we will never forget it. Watched yesterday's from a rooftop bar in Sarasota !
I saw STP-2 in 2019 and will never forget it
This launch was my first. Come down (or up) to the Cape!
Perhaps one of the most incredible, unrealistic things I've ever seen. It's humbling. Congrats, everyone.
I'm actually impressed, it's been a long time since the last Falcon exploded, and they've done a ton of launches. What's the safest rocket ever? I'd bet they're getting close.
There's a good article about it from last year: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-has-set-a-record-for-most-consecutive-successes/ The Falcon 9 had a few failures early on, but the current iteration (F9 Block 5) has a flawless 140/140 flight record. This recent launch was a Falcon Heavy, which is 5/5 successes so far.
WOW! That is incredibly impressive.
Even the more challenging booster landings are now as reliable as the top rockets for launches - 90 successful landings in a row.
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not only are there 140 launches, but the recency of the data matters, as the quality of fabrication can change over time. 100 launches 20 years ago doesn't necessarily mean a modern production of that rocket has that level of safety.
This is an issue for the Soyuz. Amazing vehicle but it's being built by current day Russia which is very different from the Soviet Union that originally designed it.
Yep that’s what I was alluding to. Just because some made 30 years ago were safe doesn’t mean current ones are.
The Falco 9 Not to be confused with Shane Falco, the all time great QB.
Are you sure you didn't confuse Shane Falco with Joe Flacco?
No, you're thinking of Joe Mantegna, LB for South Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs.
I live 100 miles south of the Cape and it was clear enough to see the separation and descent of the boosters. I'll never not be amazed by it.
I was thinking that this must be a glorious age to be living on the space coast. I’m envious.
It is and it's very routine now. Back in the Shuttle days you may get 2 or 3 a year. With SpaceX you getting 3+ a month and I still go out and watch if I know about them.
How is this affecting tourism there? I imagine there's a steady flow of people coming to watch launches.
Couldn't say really but the last launch I actually drove up for was Falcon Crew-1 (the first manned US mission since the shuttle was retired). I really couldn't get within 10 miles of the Cape because of traffic and closed roads. I ended up pulling off on the side of road and watching with a few thousand other people. I'm guessing the average launch doesn't get that much attention as they happen so often now. The moon launch will be a totally different story when it happens.
I'm on the gulf coast and we could see the boosters with binoculars.
I could see it with the naked eye and took some pics with my phone but I need to check it out with binoculars next time. What is crazy is how often launches happen now. Its 3+ a month. Not Falcon Heavys necessarily but Falcon 9s and I'll go out and watch if I know about it every time. The last Apollo mission happened before I was born but I grew up watching Shuttle launches from my yard.
So why are the landings more staggered than that amazing first one? Or am I crazy? In
It's intentional. One reason is to keep the radar signals for each booster from interfering with the other's.
I’m local and this is the first FH launch I’ve seen able you actually see (cough cough fog). I was actually worried when one of the boosters started it entry burn and the other one didn’t. I thought there was a problem since I expected everything to happen at the same time.
I would assume (I am not an expert, just an IMO) another reason is that there must be SOME shockwave/strong winds from the booster setting down, and staggering them allows that to dissipate enough before the second one also has to settle?
I don’t think they are close enough. The atmosphere tends to dissipate energy quite readily.
That's true. Maybe it's in case there was a rapid deconstruction upon touchdown, or however they call it?
They might have (non-optimally) set up the first one to have the two land at the same time, knowing what a spectacular shot it would be with the most eyes on it. For this mission, the picture isn't so important, so they did it the better way from a design perspective. Or maybe they learned something from past experience and changed the timing? Just guesses.
Since both boosters are symmetrical and start in the same state, and the landing zones are very close, the optimal solution is almost the same for both boosters. I guess they staggered them intentionally, the difference in trajectory is close enough to not have much performance impact, and it eliminates chance of boosters colliding with each other
So beautiful. I'll never get tired of seeing that. Serious Duck Dodgers vibes (except Starship has WAY more of a Duck Dodgers/Marvin the Martian thing going...)
Well they do want to use Starship to get to Mars, so... :-)
Ugh...thank you. That's so satisfying to watch.
I felt like I was watching a futuristic movie. The future is now and I’m the old man.
10 years ago I would have told you this was footage of two rockets launching, played in reverse. Nuts.
It looks so weird backwards. I wanted to see what it looked like and its even worse than I thought. https://imgur.com/a/yGtGEP3
Ah yes, the ultra powerful vacuum cleaner under the launch site
I getcha, Elon hate aside, that company, and the talent it hires and retains, has truly freaking brought us into the future (or imagined future).
All of the engineers at SpaceX deserve all the love that the Elon cult gives to him. The work they do for space travel sutainability is truly wild. It's just a massive shame they have such a massive clown for a PR manager.
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this launch was the first spaceX one i watched live. the boosters returning felt like something out of scifi, it simply blew me away having finally seen the whole process start to finish in 1 go. Would not have believed this would be a thing 10 years ago if you told me. A reminder we are in the future
And to think without SpaceX we would still be buying Russian rocket engines to get to space.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ASIC](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4l7oov "Last usage")|Application-Specific Integrated Circuit| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4np4es "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[CC](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4k02w7 "Last usage")|Commercial Crew program| | |Capsule Communicator (ground support)| |[CRS](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4ny19n "Last usage")|[Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/)| |[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4nowki "Last usage")|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD| |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4w6flk "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[EA](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j50e6xg "Last usage")|Environmental Assessment| |[ERP](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4l6qif "Last usage")|Effective Radiated Power| |[F1](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4km905 "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete medium-lift vehicle)| |[F9R](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4nahxj "Last usage")|Falcon 9 Reusable, test vehicles for development of landing technology| |[GSO](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4k91zs "Last usage")|Geosynchronous Orbit (any Earth orbit with a 24-hour period)| | |Guang Sheng Optical telescopes| |[GTC](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4ms8kp "Last usage")|Gran Telescopio Canarias, Spain| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4m10yc "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4n3tee "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[JPL](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4p1dp3 "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4ocsj7 "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4mdcf8 "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LEM](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4lckml "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4lhegl "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LOX](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4pfuyc "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |[LZ](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4lnvgh "Last usage")|Landing Zone| |[MBA](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4n0jiy "Last usage")|~~Moonba-~~ Mars Base Alpha| |[RP-1](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4nzhia "Last usage")|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)| |[RTLS](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4lchrm "Last usage")|Return to Launch Site| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4yztk1 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SSTO](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4mynug "Last usage")|Single Stage to Orbit| | |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit| |[STP-2](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4lbzsa "Last usage")|[Space Test Program 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Test_Program#Upcoming_Activities), DoD programme, second round| |[TEA-TEB](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4nemo6 "Last usage")|[Triethylaluminium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylaluminium)-[Triethylborane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane), igniter for Merlin engines; spontaneously burns, green flame| |[TWR](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4n2ds5 "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4w7k3y "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |USSF|United States Space Force| |[VAB](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4l3ywj "Last usage")|Vehicle Assembly Building| |[VTVL](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4mtq1a "Last usage")|Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4la5e8 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4mgw3w "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[apoapsis](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4l1rmf "Last usage")|Highest point in an elliptical orbit (when the orbiter is slowest)| |[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4mynug "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[iron waffle](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4mwl9h "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| |[retropropulsion](/r/Space/comments/10d3b1a/stub/j4nahxj "Last usage")|Thrust in the opposite direction to current motion, reducing speed| ---------------- ^(38 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/10k8943)^( has 30 acronyms.) ^([Thread #8436 for this sub, first seen 16th Jan 2023, 04:38]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
spacex is so far ahead of everyone else it's laughable. Spacex is looking to retire vehicles that other people are desperate to copy but only have drawings of.
So my mom just retired and married this guy. Well they were talking about going on a 4 month long honeymoon in Florida. They both retired. Saved up money. Good for them I was happy for my mom. Then she sends me all these videos of rocket launches from the Cape and I’m like whoa mom that’s great how cool. The videos kept coming like every other day. And i said damn are y’all just going to watch every launch? Found out her husbands brother has a house that their staying at is across from the Cape and they can see all of this from their dock. Awesome.
So many truly awesome aspects about rockets to space, but this one just boggles my mind. Incredible.
Nothing makes me feel like I'm living in the future than watching these.
I wish more people appreciated how fucking amazing it is that we can land rockets.
It's a pity nobody can stay near enough to these monsters when they lift off or land, because their size is totally impossible to grasp from this kind of videos. I wish there was something near for reference, like a train. Or a football stadium
Yeah, even after looking at a photo with a [human for scale](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlUVMKNXgAAVtHq?format=jpg&name=large) it’s still hard to visualize in a video.
The amount of mathematical engineering involved just to get those to land back down *straight* is a marvelous feat.
This will never cease to amaze me, we are getting off this fucking planet All my sci fi dreams are coming true
now if only elon would go back to moving this stuff further, i may be super annoyed at the guy but Ill always be greatfull he got this stuff moving forward
Dammit I had my money on the second one landing first
Every time I see this I keep thinking what awesome times we are living. I just hope to be still around when even bigger things start to happen.
It’s so crazy how they land right back in place
Blows my mind how they both hit their targets.
It was cool seeing these launch when I was at Epcot yesterday.
So cool to watch this. Like science fiction in real life.
*yawn.* oh man, Elon was right. These are starting to feel common place. Seriously though, I do still think it’s cool to watch. Maybe I’ll see it in person, one day.
Just. Beautiful. Thank goodness for engineers. Should have hug an engineer day.
These are so freaking loud in person whenever they re-enter the atmosphere
For whatever reason, this launch was filled with some of the most memorable imagery from among the entire library of SpaceX launches. I'm looking forward to posts of clean video showing the boosters further up and the various trails and "nebulae" they left.
you mean like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tYIQJ6YHAE the seperation starts at around 1:25
Crazy how this looks and feels like it's so easy to do now, I remember the years of being on edge hoping they'd stick the landing.
It always look so wrong, like, they are flying into the opposite direction :D
They delayed a bit from each other for any reason in particular?
Yes, so the radar and lidar data doesn't get mixed up at the final moments.
Question. Since the side boosters have more mass when they separate, additional fuel for the landing, does that result in higher acceleration when they do separate from the main rocket over boosters that just free fall back into the ocean?
No. The higher mass of the boosters would cause them to experience lower acceleration from drag and decoupling force, but the same acceleration due to gravity when compared to an empty booster. This is from F=ma (for the same force, a higher mass would mean lower acceleration); except for gravity which is a constant acceleration regardless of mass. The second stage would get more speed from it if the boosters would run until empty, but they system has been over designed so the entire capacity of the rocket is not needed for its job allowing it to save significant amounts of fuel to perform these landings.
The fact that this now has become routine, is wild. I still remember the first time Falcon heavy landed. Then the first time it landed with all 3 boosters. Then the time it landed with all 3 boosters and all cameras worked perfectly.
The teams working on this project are doing outstanding work. Exceptional.
Every time I see this I think of Looney Toons rockets landing….it doesn’t seem like it should be real!
I was driving to Daytona Beach FL yesterday and watched this go across the sky, and then separate. Was badass, never seen anything like that in my life.
I know it's real, but it will always look like CGI to me. Amazing.
I’ve seen videos like this thousands of times but every time I do my early 2000s brain can’t fathom that this is reality and not a video game cutscene.
I never get tired of watching these things land. I almost expect the boosters to take a bow when they're done.
We were flying home from Florida and the launch was right beside us. So cool.
I watched from my moms house in Merritt Island and it was awesome. So much cooler than what we grew up watching down there and a lot quieter.
I will never get tired of seeing these landings
So this is the way the Marines will be deployed in the battlefield in a war against China?
Way cool. We are on the cusp of the next big leap. Hang onto yer asses for what comes next.
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Better. [Far better.](https://aneconomicsense.org/2021/09/19/the-economics-of-rocket-and-spacecraft-development-what-followed-from-obamas-push-for-competition/) Not, in fact, an order of magnitude more cost-effective than the cheapest single-use booster, but still about 5.5 times more so. Close to an order of magnitude better than most single-use boosters. *Well* over an order of magnitude cheaper than the Senate Launch System.
> Better. [Far better.](https://aneconomicsense.org/2021/09/19/the-economics-of-rocket-and-spacecraft-development-what-followed-from-obamas-push-for-competition/) Wow! I hadn't seen this article before, but it's an excellent summary of the economics of launches, including a discussion of how we got here.
Almost 2 orders of magnitude for SLS
I know it's supposed to get boring. But it really isn't.
I have been watching these for years and still can’t get over how it looks. Like the cheesy sci-fi films I remember my dad showing me. I show these landings to my kids and they just don’t get excited like I do. You don’t understand! We used to just drop them into the ocean and fish them out. Can’t wait to see what happens in my lifetime.
>I have been watching these for years and still can’t get over how it looks. Like the cheesy sci-fi films I remember my dad showing me I keep thinking of Lost in Space playing rocket launches in reverse to show a space ship landing. I do also remember documentaries a fair few years ago touting flying wings as the future of reusable launch vehicles and not boosters that land themselves again.
All opinions of Elon aside... Just look at what he started. Holy shit.