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Over at Ars Technica is a story, SpaceX proves it's not afraid to fail by releasing a landing blooper reel:
SpaceX is famously not afraid to fail. "There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA," company founder Elon Musk has said in the past. "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
In recent years, others in the aerospace industry have come to see the sense of this ethos, as SpaceX has tinkered with its Falcon 9 rocket to make it a mostly reusable booster, finally achieving reuse of the rocket's first stage earlier this year. To go further in space, at a lower cost, new things must be tried.
Even Gene Kranz, who famously said that failure was not an option as a NASA flight director during the Apollo lunar missions, has recently enthused about SpaceX, saying, "Space involves risk, and I think that's the one thing about Elon Musk and all the various space entrepreneurs: they're willing to risk their future in order to accomplish the objective that they have decided on. I think we as a nation have to learn that, as an important part of this, to step forward and accept risk."
To that end, SpaceX has put its failure on display in a new video showing the company's (often explosive) attempts to first return the Falcon 9 first stage to the ocean, then to an ocean-based drone ship, and more. Along they way the engineers have clearly learned a lot about rockets, propellants, and the pitfalls of trying to return a very large rocket from space.
Note: the apocryphal saying was not from the actual Apollo 13 mission. It was a line from the movie based on the mission. See this section on the Wikipedia entry for Gene Kranz.
With that out of the way, I find it absolutely amazing that just a few short years ago, the concept of a rocket that could land upright was science fiction. Now, it happens so routinely for SpaceX that they feel comfortable releasing a "blooper reel"!
(I'm curious, though, how many millions of dollars does that video show going up in flames?)
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @03:46PM (5 children)
Nice to say if your ass isn't sitting on top of that candle.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 15 2017, @04:08PM (2 children)
LMAO - ask all of those volunteers for a one way trip to Mars. Each and every one of them, if informed that there is a 5% chance of failure, will probably tell you, "Light the damned fire, and let's SEE what happens!!"
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=come+on+baby+light+my+fire [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday September 15 2017, @04:23PM (1 child)
I'd be right there with them. People don't seem to have a good grasp of cost/benefit or risk/reward these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @09:29PM
Well when all risk is passed on to the taxpayers I can see why they'd develop a bit of a mania about it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)
> Nice to say if your ass isn't sitting on top of that candle.
SpaceX rockets are unmanned.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:13AM
The Falcon 9 will eventually launch people. They're already working on a crewed vehicle. But those people aren't landing with the first stage.