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posted by CoolHand on Friday September 15 2017, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the things-that-go-boom! dept.

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?)


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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by edIII on Friday September 15 2017, @11:32PM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Friday September 15 2017, @11:32PM (#568745)

    Yes, because we can demand success without any failures and still be reasonable citizens. You're money, along with my money, was used to send Chuck Yeager up to break the sound barrier. How many millions went up in flames before he succeeded? We went to the moon.... but that also took millions of dollars going up in flames, along with several very brave and courageous men willing to take that risk. We paid their salaries and they were failures!

    Get the fuck over it. Considering the secondary successes of the space program, NASA, and the JPL, our money has had tremendous ROI, and that's giving zero value to the exploratory nature of space and discovering the nature of the cosmos and all that. Next time you use something with velcro, just be thankful and shut the fuck up.

    People like you are so fucking unreasonable when it comes to discovery and science. If we all thought like you, nobody would've ever made it the moon in the first place. We would've needed cheese studies and concrete proof of ROI before doing anything... cuz it's your money and failures will not be tolerated.

    Fool. If I had my druthers, even more of your money would've gone to NASA, NIST, etc. In fact, all of the money used for the F35 boon dongle should've gone to "expensive fireballs".

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  • (Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:05PM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:05PM (#568960)

    > Get the fuck over it.
    > just be thankful and shut the fuck up.
    > People like you are so fucking unreasonable
    > Fool.
    I wrote a fact and you wrote me this. Guess where is the problem.