As to the visionaries of the fifties cartoons: far way to go yet to travel and
land on say Enceladus or Europa, single stage, return to earth with powered
reentry (heat shielding being of a forgotten era) next touch down anywhere like
a jump jet. Piece of cake. But then maybe Dan Dare's Annie private spacecraft
did not use ancient chemical propellants ;-). Odd though most spaceship
drawings in the fifties were single stage and most lifted off & landed
horizontally. No pads, launch ramps at times. Because V2s then only had a
single stage?
As to the F9 booster's surface temperature I wonder if the paint got scorched
returning from 180 km up. Amateur rockets making it to only 100 km (returning
on a chute) all had a friction burned paint (Mach 3 at least). Saw no F9
booster graph surface temperature versus altitude yet.
jd
-----Original Message-----
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Monroe L. King Jr.
Sent: woensdag 23 december 2015 20:43
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: Re spacex falcon 9 landing
You have to have some ego to have that much drive.
Elon is going to Mars and that's really what he wants.
All this "stuff" is just a means to an end for him.
To him these are just steps he has to take to get there.
I'm sure this step was satisfying but all it did was bolster his ego to keep
going for the prize in his mind.
Mars
He's a mars mission nut and I think he's likely to get his way because that's
what guy's like Elon are best at getting their way.
His very nature is to do just that.
Why do some guy's make it look so easy? It's no different than a star athlete
your born with it and the right set of circumstances fell into place for his
mindset and skills.
I wont even go into the drawbacks of a mentality like that.
As long as he has enough enablers around him pushing him up and enabling that
ego he will succeed because that is his nature.
To him it's child's play to get the blocks stacked properly in his sandbox.
I am happy for him without doubt. But he won't truly be happy until someone
set's foot on mars.
I kinda hope he get's his way and the more people that hope that for him the
more likely he is to succeed.
He is a leader plain and simple and a pretty good one.
Leaders have egos and are a bit hard to deal with but we need them as much as
they need followers.
He can face Goliath with a rock and a sling and prevail because it's his nature
to do that.
It doesn't occur to him to think much about it he just does it naturally. It's
no surprise to him Goliath fell because that was his plan in the first place.
Did David fear he would fail? Perhaps for a second but he stepped right beyond
that in a heartbeat.
I'm sure his cry after that was the same as Elon's after the landing- NEXT! The
battle was won but the war for Elon is far from over.
lol
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AR] Re spacex falcon 9 landing
From: James Fackert <jimfackert@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, December 23, 2015 10:45 am
To: arocket list <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Falcon 9 was designed for reusability from the start. Now that landing
has been accomplished i have no doubt reflight will become routine.
Blue origin landing is interesting but its intent is to some day be a
rocket amusement ride.
Hop up to the edge of space. No orbit no working payload.
Falcon 9 is the 747 to orbit and back and is already trucking supplies
to iss and putting working satellites into orbit.
No comparison, imho.
Musk may be over optimistic on the timeline but spacex's achievements
to date are quite incomparable. Its amusing to see the doubters
continue to doubt that they will acomplish the "next" step as each is
accomplished.
Musk does not build battery gigafactories, rocket assembly lines or
boosters that land just for fun or stunt or ego.
jim fackert