…for commercial space. My initial thoughts on Friday’s successful Falcon 9 launch. I’ll have more at AOL Online later.
6 thoughts on “One Giant Leap”
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…for commercial space. My initial thoughts on Friday’s successful Falcon 9 launch. I’ll have more at AOL Online later.
Comments are closed.
Well written. I agree that it was an amazing sight to watch the turnaround from the initial abort. What will be most interesting in the near-term is to hear about the cause and resolution of the 90 degree roll on liftoff. That, along with a seemingly-bad umbilical disconnect, had the potential to make a good day turn bad very quickly. I will say, though, that the design of the launch mount helps mitigate the roll concerns somewhat. Here’s a link to the launch mount test: http://spacex.com/assets/video/20100104_11f9release.wmv
You covered all the points, but may have been a bit too succinct.
…considering the history of rocketry. [insert examples?] SpaceX itself downplayed expectations…
OTOH, most PJ Media articles tend to go two pages and get cut in half. I like that you keep yours short. So I’m fickled. What else is new?
One thing I am hopeful for (and no one has really mentioned that I’ve seen) is what this launch means for NASA exploration and discovery. With the monetary, manpower and managerial attention resources the cancellation of Shuttle and Constellation frees us, we could be seeing a reP Renaissance in probes, telescopes and rovers in the next decade. I am hopeful NASA will use this opportunity to really focus on the job they do better than anyone else.
Overall, well said, but:
A lot (in fact, way too much) was riding on Space Exploration Technologies Corporation’s (SpaceX) first launch of its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on June 4.
If there’s one thing I got sick of leading up to the launch, it was all the downplaying of expectations and the complaining of how unfair all the high expectations were. And you’re still doing it.
Yes, it’s not fair. But it’s life. Neither is it fair that the general public holds NASA to the standard of perfection. But you don’t hear anyone complaining.
SpaceX stepped up to the plate & knocked it out of the park. Very impressive feat at 1/10th the cost of a government program.
It would have been even more impressive if they had just done it without all the hedging.
One percent Sean, not ten percent. They have to attempt to control public perceptions because they have the government as a customer. It’s not hedging to say that historically testing of rockets often has results you don’t want. Look at the flack they got from their first three flights even though from a testing standpoint they were mostly very successful.