Much as I hate the man, his partly government funded company has done some pretty amazing space-related things. What got me on this is that I’m waiting for a SpaceX launch today. It doesn’t really do anything for the state of the country, but it looks ahead to what we might do in the future. At some point, we are going to need to do more with/in space and this is a start.
Any and all space launches are exciting. To watch those rockets lift off is really something. And to have cameras on it that can stand up to the stresses of the flight is a HUGE bonus. We haven’t always been able to see the process of the rocket with the separations of the different sections, the controlled return to Earth, the maneuvers in space, and THAT return, there’s just so much that’s exciting and shows possibilities well, into anything for the future. I’m too old to be able to see much more of anything. It would be great to see the next moon landing, especially as we are in a race with other countries to “get there first”. I just hope it isn’t at the expense of people. Automated machinery? I could go for that. There’s a lot that can be learned before we send a crew up. I’d like to do as much as we can to be safe FIRST.
Well, we had a textbook liftoff and separation that was beautiful to see. We had our additional separations right on schedule. And they had a second damn near perfect catch of the booster module. Well, what’s not damn near perfect is that we appear to have lost the ship. We had a couple of engines go off early, and all contact has been lost. My husband said might want to give NORAD a call since they have a good chance of finding it. Having that big-ass thing come out of orbit and drop onto China or Russia would be Bad. Having it come out of orbit and drop *anywhere* would be Bad, especially if it comes through with some of the parts still in one piece. Yeah, let’s give our enemies another technical jump in the race.
It was so, SO exciting watching this liftoff and I was only watching on the TV. I can’t imagine the emotions of being there. The catching of the booster, which I did not get to see “live” the first time. This was just amazing. AMAZING. Of course, this now leads me into this program having a rather LARGE amount of funding from the US Government, as well as the Falcon and Falcon Heavy, all looking towards placements of things on the moon, orbit, and Elon looking at colonizing Mars. I have *no* idea what it is with him wanting to go to Mars so badly. He’s got it GOOD here on Earth. I guess the answer might be “because he can”.
So you have a whole bunch of excitement and a little bit of politics. If you made it this far, I thank you and I hope I described it well enough.
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I never celebrate nazi achievements, after all, we excused all their atrocities, after WW2, so we could get their scientists to work on the arms race during the cold war. Realistically this is just boys playing. As a species, we are trapped here forever, and given where we are, forever may be a very short time. Eventually the sun expands, and boils off the oceans in a few billion years. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. It can travel 7x around the earth in one second. The sun, our closest star, is so far away it takes 8 minutes 20 seconds at that speed for the light to reach us. The next closet star is 4 years away at that speed. By the way we’ll never travel anywhere close to that speed as the G forces would destroy us. No. The whole idea seems a waste of resources given we let children starve on the ground on our planet. Call it my fundamental distrust of our species, but, this has military applications and intentions written all over it. I’ll ride a donkey before I ever buy anything Musk makes.
Dang, Scott, how do you always figure out the things I miss? I feel kinda silly now for missing the implications you noted. I only thought as far as the moon or Mars. OUCH and thank you!
Susan…probably because I’m older, more experienced, and meaner. Ha. No one can see how things will unfold. Watch for the debris when his toys come crashing back to earth.
This business the Rat owns should be a public service entity owned by the US govt, not in the hands of a private citizen or corporation. Too much power in 2 hands of a guy trying to control the free world.