For the Monty Python fans & Elon Musk haters
 

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To be fair, they did finally figure it out.

Way back in the 1960s my dad was on the Air Force Presentations Team. They went all over the country promoting the space program and the unlikely possibility that "one day we will watch a man walk on the moon while he carries a hand held video camera"

Many in the audience would scoff and harrumph. Part of the presentation was many failed launches by NASA where rockets blew up right on the pad. They had a lot of failures and Alan Shepard was a very breve man to strap into a rocket built by the lowest bidder, that had a history of blowing up. All the astronauts were fairly brave.

Musk is smart enough to no try a human on-board yet. NASA did it in 1961. Some great Shepard quotes:

"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

It's been a long way, but we're here.

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all."

"That wasn't an explosion, it was a rapid unscheduled disassembly."

LOL!

Why is this hard?

This isn't rocket science!

Oh wait... :)

I thought for a minute that it was Kim Jong fail army.

Doubt it. He got some rough news this week.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1505504132.png

So how much of taxpayer dollars crashed and burned in that video?

I wasn't aware that Space X is government funded.

Isn't that the whole reason that we've switched from NASA (govt funded) to places like SpaceX (private industry) was to stop spending govt money on space stuff at least on expensive delivery systems?

You believed that?

Translation: "NASA" means your tax dollars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

That was my thought.

For $4 Billion, I could do some way better explosions. I'd even play Stars and Stripes Forever while doing it.

I won't be volunteering for the first ride.

"Rapid unscheduled disassembly?" My sides! :D

Who cares? Its 4 billion we didn't waste blowing up stuff mud houses in the middle east. Its more like how much has he saved us in the long run. He's developed a new technology that will make payloads into space cheaper than using NASA.

4 billion equals what? A single nuclear sub, or a carrier for 2 F35s, its pocket change to the feds.

and pretty soon it adds up to some real money...

You remain ignorant..the West has been at war with Islam since 700 AD...

Allah does NOT recognize the Rights of man, nor the basic tenet of separation of state and religion. Under Islam Religion is the state. So the Western Liberal mindset of toleration of all beliefs is allowing Islam to practice it's belief of intolerance of anything but subservience to the will of Allah. The end result is that Islamic peace means as a Westerner you die as what you believe is antithetical to the will of Allah. .

So the money would have been better spent putting Allah in his place...

Without getting side-tracked by a debate on defense spending...

I find it humorous that SpaceX is considered a private company. Elon Musk has been living off the Govt teat spending your tax dollars to build something that may or may not ever be viable. The same with Tesla. The U.S. people are SUCKERS and he knows how to milk money right out of your pockets. I don't hate Musk, I hate how he is ripping me off. He is the equivalent to the pet shop owner:

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(and yes I am a Python fan)

Um not really.

The US didn't even exist until a thousand years later in 1776.

Not to get into a debate about people who reject science and technology. But the average cost of the a Shuttle mission was $450 million. That was for developed technology. What Space X has done is start on their own and develop a system that works with I believe 13 landings in a row of technology that NASA couldn't ever accomplish. If we had to pay NASA to do the same thing it would cost 100X times more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program

Space X can launch payloads and astronauts soon to the space station.


Here are two data points on the cost savings.
http://spacenews.com/wp-content/uplo...e-1024x563.gif

The average cost of a spacex launch is around $92 million.

SpaceX's new price chart illustrates performance cost of reusability - SpaceNews.com

Compare that to Richard Bransons space company that charges about $422 million.

According to analysis by Ars Technica, the figures suggest that competing launch provider United Launch Alliance continues to charge several times more than SpaceX on average, despite ULA’s efforts to lower costs. The document shows an estimated 2020 cost of $422 million per launch if the Air Force selected United Launch Alliance to conduct them. That combines costs for launches using ULA’s large Delta rocket as well as its smaller, less expensive Atlas V rocket.

SpaceX Launch Costs Substantially Undercut Competition, Analysis Says | Fortune.com

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Thus we are getting a hell of a ROI out of spacex and haters need to realize the economics of the space industry are here to stay and going to advance whether you like it or not.

If you are going to thump science then at least get the numbers straight. There have been 12 successful landings out of 28 attempts. Dependability has gone up but the risk versus reward is still not great.
The economics are we have spent 3.4 billion and do not have a system that is reliable enough to trust sending equipment into orbit AND for all the money we've spent, Musk owns the tech and not us.
What a bargain.

Musk is proof we are a nation of suckers.


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