Elon Musk is seemingly dragging the United States into the 21st century. His kind of genius is what made this country in the first place and now we are resting on our laurels while the rest of world is not just catching up but whizzing on by. I have Chinese and Korean friends, in China and Korea. We are in the 50s compared to them now.

Bravo Elon Musk for revitalizing the great American entrepreneurial spirit.

Yep. In the 60s the US was the place to come for opportunity. Now, young Europeans are going to China, Hong Kong, and Korea. Musk has bolstered the US reputation for opportunity and innovation. I hope his success encourages more entrepreneurs to chose the US.

Governments (or pseudo governments) have always done the heavy lifting with respect to development.

Private industry didn't decide to build rockets and do the basic science/engineering to get there. The US government did. As well as MEMs, the solid state transistor, and a variety of other technologies that finally got mature enough to converge and become the product of SpaceX.

Rome build the aqueducts, not crassis (he was the richest, IIRC).

The pope (church, quasi government) drove the Sistine chapel to be created.

I'm trying to think of one new science discovery that lead to a new technology that was created only on private money...

:rolleyes:

Technology is born from the imagination of the individual seeing opportunities. Take a look at Tesla, the man, for example.

What you are talking about is scale. Govts will scale the crap out of certain ideas.

in the past - simulated payloads have been iron or concrete blocks - For first runs - they don't put any sort of valuable payload -

The car is in an increasing orbit that will not collide with any other satellites - it's headed out to mars

And because we're talking rockets here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. ...

Goddard's work as both theorist and engineer anticipated many of the developments that were to make spaceflight possible.[4] He has been called the man who ushered in the Space Age.[5]:.... Goddard successfully applied three-axis control, gyroscopes and steerable thrust to rockets to effectively control their flight.

Although his work in the field was revolutionary, Goddard received very little public support for his research and development work.

^Per wiki link, Bold mine

There is a considerable difference in size and capability between the Saturn V and the small (relatively speaking) Falcon Heavy.

There is a good read here, and I think Ars Technica had a good one also.

https://newatlas.com/falcon-heavy-saturn-v/53090/

Let's look at the basic statistics. The Falcon Heavy stands 230 ft (70 m) tall, its core has a diameter of 12 ft (3.66 m), and when fully assembled with its side boosters is 40 ft (12.2 m) wide and weighs 3,132,301 lb (1,420,788 kg). The Saturn V with its three stages in place, tops out at 363 ft (110.6 m) tall, has a diameter of 33 ft (10.1 m), and tips the scales at 6,540,000 lb (2,970,000 kg).

Of course, size isn't everything. The Empire State building is bigger than both the Saturn V and the Falcon Heavy, but it can't fly for toffee. On the other hand, the two-stage Falcon Heavy has nine Merlin 1D main engines in each of its first stage elements burning supercooled liquid oxygen and kerosene to produce 5,548,500 lb of thrust. Then the second stage takes over with its single Merlin 1D engine to punch 210,000 lb of thrust

That's remarkable when compared to the Atlas and Ariane rockets of today, but now let's look at the Saturn V. Its S-IC first stage has five Rocketdyne F1 engines that, when set loose, generate a staggering 7,610,000 lb of thrust as it burns kerosene and liquid oxygen.

also of note: "Goddard successfully applied three-axis control, gyroscopes and steerable thrust to rockets to effectively control their flight."

Again, Goddard, October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945

But what Musk's team did... like science fiction :rolleyes:

Actuality, Musk's team went for the big show.
Don't get me wrong, it's cool as hell. But mostly because of the scale, not because thrust control is anything new.

So, a weight to thrust ratio of .564 versus .859. That would explain the difference in initial acceleration...

I imagine a fully loaded FH would be less spritely off the pad. Still impressive, I don't mean to make it sound like it isn't.

They have a saturn V turned on its side at the NASA clear-lake facility. It is absolutley bewildering to wonder around. It boggles the mind that humans could build something so big and powerful especially given the time frame.

I was definitely impressed by the falcon heavy launch, but found it a bit misleading when everyone implied it was the most powerful rocket in existence. Sometimes they didn't even qualify it with "currently"

Ive always been a bit on the fence with Musk. I thought electrifying an elise is a pretty unremarkable feat of engineering. Model S is a pretty impressive car with amazing marketing, economics aside. I find it very fun and refreshing that when I am overseas these days, Tesla is the fantasy car of choice for many of the engineers I work with. It wasnt that long ago where american cars (and intelligence really) were the subject of many jokes from European and Scandinavian colleagues.

I like that Musk and Bezos are putting their billions to work for a greater good. It's inspirational to others in their class. And the work itself is inspirational to new generations. I hope this spirit becomes imprinted on millions of kids.

Are you serious? The list of 21st century innovative technological achievements in the United States is nearly endless. :rolleyes: No need to make a cult hero out of Musk. His achievements and failures can speak for themselves just like everybody else.

Some of the stuff that is now unclassified from the 90s is pretty remarkable. Imagine the stuff we don't know about.

The FH is an impressive feat, but it isn't the technical leap frog that it is hyped to be. I am glad there are private industry pushing the limits instead of the government but these are all logical steps. It just took someone with the ability to take the risk on and do it.

Yeah, I see your point.

Most important inventions of the 21st Century: in pictures - Technology

I'm beginning to think the urge to explore may actually be a human trait embedded in our DNA.

As such, I am confident our efforts at space exploration (and exploytation) will continue.

Who moves us forward and the manner of it's execution is purely a product of circumstance.

But then again, the spirit of 'somebody's gotta do it' is decidedly a choice.

Bell Labs created the solid state transistor.