REFLIGHT IS HAPPENING

I'm happy with an American private company making good progress.

Of course, they're getting lots of NASA money, technical assistance, and technology though, and operating under the US government's restrictions of who is allowed access and what they use it for.

When the government says "We'll pay our space agency $100 million to do this job" and then a private corporation comes along and says "We can do the exact same job faster if you pay us $60 million" is that really what would be considered a subsidized business?

Either way the government is the customer but the private entity is providing the service to the customer more cheaply and efficiently than the state can itself.

I wonder just how much progress for them will slow down when they can't beg NASA to do and explain every single thing. And how quickly they'll become background noise and their supporters stop remembering they even exist.

t. That guy who owns Virgin

Less subsidy is not no subsidy.

SpaceX got NASA funding specifically to develop Falcon 9 and Dragon, apart from any services, and SpaceX kept all the rights. They got money from the Air Force specifically to develop Raptor, again with SpaceX keeping all the rights. They've received many millions of dollars worth of free technology and technical assistance. Furthermore they've been favored with access to facilities like launch sites.

SpaceX is simply a healthy big government contractor, putting in honest effort, rather than a pathological one.

What's NASA's reusable VTOL rocket called again?

Delta Clipper.

so far they landed like 3 first stages, right?
Which one of those is it.

I think it's 7 now.

>Which one of those is it.
That's in OP:
>it's a Falcon 9 Full Thrust that was already launched and recovered on mission CRS-8 in April 2016

Also: Project Morpheus.

Anyone have a source on this launch btw?

Because he has this bad habit of spouting utter bullshit on things he doesn't know much about, which is then picked up and parroted by Musk fanboys who spread it everywhere.

spaceflightnow.com/2017/01/17/ses-10-telecom-satellite-in-florida-for-launch-on-reused-spacex-rocket/

Furthermore, it's a way of saving money - the Russians increase Soyuz seat cost like 6% per year

And having multiple competent LSPs in the US is important.

Can't wait to see SNC do some cargo missions... that'll be neat

...

This wouldn't even do anything, the entire operation is the CPU in the rocket tracking towards the RFID array in the barge

Well if it's just RFID user that shouldn't be too hard too fake

>Falcon 9 v1.0
>Not the actual core that will be flying on the 22nd
Not to worry, I've got you covered.

>Shouldn't people cheer for every rocket program in the world to be as successful as possible?

cheer, for the evil ula who literally overcharge everything by at least 400% they literally steal from you and are the n°1 astronaut killer in history

no, not accident
they are as dead as if they pulled the trigger, literal death machines which had FORESEABLE failures

thats WHY you dont root for the evil baby murderors son

try to sabotage a launch that involves close to half a billion dollars in technology and manhours and see how close you get raped by cia agents in guantanmo. I said you could be there in less than a day after even writing plans for such an idiocy

I was annoyed at him sperging out about the simulation hypothesis too. But if he can get reusable rockets up and running, E V E R Y T H I N G changes for space. It'll put pressure on other launch companies to do the same thing,it'll make getting into space go from costing tens of thousands of dollars per pound to perhaps a few hundred dollars per pound, making it easier for people that want to test out things like next-gen in orbit engines or put up satellites or habitats in space or explore the asteroid belt or planets or moons.

We could have VASIMIR barges ferrying platinum from the asteroid belt to a space factory that also houses a factory for making more starships within 20 years if we're lucky and people get hyped. If i were a billionaire I would put everything into dominating space, the FREEDOM of it is intoxicating. With the right drive and focus, you could start work on something as insanely ambitious as a massive generation ship built from a small, hollowed out asteroid, maybe even within your lifetime if you lived to be 110. Or at the least you could make a rotating space base a la the one in 2001 that would make the ISS look like a runny dog turd.

how would a space station outside of the magnetosphere be protected from radiation?

>Because he has this bad habit of spouting utter bullshit on things he doesn't know much about, which is then picked up and parroted by Musk fanboys who spread it everywhere.

Such as?

God damn musk is way behind

Blue Origin has relaunched the same rocket about 6 times

>Blue Origin has relaunched the same rocket about 6 times
an orbital rocket? are you sure?

oh, you must mean the shitty piece of shit with less than one quarter the power of the falcon 9 and that couldnt put even the smallest object in orbit

that's their little tourist capsule

the real money for bezos will be selling their methane engines to ULA for Vulcan, though not as price gouge-y as aerojet and the russians

mining shit at the belt is still a massive waste of time...
would take literally years before a first shipment arrives back at earth...

If it's a $20 trillion shipment that'd be worth it though

if you had that much platinum it wouldn't be worth anything near 20 trillion

>spaceflightnow.com/2017/01/17/ses-10-telecom-satellite-in-florida-for-launch-on-reused-spacex-rocket/

yeah it'd be a lot more.

usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/01/18/nasa-planning-mission-asteroid-worth-10000-quadrillion/96709250/

Before New Shepard, there were multiple reusable VTVL rockets, and two reusable suborbital space rockets that actually carried crew (SpaceShipOne, X-15).

Before Falcon 9, there was only one reusable booster, and that was the space shuttle solid rocket booster, which was reusable in a very questionable, low-value way.

You know what that estimate is based on? Iron. One of the most plentiful elements. About 6% of the earth's crust by mass.

It's like estimating the value of a mountain if it were sliced up into granite countertops, or the value of a fresh cadaver if every chemical substance in it were isolated and sold as lab-grade material, or a desert if refined into monocrystalline silicon boules.

>What is supply & demand
>What is flooding the market

Iron is basically only mined in a few spots on earth because its already at a very low price

on the one hand the price would drop because of supply and demand... BUT there are many electronic device that would be revolutionary but can't be made because platinum isn't abundant enough. Once it hit a price that allowed those devices to be feasible it would stay there no matter how much platinum you import

t. turbo retard

How much further developed would SpaceX be if they didn't have to play ball with government regulators?

a lot less, since spacex is basically a goverment enterpriser of the state public communist
aww yeah score one one up for the liberal non conservative left marx state yes ussr defenders of the bi wide world

Jesus. Is this what XKCD has become now? God, that's cringey.

when was it not cringey