From Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda
So I watch this video and it flies in the face of everything that I know about space flight. I hope it’s true, but I just don’t understand how it’s efficient to bring up extra fuel for vertical landings like this. But I hope I’m wrong, and I’m living for the day that i can see it b/c… wow. What is clear to me, is that if nothing less, SpaceX is willing to go out on a limb and try something amazing. Or at least CGI render something straight out of the best science fiction. What really did it for me was watching the second stage touch down… and then watching the capsule follow suit. Where do you store the fuel for that? My understanding of the moon landing is that the only reason that it was possible to pull a landing like this off was because of the drastically reduced lunar gravity… but then again, maybe we’ve made some advancements in rocketry in the last 40 years. At least, I hope we have.
More on SpaceX’s plans for the future
Maybe, by then, we’ll have a lighter alternative to either liquid fuel or chemical rockets. You’d think by now we would have something a little more advanced than we did in the sixties and seventies.
As an aside, last year I saw one of the American Idol guys performing this song…ad doing an impressive job of it.
Wow, all that extra fuel needed for that can put the parachute companies out of business!
I think it might be more practical for something like landing on Mars or an asteroid, where you might -say- want to take off again.