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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX is exciting because Elon is one of us. He's a silicon valley founder who put all his personal money on the line to change the world. Paraphrasing PG, he didn't forget his dreams and he's inspiring many of us to remember our own.

SpaceX is just beginning. His launch costs are now as low as the Russians (the cheapest). The Falcon 9 heavy will cut that in half, and reusability is intended to cut it by 80% again (10x improvement is the next goal). Watch this animation to see reusability, it's awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IbxqsWLXsw

Elon has said he will consider the company to have failed if they dont get reusability to work. These cost improvements will make many things possible and change the world. And these too are just the beginning.

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It's also exciting because it is potentially of cosmic significance. There may come a time when the entire universe is affected and altered by people, and this is an important step in the journey to attaining that level of science and technology. There are certainly medical steps along that journey and those will generate great excitement as well; for example, when a "cure" for aging is developed, I'm sure it will generate a great deal of enthusiasm on HN, if HN is still a going concern when that happens.

He's one of us? I wish. We should aspire to be a crowd of Elons.

That goes for the investors reading this too. This is what I tweeted a couple of days ago:

> All the other rich people in the world should be kidnapped and forced to attend a seminar by @ElonMusk on Advanced Zillionairing.

https://twitter.com/flipzagging/status/204847457782345728

They're going for TSTO full reuse, vertical landing?

That video gave me the creeps: "One hundred thousand dead after engine of spacex launcher fails."

Do you have any clue about how they intend to solve this problem?

Where the hell are you getting this 100,000 people dead stuff? It's a rocket engine, not a nuclear weapon. What problem is it you're suggesting they need to solve?

I was thinking about the launcher falling on a skyscraper for example. My number was off by an order of magnitude, sorry.

The problem is: making sure the launcher lands where it has to or else falls on an unpopulated area. I expect this to be harder than with the free fall capsules, where you only have to calculate a trajectory and gravity does the rest.

WTF?!

I'd call that more like three orders of magnitude, and the world has been launching rockets and landing capsules since 1961. Nothing even remotely like what you are speaking of has ever come remotely close to happening.

No one launches rockets over populated areas, nobody aims capsules for populated areas, the CIA spent the 1960s recovering CORONA satellite film canisters with such precision they captured them with planes in mid-air.

Stop fear-mongering.

Come on, I'm just ignorant, not a fear monger, it really gave me the creeps in my ignorance.

I was not aware of any of the marvellous feats you mention. Thanks for the information.

I was merely wondering if a propelled launcher would be a harder safety problem than a non propelled one, but it seems that has already been solved also.

(This is in answer to nknight)

Where exactly have you lived that you've avoided knowledge of Vostok, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, the Space Shuttle, Skylab, Salyut, Mir, the International Space Station, and the thousands of observation, spy, communications, and scientific satellites that have been launched since Sputnik in 1957?

I'm aware of many of the names you mention, but I haven't the slightest clue if they were reusable or had a reusable launcher.

And more to the point, I have no idea if the reusable capsule or launcher had an engine to drive it instead of using a parachute and letting it fall on the sea.

The only reusable launchers I'm aware of are the Space Shuttles, which look like to be driven similarly to a plane.

(answering nknight)

The capsules holding astronauts obviously have to land intact at some point, unless you thought we sent all astronauts prior to the Shuttle up to their deaths. The Shuttle's uncontrollable SRBs have been jettisoned and recovered after every flight.

Reusability is of no ground-safety consequence. By basic physical law, these devices will be very nearly empty of fuel by the time they reach the ground -- in fact almost all fuel will have been expended within minutes of liftoff.

The first stage of a Falcon 9 has a dry mass less than a 14-seat Gulfstream V business jet, the Dragon capsule is less than 1/3rd that.

If you trust thousands of planes to fly through the air over and into major cities every day without killing thousands of people on the ground, you should trust spacecraft far, far more.

You are absolutely correct. I should have thought a bit more about it before writing about my irrational fear. Thanks.

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