June 14, 2013: Grasshopper flies 325m straight up and down (http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/06/14/grasshopper-completes-...), which was hellishly impressive
Two months later, this test seems enormously more difficult than the flights without the sideways maneuver. And it's not even a year since it left the ground for the first time.
EDIT: Downvotes? Hello SV echo chamber. SpaceX iterates almost as fast as any tech startup in SV; and how many vehicle losses have they had?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_1_launches#Launc...
But yes, overall they're moving and iterating and learning super fast. To me, it's one of the 21st century's most exciting companies so far.
[1] http://www.usafa.edu/df/dfas/Papers/20062007/FalconSAT-2%20L...
> For years, cadets have trained falcons (the only performing mascot at NCAA division I football games). FalconSAT-2 showed its excellent homing skills in the launch failure by avoiding the sea and returning to its shipping container so it “could come home to roost.”
We constantly hear the mantra about iterating quickly, changing/breaking things, not worrying about initial quality, etc.
But, there's something to be said for investing in quality and striving for excellence every time out of the gate. And from the outside, it's certainly inspirational.
Ok, so guess I just signed up to absorb some of the downvotes. Whatevs.
But I don't think that "Move Fast and Break Things" necessarily means not striving for excellence every time. To me it or more of, since in Programming there is (usually/almost) no bad side effects of breaking the code, go ahead and try new things. Worst case, revert to your last committed version. And I have to assume that SpaceX has most definitely had ideas that didn't work, or in other words 'broke'. They just hopefully never make it to the actual rocket testing phase!
So in my opinion, you can both "Move fast and break things" and strive for excellence every time out of the gate.
And to comment on the original video, I think it's really impressive seeing a toy helicopter do stuff like this on it's own. And this is a fucking ROCKET!!
The great thing about SpaceX is that they use advanced technology very appropriately and pragmatically. They didn't design a carbon fiber body SSTO RLV or anything like that, they built a 2 stage LOX/Kerosene expendable rocket, a design that's been around since the 1950s. They built a small vehicle and spent a few years building institutional knowledge of building and operating orbital launchers. Then they used that knowledge to build products that were competitive in the market. Now they're continuing to iterate like crazy and building a lot of exiting new things off of what they've already proven: the manned Dragon, Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9 v1.1, and Falcon 9-R.
If they continue to put a consistent amount of effort into iterative R&D they'll not only own most of the orbital launch market they'll own a lot of new markets that don't even exist yet.
They're just applying common sense and building obvious designs well to compete in a market filled with companies that aren't used to strong competition.
Just ignore it.
The plan is to do a return-to-launchpad maneuver -- except that not to the actual launchpad, but to a point offshore -- followed by a controlled "landing" on the ocean. Allows them to test the entire flight profile of a Falcon 9-R (reusable) booster, using an off-the-shelf stage, absent the flight-weight landing gear (which still hasn't been tested). If this is successful, then I imagine that a series of flight-weight landing gear tests will be in order, followed by high-altitude testing at White Sands. At the rate they're going, we might see them reusing boosters on commercial missions within 18 months or so.
First team that can send and retrieve two people to each:
- $5 Billion USD for the moon
- $100 Billion USD for marsI know Google has a $30 million prize for putting a rover on the moon.