In article ,
says...

"Vaughn Simon" wrote in message ...

On 5/27/2016 5:56 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
The
barge is looking like it's doing just fine at its job.
That barge won't look so good in a high sea state. Inevitably Space X
will sometimes have to make decisions when that happens; delay launch vs
sacrifice booster.

That said, you may color me damn impressed with their string of
successful recoveries.

Yeah, 3 in a row. Pretty impressive.

Henry Spencer use to say (paraphrasing here) that we didn't have truly
reusable vehicles yet because no one yet had actually tried. He was
right.

It's not like Musk is doing this single handedly. He hired engineers
from NASA and the very government contractors who had failed in the past
to produce meaningful progress on affordable reusable vehicles. The
"big leap" projects had all failed, in part, because it was thought that
some new bleeding edge technology would be needed because the mass
fractions required were so tight. This simply isn't true, especially
for a reusable first stage.

Instead, a vehicle based on existing tech is proving that reuse is
possible, by simply trading a bit of performance for reusability (fuel,
oxidizer, and some extra hardware like landing legs and grid fins).
Ditching the "performance uber alles" attitude of the missile designers
is one of the keys.

Instead of grasping for the ring of bleeding edge technology, doing what
you can with existing tech is proving to cost far less and is producing
results far faster than many engineers would have imagined (especially
after the expensive failure of X-33 and similar projects).

Jeff
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