Watched it live with my daughter this morning. She wasn't alive before SpaceX was landing rockets. She was very excited about how cool the rocket looked taking off and the engines firing. The significance of the tower catching the rocket was lost on her. She's seen so few rocket launches, it's just immediately taken for granted, like they all do that and always have. In a way it makes me optimistic about the new space age she will live in. She wants to visit space one day in that childish way kids who see a rocket take off always do. But that might actually be a thing normal-ish people get to do in her lifetime, unlike mine.
It's funny when you see the SpaceX progress in this direction taken for granted even by critics of SpaceX. When they lost that booster on landing recently instead of being able to refly it for the 25th time, people started talking about how wasteful that was. Does nobody know what happens to every single rocket booster actively being flown by everyone other than SpaceX? Rocket Lab reflew one engine once, and they're hoping to refly a whole booster in the near future, but other than that? Vulcan? Splash. Long March? A cloud of toxic smoke next to a Chinese village. Artemis I? A multibillion dollar fish habitat.
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Notes -
Watched it live with my daughter this morning. She wasn't alive before SpaceX was landing rockets. She was very excited about how cool the rocket looked taking off and the engines firing. The significance of the tower catching the rocket was lost on her. She's seen so few rocket launches, it's just immediately taken for granted, like they all do that and always have. In a way it makes me optimistic about the new space age she will live in. She wants to visit space one day in that childish way kids who see a rocket take off always do. But that might actually be a thing normal-ish people get to do in her lifetime, unlike mine.
It's funny when you see the SpaceX progress in this direction taken for granted even by critics of SpaceX. When they lost that booster on landing recently instead of being able to refly it for the 25th time, people started talking about how wasteful that was. Does nobody know what happens to every single rocket booster actively being flown by everyone other than SpaceX? Rocket Lab reflew one engine once, and they're hoping to refly a whole booster in the near future, but other than that? Vulcan? Splash. Long March? A cloud of toxic smoke next to a Chinese village. Artemis I? A multibillion dollar fish habitat.
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