There’s a good article over at Quartz about the company and Elon. It had a few errors, though.
@qz You don't need to reach escape velocity to get into earth orbit. You only need about 71% of it.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Also, the Merlin isn't the first US liquid rocket engine since the 70s. The RS-68 was developed in the 90s. But good article overall.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Oops, another error. First stage doesn't get it into orbit, it just gives it a head start. Second stage generally needed for orbit.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Oops, Senator *Bill* Nelson, not Ben. Ben was in Nebraska, and didn't give a hoot about space. Still reading…
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
And the response?
@Rand_Simberg @qz thanks for noting these for us, we've corrected http://t.co/9fuM6UrbHg
— Tim Fernholz (@TimFernholz) October 21, 2014
That’s exactly how it should work.
Sorta unrelated but:
“Commercial Rocket Test Helps Prep for Journey to Mars”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UFjK_CFKgA
Awesome thermal imagery of Falcon 9 separation event and reentry.
Yeah it reveals a lot of maturity and integrity they corrected their article so quickly.
Great article! Though one more:
“In September, NASA announced that it was awarding two contracts to carry astronauts to the space shuttle—$4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX. ”
Wish I had THAT contract!
If you want a really good history of SpaceX from start up to a year or two ago, get “Here be Dragons”. Apogee books, Friends of ours.
Musk makes the big times! South Park spoofs him!
http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e04-handicar