Why it’s better than Apollo.
For one thing, it’s more sustainable. And it will accomplish much more. Whenever kids (i.e., people less than 50) tell me they envy me that I saw men walk on the moon, I tell them that I envy them for all the much more exciting things in space they’ll see (assuming that we don’t get life extension).
Somewhere in the hundreds of YouTube comments on the Falcon Heavy test flight video, a teenager (I think) said that she envied people who saw the Apollo moon landings live.
I replied, “I got to see the beginning of the Space Age, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But you’re going to see it come to fruition, and that is very exciting.”
Of note: SpaceX recovered half a fairing, caught it on that barge with the big net (used to be called Mr. Steven, I think they now call it Ms. Terry).
I think they fished the other half out of the water. The barge can only catch one of the halves in the net.
One the barge landing attempt, the barge was illuminated by the descending rocket, with dust dancing around like the rocket was soon to touch down, and then the rocket veered sharply away and impacted the water.
So I wondered if that was intentional or not. They might have simply run out of fluid (fuel) for the thrust vector control system, causing a loss of control. Or they might have added code to abort to the sea if the stage isn’t going to stick the landing, so as to avoid putting the barge in the shop for repairs.
That is intentional. The stage comes back in at an angle, so if it runs out of fuel or has engine problems it misses the barge. It only makes it to the barge if everything works.
Elon tweeted what they think happened to cause the failure: “High entry force & heat breached engine bay & center engine TVC failed.”
And when the onboard computer detected this, it followed its protocol to hit the water rather than the barge.
Ms. Tree, as she’s now known, isn’t a barge. She was designed as an offshore oil platform service vessel and has a top speed of 32 knots. The ASDS’s are converted barges.
We are once again seeing brilliant people building on successes and failures to attain greater accomplishments. The idea of standing on the shoulders of giants once again applies to space. A nice change from the NASA approach of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets for their long-range sight. I watched the moon landings, and I am once again excited about our future in space.