SpaceX lands another rocket

Elon Musk's space trucking business, SpaceX, has again landed a rocket safely on Earth. The company sent a Falcon 9 heavenwards on Sunday and it successfully delivered a communications satellite to a geosynchronous orbit. The first stage of the rocket then returned to land on the company's Droneship and did so before the …

[Trollslayer]

Nearly boring

Best sign of success.

I am looking forward to the excitement of reused vehicle landings now.

[NotBob]

Re: Nearly boring

Just remember, the launch of Apollo 13 was considered too boring / too routine to be carried on TV...

[Gene Cash]

Re: Nearly boring

"It's unfortunate, but the way the American people are, now that they have developed all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away."

-- President Lyndon Johnson, on the Apollo program

This country went from landing on the Moon to "This bag is not a toy!" in 40 years.

-- my t-shirt

[perfgeek]

Re: Nearly boring

Rather ironic for Johnson to say something like that, given how his escalation of the US presence in Viet Nam was one of the driving forces behind the cutbacks in NASA's budget which meant not taking advantage of Apollo...

[smartypants]

Too boring was a problem for Apollo

It led to the early cancellation of the programme.

This is the problem with 'achievements', which is what Apollo was. It relied on large amounts of government funding. Apollo was woven into the cold war story and once superiority had been established, its job in the eyes of many was accomplished and this made it harder to argue to continue.

Now if we had a reliable and cheap fusion plant, people could get bored of that and it'd be fine as it'd justify its existence on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, the world isn't spending much of its money on that idea and not enough people seem to be interested in that type of achievement, which is probably a lot more depressing than a lack of interested in repeat moon shots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nearly boring

Me too - I miss the Space Shuttle.

[Yesnomaybe]

Re: Nearly boring

Yup. Boring is good. Superb in fact.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Nearly boring

The Space Shuttle is about a "missable" as first-generation soviet nuclear submarines...

[genghis_uk]

Re: Nearly boring

Was going to point out that we have gone from whole "MUSK DID IT! \o/\o/\o/" articles to "musk did it again" news bites in a very short space of time.

Personally, I struggle to find this boring no matter how many times they land that first stage... maybe in a few years, but probably not.

[Anonymous Coward]

They seemed to have hit the target dead centre there. Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Practice makes perfect.

[MrDamage]

Nah

They got sick of losing, and installed an aimbot.

[Andy The Hat]

Hit the target?

Must be faked like the moon landings. If you look closely on the video you can see where the Gerry Anderson-esque winch-line lowering it has been photoshopped out and the 'made by Airfix' label on the plastic moulding has been erased ...

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Seems like they're getting the hang of it, good for them!

[IglooDude]

It may be getting more boring, but still toast-worthy.

[Mark 85]

Space is never boring

And neither is getting there or returning home. Have cold one SpaceX and my the successes and cold ones continue to flow.

[Scott 1]

Never boring

Considering how I get treated to a house shaking sonic boom every time one of those rockets comes in for a landing (after 1:00 AM this most recent time), I doubt I will ever find these landings "boring."

[et tu, brute?]

Re: Never boring

Just curious: Sonic boom even when the landing is on a barge? Thought it would be well away from land by then?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Never boring

When buying a secret underwater super-villian lair it's very important to check out the neighbourhood.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Never boring

Wouldn't the super-villain be in the perfect position to hijack those boosters? And then sell them back to Musk for a tidy sum? I'm pretty sure the 'Super Villain' class submersible is capable of holding one of those boosters with room to spare.

[JeffyPoooh]

I watched the 'JCSAT-16 Technical Webcast'...

...After the fact due to the wee hours local time.

The barge video still cut-out just as the booster arrived.

As a Comms guy, I'm still very annoyed by that repeated failure in the SpaceX Barge Comms.

Given that there's a relatively 'nearby' Support Ship, there's only about a half-dozen solutions that would address this repeated failure.

Cue mindless defense of Musk in 3, 2, 1...