How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Pretty sure they did ages ago, that was kinda the point of the space shuttel program. And thats just the most notable attempt, the DC-X is another example. Reusable rockets are just kinda inefficient for a lot of shit.

      • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The DC-X/Delta Clipper was really cool, but the Space Shuttle was a design-by-committee safety and maintenance disaster. VentureStar didn’t go much better either, though that was mostly Lockheed.

        NASA’s had the tech, the expertise, and the will for a while, but the political process was never going to give them permission to do anything more than slow-moving rehashes and incremental evolutions of old technology.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Reread what I typed, reusablle rockets have their place but they can become rather inefficient or even outright wasteful depending on the circumstances. Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit, that means more fuel, more fuel means more weight. And sometimes it better to put that fuel and weight into putting more shit into orbit.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Von Braun came up with the concept for a reusable rocket in the 50s. Not being able to figure it out was not the issue.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          And a horrible Nazi. Let’s not forget that. The U.S. tried to make everyone forget that.

          But yes, he was a genius.

          • srgtDodo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            oh I know! It’s just that some humans throughout history had this insane amount of intelligence and creativity and they jumped our level of technology, and our understanding of the universe by decades, or arguably even more! It always blows my mind that there are people like that

      • Comment105@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You strike me as an academic that struggles to appreciate the value of applied physics and engineering.