Elon Musk, the man who provided us the behemoth gigafactory at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, gave us an instructional video of sorts on Thursday: “How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster.”
Musk is the chief of SpaceX, which has been launching reusable rocket booster, and like all companies, SpaceX went through its share of growing pains. Like having the rockets take off and explode in all kinds of entertaining and spectacular ways.
The two-minute video shows all of SpaceX’s spectacular fails. But Musk and SpaceX are great examples of those who succeed can’t succeed without first failing. Or in SpaceX’s case, try, try – and try — and try – and keep trying again until you get it right.
SpaceX has been getting it right lately with 16 successful booster landings. But those crashes and burns — and I mean crashes and burns — before the successful run were spectacular to watch. You can see the video here https://phys.org/news/2017-09-spacex-bloopers-video-orbital-rocket.html.
And appropriately the video is set to John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell.” I love Sousa and “The Liberty Bell” is one of my favorite Sousa marches. Many of you I’m sure know “The Liberty Bell” was the theme song for the Monty Python Show.
I particularly liked the rocket in the video that just tipped over like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was awesome.
So for Musk, it’s been one small crash (actually many large crashes) for man and one giant burn (actually many giant burns) for mankind.
— Charles Whisnand
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