{"id":122,"date":"2016-04-08T19:57:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T00:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/?p=122"},"modified":"2016-04-08T20:04:17","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T01:04:17","slug":"sticking-the-landing-spacex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/04\/08\/sticking-the-landing-spacex\/","title":{"rendered":"Sticking the Landing: SpaceX"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX deserves its own post here, to say “YAY!! Congratulations!” for sticking the landing on the barge today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is my favorite video of the flight so far:\u00a0 http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/zlcf38g\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 Boo hiss to those who celebrated the four failures and the ones who today (on Twitter, for instance)\u00a0 claimed the landing was just reverse video.\u00a0\u00a0 No, it really happened.\u00a0\u00a0 It worked; they landed it, and what can be done once can be done again, and made routine.\u00a0 I didn’t realize until a good way through the first that after first stage re-ignition, the video alternates views of the first stage and second stages engines.\u00a0 It becomes obvious when first-stage has a background of blue sky and the second stage has the black of space.<\/p>\n

Failure isn’t always (usually) fatal.\u00a0 The first time I rode a bicycle I fell down.\u00a0 When I got a much bigger bicycle, I fell down.\u00a0\u00a0 Forty years later when I got on my first mountain bike, the first bike I’d ever ridden with multiple gears and handlebar brake controls, I fell down a lot.\u00a0 Sometimes I still fall down (sharp curves on bumpy trails…especially with thorny vines that catch in a wheel spoke just enough…)\u00a0 So I figured SpaceX would eventually stick a landing, just didn’t know it would be today.\u00a0\u00a0 I expect they’ll have some more failures, too–even when something complicated becomes routine, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% reliable.\u00a0 Today’s their day to celebrate and I’m gleeful too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX deserves its own post here, to say “YAY!! Congratulations!” for sticking the landing on the barge today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is my favorite video of the flight so far:\u00a0 http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/zlcf38g\u00a0\u00a0 Boo hiss to those who celebrated the four failures and the ones who today (on Twitter, for instance)\u00a0 claimed the landing was just reverse video.\u00a0\u00a0 No, Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}