GM in 2008?

Did it ever go to orbit and return? I didn't think so, and thus it did not confirm viability of the concept.

It is relatively easy to takeoff, hover and land compared to an orbital flight.

The "rocket equation" is very unfriendly to carrying around mass you aren't using, hence staging.

Mike C.

Did it ever go to orbit and return? I didn't think so, and thus it did not confirm viability of the concept.

It is relatively easy to takeoff, hover and land compared to an orbital flight.

The "rocket equation" is very unfriendly to carrying around mass you aren't using, hence staging.

Mike C.

The base rotation maneuver was a major success….. and the difficult feat. The software to control sloshing fuel with a response was not easy. Remember computing was not the same as it is today.

The thermal stuff for re-entry was known. …as well as the TPS.

The DC-X was never designed to be an orbital vehicle. It was an ops concept suborbital demonstration. That was performed at the low cost of $15m.

Well getting to see the SpaceX launch facilities and Starbase up close is going to get a lot harder.

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/01 ... cex-beach/

Very soon you are not just going to be able to jump in your Bugsmasher 2000 for a $100 hamburger run down to BRO and rent a car for a day at Boca Chica Beach.


Boca Beach closures amid SpaceX expansion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R3aOoXUgRY


This link will give you up to date information on Highway 4 from Cameron County -

https://www.cameroncountytx.gov/spacex/


Looks like Highway 4 will be open for major holidays....for now.

WARNING - Once you leave Brownsville there is nothing on Highway 4 to support you, no gas stations, no bathrooms, no mini-mart, no water, no nothing.....you've been warned.

Elon claims he is going to be shooting 1000 rockets per year (yes you read that correctly) so rough math is three launches per day.

Well, they launched over 90 Falcons in 2023 and 134 in 2024.

But most of those are from Kennedy, not Boca Chica.

This reminds me of one of my engineering profs who'd worked on the Canadarm (space arm in the cargo bay of the space shuttles). His specialties included feedback control systems and robotics. He told us that the development team took the approach of software control of the motors at each joint in the arm. They had to account for everything from gear lash to the sections of the arm springing (individually and together, I suppose), lots of complicated stuff about modeling the dynamics in the first place and then controlling all that bouncing with computerized control of the motors in all those elbows.

The payoff would be weight savings from not needing physical dampers.

A lot of contemporary experts in the field at the time thought their approach was impractical or even impossible using what was then the state of the art in computing. (And they weren't completely wrong!)

I thought of it like when you're holding a flexible transmission dipstick, at arm's length, and trying to put it back into its tube- but exponentially more complicated.

yup....It was described as balancing a broom stick by the handle....with a half filled, sloshing, 5 gallon bucket on the end. Not the easiest to model and control.....
This reminds me of one of my engineering profs who'd worked on the Canadarm (space arm in the cargo bay of the space shuttles). His specialties included feedback control systems and robotics. He told us that the development team took the approach of software control of the motors at each joint in the arm. They had to account for everything from gear lash to the sections of the arm springing (individually and together, I suppose), lots of complicated stuff about modeling the dynamics in the first place and then controlling all that bouncing with computerized control of the motors in all those elbows.

The payoff would be weight savings from not needing physical dampers.

A lot of contemporary experts in the field at the time thought their approach was impractical or even impossible using what was then the state of the art in computing. (And they weren't completely wrong!)

I thought of it like when you're holding a flexible transmission dipstick, at arm's length, and trying to put it back into its tube- but exponentially more complicated.