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2013–2024years
33% recommend67% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- Two Stage to Orbit, with vertical rocket-thrust tail-landing for both stages, eschewing carbon fiber for aerospace aluminum and using friction stir welding, rejecting exotic engine designs for proven ones, and financing from dot-com tycoons:
I'm not affiliated, and the end is kinda corny, especially if you are a typical skeptic/rationalist Silicon Valley type. It's not exactly how it happened with SpaceX, but there are quite a few parallels:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rocket-Company-Library-Flight/dp/1...
EDIT: In case you are not sure, it's a fiction book. It's interesting because it presages some things SpaceX did later.
- The fictional book The Rocket Company, by Patrick J. G. Stiennon and David M. Hoerr, is a basic narrative about creating a space launch services company designed around a two-stage rocket, with both booster and second stage manned by a single pilot each, and able to launch and land fully reusable.
The book has paper-thin characters whose whole purpose is to explain and counter-point a long list of technical explanations for why the company, vehicle, and manufacturing processes were designed the way they were. The book has a copyright date of 2005.
I really enjoyed reading the book.
The book, in the front, has a section called "Blurbs for The Rocket Company", which has some comments left by John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace, Jeff Foust of The Space Review, Gary C Hudson of HMX, Inc, Eric Laursen of International Launch Services, and Elon Musk.
To quote the blurb directly: "This is an interesting approach to the greatest problem in space exploration: the cost of getting there" -- Elon Musk CEO, Founder Space-X
- SpaceX's approach is much more "big and dumb."
There was a self published Sci-fi book from a few years back, where some dot-com billionaires funded a "big and dumb" design philosophy reusable two stage to orbit rocket. It also used aluminum computer aided machining and friction stir welding to increase seam strength and lower structural weight.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rocket-Company-Library-Flight/dp/1...
