I’ll tell you straight up, I’m rooting for SpaceX. Don’t get me wrong, I’m rooting for Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and every other private company working on launching rockets, but Elon Musk and SpaceX seem to have a much bigger vision than most of these other companies. I doubt I’ll ever be able to set foot on Mars (though I’d sign up for that trip in a heartbeat) but maybe my kids or grandkids will. Anyway, Tuesday saw the latest test of their Starhopper design, and while the ending didn’t quite go as planned, it’s still just damn cool to see something roughly the length of a Boeing 737-MAX10 falling out of the sky in exactly the way that birds don’t, then maneuvering for a landing at the last minute.
Here’s the moment I’m talking about
Okay, so they haven’t stuck the landing. Yet. But as I’m watching this thing fall controlled out of the sky, I got a sense of deja vu, like I’d seen something like this before. And then it hit me: It’s the frakkin’ Adama Maneuver!
Maybe SpaceX just needs to work on their FTL jump drives instead of landing?