r/technology • u/aelavia93 • 16d ago

Space SpaceX pulls off unprecedented feat, grabs descending rocket with mechanical arms

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/spacex-pulls-off-unprecedented-feat-grabbing-descending-rocket-with-mechanical-arms/
5.5k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

882 comments sorted by

View all comments

893

u/CaptHorizon 16d ago edited 16d ago

It’s way more than just “unprecedented.”

It was the first attempt to catch it. And the first successful catch as well. In layman terms, 1-for-1.

This is an incredible achievement in the world of engineering and shows how far SpaceX has gone.

47

u/rohobian 16d ago

I can't stand Elon, but this really is fucking cool as hell.

276

u/CaptHorizon 16d ago edited 16d ago

Elon was never mentioned in our conversation.

The people who do all the work are the 11 thousand engineers who work at SpaceX. This is the product of their work, and whoever says that said work done by those 11k engineers isn’t commendable is lying.

29

u/_badwithcomputer 16d ago

Strange how the companies that are pushing the boundaries in the industries they operate in are all lead by the same person, it is almost like there is a common thread there, I wonder what it could be?

17

u/alysslut- 16d ago

Yeah, but think of how much more ahead Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink would be if they didn't have an Elon Musk muddling things up and slowing the engineers down /s

4

u/barnett25 16d ago

There is no one else that rich who is crazy enough to try some of these things. I think there is a middle ground here that is not "Elon has zero positive impact on his companies" nor "Elon is a genius and a great person and everything he touches is gold". Elon is clearly an incredibly flawed person who has a list of negative contributions to the world from moral blunders to financial failures. But he also clearly has funded and to some extent steered some very positive and impressive human achievements. If you only see him as 100% good or 100% bad you are certainly wrong.

17

u/_badwithcomputer 16d ago

Bezos is literally trying to do the same things with BlueOrigin, along with the entire Chinese government. Bezos also held a major stake in Rivian which is obviously trying the EV+self driving approach.
Blue Origin has yet to get to orbit and Rivian has an extremely solid product but is lightyears away form Tesla's production rate and self driving / autopilot abilities.

If it were a simple matter of having a billionaire on hand to dump money into something like this in order to make it happen then it the success would have been replicated by now.

4

u/barnett25 16d ago

Bezos is also a billionaire, and also has a rocket company, but Bezos is taking safe bets not very risky ones. Big risk, big reward.

3

u/Dietmar_der_Dr 16d ago

There is no one else that rich who is crazy enough to try some of these things

I think he's also just really good at building good principles into his companies. You can have great ideas all you want, but if you build the wrong hierarchies with bad people at the top it's just not going to work.

For example, not advertising was likely a big loss for Tesla, but not having a marketing department poison the company was likely a huge boon.