Conservative. Idaho. Software engineer. Historian. Trying to prevent Idiocracy from becoming a documentary.
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"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." -- Rom. 8:28
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Sunday, October 13, 2024
Remember the 1950s Space Films Where a Rocket Lands Tail First?
In retrospect, these were absurdly impossible. Watching the video in this 10/13/24 BBC coverage of Starship booster landing in a scissor-lock is just amazing.
As Arlan Andrews famously said, albeit about the Delta Clipper, "... landing tail-first under its own power, the way God and Robert Heinlein intended."
It was more than God and Robert Heinlein intended, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction had virtually all the rockets on the covers either launching vertically or landing vertically. It wasn't until Fireball XL-5 that the rockets launched from a long take-off ramp and landed horizontally with landing rockets.
[Cue "Fanfare for the Common Man, Copeland]
ReplyDeleteWhere else can an African immigrant create a self-funded space program that puts the United States, Russia and China's to shame?
I see him more as Delos David "D. D." Harriman from Heinlein's novella The Man Who Sold the Moon
ReplyDeleteAs Arlan Andrews famously said, albeit about the Delta Clipper, "... landing tail-first under its own power, the way God and Robert Heinlein intended."
ReplyDeleteIt was more than God and Robert Heinlein intended, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction had virtually all the rockets on the covers either launching vertically or landing vertically. It wasn't until Fireball XL-5 that the rockets launched from a long take-off ramp and landed horizontally with landing rockets.
Delete