Elon Musk, 13 years ago: A fully and rapidly reusable rocket is barely possible.

[eTorro]

SpaceX is going to try to do it. We could fail, but we're going to try to do it.

“The pivotal breakthrough that's necessary, that some company has to come up with to make life multi-planetary, is a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket.

This is a very difficult thing to do because we live on a planet where that is just barely possible. If gravity were a little lower, it would be easy. If it was a little higher, it would be impossible.

It's just a very tough engineering problem. I wasn't sure it could be solved for a while. But then, relatively recently, probably in the last twelve months or so, I've concluded that it can be solved.

And I think SpaceX is going to try to do it. Now, we could fail. I'm not saying we're certain of success here, but we're going to try to do it. And we have a design that, on paper, doing the calculations, doing the simulations, it does work.

And now, we need to make sure that those simulations and reality agree, because generally when they don't, reality wins.”

https://x.com/elon_docs/status/1845770608560291917

National Press Club, 2011

[zazen]

Amazing work by Elon. 

A hopeful comment by Devon Erikson:

This is what will matter 1000 years from now. 

Not your politics. Not your stupid tantrums about who platformed who on some website. Not your incomprehensible desire to send NASA's entire budget to the third world.

This guy reignited the Space Age. 

He spent his own money, hired a bunch of dudes, and reignited the Space Age. And together, they underbid and outdid NASA and its pet dinosaur corporations on every conceivable level. 

This is history happening before you. 

If you are a puddlefish, if you think this is a wasteful showpiece or science project, then you don't understand physics, economics, astronomy, or in fact the basic layout of the universe you live in. 

We live in a tiny puddle at the bottom of a well. 

Out there is an entire universe, full not only of stuff to explore, but full of stuff to build things out of. 

Big things. Wonderful things. Things that are going to make all of the cool stuff you have today, all of human civilization to date look like early Assyrians writing stuff down on wet clay with a reed. 

Infinite resources. Infinite energy. Infinite space. 

Instead of fighting over little patches of land, we will have an infinite 3d volume. Enclose it in steel, pump it full of air, spin it, and it's a habitat. 

Instead of scratching tiny scraps of metal out of the crust of one planet, we will break down entire asteroids and smelt them. 

Instead of drilling for hydrocarbons and turning water wheels, we will harness entire suns, split the atom, and eventually draw our fuel from the substance that makes up 99% of the entire universe. 

None of your local, temporal Earth politics matter compared to this. This is more important than pride parades and abortions, more important than tribal conflicts in eastern Europe and southwest Asia, more important than tensions with Russia and China. 

More important, in the long run, than the United States of America. 

America's most important function, its one most vital purpose, is to serve as an incubator for this.  

Because this changes everything. 

All of our arguments about conditions on this planet become obsolete, because the whole planet becomes just one suburban neighborhood. 

All of our wars over resources and territory become obsolete, because no one has time to brawl when we're all sitting on top of a dragon horde with sacks and shovels.

Everyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were when Kennedy died in Dallas. When the towers fell. When the Eagle landed. When the Wall came down. 

But this... this is the real moment, one of the first of many. They are what every child will know about a thousand years from now, even if they have four arms and are genetically engineered for zero-g, or are sentient blocks of code running on a sphere of computronium enclosing an entire star. 

You may not live to see that, depending on what we do or don't invent, and when. 

But it will happen, and you will live to see wonderful things. 

If the puddlefish don't get in the way. 

Don't be a puddlefish.