Dragon landing; Dragon’s big impact
Here is a picture from SpaceX showing the Dragon descending to the ocean today:
[Update: Some more landing photos.] === Elon mentioned his goal of making sci-fi spaceflight a reality. I’m wondering if other commercial launch providers around the world are now realizing that the SpaceX price list is not science fiction. In fact, the prices could even go lower if SpaceX achieves at least some degree of reusability for the boosters. Making big cuts in costs and prices is not sci-fi for many aerospace firms but something from a horror flick.
Moreover, I expect aerospace companies and organizations, DoD space policy makers, Congresspersons who deal with space issues, their staffs, and others will be doing some serious pondering over the next few days and weeks on what today’s successful flight means for space costs and space development practices. For many in the conventional aerospace world, SpaceX just wasn’t supposed to be able to do this, at least not without a lot more time and money and several failures.