ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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SpaceX brought us a giant step closer to the glory days of the 1950s, when rockets finished their missions and then made spectacular vertical landings right back at the “space port” from which they blasted off!

A rocket with a very macho name — the Falcon Heavy — is not as powerful as the legendary Saturn V which took men to the moon, but it is the most powerful rocket in operation today.

And after a perfect launch on February 6th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shot his own bright red Tesla Roadster into space, along with a dummy named Starman behind the wheel. The car is headed towards an elliptical orbit around the sun, and it will drift in space for hundreds of millions of years.

But the really exciting element of this remarkable achievement is the spectacular remotely-controlled vertical landing of the Falcon Heavy’s two boosters in perfect unison on a pad at Cape Canaveral — not onto some floating pad out in the ocean.

They returned to the "space port", just like in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

And the majestic sight of the two boosters coming down side by side as their three landing gear unfolded was worthy of Hollywood science fiction blockbuster.

Absolutely amazing . . .

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SpaceX Falcon Heavy Boosters Landing Simultaneously


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

The car itself had a handful of Easter eggs:



⦁ On the dashboard sits a tiny Roadster and spaceman

⦁ The dashboard's screen displays "Don't Panic!" a reference to the cover of the guide in the novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams

⦁ "Made on Earth by humans" is printed on the car's circuit board

⦁ In the car is a disk with a digital copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of sci-fi books

⦁ There's a plaque in the car engraved with the names of 6,000 SpaceX employees

I think the thing about this that hits me the most is the sheer outrageousness of it. It reminds me so much of the 50's Heinlein story THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON.

The fact that Musk went to this extreme to kinda say "Space can be cool!" and the Human spirit and technological accumulate also includes playfulness and humor is a statement that we are still a very outrageous species!

The homage to Adams and Asimov just shows that the dream of the stars owes so much to the science fiction visionaries who preceded us!

Just damn cool, man!

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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.