More Terror, more trump, space X!

To my lowly readership, you probably forgot you even subscribed to this crazy blog. Surprise!

Well, what to talk about.

Brussels happened.  Read my last post, it pretty much sums up how I feel about that.

Trump continues to win delegates... I find this whole shit show to be amazing. I've given up trying to predict or understand this cluster fuck but to just roll with it.  Though watching the Republican party eat itself has been particularly hilarious.

Space X managed to finally stick the landing on the barge!  Of all the shit going on, this is actually the most amazing.  For those of you who don't understand... the average cost of the rocket carrying cargo to space can easily be the same price as a well equipped jet liner... except you throw the whole thing away after one use... The rocket cost millions, the fuel costs 100's of thousands... Clearly being able to reuse the first stage is going to massively reduce the cost of getting cargo into orbit.  I honestly think this is the first big step towards us having space habitats.  Imagine a future when Space X is recovering 80% of their first stages and reusing them (let's say 10 times).  We have the technology to make large space structures, it's simply the cost of lofting all the stuff into orbit.  Needless to say, I'd be quite happy being the IT guy on a giant space farm habitat.

It's been funny to watch the ULA people talk shit about the Space X, but I have to imagine behind closed doors they're shitting themselves.  They're talking about the "Vulcan" rocket that's going to be a reuseable rocket, but right now it's just talk... They haven't even flown hardware yet...so you know everything on paper looks cheap and easy... The big problem that ULA has is they're a bloated company that's optimized to solve the wrong problem.  Space X gobbles up supplies, etc. and brings everything in house.  We can argue about the ethics of that, but what it does is make their supply chain tighter than a gnat's ass.  All the parts come in a bunch of doors and finished flight ready rockets roll out one big door.  ULA on the other hand does most of it's work for the government so it doesn't need to be efficient, etc.  I should note that the financial pressure from Space X has forced them to consolidate and streamline their manufacturing... that's not a bad thing. The fact that their main launch vehicle relies and a rocket engine build in Russia is a major problem they don't have ready solution to.  They've talked about the BE-4 engine, but that hasn't left the test stand yet.