Humanity just took a picture of a black hole with a multinational telescope array, predicted by decades old math and all that jazz.
All a few (educated) friends had to say is that the image looks like garbage, what is this bullshit on my frontpage.
I was surprised about how upset these reactions made me. But then I figured there must be a multitude of important things of which I do not have even the tiniest understanding or care.
Watched the video w my 10 year old kid and tried to explain how impressive this is and relate it to my own experiences watching space shuttle launches.
Pretty much the whole (western) world stopped to watch it. It felt very much like returning to space for the first time since the end of the Apollo project (it wasn't, but it felt like it), it was such a step change from the previous generation of rockets. This was science fiction in action, it was going to revolutionise space travel. It even looked like a new form of transport, and the speed with which it cleared the gantry was amazing to people used to a Saturn 5.
We taped it off the TV, and I remember going back to watch it again multiple times.
Anyway, the question was, "how do they compare?". Personally, emotionally, they're pretty damn cool, but way less exciting. More so than can be hand-waved away as simply being older and more cynical.
Both are impressive, but spacex' achievement is making their booster truly reusable. The shuttle required way too much refurbishment to be commercially viable.
These vehicles are also completely different in their purpose so it's hard to really compare, I find them both inspiring really.
Here's a comparison made by everyday astronaut: https://youtu.be/HF69nqY3TZs
The shuttle boosters would parachute and land in the ocean where they were retrieved and could be reused.
Back then, the thought of those boosters precisely flying themselves back to the launch site would seem like science fiction -- now it is science fact.
Just watching that video brought back memories of watching the shuttle launches -- as swish_bob says those were a BIG DEAL back then both for the engineering achievement but also culturally. It was something to admire and be proud of even if your only contribution to the project was "being born in a time and place where people do things like this".
If my memory is not playing tricks on me, when the MTV music channel started (which was also a pretty BIG DEAL in my world back then) they used animations of the shuttle (landing on the moon, I think) as part of their branding because it was hard to get any cooler than the shuttle.
Landing the boosters. Simultaneously. The entire live web stream, live video from space, the stats and maps, etc
The shuttle impressive part is that they are landing the second stage, which is an order of magnitude harder than landing a booster.
The Falcon (9/heavy) impressive part is that they are flying a reusable rocket in an way that is commercially viable (which, BTW, is what the shuttle hoped to achieve).
I think the best analogy I've heard for the boosters is that it's equivalent to throwing a pencil over the Empire State Building and having it land on it's eraser.
Being 'amazed by it' isn't equivalent to fully realizing what SpaceX's achievements imply: specifically tracking the progress of SpaceX means counting down the years until you can buy a ticket to Mars.
Do most people realize that these launches are primarily done to create Mars colonies? Do most people realize that the goal of SpaceX is to terraform Mars into a planet livable like Earth? Do most people really grasp all this?
I haven't met a single person (aside from existing friends) IRL that understands any of this. It seems to be mostly "cool, rockets!" to most people - none of the full understand of what each success is to SpaceX: money in the bank for Mars development and experience launching rockets to colonize space.
The vertical landing via rocket is to make it easy to launch and land on any solid surface in the solar system. Do most people realize the impact of this? I would be shocked.
Going to Mars for scientific research would be an incredible step forward for man kind. But the feasibility of space still holds a lot in question. It is exciting, but let's not call it "saving humanity".
[0] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/space.2017.29009...
Also, just FYI, your comment comes across as incredibly elitist as well, which is made even worse because the so-called "implications" don't actually follow from what we saw today, or do so only barely.
I think that is lost on most people. There's no point in today's launch for SpaceX if they don't get closer to colonizing and then terraforming Mars. They don't care otherwise - that is the goal.
Edit: Not sure what you mean by elitest, but okay. Every SpaceX launch, including today's, works towards this goal: this is what watching SpaceX launches is about for a lot of people, maybe most who watch.
What can be done to get more people to grasp the significance here? Or is this pattern just human nature?
Space telescopes, Mars rovers, Moon missions, these are the cool parts. Exploration! If SpaceX lowers costs enough to give of us more of these missions, then people will care. They've only maybe just started to make an impact, with Beresheet.
If the rocket puts a car into space, we have the ability to put a car into space. If the rocket lands and is reusable and cheap, we have that ability. If we send colonists to mars, we can send colonists to mars.
Until it's done, people won't worry about it or incorporate it into their worldview. Short of offering to help, what's the point in worrying about it until there's something new that I can do? There are way too many things to worry about them all, I just care when a new thing is actually available.
But yes, SpaceX is doing a lot to make spaceflight more accessible, and that will yield many benefits and opportunities down the road.
It will not be technology that solves climate change; it will be a reigning in of externalities, correctly pricing pollution into corporate development and taxation, and the recovery of truth into politics and decision making.
It should be common knowledge that most corporations are trading our long-term health for short-term profits; if only the corporations could wait 5-10 more years for profits, they could be had sustainably for centuries, rather than all in a burst today.
We need better decision making on Earth - and better technology. But it's hardly SpaceX's fault that we haven't solved our Earthly crises yet.
Sure, in the same way that I'm building the next Facebook because I've registered the domain name I'm going to use.
Personally, from a technology standpoint, I am not that impressed compared to what we have done in the past when it comes to space exploration. Moon landings, space shuttle, Mars rovers... The current state of rocketry all but highlights how awesome it was before.
The awesome part about SpaceX is not that their rockets are the best humanity can do. What's awesome is that it may very well make the first reusable rockets that make economical sense. Unlike NASA in the past, they don't have unlimited money, they are a private company, and even if they have help from the US government, they have to work with a budget.
If anything the achievement is not the rocket itself but how it creates a regain of interest in rocketry, both popular and economic. I mean, our workhorse rocket (Soyuz) dates back from the 50s, and all of the awesome (and too expensive) stuff like the Saturn V and shuttle are now lost.
This is possibly the most Hacker News comment I have ever seen.
62 years after the first flight, world-wide air travel numbered a billion passenger-miles per day.
So, pardon me, but the pessimism about space progress is fairly justified.
It's entirely possible that chemical rockets will turn out to be the "hot air balloon" of space travel. Whether this perspective increases or decreases your pessimism is up to you.
Hence the focus on reusability by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
It's "only" about 2% of global energy consumption. Not nothing, but also not that significant. There are much bigger energy wasters that can be targeted.
And air travel is growing at a steep rate because air travel has gotten so cheap and big populations in developing countries take up air travel.
“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” Rob Malda, on the iPod at its release in 2001.
That money ran out, thus also proving limited.
I’m not in any way denigrating the Russian achievement, but it’s not as though the US had no rockets of it’s own at the time and the military benefits were clear to both sides.
What makes you think that?
The original statement: that most people don't realize how awesome it is.
At face value, I've observed that less than 50% of people I know are even aware this is happening. So on that observation alone the statement is true. Among those that do know, when I've explained that there are something like 10 dimensions to solve (x/y/z velocity, x/y/z position, pitch/roll/yaw, and time) and that you have to solve all of them using only 4 inputs (lower booster, and 3 lateral boosters), they are more amazed.
In my experience, almost everyone I meet has the potential to be more impressed by this event by just learning a bit more about it. Therefore "most people don't realize how awesome this is".
you have to solve all of them using only 4 inputs (lower booster, and 3 lateral boosters), they are more amazed.
I thought they used those grid wings on launch, too.
Gatekeeping aside, the point stands that I, and others, appreciate it more as we learn more about it. Which is pretty cool.