• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Yes. The shuttle was both rocket and spacecraft, obviously controllable for landing. The Shuttle SRBs were reusable. They were not controllable for landing, but nonetheless they did land in a state that allowed reuse.

      Musk achieved powered flight for landing his rockets, but even NASA had a long history of research with VTOL powered rockets that were not used for spaceflight.

      He can certainly claim to have perfected it, but he certainly didn’t invent it.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      That was not the claim, the claim was on the actual space frontier. And in that regard Elon Musk and SpaceX has not achieved anything.
      At 4:10 he even praise that SpaceX works on reusability, and call landing the rocket a tremendous achievement.

      You are arguing a strawman, the exact problem this video was made to address.