Why didn't they develop this forty years ago...

[AnotherFairportfan]

...when it might have been useful for me?

Do not fragile for nets... Extreme neats.

[Jabberwonky]

Man! That is so friggin' cool!

And what did you need rocket for 40 years ago...(not that I wouldn't have one just to one either)

[AnotherFairportfan]

I needed rockets forty years ago for the same thing i needed them for fifty or even sixty years ago - for going to the Moon or Mars or Alpha Centauri ...

[MerchManDan]

I think this qualifies as Awesome. I'd have some concerns about landing upon foreign surfaces using this sort of rocket (we don't want to wreck the place before introducing ourselves, after all) but it seems at least as useful as a Space Shuttle for coming back to Terra Firma.

[NOTDilbert]

This is the second flight test film I've watched of this rocket - they're gonna have to stop painting the landing gear; the paint has caught fire in both flights.

Awesome, anyway.

[Atomic]

I'm reminded of the many and varied plans to get a man to the moon before they settled on the Lunar Lander design. It seems a single rocket unit landing on the moon would have been the size of the Atlas rocket used in the Mercury program, and the monster needed to boost that whole thing just to the moon would have been huge beyond belief -- something like 4x the size of the Saturn!

Consider: a modern Atlas rocket weighs about 330 tonnes and can lift 10 tonnes to low earth orbit, but only 5 to geosynchronous orbit - a nearly 70:1 rocket:payload ratio. This is what SpaceX is up against. A moon transfer ratio would be much bigger -- and then,need even more fuel to land and return!

A 100 ton moon lander requires something Really Really Big to get there. So, they went with the Throw Away Everything You Absolutely Don't Need. The starter payload was the astronauts and 300Kg of moon rock. Then built up from there - life support, a capsule, a lander, supplies -- and then the rocket to lift all that.

Seems it worked!

[Dave]

This is the second flight test film I've watched of this rocket - they're gonna have to stop painting the landing gear; the paint has caught fire in both flights.

Awesome, anyway.

The paint may be useful even if it burns off... a "sacrifical" coating to protect against corrosion due to weather and the initial flame of take-off. If the landing gear is steel it would need some sort of coating to prevent rust... aluminum might not but I don't know if aluminum would be strong enough or heat-resistant enough for this (safety critical) applcation. Titanium alloy... dunno.

"Awesome" is right. A big rocket/booster launch is always an amazing sight, with all of its raw power... but seeing them control this power so precisely is really mind-boggling.

[Catawampus]

. . .they're gonna have to stop painting the landing gear; the paint has caught fire in both flights.

From what I understand, that's the actual material of the landing gear itself smoking, not the paint. The legs are made out of aluminum and carbon-fibre, and are retractable. During normal launches and landings, they'll be tucked up safely away from the flames for most of the flight, being extended by compressed helium pistons out into the heat for only a very short time at the end of the landing process. For these first tests, though, they're just leaving the legs out for the whole launch and flight. This heats the legs up much more than would happen under ordinary circumstances. Which means that those are some well-built legs, seeing as how they still function properly even under unusually extreme conditions.