Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.
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I finished my degree in aerospace in late 1987.
A year earlier we had our dreams smashed with the Challenger accident. I actually was in Florida 2 weeks earlier to see Columbia take off. One of my aerodynamics professors lost a friend on Challenger. Its was a dramatic time.
One of the big discussion points was "What next for getting people into space?" It was obvious that, despite the incredible TECHNICAL success the shuttle was, it was a flawed system. Every launch included a 75 tons of orbiter to lift and bring down. KELLY JOHNSON (of P38, U2 & SR-71 fame) advised NOT to replace Challenger with a 6th space shuttle but to give him and his Skunk Works team the money to do something better.
HE WAS IGNORED.
Since that time there has been the X-30, X-33, X-34, X-37, X-38, X-40A, X-51 all of which were meant to herald ne technologies for manned space flight but only the X-37 ever flew into space and that was by Boeing. The rest were done by others. On top of those projects there were numerous other projects like Ares and SLS. There were even design studies to scale up the X-37 to a crew size vehicle. The X-37 proved it could stay in space for extended periods of time and be reused.
The question needs to be asked: WTF were these people doing with all that money, all those resources and all that expertise over 36 years to only get this far.
I'M NOT and have NEVER been a SpaceX employee, but Gwynne Shotwell and the team behind Falcon have done an amazing job considering the resources and the clown who owns the company to do what they have done. From a blank sheet of paper NASA went to the moon in the 1960s less than a decade.
Boeing deserve the scorn they get. In fact they don't just deserve scorn they deserve to be kicked out of the aerospace industry all together or do you all need reminding of who built the 737 Max-8.
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