alt Hacker NewsNo, rockets landing themselves is just controlling the mechanism you use to have them take off, and builds on trust vectoring technology from 1970s jet fighters based on sound physics.
Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is fighting physics. Ordinarily we use a void on earth as a very effective _insulator_ to keep our hot drinks hot.
Replies
This is a classic case of listing all the problems but none of the benefits. If you had horses and someone told you they had a Tesla, you'd be complaining that a Tesla requires you to dig minerals where a horse can just be born!
> Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is fighting physics.
Radiators should work pretty well, and large solar panels can do double duty as radiators.
Also, curiously, newer GPUs are developed to require significantly less cooling than previous generations. Perhaps not so coincidentally?
His point is that everyone said landing and reusing rockets was impossible and made fun of Elon and SpaceX for years for attempting it.
Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is just building very large radiators.