“Falcon Sticks Landing on Of Course I Still Love You” sounds like gibberish – but it is an amazing technological advancement by SpaceX.
Of Course I still Love You is the name of the remote autonomous floating ship on which a Falcon 9 rocket stage just landed.
It’s also a pop culture reference to Iain M. Banks’s Culture series of sci-fi novels, in which advanced starships had cheeky names such as Irregular Apocalypse, Congenital Optimist, and Youthful Indiscretion.
The last time SpaceX tried to land the Falcon 1st stage on the ocean-going droneship, the ship was called Just Read The Instructions. It was the most recent of multiple failed attempts.
The Falcon 9 rocket is powerful enough to leave Earth’s orbit. In order to drive down launch costs SpaceX is attempting to land the first stage of the rocket for subsequent reuse. They have already managed this on land, but for an even harder trick, they are trying to do this autonomously on a small floating droneship in the ocean.
Today, without being deterred by multiple failures, they reached that astonishing milestone.
Congratulations!
Onwards and upwards.
[…] Elon Musk’s SpaceX company achieved another historic milestone last night, when it launched another payload into orbital space while re-using its liquid-fueled booster rocket from a previous landing attempt. […]