I can't think of anything that beats the dual hoverslam for cool factor. What a breathtaking sight! Mad props to Elon and the team at SpaceX for getting the hat trick.
Agreed, it is pretty epic. It is one of those things that really impresses how far ahead of the previous generation launch systems this can be.
Now it will be interesting to watch how "low cost" commercial heavy launch capabilities will be used. I know they are working hard on the the BFR but there is money to be made here that I'm sure at least Gwynn Shotwell is looking to take away from ULA and others.
Everyone has their rationalizations, but to me the transport of a weapon is different from designing a weapon, which is different from firing a weapon. Each may draw the line as they see fit though.
Agreed. And in this particular case, they're not even transporting weapons, right?
I don't see this as being too different than a paper products company supplying notebooks to the military.
Just the devices used to choose targets. It seems like splitting hairs when you effectively don’t build guns, you just build gunsights to use a metaphor. Note that I’m in favor of supporting the military, but I’m not in favor of pretending that support however it comes about doesn’t ultimately connect to killing people.
While GPS can be used to target bombs, it can also be used to target many other things, like cameras and airplanes and helicopters and containerships and taxi rides. Simply because GPS is useful in war does not make it a weapon of war.
Spy satellites don't help industry or commerce or transport or safety or medicine. They solely help those who kill hundreds of people for a living.
Spy satellites, due to their very restricted scope of usefulness (and to whom they are made useful), are weapons of war. We'd be having a different discussion entirely if their outputs were livestreamed to the whole planet (like the GPS signals are). Those that run them don't permit that, because then they wouldn't be quite as useful for committing lots of murders.
