<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr">On Dec 31, 2020, at 2:32 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal">I share this Twitter user’s attitude about how cool this is, but disagree with his comment on impossible. It was generally agreed by about the late 1990s that it is possible to land a rocket feet first.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://twitter.com/i/status/1343959265988411394">https://twitter.com/i/status/1343959265988411394</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">spike</p></div></div></blockquote><br><style><!--
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--></style><div><div dir="ltr">I think his statement — ‘Still kinda hard to believe this was considered *impossible* 5 years ago’ — is vague enough to border on being meaningless. He doesn’t say by whom and even when you say ‘generally’ it’s unstated who you mean. I gather you mean by experts in the field and not, say, the general public or even educated members of the general public. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">By the way, I was thinking of how back before SpaceX accomplished this I thought it was very high risk. Not impossible, but definitely not the route I’d advise taking. Am I wee too cautious or was SpaceX just lucky? (Or is that SpaceX is different enough in its aggressive product development process that my opinion (non-expert, of course) might apply to your ‘average’ rocket company but not SpaceX?)</div></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Regards,</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Dan</div></body></html>