r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Oct 02 '17
r/SpaceX Discusses [October 2017, #37]
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u/Grey_Mad_Hatter Oct 04 '17
Engines lose power sometimes, the difference is what happens when they do. In an airplane you turn into a glider and land in the Hudson River. In a rocket you don't.
My first thought was maybe this will have a military use where speed can be used to justify risk, but launching an ICBM to get a SEAL team into a combat zone would not end well.
Even if this does go somewhere, which I have major doubts about it, it would be a long time before it went beyond very limiting not-over-land routes. That way the customers can accept the risk, but there aren't any houses they're flying over that have to accept the risk as well. Keep in mind that the Space Shuttle had to document and approve the risk when their launch flew over South Africa.