Elon Musk and John Carmack Discussing Rocket Design on Twitter

DigitalSea · on Nov 24, 2014

This is awesome. I have no idea what the heck they are talking about, but all I know is two smart guys I idolise are talking about rocket designs and I am okay with that.

sysk · on Nov 24, 2014

Serious question: which book(s) do I have to pick up to begin understanding half of what they are talking about?

32faction · on Nov 24, 2014

We used the Space Mission Engineering: The New SMAD by Wertz, Everett, and Puschell for my senior capstone project.

It's pretty comprehensive about all things involved about space missions.

You would specifically want to look into its chapter about launch vehicles since that is what SpaceX does (they're basically launch-to-orbit-as-a-service). Dragon is their payload capsule while the Falcon is the launch vehicle (the rocket).

robodale · on Nov 24, 2014

The slower the descent, the less useful the wings will be, correct? I can understand John Carmack's logic that little thrusters could be more stable.

wodenokoto · on Nov 24, 2014

How does one view the actual conversation between the two? All I see is one tweet from ELon to johns and a bunch of random people commenting on that tweet

philtar · on Nov 24, 2014

Once the random people started creeping on Elon and Carmack's conversation without adding anything to it the conversation stopped.

_xg6h · on Nov 24, 2014

Scroll up. The conversation is above the linked tweet.