There are not many events in life

[Suff]

Which we find truly game changing.

Kennedy was killed in my lifetime but not in my memory.
I watched the very first Apollo launch.
I watched the first moon landing
I watched the challenger shuttle blow up
I watched the USSR disintegrate
And somewhere in the whole mix Martin Luther King Jr finally moved American Blacks out of the back of the bus.

Tonight I watched the Falcon Heavy launch. A rocket launch which is the closest we've ever been to the planets since the Apollo program ended. Even more so, Apollo was built of single use discardable rockets which burned up in re-entry.

When Falcon Heavy launched, this evening, SpaceX managed a launch vehicle almost as capable as the first Apollo. Not only that it brought back all 3 launch stages into landing. Still unsure about the centre stage onto the platform in the Pacific but I'm sure it will be OK, however the dual, simultaneous landings at Canaveral were dramatic. Even more remarkable was that two of the three booster first stages had already been flown and were re-used.

Whilst I may have a wry smile at the "showmanship" of Musk putting his roadster in as a payload with a dummy in a SpaceX test space suit, playing Bowie, but I laud the achievement.

NASA is still working on SLS. The Space Launch System. It is late, will likely arrive in 2020 or so and will cost about $1bn per launch. Musk's SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch for around $90m a go. Maybe less as we see just how many times they can re-use a booster. SLS will launch about twice the load of Flacon Heavy, but the cost will be prohibitive.

It will be interesting to see where SpaceX goes with the BFR.

However, when all is said and done, things just changed again. Mankind just took another small step on a very long road to the stars.

[Workingman]

Suff, when I watched my thoughts were the same.

The payload of 64 tonnes is staggering on its own. It allows for even bigger more imaginative projects to be launched - even the elements to build a base camp on Mars before us humans get there. Some of those could be pop-up units so that when we get there we walk in, turn on the lights and get to work.

This really is a game changer... possibly for all of us.

But then he also has the BFR on the go as well - 5 rockets instead of three. I will leave the reader to figure out what BFR means, just put your fingers in your ears as you say it out loud.