I grew up during the age man began to develop space travel, to someday take man between the stones of fire in our solar system. With the triumphs, the tragedies ring the remembrance bell. In my mental rolodex of failed lift-offs, pad explosions and self-destructs, these images play every time I watch a new lift-off. So when I began watching the footage of the new Space-X launch of one of their new test vehicles, I began to get that little voice speaking in the back of my head, “It’s not going to make it. Big fireball anytime now!”

This one was different:

Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX's rockets are being designed to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing. SpaceX's Grasshopper flies 820 feet, tripling its March 7th leap. - Space X

In other words, it did exactly as it should have, take off and return back to the pad. That seemed like magic, I had never seen anything like it before. Adding Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire', just makes it all that much cooler.

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Technology is now at a place where we can make thousands of flight controls per second, something humans are unable to do. This type of precision will take us places we have never been before. Space is starting be cool again.

Watch the video and see if you don't believe for just an instant it's going to crash:

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