Elon Musk doesn't seem like the easiest person to work with, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a more accomplished human.
I mean, I guess some people here subscribe to the notion that space travel is imperative for human survival. In that case, you might argue that each step towards it is more valuable than anything else that does not immediately push towards human space travel. Human space travel will save humanity, your piddly vaccine only saves a couple of hundred million people. But that seems a bizarre argument to make (and maybe that's why one really makes it).
Edit: -3 in one hour? Wow. For what it's worth, I made this comment in good faith.
SpaceX is just beginning. His launch costs are now as low as the Russians (the cheapest). The Falcon 9 heavy will cut that in half, and reusability is intended to cut it by 80% again (10x improvement is the next goal). Watch this animation to see reusability, it's awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IbxqsWLXsw
Elon has said he will consider the company to have failed if they dont get reusability to work. These cost improvements will make many things possible and change the world. And these too are just the beginning.
The problem is: making sure the launcher lands where it has to or else falls on an unpopulated area. I expect this to be harder than with the free fall capsules, where you only have to calculate a trajectory and gravity does the rest.
I'd call that more like three orders of magnitude, and the world has been launching rockets and landing capsules since 1961. Nothing even remotely like what you are speaking of has ever come remotely close to happening.
No one launches rockets over populated areas, nobody aims capsules for populated areas, the CIA spent the 1960s recovering CORONA satellite film canisters with such precision they captured them with planes in mid-air.
Stop fear-mongering.
I was not aware of any of the marvellous feats you mention. Thanks for the information.
I was merely wondering if a propelled launcher would be a harder safety problem than a non propelled one, but it seems that has already been solved also.
(This is in answer to nknight)
And more to the point, I have no idea if the reusable capsule or launcher had an engine to drive it instead of using a parachute and letting it fall on the sea.
The only reusable launchers I'm aware of are the Space Shuttles, which look like to be driven similarly to a plane.
(answering nknight)
Reusability is of no ground-safety consequence. By basic physical law, these devices will be very nearly empty of fuel by the time they reach the ground -- in fact almost all fuel will have been expended within minutes of liftoff.
The first stage of a Falcon 9 has a dry mass less than a 14-seat Gulfstream V business jet, the Dragon capsule is less than 1/3rd that.
If you trust thousands of planes to fly through the air over and into major cities every day without killing thousands of people on the ground, you should trust spacecraft far, far more.