[HN Gopher] Netflix announces Space X documentary on civilian mi...
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Netflix announces Space X documentary on civilian mission into
orbit
Author : belter
Score : 120 points
Date : 2021-08-04 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.sky.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.sky.com)
| dotBen wrote:
| What I've been surprised about is that Elon isn't going on either
| this mission or just one of his own seeing as SpaceX could
| presumably have two commercial flights.
|
| Given the 'length comparison games' that Branson and Bezos have
| been up to with their 'near space' escapades it's a massive F U
| for Elon to do a trip like this which will actually be one of the
| furthest distances humans have gone from Earth since the moon
| landings (the orbit is higher than low-earth orbit where the ISS
| and Chinese space stations are). There's no question these people
| will become fully fledged astronauts.
|
| I was wondering if shareholder issues and risk could be the
| problem - but it's not like Elon seems to care about that and
| Elon is already saying he's going on Virgin Galactic anyway.
|
| Elon, Grimes and two friends going up on a Dragon X capsule for 3
| days would be a hoot.
| belter wrote:
| No, he is keeping himself for another demo. He will be tied up
| and launched on a Tesla cross country with FSD...
| tenpies wrote:
| > it's a massive F U for Elon
|
| Is it? Seems to be the only billionaire that doesn't trust his
| own system enough to fly in it, so I think that's a huge blow
| and shows a complete lack of confidence / psychopathy. Should
| not be surprising from the person willing to have untold
| hundreds die while "training" a "beta" "self-driving" system on
| public roads.
|
| And in usual Elon fashion if he can't win "it didn't matter
| anyway".
| tw04 wrote:
| I'm not sure he cares to be honest. Why would he? His goal is
| to have humans populating the universe, strapping himself to a
| rocket for an ego trip would be a rather pointless risk.
|
| I'd say the fact that his company has absolutely destroyed both
| competitors to date wins any dick waving contest around "but I
| personally went to space first". I'm not even an Elon fan, and
| I think he's got a million character flaws, but he seems to be
| sticking true to the purpose of space-x and tesla and neither
| one is about bragging to his rich friends with a "LOOK AT ME!".
| dotBen wrote:
| He might care because he wants to go to Mars and so
| presumably it's totally reasonable to assume he might have
| the opportunity to go to space more than once. He might want
| to do a 3 day tour of the Earth as the beginning of that.
|
| He might just because he's the kind of guy who pretty much
| makes loads of his decision 'because he can'. Plaid? Model's
| S 3 X Y (sexy)? acceleration speeds that are almost unsafe
| for normal drivers to be handling? A lot of his decisions are
| outside the norm, which is why (some of us) love him.
| yupper32 wrote:
| You can argue that turning down a 3 day trip orbiting the
| Earth is also outside the norm!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think the explanation is simple. Musk is a notorious
| workaholic and does not want to leave Boca Chica at this stage
| of Starship development. The activity at Starbase is frantic
| right now and will likely be frantic for some months to come.
| bdamm wrote:
| This is exactly right. He could not imagine delaying the
| development of Starship for the ~week it would take him to
| train for, orient on, and fly the mission. It would be a huge
| distraction for him and everyone in the company. Once the
| Starship trips are normal, operational, and for sale, my bet
| is he'll take a jog around orbit.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Flying on Dragon takes a lot more training than a few days.
| The Inspiration4 crew has been training for months.
| takeda wrote:
| Unlike Blue Origin or Virgin Atlantic SpaceX is not an
| amusement ride. He doesn't need to prove anything, because he
| isn't looking for passengers that would pay $250k for a 10
| minute ride.
| joakleaf wrote:
| No, but at 200 million for 3 days (1440 minutes) it is still
| $139000/minute, or almost $1.4 million for 10 minutes.
| takeda wrote:
| The difference is that this is a test before actual
| mission, similarly why there's plan to go to the Moon
| before going to Mars.
|
| People there are not paying for the attraction and they are
| also aware with associated risks.
| trsohmers wrote:
| You are off by a factor of 3... it is $46k a minute, there
| are 4320 minutes in 3 days.
| joakleaf wrote:
| You are right, sorry...
|
| Still not cheap though.
| trsohmers wrote:
| and since there are 4 people, it ends up being only
| $11.5k per minute per person.... cheaper per minute than
| Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's amusement park rides
| ben_w wrote:
| The millions are for the opportunity to say you were first.
| Musk's target price is getting to Mars for what Virgin
| Galactic is listing for suborbital.
| yupper32 wrote:
| When was the last time a crew that orbited earth were all first
| timers?
|
| I think all of the SpaceX launches so far have been almost all
| experienced people who have ridden on the shuttle or soyuz. I
| remember being amazed that we had such a deep pool of experienced
| astronauts.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| _> When was the last time a crew that orbited earth were all
| first timers?_
|
| Shenzhou 7 in September 2008.
|
| The Russians did it last in April (launch) and October
| (landing) 2008, while for the US you have to go back all the
| way to the second Shuttle flight in 1981.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Awesome stuff, thanks.
|
| Totally makes sense why we'd basically always want someone
| who has done the trip before. I wonder if that was actually
| the thought process?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Writing it as Space X instead of SpaceX caused my mind to
| question the spelling...
| gnhalf wrote:
| There's already a Space before the X :)
| wcr3 wrote:
| If the title isn't "One-way Ticket" then I'm not interested.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I have a bet with a friend that James Cameron will be one of the
| first private citizens to go to the moon, and that he will bring
| an IMAX camera to fund the trip.
| ben_w wrote:
| Sounds plausible. Musk's target price is essentially a rounding
| error compared to the budgets of _Gravity_ or _The Martian_.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| _> Musk's target price is essentially a rounding error
| compared to the budgets of Gravity or The Martian._
|
| Do we even know Musk's target price for a return-trip to the
| moon? It's very hard to extrapolate from the $10/kg figure
| ($1M/launch) that keeps getting quoted, as a return-trip to
| the moon without discarding a Starship (which will blow up
| the cost enormously) will involve a lot of launches. Even the
| HLS architecture, which leaves Starship stranded in lunar
| orbit and uses Orion to get the astronauts back, needs 10
| launches.
|
| Even if we're very generous and assume 20 launches at
| $1M/launch, that's ~20% of the budget of these movies. But
| that's very aspirational: for HLS, which is already
| ambitious, NASA paid $2.89B for development & 2 launches. If
| we assume 80% is development, you're still looking at $289M
| per trip.
| InTheArena wrote:
| The recent interview of Elon by Tim Dodd is probably more
| informative and interesting this this could ever be.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
| milansuk wrote:
| I remember watching "Everyday Astronaut" live with less than
| 1000 other people. Today, the numbers are over 100K. He is a
| great guy, who is very interested in and passionate about
| everything around space exploration and his articles and videos
| go very deep, the same for answering questions live. Only if
| more YouTubers were like him.
|
| Can't wait for 2nd and 3rd parts.
|
| His notes for 1st part: https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-
| tour-and-interview-wi...
| spikels wrote:
| Came here to post that video. Awesome!
|
| My favorite part:
|
| Elon's 5-Step Design/Development Process:
|
| (1) Fix "Dumb" Requirements
|
| (2) Remove Unnecessary Parts/Processes
|
| (3) Simplify/Optimize
|
| (4) Speed Up Cycle Time
|
| (5) Automate
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Two things I took from that interview:
|
| * the quip about people spending a lot of time to optimize
| something unnecessary,
|
| * the quip that you must be wary about recommendations made
| by smart people, because you will tend to trust smart people
| too much and they can still make mistakes.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Also leadership through humbleness and vulnerability: "I
| myself made that mistake, I followed the process exactly
| backwards and wasted a lot of time."
|
| Also leadership by storytelling. Don't say what you want,
| tell a story that shows people what you want, so they can
| envision themselves doing what you want.
| __sy__ wrote:
| I thought this was an absolutely masterful explanation of
| engineering design thinking. If I may, I would also like to
| add to this list another thing he mentioned: "each
| requirement must have a name attached to it."
|
| I believe he was referring to the first step. And "Name" was
| really "a person" as opposed to "a department." This was his
| way of saying DRI all the way down to each individual
| requirements, to force someone to be accountable for it. His
| example was that SpaceX interns previously listed
| requirements, that were later assigned to a department (e.g.
| avionics), and when prompted, no one in that department
| really knew why it was there.
| smarri wrote:
| Awesome video and thanks for the list, I was just going to
| write that down and you saved me a job.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Tim Dodd's website also has an article version of the video
| with a more detailed summary:
| https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-tour-and-interview-
| wi...
|
| > Musk overviewed his five step engineering process, which
| must be completed in order:
|
| > 1. Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are
| definitely dumb; it does not matter who gave them to you.
| He notes that it's particularly dangerous if someone who is
| smart gives them the requirements, as one may not question
| the requirements enough. "Everyone's wrong. No matter who
| you are, everyone is wrong some of the time." He further
| notes that "all designs are wrong, it's just a matter of
| how wrong."
|
| > 2. Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts
| are not being added back into the design at least 10% of
| the time, not enough parts are being deleted. Musk noted
| that the bias tends to be very strongly toward "let's add
| this part or process step in case we need it."
| Additionally, each required part and process must come from
| a name, not a department, as a department cannot be asked
| why a requirement exists, but a person can.
|
| > 3. Simplify and optimize the design. This is step three
| as the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize
| something that should not exist.
|
| > 4. Accelerate cycle time. Musk states "you're moving too
| slowly, go faster! But don't go faster until you've worked
| on the other three things first."
|
| > 5. Automate. An important part of this is to remove in-
| process testing after the problems have been diagnosed; if
| a product is reaching the end of a production line with a
| high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process
| testing.
| IanClarke wrote:
| I was surprised how Elon talked "in depth" about technology and
| engineering in this video with Tim, since Elon often uses
| relatively simple things to talk about to reach the masses,
| like "rockets must be fully reusable", "we need sustainable
| transportation (and they are electric cars)", etc. Elon likes
| to use simple language and paint big pictures. But he (and his
| team) must have evaluated thousands of interdependent complex
| factors and found the one solution (e.g. Methane-propelled
| Starship) before reaching to these simple "big pictures" (which
| he then likes to talk about and present to the public) and ofc.
| it's the right thing to do and there is nothing wrong with it.
|
| Though there are very much details, which he is aware of and
| trading/evaluating... at least with his engineers and which he
| does in this video, which is nice, refreshing and new
| information (for us and from him).
|
| I really like Tim Dodd, though he comes from a background of "I
| wasn't good at school and am still excited and knowledgeable
| about rockets today [and so can you(everyone)]", he is
| sometimes over-explaining simple things imho. I have also the
| feeling that Tim Dodd might be a sub-par interview partner for
| Elon in this video, but Elon manages it fine and I think he
| likes Tim for everything he achieved despite not having an
| academic background.
|
| Just recently I found https://youtube.com/c/MarcusHouse, which
| fits my taste a bit better, currently.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Tim Dodd reminds me of Andy Weir. They're both trying to
| explain things that are fairly complicated to an audience
| which is interested but might be starting from zero. That's
| actually really hard to do and then they add to the degree of
| difficulty by not being afraid to release the minimum viable
| product to that end.
|
| For me it makes both of them fun to watch because you can see
| them getting better. As a novelist Weir is - in my opinion -
| improving his craft with each novel. Same with Dodd when it
| comes to the videos he's making. Both really impress me.
| tpmx wrote:
| Shouldn't they have been wearing helmets when filming that
| segment? It was a quite busy work site with high altitude work
| (so a risk of dropping tools etc).
| IanClarke wrote:
| In the beginning of the video they were high up and I feared
| Elon could fall to his death and that would bring "all of
| human's progress to a halt". They not only work 24 hours and
| 7 days a week (In 12 hour shifts: 3 days and 4 days in a row,
| then 3/4 days off), but they also rush things, with tight
| deadlines, ofc. top-notch workers/engineers, but still. No
| fatalities while working like this (I googled it the other
| day) - It all looks dangerous.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah. But wearing a helmet isn't cool, so...
| IanClarke wrote:
| Elon's new, transplanted hair.
|
| He is very proud of it in the video, combing through it
| with his hand all the time. Especially with his current
| new hair-style: Short on the sides, long on the back and
| top - a rebell, cyberpunk, cybertruck-t-shirt on.
|
| He looks great,... today. Gone are the years where he was
| bullied keeping his nose in the books and -though coming
| from a modelling-family (his mother)- being (looking)
| rather nerdy/"average"... a bit sleepy (when he was
| younger).
| devfromanatolia wrote:
| Netflix has become an advertisement platform for certain
| companies/ideologies/people rather than a media streaming
| platform.
|
| Which is a problem because it has no like/comment functionality
| that can (theoretically) filter false/exaggerated advertisement.
|
| On the other hand, which media platform is actually not an
| advertisement platform? That's a whole another debate.
| Animats wrote:
| It's so Instagram: "Vacations of the Rich and Famous".
| sandworm101 wrote:
| "The privately chartered flight will be commanded, funded and led
| by 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, and aim to support St
| Jude Children's Research Hospital."
|
| Um. Wow. Lots odd there. How can a charted flight be "commanded"?
| Are they renting the spacecraft or chartering a flight? How does
| this support the hospital? Is this a stunt to gather donations? I
| applaud billionaires who do cool stuff. I say have fun. But I
| don't feel any urge to send money. Now if he did something
| dangerous and/or humiliating in the style of Comic Relief, then
| I'd think about donating. How much of my [brother's] netflix
| subscription is paying for this flight?
|
| Richard Branson driving a Ferrari while asking for money? No.
| Richard Branson ice bucket challenge ever hour until the hospital
| gets a new MRI machine? Sign me up.
| trothamel wrote:
| There are at least a few manual decisions that could need to be
| made on the dragon, in addition to the buttons here:
|
| https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46136.msg1...
|
| Of the four people on the craft, one of them has to have
| control if the "deorbit now" button is pressed - that would be
| the commander.
|
| (I suspect there will also be at least some other commands they
| can do, like changing the orientation of the spacecraft.)
| _Microft wrote:
| From what I remember a donation to the hospital made you enter
| the pool from which a winner for a seat on the flight was
| drawn. The planned spaceflight is called "Inspiration 4" and
| has a Wikipedia entry already:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ah, that flight. It is a purchased flight. My understanding
| is that while they can throw the word "commander" and "pilot"
| around, that this will be a purely automated/ground-
| controlled exercise.
| _Microft wrote:
| Indeed, even though that has not been that different on the
| crew rotation flights to ISS. Doug Hurley (iirc - might
| have been Bob Behnken instead?) got to fly Crew Dragon
| manually during the first crewed mission "Demo 2" but the
| spacecraft is meant to bring people where they should be
| all by itself (and with help from ground control).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The ISS is a special case. That requires a pilot who can
| take manual control should the docking system go wrong. A
| stuck jet on approach could shatter the station and so
| you need someone who can take over and make very fast
| avoidance decisions. The recent incident with a docked
| module was a huge reminder of those dangers.
| [deleted]
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > But I don't feel any urge to send money.
|
| Billionaires publicly raising money via donations is just..
| weird. They should just raise money among themselves during
| their eyes wide shut parties.
| dotBen wrote:
| _How can a charted flight be "commanded"?_
|
| I looked into this previously, so Jared Isaacman not only is a
| billionaire from a payments gateway startup he founded, he also
| is the biggest private owner of military jets and owns a
| company that actually trains pilots for the USAF, USNavy and
| foreign airforces. He is a very accomplished pilot from what I
| gather. (He's 38 btw, so kudos to him)
|
| So, while the Dragon capsule is autonomous there is some
| 'commanding' that is needed to be able to fly the thing,
| especially if some of the autonomous features fail - he has
| been having astronaut training for that and such is
| 'commanding' the vessel.
|
| _How does this support the hospital?_
|
| He sold one of the tickets for a lot of money, I think it was
| to the guy who is listed as an Air Force vet but is actually a
| data scientist I believe.
|
| Look, he has to donate and generate a large chunk of cash to
| charity - it's fair optics, esp given the backlash Jeff Bezos
| had for not using his wealth philanthropically. Here the peanut
| gallery, we can't have it both ways either we pop at
| billionaires using their private wealth to go into space or we
| celebrate the ones who do something for a good cause..?
| beerandt wrote:
| He bought a second ticket for a (former) St Jude patient who
| survived (to eventually become a nurse at St Jude).
|
| She'll be the "medical officer", which I'm not sure is a
| civilian title or crew one.
|
| Lots of "survivors can do anything" PR, plus there's an angle
| that space x is making space travel safe/common enough that
| you don't need to be medically perfect to qualify (she still
| has some sort of prosthesis from her treatment).
|
| It's a pretty brilliant PR campaign all around.
|
| She'll also become the youngest person ever to fly to space.
|
| ETA: Haley Arceneaux
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