[HN Gopher] SpaceX will 'hopefully' launch first orbital Starshi...
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SpaceX will 'hopefully' launch first orbital Starship flight in
January
Author : hsnewman
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-11-19 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| warning26 wrote:
| Looking forward to it! If they can get Starship working, it will
| completely change the game for not just super heavy lift
| boosters, but access to space in general.
|
| Good luck, SpaceX! I hope that everyone else copies your approach
| (assuming it works).
| crakenzak wrote:
| The pace of which Elon & the SpaceX team continues to prototype
| and develop the Starship is beyond mind boggling to me --
| especially in contrast to the complete waste of taxpayer money
| that is the SLS.
|
| Yet again another example that the government is unbelievably
| inefficient and an incompetent manager of our taxes/public funds.
| garmaine wrote:
| The government is extremely efficient and funneling taxpayer
| money to Boeing. That was the whole point of the SLS, no? The
| best rocket lobbyists could buy.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/revealed-the-secret-...
|
| the take away for me from this article is SpaceX's appoarch is
| like software development.
|
| fail often and fail fast, stock options for employees to retain
| talents.
|
| i also believe Elon's vision for Mars paint a goal for SpaceX
| employees and Gwynne Shotwell. She is the force behind SpaceX.
| rndmind wrote:
| You speak in absolutes, but the world is not black and white.
|
| Look at the publicly funded Bell Labs in the 1940's - 1970's
|
| They invented everything from the transister, tcp/ip, C
| language, satellites, cellphones, and the list goes on ... they
| were not-for-profit because the government allowed ma bell to
| be a government sponsored monopoly.
|
| Look at that incredible work done, which would not have
| occurred if they had been forced to churn a profit each and
| every quarter.
|
| It is a tragedy what happened to Bell Labs when they finally
| were cut off from being a non-profit in he mid 1970's. The
| shell of Bell Labs remains, iirc the buildings are now owned by
| Nokia, but it is a very sad result for the company that
| pioneered our modern society.
|
| A great book on Bell Labs is called The Idea Factory, highly
| recommend that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Bell Labs were owned by Western Electric and AT&T.
|
| AFAIK they weren't directly public funded. You can argue that
| AT&T being a monopoly amounted to indirect help, but that
| still does not it itself generate enough money for research
| itself, neither does it ensure that the entity will be even
| willing to do and finance more research than absolutely
| necessary. They could have spent all the revenue on executive
| bonuses and campaign contributions to their congressmen.
| mrjangles wrote:
| What on earth? Bell Labs wasn't publicly funded. Talk about
| turning things around. Bells Labs is the best example of the
| universal rule that just about every good piece of science
| for the last 70 years was produced by the private sector.
|
| Every time I see something along the lines of "<so and so>
| tech wouldn't exist without government funding because...." I
| do some research and it turns out that the article was based
| on one person working for the government who contributed
| about 1/100'th of the important work, meanwhile the other 99%
| of the work being done by the private sector doesn't get
| mentioned. Sometimes the government also takes credit because
| they funded 50 million out of a 5 billion dollar budget, or
| something equally ridiculous.
|
| As for Bell Labs, I remember watching a documentary about
| Shockley and co inventing the transistor. The military
| decided they needed that technology and managed to get their
| hands on some samples from Bell Labs. They set up a team to
| try to work out what Bell Labs was doing. Even having all of
| the Bell Lab's work in front of them, and knowing what to do,
| they couldn't keep up. They interviewed the military
| scientists much later for the documentary and they were all
| very depressed by the whole situation because for every one
| month of work the military group did catching up, Bell Labs
| had pulled 3 months further ahead.
|
| The government can't even keep up with the private sector
| when they are copying them, let alone actually initiating
| that kind of research. It isn't a coincidence that almost all
| the best research in the world is done at _privately_ run
| American universities. At best, good research can get done at
| public universities when they receive industry funding.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Well hold on now, what about the pace of government funded
| space programs in the 60s and 70s? Government _became_ mired
| and slow over time as the means of capturing money from tax
| payers became more routine.
|
| It's entirely possible the private sector will get mired in the
| same way over time.
|
| Things ebb and flow like this. Healthcare in this country is
| mired due to the private sector, and can only really _flow_ the
| other way due to government.
|
| It's a natural cycle. Once something becomes a money printing
| machine, all parties involved naturally want to keep it the
| same money printing machine (it prints money for god's sake).
| Once private space ventures print money in a predictable way,
| the pace in which an Elon will move forward will stop (or such
| an Elon will cease to be involved, ala your Bezos and Google
| founders, gone from their money printing machine at this
| point).
| mrjangles wrote:
| Actually the government space program _was_ mired and slow in
| the 50s as Werner von Braun was walled out of the main
| programs because he was unpopular among the bureaucrats.
|
| It was only after the success of the Soviet space program
| that the US government got worried and decided things needed
| to change. They put von Braun in charge an the rest is
| history.
|
| The lessons one learns from this isn't that he government is
| good at science. The lessons are that great individuals
| produced just about every great thing humanity has, and the
| best way to empower individuals in through the private
| sector, rather then having them bogged down in the
| bureaucracy. The other lesson is something that most
| totalitarian regimes in history worked out pretty quick: that
| an all powerful governments can only function well when it
| has an enemy. It is something in human nature that we fight
| among ourselves and are happy to corrupt and ruin things for
| our own benefit. It is only when faced with an enemy that the
| human instinct to work together for survival kicks in.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This had a mirror situation in the East.
|
| Korolev was a genius engineer. He was also a workaholic who
| would not relent until he got first class components for
| his rockets, even if it involved bitter fights with
| ossified Soviet industry.
|
| When he died, his peers Glushko and Chelomei could not
| really replace him. After Korolev's death, innovation in
| Soviet space program slowed down and they lost the edge.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > the complete waste of taxpayer money that is the SLS.
|
| SLS is such if you see it as a space exploration program. If
| you see it as a qualified workforce preservation program, then
| it is quite successful. There's a chance it is exactly that.
| The US has built thousands, or maybe tens of thousands rockets
| capable of reaching space in the '60s, '70s, '80s and a bit in
| the '90s. The Trident II SLBM is an absolute marvel of
| technology, and it's probably unsurpassed even today, three
| decades after it was introduced. But what do you do with your
| workforce once you built all the rockets you need? Do you
| simply fire them all? What if there's some new development 20
| years from now, some Chinese or Russian innovation (maybe
| hypersonic missiles? nuclear thermal rockets?) that
| destabilizes the balance of powers? You won't be able to flip a
| switch and bring all your engineers back to work to figure out
| some way to stay relevant. So what you do instead is you give
| them some pretend work. What you don't want is to turn that
| pretend work into real results, because those results is not
| what you are paying them for. You are just paying them to keep
| them around and a little busy, not to take you to the Moon.
| cameldrv wrote:
| One problem with this strategy is that the sort of workforce
| you will attract to a make work project is much different
| than with an exciting new technology.
|
| If you're essentially telling your workers that what they're
| doing isn't very important, why would they bust their butts
| and make major sacrifices in their lives to do it (as SpaceX
| employees do)?
| [deleted]
| aeternum wrote:
| This would be more convincing if there weren't a major labor
| shortage right now. There are plenty of companies including
| aerospace companies where the skills of that qualified
| workforce could help move things forward.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > If you see it as a qualified workforce preservation
| program, then it is quite successful. There's a chance it is
| exactly that.
|
| This is my take on why we have such a huge automobile
| industry - it's not that the automobile is the best mass
| transit option, it's wildly inefficient, but having the
| manufacturing capacity for automobiles on tap keeps what's
| essentially a hot standby for a wartime manufacturing of
| tanks, etc. I think SLS is in the same boat, we have it
| operating inefficiently for civilian purposes, but it's a hot
| standby in case we need to manufacture a _lot_ of ICBMs in
| short order.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _So what you do instead is you give them some pretend
| work._
|
| Are you saying that the SLS is just pretend work? Because if
| it's not then it's very much a waste of taxpayer money at
| this point.
|
| And if it's not pretend work then I would further argue that
| pretend work doesn't keep the skills sharp for the goal of
| building rockets. That's particularly true since SLS has yet
| to deliver any successful rockets!
|
| > _You are just paying them to keep them around and a little
| busy, not to take you to the Moon._
|
| So you're definitely arguing that people should get employed
| to pretend to build rockets so that when you _have_ to build
| rockets you can.
|
| But I tell you: when you _have_ to build rockets you still
| won 't be able to because your people weren't _actually_
| building successful rockets.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Indeed, they aren't building successful rockets. But the
| re-learning process for them would still be much faster
| than if you start with people with zero experience.
|
| It's like saying there's no point in keeping a National
| Guard around, because if a war comes, the guardsmen will
| have no actual war fighting experience. That might be true,
| but they'll still be able to man a 155mm howitzer, or dig a
| trench, or perform a patrol at night in a forest or 100
| other things better than me.
| aeternum wrote:
| It's crazy that we are still funding the non-reusable SLS.
| Promoting competition makes sense but reusability is now proven
| and should be a requirement.
|
| Funding would be better spent with Blue Origin or the many
| other smaller companies that have demonstrated reusability or a
| path to it.
| garmaine wrote:
| What is crazy is that we're going to chuck 4 Shuttle rocket
| engines which belong in a museum into the the ocean after a
| pointless flight of a pointless rocket.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| No kidding, reading folks talking about the innovation in
| this program is laughable.
| warning26 wrote:
| > Funding would be better spent with Blue Origin
|
| Funding Blue Origin is basically the same as SLS at this
| point -- creating JOBS but not, you know, rockets or what is
| actually supposed to be paid for.
| JoshCole wrote:
| If Blue Origin isn't building rockets why is there a video
| of a reusable rocket being launched which has Blue Origin
| branding on it on the Blue Origin YouTube channel? [1]
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/ZUZZ0EDzII0?t=4913
| mrjangles wrote:
| Blue origin was formed 20 years ago. They have _never_
| delivered a single orbital class product. There are
| currently around 5 privately run space companies that
| have produced orbital class rockets that have flown, or
| will fly this year (Firefly Space, Spacex, Relativity
| Space, Virgin Orbit, Rocketlab... and probably others I
| don 't know about). Every one of these companies took
| about 6 years to develop their rocket from scratch.
|
| That thing in the video is essentially just a spaceplane.
| It has about 1/100th the amount of energy needed to reach
| orbit. It isn't comparable to any of the companies
| mentioned above. Blue origin has had billions of dollars
| pumped into it and has produced nothing.
| rtsil wrote:
| Anybody can make a video. A rocket, let alone a reusable
| one, appears to be harder.
| JoshCole wrote:
| I asked the rhetorical question because the claim that
| they don't make rockets is obviously false and the
| evidence that they do is easily found. I think it is
| worthwhile when people make false claims to counter those
| claims with the truth, overcoming darkness with light.
| Stoking anger with falsehood is folly.
| boringg wrote:
| So what you fail to understand and much of the "govt waste"
| argument also fails to understand is that the government has
| funded the basic research and incredible high risk capital to
| do any the projects in the first place. With out the decades of
| work and capital that the R&D programs have built in this
| country none of SpaceX would be possible.
|
| Everything that Elon has done has been piggybacked on the heavy
| lifting of the government. Most of all climate technology,
| space tech and the internet has been developed off their back
| and productionized (ie most of the technology is de-risked
| thanks to the fundamental research from the government).
|
| This, frankly, unintelligent argument that the government is a
| waste of resources probably better represents your
| understanding of how difficult technology gets funded in the
| US. Critical word here is difficult (not some ad-tech SAS
| company).
|
| FWIW the government has a ton of inefficiencies but their goal
| isn't to productionize something and turn it into a business.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This does not explain why NASA of the 1960s was so dynamic
| and goal-oriented and lost that spirit in the following
| decades.
|
| I still trust NASA when it comes to interplanetary probes and
| other basic research, but they stopped squeezing their
| suppliers (Boeing, Morton Thiokol etc.) for radically better
| launchers a long time ago. All improvement was very gradual.
| Which is not terrible in itself, but expendable rockets need
| reusable replacement very sorely. Fortunately, Falcon 9 seems
| to work very well.
|
| I think no one, including Elon Musk, would claim that private
| space companies developed everything from scratch. They were
| obviously standing on the shoulders of giants. What is less
| fortunate is the fact that many of those giants were already
| dead.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| This is ironically totally backwards.
|
| The 20B+ / $2B/launch SLS program "innovation" is to not
| innovate! This is Apollo+, but heavier and in many ways worse
| and very expensive.
|
| My own guess is that all in NASA / SLS cost per launch and
| program maint is probably on the range of $3B per launch if
| you look at the facilities list they have for this - which is
| super large.
|
| Even weirder, NASA now says they want to be the anchor
| customer for 30 years of this boondoggle! Rather than just
| bidding out whatever heavy lift they need, they are going to
| get stuck with this crap for 30 years, which is a clear lock-
| in effort to avoid this thing getting cancelled out.
| jhgb wrote:
| But SLS is not "basic research".
|
| > but their goal isn't to productionize something and turn it
| into a business
|
| Which means that you hate the government's recent plan to do
| just that with the SLS?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Basic research has nothing to do with the pork barrel
| boondoggle that is the SLS. SpaceX in the last decade has
| dramatically outdone NASA et. al[0] to the point of
| embarrassment. If building rockets and going to space was a
| football game, NASA vs. SpaceX is looking like Cumberland vs.
| Georgia Tech (0-222).
|
| Frankly as someone who is on 'team USA' I'd like us to suck a
| lot less at building rockets[1].
|
| [0]Who not only also benefit from all the same basic
| research, but have more direct and firsthand access.
|
| [1]Among other things.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Elon is hyper focused on one task. Go to mars. Everything
| he is doing is that. Orbital network so you can talk to
| each other. Boring company to dig places to live as the
| surface is probably too harsh. Electric vehicles and solar
| to move around the surface. Reusable rockets to
| dramatically lower the costs going there and back. To move
| the amount of material to build a city there is going to be
| daunting the rocket cost was one of the large outliers.
| Think he said that cost had to come down 10-20x for him to
| make this happen. SpaceX is doing research and they are
| willing to blow up rockets to do that. NASA seems to have
| lost the taste for that years ago.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Are you suggesting the Russian space program also
| "piggybacked" on the US government?
|
| Is it not possible that SpaceX did what they did not because
| of the US government, but in fact, in _spite_ of it?
|
| You may have this completely backwards.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Obviously the USSR and Russia space program is world-class.
| But they clearly took some cues from NASA*, albeit
| sometimes due to political pressure.
|
| Just look at Buran- Brezhnev started the program as a
| direct response to the US Space Shuttle. The KGB and VPK
| spent a fortune hoovering up documents about the shuttle,
| and the resulting vehicle had clear similarities.
|
| *And there have obviously been times where NASA drew on
| their work
| simonh wrote:
| The USSR/Russia had it's own many decades long R&D
| programmes.
|
| We know for a fact SpaceX has benefited from NASA expertise
| because Elon has said so repeatedly and often, and the
| experienced designers and engineers he hired in the early
| days, some of whom are still there, cut their teeth in "old
| space". That's aside form the fact that much of what SpaceX
| has done has depended on NASA funding, including the couple
| of billion for lunar Starship.
| jhgb wrote:
| And yet, weirdly enough, despite NASA's expertise, the
| launch vehicle most similar to Falcon 9 is...Russian
| Zenit.
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