[HN Gopher] Starship is threatening NASA's moon contractors
___________________________________________________________________
Starship is threatening NASA's moon contractors
Author : danboarder
Score : 188 points
Date : 2022-02-15 03:38 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| mLuby wrote:
| SLS is _just_ Space Shuttle boosters, tanks, and engines in a new
| configuration.
|
| Falcon Heavy is _just_ Falcon 9s in a new configuration.
|
| Now that Starship's shell is assembled, it looks 90% done. Which
| means there's only 90% hidden work left to do.
|
| The devil's always in the details. (BTW I'm a fan of all these
| rockets--ad astra per redundantiam.)
| vertnerd wrote:
| For those of you playing along at home, the phrase:
|
| "At this point, I am highly confident we will get to orbit this
| year,"
|
| is a special thing that Musk says when development is taking
| longer than expected. Historically, everything that Musk is
| highly confident about either never happens or happens years
| later than promised.
|
| Don't hold your breath.
| hoseja wrote:
| That's just Musk time. The rest of us not currently shorting
| TSLA can be highly confident they will get to orbit in 2-3
| years.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| AKA bullshit time
| darawk wrote:
| Bullshit time that still ends in delivery of world changing
| products, pretty consistently. He can bullshit about
| timelines all he wants as long as he's delivering at this
| level eventually, as far as i'm concerned.
| thesausageking wrote:
| That's been the history on self-driving cars:
|
| 2015: "We're going to end up with complete autonomy, and I
| think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two
| years."
|
| 2016: "I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem, I
| think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy,
| safer than humans, but regulations should take at least another
| year."
|
| 2018: "I think probably by end of next year (2019) self-driving
| will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least
| 100% to 200% safer than a person."
|
| 2019: "We need to be at 99.9999..% We need to be extremely
| reliable. When do we think it is safe for FSD, probably towards
| the end of this year then its up to the regulators when they
| will decide to approve that."
|
| 2019: "I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis
| for Tesla next year."
|
| 2020: "I am extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and
| releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. But I think
| at least some jurisdictions are going to allow full self-
| driving next year."
| [deleted]
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| > "SLS... its just not going to be a significant player in the
| future in space..."
|
| > Boeing's Starliner... continues to be delayed.
|
| Man, is 'old space' good for anything? Over breakfast this
| morning I read the article below about problems from
| consolidation in defense. After a certain point, aren't these
| companies supposed to make money building things? Isn't there
| some will to succeed in the management above the engineers? How
| much longer will government bureaucrats allow the farce to
| continue?
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/c408c7bd-466a-496b-9889-9f83cc85e...
| Retric wrote:
| It's congress not government bureaucrats that are in charge of
| the really big ticket items.
|
| As such these companies setup manufacturing to be in an optimal
| set of districts to ensure their success even if it's
| inefficient that's just more pork.
| Datenstrom wrote:
| The number of stories of contractor companies hiding
| innovation and automation to maintain a higher number of
| butts in seats is astounding. Never saw it at NASA but
| otherwise I know someone who automated his job away and that
| of over a 10 man team, made it a one button solution. When
| they told their boss the company immediately claimed IP, took
| the code, hid it away, and it was never seen again. Now my
| company is innovating in a space where we could similarly
| eliminate a lot of busy work and unless the product becomes
| industry standard these contractors wont touch it because
| they want to maintain the most useless workers on busy work
| they can. Missaligned incentives.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Exactly. This is basically the modern replacement for earmark
| spending.
| fsloth wrote:
| I'm not from USA, but my limited understanding is that the
| contractors (Boeing etc) work for Nasa, which in turn is
| guided by congress. And congress does not specify engineering
| or scientific goals, but how much government funds they want
| directed to their district. Hence it's broken from the start
| as a vehicle for engineering progress, but successful if the
| measure of success is to create jobs and subsidies.
| wolf550e wrote:
| Congress mandates specific technical details to force
| contractor choice and factory location in right district.
| For example RAC 2 (Saturn V reboot) won the NASA
| engineering trade off but congress mandated RAC 1 (shuttle
| tank, engines and boosters but without orbiter) becomes
| "SLS", to give jobs to shuttle contractors in their
| districts. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZx208bw0g
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's the big difference, these contractors get given the
| contract with a big pile of restrictions on _how_ they should
| build the thing, which usually aren 't optimal in terms of
| cost or performance.
|
| Commercial companies like SpaceX on the other hand, who are
| spending their own money (i.e. no strings attached) have much
| more of a free hand on things like technology choice,
| architecture and procurement.
| croddin wrote:
| SLS is like that, but Starliner is playing by that same
| rules as Crew Dragon as they are both commercial contracts
| rather that passed into law up by congress.
| Retric wrote:
| Starliner is a multi year contract that can be canceled
| by congress. Which means they are still dependent on
| congressional good will.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| SpaceX is spending _plenty_ of taxpayer money. They have
| significant contracts from NASA.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> SpaceX is spending plenty of taxpayer money. They have
| significant contracts from NASA.
|
| SpaceX is _saving_ plenty of taxpayer money. They have
| significant contracts from NASA, which they won by
| offering reliable launch services for a lower price than
| their competitors.
|
| There, fix that for you.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The GP said:
|
| > Commercial companies like SpaceX on the other hand, who
| are spending their own money
|
| That's not an accurate description, regardless of whether
| SpaceX is saving NASA (and the rest of us) money.
| Cerium wrote:
| Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the difference I see is that
| SpaceX is spending money they earned from NASA rather
| than being given money to develop a product.
| phkahler wrote:
| They have done both. IIRC They received NASA money for
| development projects like the commercial crew program.
| But in that case they got less money than their
| competitors and have already delivered results and are
| now taking people to the ISS for less recurring cost than
| the competition will if they ever get there at all.
| SpaceX has also taken government money for other
| development projects, as have the competition.
|
| Development is hard, and many projects fail. If that area
| SpaceX also seems to do better than the competition. This
| is probably because SpaceX basically takes "development
| project money" to do things they would like to do anyway,
| and would do on their own given unlimited funds. They do
| ignore projects that are not in line with their longer
| term goals.
| signatoremo wrote:
| They don't spend taxpayer money. They get paid with
| taxpayer money, after they have delivered. Big
| difference.
| thxCronyCap wrote:
| HPsquared wrote:
| Starship is funded by profits from other contracts. After
| fulfilling the other contracts (for launch services on
| Falcon 9 etc.) that cash is theirs to spend without
| further strings.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Right, but the specs don't come from NASA before the
| thing is built.
|
| The thing is built and then shopped to NASA as a possible
| launch platform.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| NASA absolutely got to set some specifications on the
| cargo and crew Dragons, and I'd expect there's at least
| some consideration to their potential requirements and
| quiet communication with NASA in Starship's design as
| well.
|
| There'll be quite a few specifics on the HLS award
| variant (which, hilariously, still manages to shoehorn an
| Orion capsule into the plan, at least for now).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS
| taylorfinley wrote:
| One wonders if that Orion capsule is designed to be
| interchangeable with some other payload with another
| function that the US might like to be able to continue to
| use.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| > hilariously, still manages to shoehorn an Orion capsule
| into the plan, at least for now
|
| Why is this hilarious? It makes perfect sense for the
| mission to me. The HLS probably isnt going to return to
| Earth, and even if it did have that capability, it seems
| extremely unlikely that we will have humans on a
| propulsively landed Starship by the end of the decade. Id
| be much more concerned if Orion wasnt part of the plan
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's hilarious because the mental image it gives me is
| like when a toddler helps with the groceries by carrying
| one small item into the house while I tackle all the rest
| of the bags.
|
| It's the big prestige NASA capsule and it's like a toy
| besides a Starship.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Right but its a toy that will actually be human rated for
| flights from and landings on Earth. Sure its not big or
| flashy, but it will get the job done.
| kranke155 wrote:
| SpaceX vs SLS that hasn't even launched and will cost
| some 10x to 100x more by the time it's done. Sure, spaceX
| charges money for its missions but it is radically better
| than the alternative. Any suggestion otherwise is
| stupidity or a lie.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| GP said:
|
| > Commercial companies like SpaceX on the other hand, who
| are spending their own money
|
| If there's a lie here (and I'm not saying it is a lie),
| that would be it. SpaceX being cheaper (and maybe better)
| than the alternatives doesn't change the fact that they
| are not "spending their own money" exclusively (or even
| majority).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If I buy a cheeseburger from McDonald's and they decide
| to invest the profit in R&D, is it still my money at that
| point?
|
| To be more fair, SpaceX is mostly spending VC money,
| while SLS is spending taxpayer money. They are gambling
| that they can make a better product for the customer
| without working under contract with the customer and
| being payed for their development..
|
| SLS has a government contract that pays up front for
| development, and will work hand in hand with the customer
| throughout development.
| signatoremo wrote:
| That's disingenuous. Is your salary your own money? The
| fact that you earn the money by working for your employer
| doesn't make that money their money. It is still yours.
| You can spend it however you like.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| As has been mentioned elsewhere, SpaceX has received
| development grants. Less than old space. But more than
| zero.
| Retric wrote:
| True, though a small fraction of their total R&D budgets.
| avmich wrote:
| > doesn't change the fact that they are not "spending
| their own money" exclusively (or even majority)
|
| You know you spend my money, right? I mean, I paid taxes,
| which government used to buy products from the company
| which pays your salary. So behave please.
|
| :)
| adolph wrote:
| > aren't these companies supposed to make money building things
|
| Making money not building things has a higher ROI.
| iab wrote:
| > which Musk recently bragged could cost as little as $1 million
| per launch.
|
| Didn't realize you could brag about things that haven't happened
| imtringued wrote:
| Hyperloop tickets for $1!!!
| nickik wrote:
| He didnt brag, he answered a question about what their goal
| was. This is simple editorializing.
|
| He didn't say 'We are awesome its so cheap'. He was asked to
| project and explain what they were working towards and did so.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And won't.
|
| I wonder if Tesla owners will ever get a refund for the self-
| driving feature they bought and will never work.
|
| SpaceX might be able to get to $1M marginal cost for a launch,
| but you can bet they will never sell launches for that.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _SpaceX might be able to get to $1M marginal cost for a
| launch, but you can bet they will never sell launches for
| that._
|
| So, if they mark it up by an order of magnitude for external
| customers, you're predicting that a Starship launch might be
| cheaper than a Falcon 9 launch is, today, with a capacity of
| a dozen times the Falcon 9?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Sure?
|
| Cheaper per pound is fine, but teasing with prices 10x less
| than you will actually charge is no more honest than
| charging for a self-driving feature that kills people who
| rely on it.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Prices are not the same thing as costs.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| avmich wrote:
| "90% of talks about artificial Earth satellites were led by
| USA, but 100% of works were done by Russia"
|
| Bragging about something in the future is as old as the time.
| Or are we talking about different meaning?
| nikkinana wrote:
| gsibble wrote:
| Falcon 9 has already made ever non-reusable rocket obsolete and
| look like a child's plaything by comparison. And the current
| industry players aren't even trying to compete. It's pathetic.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >"The space agency's first three Artemis moon missions over the
| next three years -- including a human landing planned for 2025 --
| are all set to travel aboard the SLS rocket and Orion capsule,
| which are being built by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop
| Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne and numerous other suppliers and
| engineering services firms."
|
| I'm guessing these companies enumerated in the last sentence are
| the "competitors" referenced in the article's actual title? How
| concerned would/should those companies be? Aren't those same
| suppliers constantly flush with regular defense contracts from
| the government? I don't know enough about them to know what
| percentage of their business is NASA vs regular defense/military
| contracting.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Elon doesn't have to spread operations out across the country to
| keep jobs going in a bunch of congressional districts that
| sometimes shift on the outcomes of elections. He can just focus
| on getting things done. NASA would have to be given more leash
| than is possible in the current climate to actually have a hope
| of keeping up.
|
| The world as they know it might be coming to an end, of course
| they're worried.
| Railsify wrote:
| Well said. Administration after administration comes and goes
| and neither party fixes the problem, it's almost like there is
| one party and the dual party system is just to extract
| donations during election season. I feel like it's all a big
| show.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| which, of course, is self-fulfilling.
| specialist wrote:
| Collective action is hard.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| While what you say is true, its not actually why these things
| happen. Government projects are inefficient as a result of
| how power structures naturally work. Nothing more.
| kansface wrote:
| Its like Conway's law, but for engineering physical
| systems!
| watersb wrote:
| I've worked on a huge space science project that was scattered
| across multiple countries in order to get the funding scale
| that the proposal seemed to require. We got the impression that
| in order to get the thing built, if we had relied upon a single
| organization to fund the project, it would have been far more
| easy to kill during development.
|
| Most of us were new to this way of thinking. At the time, the
| engineers with the most experience in building these things had
| endured decades of minimal funding, and had learned to keep
| things as simple as possible. There was a lot of pushback
| against what was perceived as unnecessary complexity.
|
| What is the quote, that organizations will expand towards
| supporting the organization, rather than the goals of the
| organization... Well.
|
| Science is hard, rocket science more so. All of the other
| commercial launch programs have (as yet) failed to achieve
| anything close to sustainable orbital operations, unless they
| are also traditional aerospace defense contractors. ULA is
| Boeing/Northrop Grumman, and I can't recall but I think
| ArianneSpace is technically a commercial company rather than a
| national space agency. Both are very, very good at orbital
| launch. But comparing their funding structure to that of SpaceX
| seems a bit weird.
| smoyer wrote:
| This is so true ... the amount of pork that's got to be bought
| just to get the (too small) NASA budget approved is horrendous.
| I'd argue that the "useful" funding for space programs is a few
| percent of what's spent. Imagine if we let Musk turn all that
| pork into bacon?
| phkahler wrote:
| The strange thing is if you want to spread the money around
| to all the right districts, you could just as well do
| multiple low-cost projects. By letting single organizations
| do a whole project it should cost less. OTOH like someone
| said, it's harder to kill a project that's spread across so
| many areas.
|
| SpaceX can just provide cheap launch services and we can have
| more large projects to send up!
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Cmd+F, "SHOTWELL", no results. Hmm.
| henvic wrote:
| I love space exploration, so please don't take me wrong...
|
| I've got an unpopular opinion: For me, the state-sponsored space
| exploration of space (particularly, the Space Race) slowed down
| progress in the sciences and even for space exploration in the
| long run.
|
| Of course, people can point to me all sorts of technologies that
| appeared first during the race. Unfortunately, we don't have a
| fork or an alternative world where this didn't happen that we
| could use to compare, so anything I say pointing to the high-cost
| such endeavors had to society is almost always met with
| skepticism (if you argue this makes me wrong, you're committing a
| fallacy regardless if I'm right or wrong).
|
| It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources
| been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a
| chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective and
| long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my point.
|
| Yes, maybe humans would be on Moon only 30 years later. Still,
| there's a chance at least the wealthiest could afford a week-long
| vacation with their families today on the Moon. We could have
| labs and factories for specialized equipment that might benefit
| from a low-gravity environment in space or whatever.
| mellavora wrote:
| I sense an underlying assumption along the lines of "industry
| is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a
| product/service than government"
|
| the truth of which depends on many things, including
|
| - how "better" is defined,
|
| - the timescale of the product/service,
|
| - the value creation/capture equation of the product/service,
|
| - the robustness of the product/service to disruption
|
| - the delivery cost vs profit margin distribution (some
| customers cost more to serve than others, think rural mail
| delivery vs urban)
|
| On any number of these, it isn't clear that the development of
| space tech from say 1935 to 2000 would have been faster if
| private industry was in charge.
|
| vs. now, when lots of the basic tech exists (Musk's rockets are
| based on Soviet missile tech, if I remember) ALONG WITH a
| proven market for that tech, yes, it does become more feasible
| for a commercial venture to leverage that existing
| tech/knowledge to create a product for the existing market.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Of these, the value is key for this domain
|
| Industry didn't have the appetite for this until very, very
| recently. To get anything done, gov had to create expertise
| (initially) and a market (later) for space exploration
| technologies and hope for efficiency to pick up in the
| industry. For the longest time, NASA existed almost
| exclusively to demonstrate technology and to create an
| environment where talent and tech could mature in the US.
| Now, that talent can be leveraged directly by market,
| thankfully.
|
| Blanket statements like "It'd have gone better with Industry"
| are potentially true, but miss the issue entirely: No highly-
| funded market for pictures of Mars, Neptune, Venus existed,
| essentially ever, including today.
| kiba wrote:
| Or you know, who your boss is?
|
| _vs. now, when lots of the basic tech exists (Musk 's
| rockets are based on Soviet missile tech, if I remember)
| ALONG WITH a proven market for that tech, yes, it does become
| more feasible for a commercial venture to leverage that
| existing tech/knowledge to create a product for the existing
| market._
|
| IIRC, Elon Musk tried to buy soviet rockets, but otherwise
| all the engineering works are his company's own creation. As
| far as standing on shoulder of giants, they likely stand more
| on NASA's than on Russian rocket designs.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| All rocket technology is based on German WWII rocket
| technology.
| adolph wrote:
| _The date reporting the first use of true rockets was in
| 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at
| war with each other. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the
| Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of
| "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple
| form of a solid-propellant rocket._
|
| https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_
| roc...
|
| But to your point the turbopump was a key contribution of
| the Nazis:
|
| _In mid-1935 Wernher von Braun initiated a fuel pump
| project at the southwest German firm Klein, Schanzlin &
| Becker that was experienced in building large fire-
| fighting pumps._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbopump
| TMWNN wrote:
| >All rocket technology is based on German WWII rocket
| technology.
|
| No. While von Braun and other German engineers received a
| lot of attention, his team at Army Ballistic Missile
| Agency (ABMA) was one of three competing US efforts to
| launch a satellite in the late 1950s. The Navy's Project
| Vanguard was the second to launch a US satellite (and
| would have been the first had its December 1957 attempt
| succeeded). The formation of NASA brought the three
| efforts together; Project Mercury used ABMA's Redstone
| and Air Force's Atlas rockets.
|
| The Soviets took German scientists, too, but returned
| them to Germany in the 1950s. Sergei Korolev and other
| Chief Designers of the various USSR rocket-design bureaus
| (which, unlike NASA, did not come and continued competing
| against each other) were all native Soviets.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >"The Soviets took German scientists, too, but returned
| them to Germany in the 1950s."
|
| Interesting. Could you elaborate on this? Was there a
| specific incident or reason why Russia "returned them to
| Germany"?
| dnautics wrote:
| Well not Goddard's work.
|
| Probably solid rockets have a different lineage, too.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Braun definitely was.
| StillBored wrote:
| Ah, and a tourism tip for the serious
| engineer/nerd/machinist.
|
| If you ever find yourself in Roswell, after enjoying the
| alien museum or when you get tired of the "crowds", walk
| a couple blocks north to the quiet little Roswell art
| museum. Buy a ticket and ask where the Goddard exhibition
| is.
|
| I was blown away! They have what appears to be most of
| his actual workshop on exhibition in a recreated
| workshop, as well as a number of his rockets (well a lot
| of pieces and a couple never flown/incomplete ones).
| Plus, loads of the usual pictures/documents/etc you would
| expect of a museum. I spent at least an hour standing in
| that workshop looking at the different tools he was using
| to build his rockets. Its crazy cool, and pretty much no
| one knows about it because "Art museum".
|
| https://roswell-nm.gov/1259/Roswell-Museum
|
| (ah and here is a link to the gallery description:
| https://roswell-nm.gov/348/Robert-H-Goddard-Dreamer-
| Tinkerer... )
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yep. Russians being dicks to Musk got us to Starship.
|
| https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-
| musk-t...
|
| > The third and final meeting happened back in Russia. Musk
| flew there with Cantrell, prepared to purchase three ICBMs
| for $21 million. But to Musk's disappointment, the Russians
| now claimed that they wanted $21 million for each rocket,
| and then taunted the future SpaceX founder. As Cantrell
| recounted to Esquire: "They said, 'Oh, little boy, you
| don't have the money?"
| merpnderp wrote:
| "industry is better at organizing capital and labor to
| deliver a product/service than government"
|
| At some level this is always true. Are there any countries
| with competitive industries that don't have corporations
| doing the actual work even if the government accounts for
| 100% of their revenues? Isn't this the basic premise behind
| the economic revolutions in India and China, that government
| industries are significantly less efficient than private
| industries?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Efficiency isn't the key: Appetite is. Industry didn't have
| the appetite for this until very, very recently. To get
| anything done, gov had to _create_ a market for space
| exploration technologies and _hope_ for efficiency to pick
| up in the industry. For the longest time, NASA existed
| _almost exclusively_ to demonstrate technology and to
| create an environment where talent and tech could mature in
| the US.
|
| Blanket statements like "It'd have gone better with
| Industry" are potentially true, but miss the issue
| entirely: No highly-funded market for pictures of Mars,
| Neptune, Venus existed, essentially ever, including today.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Rephrasing makes it clearer:
|
| An open market where anyone is allowed to compete is better
| at organizing capital and labor to deliver a
| product/service than a single monopolist organization.
| avmich wrote:
| Remind you, NASA did Apollo project in Soviet Gosplan
| style, when all manufacturers were working on the same
| central plan, while USSR supported at the time former
| Sergey Korolyov's team (Korolyov himself died in early
| 1966), their fierce competitors under Vladimir Chelomey
| and Mikhail Yangel's bureau as well, the latter leading
| to resources being distributed much less focused.
|
| That also allowed Zond program (Chelomey's Proton and
| Korolyov's Soyuz spacecraft) and automatic Moon explorers
| (Lunokhods and three sample return missions), so
| diversity did bring some fruits, but the manned system -
| which wasn't that far from working - was scrapped and
| Energiya-Buran project was launched. It brought results,
| but too late to be used with the terminally ill country.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The "Soviet Gosplan style" projects tend to work for the
| top 2-3 priorities of the country.
|
| The soviets did well in military power, international
| sports, and maybe one other thing, while the rest of
| society stagnated.
| simiones wrote:
| I don't think any industry/free market can compare for
| example to the war-time mobilization of industry displayed
| in the USA and the Soviet Union during WWII.
|
| For huge scale production, centralized planning can't be
| beat, at least for a period of time. I believe the same is
| true of the early space race, or the Manhattan Project.
| imtringued wrote:
| The economy must grow, no matter what.
|
| The problem is that if the economy stops growing but
| productivity keeps going up we will have to work less and less.
| However, we don't have a solution to sharing jobs. We think it
| is more efficient to employ a single full time employee which
| makes some people perpetually redundant while simultaneously
| running into the paradox that these individuals could work but
| don't have to. We still blame them if they don't work. We blame
| them even though the products the full time employees produce
| have no market other than these unemployed people.
| HillRat wrote:
| I think around here that's not exactly an unpopular opinion. :)
|
| The problem is that there's no obvious return on investment for
| space exploration once you get out of Earth orbit, since you
| need to overcome a vast number of complex scientific and
| engineering challenges, costing at least tens of billions of
| dollars, before you can even start to pursue speculative
| enterprises. Even if we stipulate there being opportunities in
| zero-g manufacturing or mining, the companies positioned to
| extract value from those markets are not companies that have
| any kind of aerospace core competency, so you have an
| innovation deadlock due to information asymmetries and
| ambiguous cost/value estimates. No board is going to sign off
| on tens of billions of dollars of investments with a high
| probability of failure, poorly-forecastable costs, and no
| defined market value on the other side of the equation;
| instead, the highest-value play is to let someone else own the
| cost and risks and, if they prove feasibility, to only then
| aggressively apply capital -- essentially, free-ride on the
| first-mover. In a scenario like this, it's likely that the
| technology never gets created until the government steps in
| with funding to break the deadlock.
| arcbyte wrote:
| I think this is a very interesting idea.
|
| I've thought the same about railroads and the USA. The federal
| government largely subsidized the rapid expansion into the west
| with railroads that meant that expansion was haphazard and
| unsustainable. The poor way railroads developed has left
| impacts on how society works today.
|
| If they'd expanded more slowly, we'd have had a more adapted
| and sustainable infrastructure today. Maybe we'd even have high
| speed rail everywhere.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Indeed the premise of "private industry always better" is
| ideology more than fact. There are many cases were private
| industry is better at developing technology, like cell phones,
| but areas where it would be a fail miserably, like proving the
| existence of the higgs boson. Each approach (private-led or
| government-led) has strengths and weaknesses. As for space
| exploration, especially in the early stages when it didn't have
| an obvious path to profit because who knew how much it would
| cost to get things working, the government approach was key to
| rapid development.
| avs733 wrote:
| I would add a corollary to this...when facts are posited in
| support of this ideology, you should be highly suspicious of
| them. Because more often then not the guy who built the house
| is telling you the foundation was irrelevant.
|
| Private industry often has the option to NOT do something.
| When they leverage that option, if the thing really does need
| to be done, it is typically left to government. That puts
| government led initiatives at an inherent disadvantage when
| private industry also dictates the metrics of success.
| Government is forced into doing things that private industry
| doesn't want to or cannot do - and we point to the government
| like its a failure. See USPS vs. FedEx/UPS - USPS treats its
| employees well, delivers to everyone, and controls prices to
| make basic services accessible to all citizens. Private
| versions do none of those things but we view them as more
| successful because 'they don't lose money'.
|
| Example from when I used to live in Arizona:
|
| * they introduced a school voucher program
|
| * theoretically, charter schools could not discriminate
| against students with disabilities
|
| * students with disabilities are more expensive to educate,
| in a public school the ratio of able bodied to disabled
| students helps lessen the burden of those costs
|
| * shockingly, Charter schools in practice wildly
| discriminated against students with serious disabilities.
| They used the language of 'would not succeed in our rigorous
| academic environment'
|
| * Students with major disabilities (e.g., Down's Syndrome)
| became enormously overrepresented in public schools
|
| * For public schools - costs per student went up, relative
| test scores went down.
|
| Some argued that this was proof that public education was
| _failing_ and they needed to expand the voucher program and
| grow the number of Charter schools. I would argue it didn 't
| - the ideology of industry better than government just
| changed the rules, broke the system, and claimed a victory.
|
| Space-X and Blue Origin and [insert space startup here]
| exists _because of_ NASA in the 60s and 70s and everyday
| since. It isn 't just that NASA did the early parts and now
| industry can do now. NASA literally used that time to write
| the standards that all of these companies now rely on. They
| generated the knowledge base required to succeed in
| spaceflight. They literally generated the standards - e.g.,
| 3D printed spaceflight parts https://www.nasa.gov/sites/defau
| lt/files/atoms/files/msfcstd... that are a starting point for
| anything they do.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| > See USPS vs. FedEx/UPS - USPS treats its employees well,
| delivers to everyone, and controls prices to make basic
| services accessible to all citizens
|
| UPS is unionized and notorious for paying very good wages.
| The difference is that UPS doesn't deliver to a lot of
| rural (unprofitable) areas. That _is_ something the
| government should be funding through USPS. On the other
| hand the travesty that is the USPS delivery vehicle
| procurement process shows maybe we shouldn't always rely on
| government for everything.
|
| > I would argue it didn't - the ideology of industry better
| than government just changed the rules, broke the system,
| and claimed a victory.
|
| In this case industry also created a market where there
| previously wasn't one for your educational funds. Your
| local school district no longer has a monopoly on tax
| revenue for schools and is forced to improve to compete. I
| would argue we should be explicitly subsidizing those
| disabled students you're talking about rather than
| implicitly have everyone else pay for them. Then you can
| split out necessary costs (accessibility, etc.) vs. costs
| that need to be cut (school is paying admin too much, etc.)
| avs733 wrote:
| thank god the government no longer has a monopoly
| on...checks notes...the money I give the government to
| provide government services. Now we can...check
| notes...collect more tax dollars so that disabled
| students have access to segregated education and somehow
| that will show us who is making too much money. You have
| invented the idea of accounting and presume that it is
| impossible that it will not show you are right.
|
| I hear this type of logic a lot. If you don't start with
| an assumption that the ideology is true and therefore the
| outcomes from the ideology are better then what comes out
| is functionally incoherent. It begins with the assumption
| that public organizations are poorly run and then uses
| that assumption to conclude they are poorly run. That's
| not thinking, its not argumentation, and it should not be
| respected as a serious viewpoint.
|
| When the charter schools get to pick the students they
| want and leave the the more expensive students to the
| group that is required by law to educate them they
| haven't improved. They haven't innovated, they've stolen
| from the public and claimed their moral superiority for
| doing so. This comment is representative of the fucking
| inanity (not insanity) of this ideology.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| > thank god the government no longer has a monopoly
| on...checks notes...the money I give the government to
| provide government services
|
| There's no inherent reason why I shouldn't get to decide
| how my own property taxes are spent. If my city decides
| through an election that those property taxes should be
| given as vouchers, why shouldn't that be allowed? You're
| proposing taxation without representation.
|
| > collect more tax dollars so that disabled students have
| access to segregated education and somehow that will show
| us who is making too much money
|
| Local tax dollars, which are raised by local elections
| approving those tax dollars. It also sounds like you
| haven't actually been in a school this decade because
| special needs students are _already_ segregated and take
| separate classes with separate teachers.
|
| > You have invented the idea of accounting and presume
| that it is impossible that it will not show you are right
|
| If I'm wrong then the tax dollars all flow back to public
| schools anyways. That's how a market works.
|
| > It begins with the assumption that public organizations
| are poorly run and then uses that assumption to conclude
| they are poorly run
|
| I don't see why we shouldn't give parents the choice to
| decide themselves whether those public organizations are
| in fact poorly run. And speaking from experience growing
| up in public K-12 and a public university, a lot of these
| organizations _are_ poorly run.
|
| > When the charter schools get to pick the students they
| want and leave the the more expensive students to the
| group that is required by law to educate them they
| haven't improved. They haven't innovated, they've stolen
| from the public and claimed their moral superiority for
| doing so
|
| You mean just like how gifted programs pick the students
| they want and leave the more expensive students (in
| dollars per student graduated or however you want to
| measure it) to the group that is required by law to
| educate them? You seem to assume that charter schools
| automatically haven't shown any improvements in outcomes
| when you say this.
|
| I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say
| let's wait and see how they do. I think parents are more
| than intelligent enough to select the best school for
| their kids. I'm happy mandating that charter schools be
| nonprofits if that reduces the grifting but I think we
| need choice. The other alternative is I move to where the
| good schools are and pay $$$$ for a house in a good
| school district. I think one is definitely going to help
| more people than the other, don't you think?
| greedo wrote:
| In my state, most special needs students aren't
| segregated, but mainstreamed. This has been a movement in
| education for the last decade. Yes, they might have
| additional classes with specialized instructors, but
| mainstreaming is an important goal for most k-12
| education systems.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of taxes that they are for spending
| we don't get to choose, because if we did, it wouldn't
| happen? Otherwise what is the point? They aren't Credit
| Unions or crowd sourcing, they are taxes. You are
| proposing taxes by direct democracy, and the United
| States at least is not based on that, because most of our
| founders came from minorities that were having penalized
| by popular rule, we tend to favor protection from the
| tyranny of the majority that you propose. WHile special
| needs may be segregated, they are still funded by the
| general pool, you completely failed to address his
| argument. You also seem to say criticize his opinion for
| not being in a school this decade, so are you arguing
| that maybe people who are say, more expert in schools,
| should make schooling decisions and not just any old
| person, say someone handed a voucher? The voucher side
| always touts the free market, but it completely fail to
| address that in markets there are ALWAYS winners and
| loosers, and if we as society are willing to increase
| that aspect when it comes to children and education.
| Instead of fixing a sinking boat, it just figures out a
| way for some to get to lifeboats. I'd like to think we
| can do and be better than that. BTW I was pro voucher in
| theory, but the outcome in reality just isn't morally
| acceptable to me.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| > Isn't the whole point of taxes that they are for
| spending we don't get to choose, because if we did, it
| wouldn't happen?
|
| No, the point is that as a city we should be able to
| choose, not individually. I said if my local election
| decides we should be able to funnel our property tax
| dollars to vouchers then we should be allowed to do that.
| I don't mean each individual gets to decide what line-
| item taxes they're paying that year.
|
| > WHile special needs may be segregated, they are still
| funded by the general pool, you completely failed to
| address his argument
|
| I said we should separate the funding for special needs
| because it's fundamentally a different cost structure and
| hides inefficiencies in the non-special needs costs.
|
| > You also seem to say criticize his opinion for not
| being in a school this decade, so are you arguing that
| maybe people who are say, more expert in schools, should
| make schooling decisions and not just any old person, say
| someone handed a voucher
|
| I think people whose kids are in school should get to
| decide. I criticized his opinion because it seems like
| he's trying to impose his one-size-fits-all public option
| when he's neither a parent nor a student. The US has
| never been a technocracy.
|
| > Instead of fixing a sinking boat, it just figures out a
| way for some to get to lifeboats
|
| Curious how you think we can do better. The US spends the
| most out of any nation on education per capita and has
| among the poorest outcomes out of any developed nation.
| More money doesn't fix the sinking boat, it just lets it
| take on more water before it sinks. Vouchers aren't
| perfect but I think they're better than pouring more
| money into a black hole with no accountability.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I think people's own experience tells them that public
| organizations are poorly run, not their assumptions that
| you have no basis for making judgement on. If government
| proponents spent half the effort making the DMV and TSA
| friendly and work that they do attacking people they
| would serve their cause way better. But no, just tell me
| my lying eyes are wrong. BTW if you are trying to have a
| discussion with people, profanity against those with a
| different view does nothing but make your argument look
| weaker. Moving the voucher claim from the theoretical
| (which I totally supported) to what we have learned from
| the actual (which has converted me to against) is a much
| better argument to make then attacks on people (telling
| them their assumptions are wrong, even though you have no
| idea what they have based them on, is never going to
| work). Maybe your post made you feel better, but next
| time maybe make a post that improves discourse and maybe
| leads to a better world (and doesn't alienate someone
| like me who is leaning to the outcome you desire).
| vkou wrote:
| My own experience tells me that most private institutions
| I interact with are also poorly run.
|
| Really, anyone that has worked for a living can tell you
| that most institutions are poorly run.
|
| At best, despite being poorly run, some institutions have
| a more consistent track record of mining value from their
| customers and employees than others. Those are the ones
| that tend to survive. As both a customer and an employee,
| those aren't the metrics that coincide with me having a
| good time with them. As a shareholder, though, they are
| pretty great.
| mch82 wrote:
| Quite an insightful comment!
| wycy wrote:
| Disagree. Space exploration requires a minimum base of
| technology to be available before it even has a glimmer of
| commercial viability. The state was able to solve that by
| pouring an incredible amount of resources into a field that no
| company could have conceived of touching at the time.
|
| No commercial effort would have expended those billions knowing
| it would take decades to maybe see any payoff. The interests of
| companies are overwhelmingly simply to increase next quarter's
| profits and return value to shareholders.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| During the space race the state got a level of results
| society could not (sustainably) support by lighting money on
| fire (at an unsustainable rate). Fast forward half a century
| and it's commercially viable for certain types of activities.
|
| Similarly, Columbus's initial explorations were state
| sponsored "light money on fire in the hope we get useful
| knowledge out of it" (like a path to the indies that cuts out
| the middle man) endeavors. The initial conquest of SA by the
| Spanish for low hanging fruit type resource extraction
| (stealing gold) in the 1500s is roughly analogous to "BigCo"
| commercial viability (draw your comparisons with the very
| expensive telecommunications satellites of the 80s) and by
| the 1630s even marginalized religious extremists could afford
| to settle on the other side of the ocean. Space is in that
| same process of moving down the economic ladder of viability.
| rkangel wrote:
| > state-sponsored space exploration
|
| Let's be clear - we are talking about organisational structure
| _not_ about funding.
|
| A lot of SpaceX's income comes from the US government. The
| money that they have used to develop Falcon was a result of
| NASA contracts, they get paid by NASA to deliver people to the
| ISS, they're getting paid by the DoD etc. I think it's a good
| thing that public money is paying for exploration, it just
| turns out the legacy players in the industry were incapable of
| innovation and a blank slate was needed.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| SpaceX is government-funded. The government is their customer.
|
| But same with the internet: The government funded the raw
| science, with military objectives in mind, and then it became
| commercially viable for private industry to make money from.
|
| Arguably, you could then make the claim that the private
| industry ruined it for everyone. I hope this doesn't become
| true of space.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is clear that the space shuttle was a disaster for US space
| exploration. It is a miracle that outer solar system
| exploration was not gutted, and we got New Horizon, Cassini,
| Galileo, and the foolish excess of Mars rovers, and Hubble and
| solar, x-ray, UV, IR, and other observatories.
|
| There is no way the space shuttle would have happened without
| stupid politics.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The tragedy of it is that the stupid politics were an
| intended feature of the original program. NASA got really
| spooked when the Apollo program got castrated just when they
| were starting to do real science instead of just testing
| hardware and delivering flags, and so they strived to make
| the program after that impossible for congress to kill.
|
| Jokes on them, the contracts started then are still
| impossible to kill today, and none of them have produced
| anything of real value for 20 years now.
| SEJeff wrote:
| Not fully true. Much of the initial NASA tech was
| transferred over to the Department of Defense and is used
| for ICBMs and various missiles. There is a lot of overlap
| with NASA and the DoD when it comes to these things. The
| difference is that the DoD basically has infinite budget
| when they really ask and NASA has a paltry percentage.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Except, it isn't used in ICBMs.
|
| Expensive parts of STS are not used in anything except
| maybe X37, which by all indications is useless, spending
| years parked in orbit just so it doesn't look totally
| disused.
| greedo wrote:
| I think this is backwards. The majority of the launch
| technology used by NASA (the rockets themselves, not the
| capsules etc) were military. It wasn't until the Saturn
| system that bespoke rockets were being used, IIRC.
| SEJeff wrote:
| The technology, the wind tunnels, the materials science.
| Much of it overlaps with military applications and the
| DoD works with NASA.
|
| The original NASA was military only. Then an all civilian
| nasa was formed and the two quasi competed. There is a
| really good overview of this in Chuck Yaeger's
| autobiography.
| p_l wrote:
| Stupid politics are also what gutted Space Shuttle, and why
| NASA went begging for money to Pentagon (which led to
| horrible design faults). Cassini would have spearheaded
| standardised long-range exploration bus, but despite
| tremendous effort Congress slashed funding for the program so
| all the stuff that was to support serial production got
| slashed along with the other mission.
|
| Similarly nuclear space propulsion and nuclear power outside
| of RTGs in US space program were killed unilaterally by
| Nixon, killing all heavier missions outside of moon orbit.
| voldacar wrote:
| A lot of different trends in technological stagnation can
| be traced back to Nixon. The book _Where is my Flying Car?_
| goes into this in depth
| danboarder wrote:
| "It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources
| been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a
| chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective
| and long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my
| point."
|
| Would you say the same thing regarding the Department of
| Defense and the Pentagon budget? I have heard good arguments
| that the military industrial complex is largely a bureaucratic
| deadweight cost to society, with few benefits (and generates
| the largest loss of life through Democide:
| https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM ). Anyway, I think
| perhaps your argument fits military waste spending even more
| than it does with regard to the space race and NASA. Or maybe
| it's just a characteristic of State spending in general (like
| the infamous story of a $640 toilet seat
| https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/only-the-pentagon-...
| ).
| henvic wrote:
| Yes, and yes. To the point that it's mere noise compared to
| the waste and destruction of wealth caused by wars and
| conflicts caused by politicians.
|
| Economically speaking, the waste caused by the industrial-
| military complex worldwide is probably 10000 times worse, at
| least.
|
| Going off-topic: However, even though I'm a capitalist pig,
| the problem with this goes even far worse than economics:
| most murders recent history are related to state-sponsored
| conflicts, not the John Doe carrying a gun around to commit
| petty theft and accidentally murdering someone. It's hard to
| become aware of it as institutions like UNODC never includes
| armed conflict between states in the count, for starters. htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
| Teever wrote:
| > It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of
| resources been taken from civil society for these projects,
| there is a chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more
| effective and long-term way from the very beginning, and this
| is my point.
|
| What would have been the economic imperative that would have
| jump started the development of rockets in the first place?
|
| Like there has to be some sort of reason for people to develop
| rockets in the first place, otherwise they're not going to do
| it, even on a whim because it's so outrageously expensive and
| required the development of so many technologies to make it
| possible.
| retrac wrote:
| Just "what's up there?" was driving some early experimenters
| before WW II. Smaller rockets are not so complex and large
| (and expensive). Small-scale exploration of the upper
| atmosphere with sounding rockets would have proceeded, which
| would have driven development of better small rockets. At
| some point, someone would start seriously thinking of putting
| a small telecom or geonav satellite up there.
|
| But I do tend to think that without the public investment we
| saw along military and PR lines that space research would
| have been very seriously delayed. Something like $100+
| billion in public funds between the US and USSR to develop
| ICBMs, which then translates to heavy satellite launch and
| etc.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| What was the economic imperative to build a ship to cross the
| Atlantic? Why send humans to their death out into some
| unknown massive ocean? Why get together funding for that?
| tomrod wrote:
| Wealth. Columbus wanted in on the spice trade and convinced
| backers to support him.
|
| At the time, we had ships that floated on the ocean.
|
| The space race's initial run was motivated by national
| pride and defense. The costs to keep it up have been high,
| which is why SpaceX's approach at reducing fixed pre-launch
| costs have found success.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Its the same with SpaceX. Musk wants to build a
| Libertarian utopia on Mars under his personal control in
| his own lifetime.
| kiba wrote:
| Elon Musk actually advocated direct democracy.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Without constitutional constraints, a direct democracy
| can presumably vote to make Musk dictator-for-life,
| right? If there _are_ to be constitutional constraints,
| the nature of that democracy is very much undefined at
| the moment.
|
| (His being in complete control over the mechanism
| required to immigrate helps shape that direct democracy,
| too.)
| SEJeff wrote:
| Which would certainly be an interesting experiment for
| his one million person mars colony.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Interestingly enough, you're using a state-sponsored[1]
| program as an example here...
|
| [1]: yes, I know the "state" was "a bit" different in that
| early modern world, but still Columbus would not have done
| that thanks to market forces alone.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I wasn't commenting on state or market forces.
|
| I was replying to a very insightful comment saying "Why
| would anyone build a rocket??"
| littlestymaar wrote:
| You answered a comment talking about how market forces
| would have lacked for the private sector to build rockets
| (in opposition to how the public sector didn't need such
| economic reason to do things):
|
| > What would have been the economic imperative that would
| have jump started the development of rockets in the first
| place?
|
| With this one:
|
| > What was the economic imperative to build a ship to
| cross the Atlantic?
|
| How is it "not commenting on state or market force"?
| Teever wrote:
| You have misunderstood my initial comment.
| reso wrote:
| The space industry was created by massive state-sponsored
| investments. There were (and still are) no private entities
| capable of putting forward the scale of investment that was
| required to initially develop space technology. Its not
| possible that states "slowed down" progress in the long-run,
| because the industry would not exist without state action.
| fsloth wrote:
| "For me, the state-sponsored space exploration of space
| (particularly, the Space Race) slowed down progress in the
| sciences and even for space exploration in the long run."
|
| I strongly disagree. A rocket engine is so complex, I think
| nation state level investment in a war economy moved it forward
| at least half a century, if not more.
|
| It took them seven years just to create the first turbo-pump!
|
| Without Nazi-Germany bankrolling von Braun and his Space Nazis,
| USA and Soviet Union would not have had the seed to start their
| ICBM programs.
|
| Which then fed everything else. Without Apollo program, you
| would not have had the huge airforce talent to figure out how
| to operate in space.
|
| Space has _nothing_ trivial in it. Each step has required
| carefull engineering.
|
| I kind of agree that with modern computing we probably could
| make a few leaps, but difficult engineering up to this day has
| required century or more of groundwork.
|
| For example Nokia did not become the fallen giant due to some
| VC investment in the 80's but because they had long tradition
| of radio engineering going back to 20's. And so on.
|
| SpaceX is now so succesful, because they have a century of
| aeronautics training, research and culture - bankrolled to a
| large extent by US taxpayers (for which we in other countries
| should be grateful for facilitating the future of space faring
| humanity) to lean on. It's still a huge achievement but without
| the century of defense spending it would not be even remotely
| possible.
|
| I would say that the tech is only now mature enough to
| facilitate the public ventures.
|
| But that's just me, you might be correct as well :)
| wnkrshm wrote:
| I want to add: If you look at the tools and theoretical
| underpinnings spaceX uses to develop their vehicles, they
| didn't develop them themselves.
|
| Numerical simulation methods, especially for hypersonic flow,
| powder-bed fusion, CAD etc. - those were invented by other
| people and for the most part all of the numerical methods
| involved come from DoD work, where they were first developed
| and verified. FEA? DoD. Finite-Differences? DoD. All kinds of
| clever methods for mechanical/thermal/optical simulation?
| DoD.
|
| It's almost sad how much of modern engineering depends on
| that basis.
|
| Edit: If you look at old papers for numerical methods,
| especially in wave optics, most of the time you see a fighter
| or a bomber in the results - gotta estimate that radar cross-
| section for when the cold war gets hot.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| The really baffling thing to me is that although certain
| technologies have come to pass in the last decade that made it
| easier to do what spacex has done, it's been technically
| _possible_ since probably the late 90's. I'm absolutely certain
| that Elon musk isn't the first person to come up with the idea of
| reusable rockets, and the people who actually did the work of
| designing those rockets were already around before Elon musk
| hired them. Tom Mueller, who was the first rocket engineer Musk
| hired, was building rocket engines in his garage out of
| frustration that nobody was taking him seriously at work. So the
| question is, how deep does institutional rot have to go to stifle
| innovation on this level industry wide? How does an organization
| dedicated to exploration become so utterly unable to take risks?
| There's definitely something to learn here.
|
| I'm looking through the list of the heads of nasa, and they're
| all trained scientists or engineers up until 1981 when Reagan
| appointed a business management executive to the position. If I
| could pinpoint anything as the inflection point, that's probably
| it. After that it's a mixture, but you get a lot of military
| generals and other members of the national security apparatus
| together with various business CEOs, and some mechanical
| engineers, and a couple rocket scientists too. But why did none
| of them try what spacex is doing? People from lower down in the
| organization were presumably shouting at them that they were
| wasting money. Everyone in an organization knows when the
| leadership is useless. It just baffles the mind. A fish rots from
| the head.
| justin66 wrote:
| > I'm looking through the list of the heads of nasa ... But why
| did none of them try what spacex is doing?
|
| There's no scenario where NASA or a NASA administrator could do
| what SpaceX is doing, well or poorly. That's not their role.
|
| That said. Charles Bolden pushed back on congress with regards
| to SLS as much as was practical. (I imagine other
| administrators did too, in their way) Congress wanted a jobs
| program and is getting a jobs program, and in that situation
| the NASA administrator can just say "this is not what we need"
| and be polite when congress ignores his recommendations. It's
| more complicated than that, but not by much...
| nickik wrote:
| Technologically it very well might have been possible far, far
| earlier. The computer in Shuttle are very complex, more complex
| then what is needed for a simple Falcon 9 70s style.
|
| NASA shackeled itself to Shuttle, a expensive failure of a
| project and from them on the basically didn't develop anything
| new for 3 decades.
|
| The millitary if anything is where such thinking should have
| been happening. The went threw many iterations of rockets.
|
| A few reasons why they never managed to go reusable. Reliance
| on solid boosters, once you have them reusability is not really
| practical.
|
| The millitary also simply doesnt care much about cost. What
| they care about is reliability above all else.
|
| And you would be suprised how much engineers buy into
| constraints. The reality is that after a while the status quo
| of the industry you work on is simply an assumed constraint.
| Nobody asked engineers the question 'how do you get 100 tons to
| orbit per week' or whatever.
|
| As Musk puts it, the most difficult part is asking the right
| question. Nothing is as harmful as smart engineers spending
| lots of money and time answering the wrong question.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| It certainly makes you wonder, what other innovations could
| we have made decades ago, but nobody was willing to take the
| risk? Currently most of our innovation is directed towards
| computer systems for keeping track of people and data, which
| in many cases can be broadly characterized as systems of
| control. And that appears to be what our society prioritizes,
| whereas a company like SpaceX only comes along once in a blue
| moon. And Elon himself is sort of a fluke as he's a person
| who is both a child of wealth, and also has a curious mind
| and a knack for understanding engineering problems. There are
| lots of curious people with a knack for understanding
| engineering problems but most of them weren't born into money
| and of the ones that were, only Elon has emerged as willing
| to make SpaceX level risky investments. It makes sense; if
| you're that rich, you have no desire to genuinely innovate,
| since you're already set for life and by definition are one
| of the people who benefited from society being exactly as it
| is.
|
| Maybe that's the real takeaway here: the people at the top of
| society by definition benefited from things being _as they
| are_ , therefore those people are the _least_ likely to want
| innovations that might cause real change. Therefore to the
| extend that society is unequal, it is also unable to
| innovate. I wonder if you could put that hypothesis to the
| test with data.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Its more than just "can we do it", its also "does it make
| sense".
|
| If you are doing a limited number of missions, it doesnt
| particularly make sense to go reusable, because you're going to
| have a hell of a time getting suppliers. If you are going to do
| 6 launches a year, and you can do that with 2 rockets, then you
| might think to build 4 rockets total. If youre developing your
| own engines, you now have to spend all that money to build
| maybe 4-16 total engines, depending on the design, which means
| your per engine cost is going to be massive. Same with core
| stages and everything else. You end up paying massive costs per
| component, and now you have to figure out what to do with those
| production lines you just started. Do you keep working on
| making more engines? Do you shut down the line because you've
| made enough for your 4 rockets?
|
| That, combined with a lot of reliance on solid rocket boosters,
| which are less important to make reusable, makes the idea
| sketchy. If we needed to put tons of stuff into LEO 30 years
| ago, the projects probably wouldve been attempted before. We
| just didnt really have the launch cadence to support it
| Kadin wrote:
| > I'm absolutely certain that Elon musk isn't the first person
| to come up with the idea of reusable rockets, and the people
| who actually did the work of designing those rockets were
| already around before Elon musk hired them. Tom Mueller, who
| was the first rocket engineer Musk hired, was building rocket
| engines in his garage out of frustration that nobody was taking
| him seriously at work. So the question is, how deep does
| institutional rot have to go to stifle innovation on this level
| industry wide? How does an organization dedicated to
| exploration become so utterly unable to take risks?
|
| I don't think this is a NASA problem, it's really a problem
| across the US Federal government. You see it on the military
| side of government-funded technology programs as well. (If you
| want to see a really terrible example, look at the ongoing
| failure to produce a replacement for the M109 howitzer.)
|
| My personal theory is that it's mainly driven by funding
| mechanisms, especially those covered by FAR.
|
| It's not, as some people allege, that the government is
| particularly _bad_ at things; the government is roughly as
| competent as any large corporation when it comes down to task
| execution. I 've consulted both to private sector corps and the
| government, and the fundamental challenges are largely the
| same. Yes, government compensation structures (heavy on
| pensions) do tend to attract people in different phases of
| their careers and lives than, say, equity-heavy packages at a
| startup. But there's not much evidence linking this to
| performance.
|
| Rather, the difference is that the US government has an
| institutional attention-deficit disorder. What gets funded one
| year might get cancelled the next. No plan can possibly be
| accurate beyond the end of the current budget cycle, no
| priority fixed beyond the next election. Everyone is going for
| "quick wins", because they want to be able to justify the
| continuation of the project. This is not conducive to risk-
| taking, _at all_. Quite the opposite. What government PMs want
| are projects that can set a ~24 month goal, and then show
| monotonic progress towards that goal every month, like
| clockwork.
|
| Projects that can't show those kind of clean metrics are often
| managed to death, if they are even started at all.
|
| Private-sector organizations, particularly those run by single
| individuals without regard for short-term profitability, can
| take on risks that the government won't--basically _can 't_--
| deal with. Elon Musk made some pretty big technical bets that
| paid off... but the government isn't allowed to play at that
| table with tax money.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > It's not, as some people allege, that the government is
| particularly bad at things; the government is roughly as
| competent as any large corporation when it comes down to task
| execution. I've consulted both to private sector corps and
| the government, and the fundamental challenges are largely
| the same. Yes, government compensation structures (heavy on
| pensions) do tend to attract people in different phases of
| their careers and lives than, say, equity-heavy packages at a
| startup. But there's not much evidence linking this to
| performance.
|
| I generally agree with the overall gist that large
| organizations are basically incapable of achieving excellent
| results.
|
| However, having worked as an employee for both large corps
| and government, I see two or three attributes that cut
| against government being effective.
|
| 1. Private industry is mission oriented whereas government is
| process-oriented. Government bureaucracies value adherence to
| process above all, regardless of what they create or impede.
| It's all process all the way down. Even when large, ossified
| firms make process a centerpiece of management, they still
| ultimately are attempting to pursue a mission.
|
| 2. The government's culture is homogenous and based on a
| mythos about "serving something bigger than yourself,"
| whereas each firm in industry tends to have some more
| concrete aspirational statement.
|
| 3. Government always has many more people on the critical
| path who can seriously impede work, because they're hard to
| get rid of or move out of the way, whereas private companies
| would have no problem firing such people.
|
| On the whole, I think even the largest monopoly firms would
| tend to be at least a few degrees more efficient than
| government just for missional focus and the ability to remove
| bad performers. If a competitive firm were to be as
| (in)efficient as government, it would die.
|
| However, communication, internal politics and management are
| major challenges for any organization at scale. It really is
| a difference of degrees, not orders of magnitude.
| dale_glass wrote:
| A huge problem I think is that just entering the market is
| terribly difficult.
|
| It's not a setting where you can get a million or two and see
| if it works out. Trying this requires pouring lots and lots of
| cash into it, it can all go up in flames, and even if it works
| you're then competing for a small market. If you just want to
| make money there are probably much easier and less risky ways
| if you have that kind of budget. You need the rare combination
| of somebody who is really into space tech and can get the
| funding for it.
|
| And even if the thing flies, it's easier said than done. NASA
| _tried_ to make the shuttle quickly and cheaply reusable. It
| didn 't quite go to plan.
|
| And even after Musk proved it can be done... not much happened
| elsewhere. Whoever else also wants to do it either needs to
| have some reasonable expectation they can compete with SpaceX,
| or needs to have basically unlimited money to spend on a
| passion project like Blue Origin.
| mch82 wrote:
| I think society just got scared by the pace of progress and
| change, then decided to tap the breaks.
| hourislate wrote:
| https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| The original Politico article futurism article refers to:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/12/elon-musk-space-fre...
| dang wrote:
| Changed from https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex.
| Thanks!
| danboarder wrote:
| @hourislate Thanks, I think the amp link caused the original
| link to go to a login page, weird.
|
| @hn Maybe a mod can correct my op link with this one? I can no
| longer edit it.
| dang wrote:
| It wasn't you. Our software follows redirects and canonical
| URLs now and https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex led
| on a wild goose chase to a wordpress login flow. Sorry! I've
| fixed it above now.
|
| Edit: however, it's not the original source, so we've
| switched to that from https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-
| spacex. Note this guideline:
|
| " _Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
| something found on another site, submit the latter._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| danboarder wrote:
| Thank you!
| copperwater69 wrote:
| This link works
| imglorp wrote:
| We used to think a four minute mile was impossible, until Roger
| Bannister in 1954. Think how all the other runners felt after
| that run: they had to catch up. Now it's done all the time and is
| the standard.
| csours wrote:
| Capitalism "creates" efficiency by driving under-performers to
| change or driving them out of the market.
|
| Efficiency means not doing unnecessary things, not employing
| unnecessary people. They may have been doing something useful,
| or just something that someone thought was important.
|
| The important point is the question of what exactly you are
| being efficient at doing. As you drive towards a particular
| Pareto optimization, economic forces have changed what you need
| to optimize for, perhaps driven by your own optimization. The
| limiting factors have changed.
|
| If the moat of required competencies and capital allocation is
| large enough, you can hide a lot of inefficiencies (aka your
| boss's friends) for quite a long time.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: people can comment about crony capitalism etc if they
| like, my comment is not meant to be comprehensive, merely
| observational.
| kiba wrote:
| Capitalism isn't why SpaceX beats competitors. Rather,
| money's not the motivator that drive Elon Musk and his
| company. Defense contractors are a form of capitalism too.
|
| The market can impose _some_ discipline, but it 's up to the
| humans in the driver seat.
| csours wrote:
| I agree. Capitalism itself doesn't do anything; people
| working in a context tend to value what that context
| values. Capitalism drives efficient use of capital.
|
| Another context for SpaceX is the Moonshot - the big
| transformational project. In a Moonshot, everyone has to do
| more work than their job requires. This is called glue work
| and normally you should limit what glue work you do because
| you may not be rewarded for it. People working at SpaceX
| seem to believe in the mission and that is a reward in
| itself, which leads people to be motivated to bridge all
| those little gaps that form between job roles.
|
| I'd love to hear what other contexts people use to think
| about this.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It's really the manager's job to look at a productive
| employee and say "great job with all of that glue work
| you're doing," and their bosses job to support their
| support, and so on up to where the org tree merges the
| two sides being glued and you get one person who's
| personally happy about it. Of course that doesn't happen,
| but that's due to bad management rewarding lower
| management for putting departmental metrics ahead of
| company-wide results, not due to there not being a
| "moonshot" in progress.
|
| If the CEO is patting the head of development on the back
| for results he got by stonewalling sales, and the head of
| sales for stonewalling development, that's the source of
| the problem even if the company sells used carpets.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Slightly different take. The advantage is consistency of
| goals and simplicity of governance. Private public
| partnerships are weighed down by a vast number of
| stakeholders. You can't follow the engineering as easily if
| your programs are bound to customer review meetings to
| renegotiate requirements and budget gating every 2-4 years.
| This adds incredible friction to development.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Defense contractors are a form of capitalism too.
|
| But different; the US is the best funded / most expensive
| military in the world by a big margin, and the defense
| contractors know it and develop weapons and price them
| accordingly. It's why they use fancy weapon systems instead
| of tried, tested and cheap Kalashnikovs.
|
| SpaceX is the Kalashnikov of rockets, if you think about
| it.
| imglorp wrote:
| Yes, but I think there are some corollaries. First, sometimes
| marketing beats all the other concerns. And second, sometimes
| business deals beat marketing.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| That's just because capitalism as taught in college
| micro/macro classes assumes a perfect market with no
| differentiation and lowest price always wins. But in
| reality it costs money to disseminate information
| (marketing) and deals are not struck in a perfect market.
| And differentiation is not only common but desired by
| sellers.
|
| I'd also add that government tends to magnify these
| distortions since it gates access to a lot of demand behind
| a bidding process that's heavily politicized and reliant on
| lobbying. So the market as thought of in economics doesn't
| really exist anymore.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I believe the general consensus of the informed is that Starship
| is going to take years longer than originally predicted. There's
| a history of this. Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being
| delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly
| reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was originally built for
| to the point there are a couple of launches a year at best.
|
| Musk does deserve a lot of credit for SpaceX. The Falcon 9
| vehicle is arguably the most reliable launch system we've ever
| made [1]. It's cheap to produce and launch. It's even cheaper
| once you factor in reuse. Starlink will probably be a game
| changer for many (but it isn't yet). But that doesn't matter
| because Starlink is driving down launch costs (with reuse) and
| improving the Falcon 9 track record.
|
| All of this for <$20B in investment, which is about the
| development cost of SLS. SLS hasn't even launched yet and will
| probably cost ~$1B/launch anyway. And it's not just an issue of
| throwing money at the problem. Blue Origin has had just as much
| money thrown at it and was founded years before SpaceX yet it
| still hasn't reached orbit and its BE-4 engines have been delayed
| _years_.
|
| Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit
| before 2025 I won't be surprised.
|
| [1]: https://www.thespacetechie.com/falcon-9-the-most-loved-
| rocke...
| go_elmo wrote:
| Getting to orbit isnt the hard part having reliable engines
| (tested) and rocket (also tested), its returning in a state
| allowing for rapid reusability / not already having a RUD on
| deorbiting. I would be extremely surprised if any heat shield
| system manages a few flights without significant inspection /
| replacement.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being delayed so
| long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly reduced the
| payloads that Falcon Heavy was originally built for to the
| point there are a couple of launches a year at best.
|
| Did you mean that "improvements in the Merlin engine greatly
| _increased_ " the payloads that Falcon 9 can deliver, therefore
| reducing the need for Falcon Heavy? Because if that's what
| happened, then there wasn't a delay as such and it's quite
| disingenuous to put it as such.
|
| > All of this for <$20B in investment, which is about the
| development cost of SLS.
|
| $1B is <$20B, and the cost of SLS will be much more than $20B.
| This sentence is particularly disingenuous if not outright
| dishonest.
|
| > SLS hasn't even launched yet and will probably cost
| ~$1B/launch anyway.
|
| SLS has been in the works for longer than Starship, has it not?
| And Starship supposedly will cost much less per ton to orbit
| than Falcon 9 / Falcon heavy, which means "~$1B/launch" is just
| nuts.
|
| > Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach
| orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised.
|
| Meh. They'll reach orbit when they reach orbit, but you've not
| shown any arguments for why it would take them that long.
|
| > Blue Origin has had just as much money thrown at it and was
| founded years before SpaceX yet it still hasn't reached orbit
| and its BE-4 engines have been delayed years.
|
| BO hasn't even reached orbit at all, while SpaceX sure has!
| What are you on about?!
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Did you mean that "improvements in the Merlin engine
| greatly increased" the payloads that Falcon 9 can deliver
|
| I believe that's what I said. The specs for FH claim ~64t to
| LEO. F9 is ~22t but it didn't start at 22t. It got that way
| with increasing improvements in the Merlin engines. That
| improved capability ate away at the payloads that would
| otherwise have necessitated FH.
|
| > This sentence is particularly disingenuous if not outright
| dishonest.
|
| You've misunderstood my point. I'm arguing SpaceX has been
| _ridiculously_ more economical than the SLS jobs program
| (which is what it is). There is quite literally no reason for
| SLS to exist. For the cost of a handful of launches, SpaceX
| has done over 100 launches.
|
| > BO hasn't even reached orbit at all, while SpaceX sure has!
| What are you on about?!
|
| Again, you've misunderstood my point. We're agreeing.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Ah, ok, so sorry.
| tonmoy wrote:
| I think you are misreading GP's comments. I got the
| impression that GP is praising SpaceX same as you..
| xoa wrote:
| > _I believe the general consensus of the informed is that
| Starship is going to take years longer than originally
| predicted._
|
| Are you joking? That isn't even vaguely the "general consensus
| of the informed", at best it's "wishful thinking by old space
| types who are seeing the real time overturning of their gravy
| train". Frankly, at this point the major risk factors as far as
| getting to orbit are done. Raptor works and generates plenty of
| thrust. Starship can go up, complete a bellflop maneuver, and
| then land. And under _harder_ conditions, they did an extremely
| aggressive fast landing to save fuel, much higher g 's then
| they have to. The only critical component to save in SS/SH is
| the SH booster, which is where most of the expense is in terms
| of lots of Raptor engines. However, that's also the easiest
| part technically speaking, it just goes up and straight down
| again and SpaceX has proven capability to do that obviously. In
| fact fundamentally it's _easier_ than F9. SH will have a
| minimum empty TWR (thrust /weight ratio) below 1, which means
| it's capable of hovering. F9 doesn't, so when they light up
| empty even a single engine on minimum throttle it'll still be
| heading right back up again. That's why they need the "hover
| slam" landing procedure, where they very carefully time things
| so that downward velocity and thrust counteract at exactly the
| landing height. Steel is easy to work with and more reliable.
|
| People have this notion that "bigger is harder" but that's no
| in fact always true. And SpaceX has engineered every last bit
| about Starship as part of an overall self-reinforcing system.
| It's cheap to iterate. Mass manufacturing has been a core part
| of the plan from day 1. So they can be hardware rich, cheaply.
| Flight is also engineered to be cheap, from the materials in
| construction to the construction procedures themselves and
| right down to the fuel (RP-1 rocket grade kerosene is quite
| pricey, methane is not). And they can self-bootstrap thanks to
| Starlink. SpaceX can look at a true MVP: all they have to do to
| start iterating is launch SS/SH and recover SH, it's fine to
| have SS be fully expended while they figure things out and it
| will _still_ be cheaper /kg (maybe even cheaper outright!) than
| F9. So they can be making money off it very fast, and then make
| _more_ money once SS is landing too. They can do initial proof
| with their own payload, then riskier commercial payload, then
| full commercial, then manned, ironing out issues with actual
| real flight the entire way.
|
| So what's revolutionary about Starship isn't merely the vehicle
| itself, but the entire system around the vehicle including the
| fact that "the vehicle" can pretty rapidly evolve and get
| tweaked.
|
| _There 's a history of this. Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It
| ended up being delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin
| engine greatly reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was
| originally built for to the point there are a couple of
| launches a year at best._
|
| No, you've got this completely backwards. The rapid iteration
| and increasing power of the F9 _negated_ the initial economic
| proposition for Falcon Heavy, so they just didn 't need to
| bother and put it on the backburner until F9 was fully baked.
| Then they didn't devote much more resources to FH because
| Starship will completely obsolete it anyway.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Frankly, at this point the major risk factors as far as
| getting to orbit are done.
|
| There's a lot more to Starship than that, right? In-orbit
| refueling. Heat shield. The launch tower chopstick catch.
| Engineering a crew space. Hell, the big window. I don't doubt
| they'll get one into orbit this year, but that's not what I'd
| define as a completed Starship program.
|
| Even Elon knows it's notable when he hits a deadline.
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1434959550575255558
| xoa wrote:
| > _There 's a lot more to Starship than that, right?_
|
| Not for MVP, which is getting Starship to LEO. Once they do
| that, they can start using it for Starlink and a fair
| amount of commercial cargo, which means it starts paying
| for itself and their runway extends vastly
|
| > _In-orbit refueling. Heat shield. The launch tower
| chopstick catch._
|
| First is only required for high energy, stuff like deep
| space. They don't need that to get iterating. Hell, they
| don't need second stage reuse even for their NASA Lunar
| contract, that was part of the risk assessment. Lunar
| Starship won't be landing back on Earth. If they can't do
| reuse it'd probably nuke most of the possible profit on
| that one, but it's not mission critical.
|
| Second is needed for reentry, but again, expended upper
| stage is fine. Most of the cost is in Super Heavy.
|
| Third is a nice economics thing. SH will be able to hover,
| landing legs add to dry mass, and landing raises more
| chance of damage which would slow cadence. Since there is
| no particular physical reason they can do a tower catch
| it's worth trying. But worst case they just give up (or
| give up temporarily) and go back to legs. That's still not
| at all a blocker for _going to orbit_.
|
| > _Engineering a crew space. Hell, the big window._
|
| Manned won't be for a long, long while. I'm not sure what
| you're confused about here, you do realize that F9 was
| going to orbit with commercial cargo for a long while
| before any human launch right?
|
| > _I don 't doubt they'll get one into orbit this year, but
| that's not what I'd define as a completed Starship
| program._
|
| Well in that case, since I said "as far as getting to
| orbit" I'm not even sure what you're arguing with. SpaceX's
| entire thing here is MVP and iteration. MVP for Starship is
| getting SS to orbit and expending it while recovering SH.
| That's enough for it to start making them lots of money.
| Cargo SS will be quite cheap for a rocket. At that point
| they start to get working on reentry and landing that "for
| free", just like with F9. And with high cadence. How many
| dozens of times do you think it'll take them to figure it
| out? Because remember, they did 31 F9 launches last year
| alone. And they've got lots of margin in the design.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| OK, so you're redefining Starship into "expendable second
| stage".
|
| I don't think that was inherently clear to anyone but
| you. I don't think that's the definition the parent
| poster meant in the context of "Starship is going to take
| years longer than originally predicted".
| mercutio2 wrote:
| The original commenter in this thread said:
| > Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't
| reach orbit > before 2025 I won't be surprised.
|
| Just having Starship reach orbit isn't moving the
| goalposts, here, it's the contentious thing most folks in
| the thread are reacting to.
|
| If OP had said "Starship won't do everything everyone
| dreams of doing before 2025", then OK, that's not even
| vaguely contentious.
|
| But not reaching orbit by 2025? That seems very unlikely.
| xoa wrote:
| > _OK, so you 're redefining Starship into "expendable
| second stage"._
|
| That's not redefining, just SpaceX's confusing naming I
| guess but I thought I was quite clear for anyone who
| knows about the system. The "Starship launch system"
| consists of a first stage named Super Heavy (SH) and a
| second stage also named Starship (SS). It was obvious I
| was talking about expended second stage "Starship"
| because I explicitly noted that Super Heavy was important
| to land, why, and additionally why I thought that was
| also relatively feasible compared to the SS parts.
|
| > _I don 't think that was inherently clear to anyone but
| you._
|
| Only if you didn't actually bother to read the comment or
| don't know anything about Starship but are choosing to
| comment anyway. Yes, all of us wish that "Starship"
| wasn't an overloaded term, but it is. The context
| nevertheless was very clear. What else did you think I
| was talking about with Super Heavy?
|
| > _I don 't think that's the definition the parent poster
| meant in the context of "Starship is going to take years
| longer than originally predicted"._
|
| It seems fairly clear given both the article and their
| "Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach
| orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised" statement? OP
| didn't write "if the second stage doesn't have full reuse
| before 2025 I won't be surprised", they wrote _reach
| orbit_. Please explain how else you can parse that except
| a claim that Starship won 't reach orbit? And a refined
| expended second stage would still absolutely slaughter
| SLS and everything else too. And yes, I'd be surprised if
| it took them dozens and dozens of attempts to get SS to
| survive reentry, they've got plenty of mass margin for it
| and fundamental advantages vs a range of other reentry
| systems including the shuttle, and as far as landing,
| well they've _already_ demonstrated the most aggressive
| version landing maneuver successfully! So I don 't think
| it's going to take them 3+ years after getting to orbit
| to land SS.
| chipsa wrote:
| Falcon Heavy was repeatedly delayed, but as you mentioned,
| Falcon 9 got repeatedly upgraded during that same time. They
| decided to allocate the resources to 9 instead of Heavy.
| However, they're not going to be doing that with Starship. I
| think they'll get it orbital before the end of 2024.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| The reason Falcon Heavy was delayed is because it is based on
| Falcon 9 which was still rapidly evolving. They couldn't decide
| on a spec to freeze it on and begin serious development because
| of how much F9 was improving. By the time it slowed down enough
| to begin work on FH, F9's performance and started to cover some
| of FH's originally envelope. I don't think it was really a case
| of Elon time as much as F9 proved to have a lot more room for
| development than they thought.
|
| Starship is a different can of worms. Its radical and
| innovative in many ways so there are a lot of work that needs
| to be done. This is definitely where Elon mis estimated how
| long it would take. It took them nearly a year to get the fuel
| tanks right. Then it took them a few prototypes to prove the
| belly flop concept. I wouldn't be surprised if the same proves
| to be true for the heat shield.
|
| The easiest part about Starship is the booster because its not
| doing anything F9 isn't already. Just at a much larger scale.
| That of course isn't easy either. But it does but things into
| perspective somewhat.
|
| And after all of that, my money is still on it beating SLS to
| orbit. Starship may be audacious but SLS's goal was never to
| get into space. In fact the longer they can drag it out the
| better it serves its purpose as a social welfare program.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > The easiest part about Starship is the booster because its
| not doing anything F9 isn't already. Just at a much larger
| scale.
|
| It's possible that its easier than the other challenges
| starship faces, but everything I've read seems to suggest the
| raptor engine underpinning the entire project is massively
| behind schedule and over budget to the point of putting
| SpaceX at risk of bankruptcy (according to Elon).[1]
|
| It's also burning a completely different fuel and has
| numerous other massive changes so a booster leveraging it
| isn't really just F9 at a larger scale. [2]
|
| [1] https://spacenews.com/spacex-grapples-with-raptor-
| production...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor
| maccam94 wrote:
| As of the Starship presentation last week, current
| production is 5 Raptor 2's per week and they are ramping up
| to 1/day. Starship is important for Starlink to finish its
| full-scale deployment cost-effectively, but if they deploy
| satellites at a lower rate on Falcon 9 this year it's not
| going to break the company. The delay right now is from FAA
| approval on Boca Chica launches, worst case SpaceX expects
| their new Florida Starship launch site to become
| operational before the end of the year.
| purpleidea wrote:
| > The delay right now is from FAA approval on Boca Chica
| launches
|
| Not true. Musk said they weren't ready to launch yet
| anyways, and that they expected to be ready around the
| same time they expected to get FAA clearance. So it's not
| holding things up yet. And it might never.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Launching in the middle of a nature preserve was always
| going to be a problem.
|
| It would not be at all surprising if they did not get
| approval for anything like the launch cadence from Boca
| Chica that they had projected, and need to fall back on
| Florida and ocean platform launches.
|
| The delay to get that stuff ready might give them time to
| actually work out bugs, without them being treated as
| failures. And, there is little doubt those will work just
| as well, although standing that stack up on a floating
| platform will be an impressive achievement. Boca Chica
| will still be able to do tests. One wonders if they will
| deliver completed vehicles to the real launch sites by
| ("test") launching from Boca Chica. I don't think you
| need a Starship on top to launch the booster, although a
| cone hat seems advisable.
| beambot wrote:
| Can get the latest updates directly from horse's mouth:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo
|
| TLDR: Delay at this point is mostly regulatory
| (environmental study approvals) to launch out of Boca
| Chica. If they have to move to the Cape, then there will be
| delays.
| purpleidea wrote:
| Not true. Musk said they weren't ready to launch yet
| anyways, and that they expected to be ready around the
| same time they expected to get FAA clearance. So it's not
| holding things up yet. And it might never.
| chasd00 wrote:
| iirc Starship was conceived before Falcon Heavy was finished
| as well. So, to me, Falcon Heavy would seem like a solution
| in search of a problem. There are some commercial flights for
| Falcon Heavy planned but as soon as Starship comes online
| it's obsolete. I don't know how much money the Falcon Heavy
| program will make but I would consider it paying for the R/D
| before being retired (just breaking even) a success.
| jve wrote:
| Elon wanted to cancel FH according to the following
| article.
|
| > Years earlier, Musk ordered Falcon Heavy canceled,
| forcing Shotwell, who'd been tipped off by another SpaceX
| employee, to sprint to a conference room and remind him
| that the U.S. Air Force, a critical customer, had already
| purchased a launch
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-26/she-
| launc...
| MPSimmons wrote:
| FH was first mentioned in 2003 (https://hobbyspace.com/AAdm
| in/archive/Interviews/Systems/Elo...), when it was going to
| be made of Falcon 1s. Not saying there was any engineering
| done there, but it was an idea that he wanted, so he could
| increase payload to orbit.
| emteycz wrote:
| I always thought they did it purely for the show - and now
| even my mom is a big fan of SpaceX, so they were very
| successful.
| iab wrote:
| Socially Laundering Securities
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| It didn't take them a year to "get fuel tanks right", they
| were building while iterating on the upper stage design. ie,
| the manufacturing of an initial design that was evolving was
| being built at the SAME TIME.
|
| Think about that for a second. For an orbital class upper
| stage larger than any ever built, it took shorter than ever
| for it to be designed AND manufactured through multiple
| iterative designs and manufacturing techniques than either
| the design stage or the manufacturing stage for ANY OTHER
| ROCKET.
|
| All this while they continue to churn out and iterate on
| heatshield material and design at the "Bakery" which is
| another manufacturing facility they spun up from scratch in
| record time, manufacturing nearly a new rocket engine every
| DAY and that which has been flown and tested to demonstrate
| higher chamber pressures than ANY full flow staged combustion
| rocket engine in the history of mankind.
|
| They're much further along than any comment in this thread
| indicates.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| It did take them a year to "get fuel tanks right". That
| doesn't mean they didn't know how to make a fuel tank. They
| were optimizing the design as much as possible trying to go
| for the best mass fraction they could while still having
| the necessary strength. They had some pretty requirements
| in that regard because of their performance goals. All of
| those burst tanks were steps to the proper design that
| could meet their goals at a given weight.
|
| I think you underestimate how difficult those were. If it
| were easy to make a low mass pressure vessel that can
| handle cryogenic temperatures, and do so at a mass fraction
| lower than existing designs while also being reusable, then
| they wouldn't have had to iterate so much. Such a design
| would have already been in use if it were that easy. Which
| in a circular way means they probably would have been doing
| all of this anyways to hit even higher performance goals.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| This is silly and underscores my point about splitting
| hairs while completely ignoring the bigger picture.
|
| They were not just focused on the tanks. That was one
| component of the structure which involved Spacex testing
| propulsive landings using test articles of varying
| designs. . And this is the crucial part. . . While
| designing those test articles and iterating on the
| manufacturing systems AT THE SAME TIME.
|
| The tanks are silly to make a point about was the
| response above if that was unclear. It was one component
| that was going through changes with the rest of the
| system in a revolutionary way that has never been done
| before. Not during the falcon development process or any
| other rocket development process going back to the Apollo
| era.
|
| Blank sheet -> Starbase today is ridiculously complex.
| Each element in of itself that I outlined above takes
| YEARS. Arguing in a silly way about "oh my, they did take
| two years, well, technically, kinda, with these caveats"
| is such a stupid way to approach the measurement of
| progress where , while being completely wrong , is also
| not constructive to the discussion.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I don't even know what point you are trying to make now.
| You say im wrong but then go on to say the same thing I
| already said.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| Saying that someone's comment is "silly," "such a stupid
| way," and "completely wrong" is also, as you put it, "not
| constructive to the discussion."
| bumby wrote:
| While the benefit of iterative development is evident in
| terms of decreased schedule risk, what other risks do you
| think this may increase?
| foxyv wrote:
| I think SpaceX's efforts have highlighted the huge amount
| of talent that is languishing in the United States right
| now. Engineering and operations budgets have been cut so
| much in US companies that we have engineers and trained
| professionals like welders, aircraft mechanics, and
| construction workers stuck in underpaid and underutilized
| roles.
|
| Elon seems to be dedicated to focusing on Engineering and
| Operations and it's resulting in the full potential of
| those engineers and professionals being explored. Instead
| of focusing exclusively on market capture, lobbying and new
| marketing strategies, SpaceX is focused on actually getting
| something done.
|
| I've been nothing but impressed with them so far. While not
| nearly as financially successful as Tesla, I think SpaceX
| is closer to reaching Mars than Tesla is to reaching
| sustainable transportation and power.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I agree. It's like we have so much talent in these
| occupations and very, very little talent or ambition or
| imagination or something at the executive and investor
| levels.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The latter which you refer to receive the most financial
| gain for expending as little energy and capital as
| possible to maximize their returns.
|
| You have to want more than financial gain to engage in
| high risk high reward engineering endeavors (building
| EVs, building space vehicle build and launch systems with
| your own capital), although financial gain is likely a
| side effect of being successful in those endeavors.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > You have to want more than financial gain to engage in
| high risk high reward engineering endeavors
|
| I think it's more likely that people who are purely
| motivated by financial gain are likely to lack the
| imagination or drive to realize anything significantly
| innovative. Maybe we're saying the same thing?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Note: I say this as someone who has never realized
| anything significantly innovative :)
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| There is inherent value stored in all of Spacexs
| accomplishments thus far that is very, very hard to place
| financial value on simply because it is the only asset in
| the world with the capability.
|
| A reusable rocket? How much would China pay for that
| capability? Don't worry about ITAR rules, it's a
| hypothetical question to understand the value of having
| such an asset available for defense or aerospace
| contracting purposes.
|
| The centuries prior to the digital age, whole private
| empires were built on the back of shipping and transport.
| Spacex is presently sitting on the largest payload
| capability fleet in the world, by tonnage to orbit. Yes,
| including China. Yes, including Russia, Yes, we're not
| even counting one single Starship here yet.
|
| The alloy itself that allows their turbines to run as hot
| as they have demonstrated to achieve such insane chamber
| pressures. What is that worth? No one else in the World
| has been able to do that in the history of mankind (In
| the unclassified realm atleast)
|
| The thing i love about the company that you allude to as
| well is they're running a ship that converts these
| "ideas" into tangible business value quicker than anyone
| we've seen in classic space industries.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I have no domain specific knowledge so would love some
| feedback...
|
| Once starship actually works it seems like a less
| complicated task diverting asteroids and mining them.
| Obviously not easy with a million new problems, but still
| easier than a fully reusable space transport system.
|
| At that point humanity's resources will become orders of
| magnitude larger. It will be a different world.
|
| And I don't see how this doesn't happen in my lifetime.
| Someone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt:
|
| _The total mass of the asteroid belt is about 4% that of
| the Moon._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Size_and_mass:
|
| _The Moon 's mass is 1/81 of Earth's_
|
| So, the total mass of the asteroid belt is about 1/2000
| that of earth. Assuming (slightly incorrectly) an even
| distribution of mass throughout earth, thats's about as
| much as in the outermost 1/6000 of the radius of earth,
| or the top km.
|
| That's a lot of material, but there also is the
| complication that asteroids are far away, and far away
| from each other.
|
| = I wouldn't count on asteroid mining making our
| resources orders of magnitude larger.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Naive question:
|
| "The easiest part about Starship is the booster because its
| not doing anything F9 isn't already. Just at a much larger
| scale."
|
| Why is it in general required, to design a new, more heavy
| rocket - and not "just scale" up an existing design?
|
| I mean, "just scaling up" means a different build process and
| this alone could probably prevent it when, using off the
| shelf solutions and not build everything yourself (screws and
| cables included), but are there other fundamental reasons,
| why usually a redesign is required?
| Aloha wrote:
| The N-1 Moon Rocket indicates that scaling up by putting
| more of your existing rocket motor on a vehicle may not
| always been as easy as it appears.
|
| As other parallel posters have commented, mechanical
| devices do not always squish or stretch with ease.
| soperj wrote:
| Which engine was the NK33 used on previously? It is
| currently used on a newer version of Soyuz, but I'm
| pretty sure that it was originally built for the N-1.
| mcguire wrote:
| Not necessarily directly related to your question, but a
| conversation I had with a friend who was an aerospace
| engineer, and who worked on solid rocket design:
|
| Remember the Ares I/V designs? They theoretically were
| claimed to use what were "essentially" shuttle solid rocket
| boosters (SRBs), but scaled up. In fact, much of the
| chatter in general forums was that the Ares boosters were
| shuttle SRBs with an extra segment on top. (SRBs are built
| of several independent segments of propellant with the
| external structure wrapped around them. When they're
| assembled, they segments are stacked with, among other
| things, o-rings between them---that is what failed in
| Challenger.)
|
| Ok, so you can just stack another segment on top for more
| power, right? Well, no. SRBs don't burn from the bottom to
| the top; there is a hole from the bottom of the propellant
| to the top, and when ignited it is the propellant on the
| surface of this hole that burns.
|
| This hole up the propellant (remember, it's a solid) is not
| just a round cylinder. If it were, when you lit it on fire,
| it would start out at a minimum thrust and the thrust would
| increase as the hole got larger in diameter. This is not so
| much what you want a rocket engine to do. So the hole is
| actually a weird star shape that maintains the same surface
| area as it burns, which requires a bunch of strange
| parameters known only to the initiates of aerospace
| engineering magic. (This is what my friend did in grad
| school. Now he's an enterprise webby project manager
| thingy.)
|
| If you just stack another segment on a SRB, it will burn
| for the same amount of time with more thrust, which may not
| be a good idea---remember, this is a mechanical structure
| that is mechanically connected to whatever you want to lift
| and the whole thing may not like higher g-loads.
|
| So, to just "add another segment" you have to redesign the
| propellant entirely, then look at the structures and
| connectors that may not be designed for the new loads, and
| so on.
|
| Scaling up isn't easy.
|
| If I remember correctly (See the book _Ignition!_ ), one of
| the major problems for the Saturn V's F-1 engine was the
| design of the engine injector plate, the thing that sprays
| fuel and oxygen into the combustion chamber. It had
| dramatic effects on the stability of the burn (they can and
| will go BOOM!), the vibration and other aspects of the
| engine. And that was basically determined experimentally.
| Also, keep in mind that the big design problem for a
| liquid-fuel engine is how to feed as much liquid propellant
| and oxidizers into the engine at the rate necessary for the
| thrust. They use burning rocket propellant to drive turbine
| pumps to feed propellant into the combustion chamber, and
| those pumps are _the_ cutting edge of high-temperature,
| high-pressure pump design. "Just scaling it up" can be a
| completely new research and development project.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Because the assumptions made for one class of payload don't
| apply to another class of payload with vastly different
| mission specifications.
|
| A great place to start is this amazing video by The
| Everyday Astronaut:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8
|
| Notice how the type of fuel used itself is a consideration
| for the type of rockets we may send to Mars if we're
| considering In-Situ refueling.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| I am not a mechanical engineer, but my general
| understanding is even mammals cannot be scaled up
| arbitrarily. I've read that elephants are more or less the
| maximal size of land-based mammals because of heat
| transport. The surface is not large enough to transport all
| the heat away from the body. I could imagine that similar
| effects limit mechanical designs.
| emteycz wrote:
| The height of trees is limited by the physical limits of
| water transport.
| xoa wrote:
| > _Why is it in general required, to design a new, more
| heavy rocket - and not "just scale" up an existing design?_
|
| I'm not a rocket designer, just someone who has really
| enjoyed following it for a long time. Someone in the
| industry could give more specifics, but the basics are
| straight forward. Everything about a specific rocket is
| tightly coupled, from material factors to engines and
| everything that goes into that. To take an obvious one, how
| do you drive the bigger rocket? If you choose bigger
| engines, then you need entire new engines (and there are
| scaling issues there too). If you choose to use more
| smaller engines, you need brand new plumbing to feed all
| those engines (a very complex thing itself, last I checked
| _each_ Raptor engine consumers nearly 800 kilograms of fuel
| PER SECOND), you need to deal with harmonics and control of
| more engines, different fluid mechanics, etc. Even merely
| construction changes with scale. For example scaling up
| carbon fiber to huge sizes is incredibly hard and
| expensive, one of a number of reasons SpaceX dropped it in
| favor of steel instead. Rocket volume obviously scales with
| the cube compared to surface area with the square of size,
| material properties change with thickness of various walls,
| and on and on. All of this also impacts aerodynamics,
| center of gravity and a host of other things.
|
| So yeah! Knowledge and expertise from existing rocket
| designs is absolutely very useful in designing a new one,
| Starship directly comes out of a ton of things SpaceX
| learned from F9, which itself took important lessons from
| F1 (and "F9" is a much bigger range much faster then
| typical rockets, from version 1.0 to Full Thrust Block 5,
| the current one, they changed more and gained more power
| then entire new rockets sometimes have). A much bigger
| Starship v2 may take much more from v1 then typical because
| they now do have something with more scaling potential
| (steel construction in particular). And a lot of the
| software no doubt will be directly evolved, Starship
| landing of course used F9 landing software and hardware
| lessons. But still, cannot just "scale up", even without
| things like completely changing fuel.
|
| _Edit_ : In reply, jmyeet points out that I glossed over
| the manufacturing bit too much as well. There is a huge
| amount of expertise and institutional knowledge in going
| from a general design of _any_ big complex machine to
| actually manufacturing it in a reliable fashion. People and
| the machines that make the machines and all the processes
| that go into that is a whole 'nother ball of wax. Can find
| plenty of stories on HN and elsewhere about merely
| duplicating "the same thing", like trying to manufacture an
| aircraft in a different factory. Or the level of work in
| "simply" copying a fab and the lengths that are gone to in
| order to try to make sure _everything_ is _exactly_ the
| same.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Not a rocket scientist either but I agree with your
| comment and expand on it further.
|
| It's worth noting that the Saturn V _to this day_ remains
| the most powerful launch vehicle ever created. So why
| didn 't we just build that again? There are lots of
| reasons. Materials science has changed (ie there are
| newer, better materials now), the F5 engine was
| "handcrafted" in a way that required a lot of tuning and
| the whole system was expensive and unlikely to scale.
| There's probably lost expertise as a factor too.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The thrust to weight ratio of a cluster of rocket engines
| is not a linear relationship. Adding one more engine might
| add N+1 thrust but it also adds at least N+1 mass. So you
| have more thrust but now more mass to lift and a worse mass
| ratio (the ratio of fuel to non-fuel).
|
| To scale your engine cluster you want to add an engine
| worth of thrust but not an engine worth of mass. To that
| end you reduce the mass of your piping or use one pump for
| multiple engines. All those changes require engineering and
| testing because the dynamics of the system have changed.
| For instance a fuel pipe of X thickness and Y material may
| have some weird failure mode if you make it just a little
| thinner to save mass.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Why is it in general required, to design a new, more
| heavy rocket - and not "just scale" up an existing design?
|
| Because defense contractors make a lot more money for the
| new one.
| mcguire wrote:
| Do you apply this sort of thinking to _your_ job?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I _wish_ I got cost-plus contracting at my job.
| greedo wrote:
| One of the criticisms of the SLS program is it's re-use
| of Shuttle Engine technology, so your point is a bit off
| the mark.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| SLS is more like $4-5B per launch including sustaining costs.
| If you gave spaceX that money they could move whatever the
| equivalent needed mass was to orbit today on existing F9
| solutions.
|
| And they could do EXPENDABLE starships (or different upper
| stages) that would absolutely CRUSH SLS. Take the heatshield
| off and fly a cargo variant of the upper stage - for $4B per
| launch they would be raking it in.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| There is no path forward for the F9 or FH that provide another
| magnitude of improvement in payload to orbit. I can't say
| anything about the timeline of S/SH to orbit, though, because
| Space Is Hard(tm).
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Interesting observations about the sunk costs vs achievements.
| Makes me wonder if just starting over really is the best
| approach at times.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It will get to orbit way before 2025. That just isn't that
| hard.
|
| Maybe 2025 before both parts _land_ from oribt.
| phkahler wrote:
| Yeah, I think if they wanted to launch disposable starships
| they could do that right now and probably for lower cost than
| SLS. But just like SLS there isn't much market for a billion
| dollar ultra-heavy payload launch. It would be a waste of
| time to even demo that.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Exactly who formed this "general consensus"?
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's really the people who are left after you eliminate all
| the irrational Elon haters and the rabid fan boys.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| What about the rational haters?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Elon Musk himself. He estimates like software engineers -
| best case, "if nothing goes wrong" sort of stuff. Very much a
| known phenomenon, to the point it even has a name.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=elon%20time
|
| https://elontime.io/
| chriswarbo wrote:
| What's also interesting about Falcon 9 is that it didn't need
| to figure out landing and re-use before it was performing
| commercial missions in an expendable fashion. Once the payloads
| had separated, SpaceX were free to experiment with the
| boosters; until they eventually figured out reliable landings,
| and could start re-launching used boosters.
|
| I imagine a similar thing will happen with Starship: once it
| reaches orbit, I wouldn't be surprised if each subsequent
| mission was full of Starlink satellites (and perhaps other
| payloads, from brave customers!); even if it takes a _long_
| time to get reliable re-entry, re-fuelling, landing, etc.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Falcon 9 reuse means expendable Starships probably will never
| be a thing (IMHO). Why? Economics. The Falcon 9 can get ~22t
| to LEO. Starship is planned for ~100t. If the net cost of a
| Falcon 9 launch (factoring in reuse) is $20m then that puts
| an effective cap of $100m on the cost of a Starship launch.
|
| You can still launch beyond that but it means you're doing so
| for non-economic reasons. This could be range (eg
| geosynchronous or Moon orbit instead of LEO) or larger
| payloads. Falcon Heavy launches seem to be pretty much
| exclusively military payloads to high orbits that the Falcon
| 9 just can't carry.
|
| People forget that payloads are deeply coupled to the launch
| system. Starship will ultimately allow a much larger payload
| (eg think of JWST 2.0 but with way less complexity) but that
| will take years for the industry to adapt to, possibly a
| decade or more.
|
| Starlink exists in part because the launch demand for getting
| payloads into space just doesn't exist otherwise. Cheaper
| launch costs will ultimately create more use cases (because
| they're now economic) but this will take time too.
|
| Starships may be lost in attempting to land but I honestly
| believe that attempted landing and reuse will be there from
| day one.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Falcon 9 has a launch velocity limit imposed by the
| throwaway second stage. Starship can be more expensive and
| still make sense if you want to launch a lot of payloads
| quickly.
|
| That said, SpaceX is targeting $10M for a Starship launch
| early on, with aspirations of bringing that down towards a
| single million. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-
| spacex-starship-ro...
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > Falcon 9 reuse means expendable Starships probably will
| never be a thing (IMHO)
|
| Sure, customers won't be fronting the entire cost of a
| Starship. My point was that Starship can perform revenue-
| generating commercial work through much of its testing.
|
| SpaceX will still be losing a fortune for each RUD; just a
| slightly smaller fortune than if they stuck with mass
| simulators until everything's perfected.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >think of JWST 2.0
|
| An expendable starship with fairings can launch a
| (dimensionally) even larger telescope. Or a starlink like
| array of large telescope modules.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >that puts an effective cap of $100m on the cost of a
| Starship launch. You can still launch beyond that but it
| means you're doing so for non-economic reasons.
|
| That assumes you don't have any mission payloads larger
| than 22t (or 63t for heavy). This is more extreme for Mars
| transfer orbit 4 & 16t respectively. Starship is
| _advertised_ as being capable of 100t to mars transfer.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Starship is advertised as being capable of 100t to mars
| transfer.
|
| Only with a _yet undeveloped_ in-orbit refueling.
| Starship can get a lot of mass to LEO or is can get
| _much_ less mass to a higher orbit or Mars transfer.
|
| The only way it can get a lot of mass out of LEO is for a
| second Starship loaded with fuel to refill its tanks.
| This capability is likely still a ways off, SpaceX need
| to get Starship flying and landing reliably before they
| attempt a large scale in-orbit fuel transfer.
| bumby wrote:
| Are there any independent assessments that back up the F9
| reuse costs? It's hard for me to parse what is Musk hype
| vs. what is reasonable and objective estimates.
| jmyeet wrote:
| "Cost" is a hard thing to determine of anything this
| complex. Obviously there's a development cost that has to
| be amortized across launches so how many do you expect?
| 10? 100? Famously for years the 747 was a huge profit
| center for Boeing because it had blown away any estimates
| of how many they'd sell.
|
| But it's not just straight fixed vs variable costs. You
| need assembly lines that have a production capacity. How
| mjch capacity do you want? Do you want the ability to
| ramp up production if there's sufficient demand?
|
| But other launch vehicles had relatively straightforward
| math. The vehicle costs $Xm to produce and launch so you
| charge $(x+y)m for that (where y is the amortized
| development cost and profit). Production capacity is
| still a factor (as a variable cost) of course. But a
| resuable vehicle just upends all that math. Part of the
| math is then how long does it take to recondition a
| vehicle for a future flight? How many times can it be
| reused? Does each reuse make the reconditioning cost
| more? A lot of these questions will only be answered with
| time and experience.
|
| And obviously that's a key commercial secret for SpaceX.
| But they can pretty much charge what they want because
| there's literaly no competition at that price point. I
| imagine this is a big part of what is funding the
| (significant) R&D costs for Starship and Raptor.
| xoa wrote:
| Yes, OP is a particularly ludicrous comment in the context of
| this article where Starship is getting compared to SLS.
| SpaceX's long term, self-set ultimate economic goals will
| certainly take iteration and a lot of work. But that
| shouldn't disguise that "merely" going _up_ at this point
| doesn 't look that big a deal at all, which is itself a
| remarkable thing. Once they're getting to orbit it can start
| doing useful work and generating money while they work on
| reuse to make it cheap, making ongoing testing an iteration
| itself profitable. And they still have no competition in even
| medium-lift reusable rockets let alone heavy lift, which in
| turn means they have enormous economic leeway. They can
| afford to charge $/kg far far above their ultimate cost goal
| and beat the market anyway. As long as they can land Super
| Heavy, throwing away Starship every single time would still
| be market shaking for LEO.
|
| Where they will need full reusability is to make in-orbit
| refueling work out economically long term, and they need that
| to use Starship in deep space or other high energy work.
| Though even there if we're comparing to SLS it still looks
| good because SLS is just that stupid bloated.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| Starlink already is a game changer. The comparisons with
| cable/fiber are besides the point. For my family in Montana it
| enabled movie streaming, that's a big leap forward.
| Veedrac wrote:
| 2025 doesn't make sense. SpaceX has a Raptor 2 run-rate of
| 250/yr today, and they're ramping up, so you're talking about
| them sitting on around 750 engines, or about 18 full Starship
| stacks on the low end. The only way things would take that long
| is if they had a severe blanket roadblock like having to move
| their entire production somewhere else and spin it up from the
| beginning. Musk's time estimates are generally terrible, but
| not _perpetually-in-the-future_ terrible. SpaceX isn 't going
| to build a bunch of super heavy launchers and then just not
| launch them.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| HN is great. "For the informed" comments like this with
| absolutely no substance or information from the past two years
| of progress at Starbase.
|
| They achieved the highest chamber pressure for a full flow
| staged combustion engine. . . . EVER.
|
| They've flown and landed upper stage prototypes, achieved an
| engine production capacity that not even China or any state
| power in the WORLD has managed in the history of humanity and
| account for a significant portion of global payload to orbit
| right now.
|
| They've developed an in house metal alloy that allows for
| temperatures in the turbine and combustion chamber to reach
| levels that the United States Government considered
| "Impossible" during the cold war and one so exotic that only
| like 4 engines have ever been built in all of human history.
| The only one of those engines to leave the test stand is . .
| .the Raptor.
|
| They develop and build their own heat tiles and have achieved
| significant output capacity in the past two years.
|
| The support system at the launch site which includes the launch
| tower, grappling arms, fuel stores etc are in very advanced
| stages at the moment and certainly ready to handle a steady
| stream of iterative full flight tests.
|
| All this IN PARALLEL !! The weight of the booster through
| iterative design has been steadily coming down as well, the
| engine ISP and chamber pressure has been rising in insane steps
| to the point where it is already amongst the best rocket
| engines known. Complexity of the engine build has visibly come
| down in the past few months alone.
|
| Each of these items by themselves take YEARS and were similarly
| expected to take YEARS even when Spacex started work on them.
| They're much further along than many people thought they would
| be two years ago.
|
| There is a lot of juicy detail in the three part video that the
| Everyday Astronaut did with Elon Musk at Starbase, i'd urge the
| people interested in this thread to go watch that instead of
| the armchair idiocy of either the OP or myself and make up your
| own minds.
| kranke155 wrote:
| HN is full of rich techies who suffer from confirmation bias
| who think they know everything since they are in the top 1%
| of earning power, even though the truth is most of them are
| of average intelligence.
| lief79 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I suspect you might over estimate average
| intelligence.
|
| I do hope I'm wrong.
| reso wrote:
| Seems unlikely to me that starship will get to orbit this year.
| They haven't received FAA approval to test launch to orbit from
| Boca Chia. SpaceX's tests usually fail multiple times before they
| succeed, so the clock hasn't even started. The interval at which
| they can run tests logistically is at minimum a few months. As
| well, we also know that the raptor engine production line is
| running much too slow. [1] Starship required 34 raptors for every
| test, so you can do simple math at how quickly they will be able
| to do tests based on how quickly they can build the engines.
| There's never been an engine production line which could build
| much more than one engine per week.
|
| It also seems likely that SpaceX will have to fundraise at least
| once at their current burn before Starship gets to orbit, so that
| could be a down round.
|
| [1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
| snarkerson wrote:
| Paying DoD prices for a civilian program never made sense.
|
| Add in constant program stretching due to a limited budget, I
| don't doubt NASA will look bad by comparison.
| smoyer wrote:
| As a taxpayer, paying DoD prices for a military program also
| doesn't make sense (aside from the question of whether we even
| need most military programs).
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've worked at BAE Systems, Inc. and Raytheon and there is so
| much extra bullshit it will make your head spin. I'm a
| veteran and I left the industry in disgust. I will never
| consider defense software again unless there are some drastic
| changes.
|
| I've always said that the US Govt pays $10 for $1 worth of
| work.
|
| https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126691/-1/-1/0/SWA.
| ..
|
| > The current approach to software development is a leading
| source of risk to DoD: it takes too long, is too expensive,
| and exposes warfighters to unacceptable risk.
|
| > Nothing is changing: most of this has been said before and
| the 1987 DSB report on military software pretty much says it
| all. What is it going to take to actually do something?
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I've been there as well and agree. The defense world is a
| headache. Everything slows you down. Its like trying to
| swim through fruit cake.
|
| Lockmart and Boeing are fortunate that SpaceX has no desire
| to get into the defense game beyond launching satellites
| for the Space Force. They wouldn't be as fast as their past
| work, half the friction in the defense world is imposed by
| the customer. But they would be faster than the incumbents.
| smoyer wrote:
| Thanks for serving ... the rank and file of the military is
| truly dedicated in my experience and it would be great if a
| larger portion of the funding was spent on the human side
| of defense and if a larger portion of the decision making
| was left to the "normal people".
| gerikson wrote:
| Better be careful or they'll target the Tesla factories with moon
| rocks fired from mass drivers...
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| Luckily, they'd have to get to the Moon first ;)
| Meerax wrote:
| The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress reference?
| RegBarclay wrote:
| That was my first thought. I haven't seen The Expanse, but in
| any case, Heinlein preceded The Expanse by decades.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Science Fiction Science Fiction? It gets a bit meta
| there...
|
| but yeah, something something, shoulders of giants.
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| It is a reference to The Expanse
| (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/)
| tehbeard wrote:
| ...no?
|
| In The Expanse it was rocks from the belt coated in
| "stolen" Mars stealth material.
|
| Luna's a UN colony, practically on Earth's doorstep, not a
| beligerent.
|
| The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is the reference.
| gerikson wrote:
| The Expanse authors got it from Heinlein, which was what I
| was referencing ;)
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| beltalowda
| Cerium wrote:
| tanstaafl
| chasd00 wrote:
| i wonder if Musk regrets the political comments he's made on
| Twitter. I'm sure the current administration is not pushing the
| FAA to get the assessment done for Boca Chica. Quite the opposite
| I bet.
| [deleted]
| ptha wrote:
| From the article: _That makes Starship, which conducted a
| successful flight to the edge of space last year, especially
| threatening to the contractors and their allies in Congress._
|
| So far Starship has flown to 12.5 km [1], which seems to be a
| stretch to describe as "the edge of space" [2].
|
| It seems like the FAA Environmental Assessment for the
| "SpacePort" at Boca Chica has been delayed again from Feb 28th,
| by a month to March 28th [3]. If they recommend a full
| Environmental review that will delay progress even further. I
| believe Elon mentioned in the recent Starship update that they
| will move Starship testing to Cape Canaveral which already has
| permissions to launch Starship there if this is required [4] [5],
| but that will require building out an orbital pad for Starship.
|
| It will certainly be interesting to see how long it takes
| Starship to get to orbit. I would guess that the raptor 2
| performance/reliability and also the heatshield performance will
| be significant challenges to overcome. When/if SpaceX do overcome
| them, the incumbents will be justified in "shitting the bed", as
| per the article.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SpaceX_Starship_flight...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line#Interpre...
|
| [3]
| https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo (SpaceX Starship
| update)
|
| [5] https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starship-orbital-
| cape-c...
| martyvis wrote:
| The height reached was more of a limit imposed by FAA, and that
| SpaceX had more important things to demonstrate than to
| literally just burn more fuel and go straight up. I mean look
| at how they had to turn off engines as they ascended just to
| keep the velocity in check.
| olliej wrote:
| This is so dumb, the moon contractors have decades of experience,
| whereas starship hasn't even got into orbit once.
|
| oh
|
| the contractors haven't even got off the ground once?
|
| huh
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