6 ms·

The Rocket Man Who Wants To Beat the Billionaires

159 points by cwal37 11y ago

DarkTree 11y ago
Great. First Musk, now Masten. I'm incredibly hopeful that entrepreneurs will keep challenging the massive, monolithic companies/contractors. Their ability to compete with these companies show that increased size often leads to a lot of waste both within the company and in the bureaucratic decision structure. Large isn't inherently bad, until the only competitors are also large. It then becomes the bigger the better. Now that smaller guys are able to successfully enter the field, it make them reevaluate their structure. In the end, not size, but efficiency is key. Funding still remains the medium to get there.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Musk, Masten, Blue Origin, Firefly, XCOR. There's really quite a lot of innovative rocket companies out there now. A lot of them are working on similar or complementary problems, and innovating while they do it. I'm excited to see not only what they produce but what fruits are born from follow-on innovators.
  - kelvin0 11y ago
    Yeah, remember when Armadillo used to be a cool kid on the block?
    - 6stringmerc 11y ago
      Not sure if you caught the interview but John Carmack recently said he'd still love to re-visit it, but he held firm to his "10 years, that's it" plan. He said it was "binary" - didn't make it, close it down. If you did catch that, then sorry for being redunant!
    - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      Heh. Still have an Armadillo Aerospace sweatshirt in my closet. Wonder if it'll be a "collectors item" someday like those SF magazines that are worth a whopping $5 more than I paid for them 30 years ago :-)
  - avmich 11y ago
    Extremely different companies. Blue Origin founded, IIRC, before SpaceX - yet has comparatively little to show, even though it had money of Bezos. Masten "graduated" from Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society - erps.org - from San Jose, CA area; the group still has projects going on!
    - Symmetry 11y ago
      Well, you can't expect a company that's motto is "Gradatim Ferociter" to move quickly. But they have flown a single stage rocket to the edge of space and their engines are going to be in ULA's new rocket.
      - avmich 11y ago
        The latter remains to be seen, the former is good - and the number of flights they had to achieve that is quite odd. Looks like Bezos is a follower of quite different development philosophy than e.g. John Carmack. Blue Origin way of doing things isn't clear - may be by design.
- MrJagil 11y ago
  Don't forget http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/ http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/ Is there anyone else to add to the list? The news we had "recently" on Indian rocket science was not about private endeavours, was it?
  - heisenzombie 11y ago
    http://www.rocketlabusa.com/ http://www.rocketlabusa.com/ is a scrappy contender from New Zealand. (Not the same goals -- they're focusing on being super cheap way to get small payloads to LEO)
6stringmerc 11y ago
Love this, very inspirational and pragmatic. I like how down to Earth Masten comes across in the article (pun intended). Reminds me of the lesson learned in the restaurant business - over-estimate the wait time, deliver early, and let people enjoy! I think it's something about the inherent risks and rewards of flight that are a great challenge and temptation for advancement - space being a dream for so many from childhood. Maybe it makes us feel a little more important in such a grand universe. The Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics. They beat out the entire world into manned, powered flight. Creativity, some resources, and tenacity can do wonderful things.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  There's an important insight in there that I think a lot of people miss. It reminds me of the old, probably apocryphal, story about the maintenance guy who comes out to visit some machine that's malfunctioning, hears about what's wrong, then goes and hits it with a hammer, causing it to start working again. The business owner complains about the bill, since anyone can hit something with a hammer, so the technician creates an itemized receipt, wherein "knowing the right spot to hit" is the majority of the cost. So much of anything is knowing the right thing to build and the right way to build it. Everything else tends to be much easier problems to solve. The same thing is true in rocketry. And that's what's so exciting about these startups, they're not just trying to fill the shoes of past generations, they're innovating, they're doing research. They're developing the knowledge base and experience base that will serve as the foundation of a tremendous amount of future work. Once you've developed the fundamental technology components and figured out an optimum vehicle design then you just have scaling up and iterating (as SpaceX has done, for example), which is a lot more straightforward.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jwcooper 11y ago
    The crafty engineer was Charles Steinmetz, and the business owner balking at the invoice was Henry Ford [1]. EDIT: Maybe not so true after all [2]. I had never heard of Maston Space Systems. It's amazing they were able to compete with such massive names in Boeing, and Lockheed. [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinm... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10389203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10389203
hoorayimhelping 11y ago
I've heard of other small rocket companies using alcohol and lox as the fuel/oxidizer. Does anyone know if that is a stand-in for "real" fuels (e.g. RP-1 or H2) that they'll switch to after getting contracts or if they plan on using an alcohol-fueled engine as part of their strategy?
- avmich 11y ago
  I've heard of planning to use alcohol - ethyl alcohol - as fuel for Kliper spacecraft in RKK Energiya. Reminding that Soyuz capsule still uses hydrogen peroxide as its RCS fuel. So alcohol isn't that much of "non-real" fuel.
- jccooper 11y ago
  Probably they will switch as vehicles get into higher performance requirements. Alcohol's a great fuel to work with: clean burning, room temp, good cooling properties, but it'll be tempting to switch to something else when you need more performance--and have the money and experience to deal with the extra complexity. (And RP-1 isn't that much worse, unless you have a particular problem with coking and a reusable engine, while it gives a noticeable increase in ISP. If you can handle the low density, methane's nice and clean.) But part of the new wave of space development is to optimize for cost and simplicity instead of performance, and you certainly can do real stuff with alcohol; many early rockets used it. It's possible someone will keep using alcohol; Masten's suborbital stuff might certainly stay that way. Doubt they'll land on the Moon with alcohol, though.

159 points by cwal37 11y ago

Great. First Musk, now Masten. I'm incredibly hopeful that entrepreneurs will keep challenging the massive, monolithic companies/contractors. Their ability to compete with these companies show that increased size often leads to a lot of waste both within the company and in the bureaucratic decision structure. Large isn't inherently bad, until the only competitors are also large. It then becomes the bigger the better. Now that smaller guys are able to successfully enter the field, it make them reevaluate their structure. In the end, not size, but efficiency is key. Funding still remains the medium to get there.

InclinedPlane 11y ago
Musk, Masten, Blue Origin, Firefly, XCOR. There's really quite a lot of innovative rocket companies out there now. A lot of them are working on similar or complementary problems, and innovating while they do it. I'm excited to see not only what they produce but what fruits are born from follow-on innovators.
- kelvin0 11y ago
  Yeah, remember when Armadillo used to be a cool kid on the block?
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Not sure if you caught the interview but John Carmack recently said he'd still love to re-visit it, but he held firm to his "10 years, that's it" plan. He said it was "binary" - didn't make it, close it down. If you did catch that, then sorry for being redunant!
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    Heh. Still have an Armadillo Aerospace sweatshirt in my closet. Wonder if it'll be a "collectors item" someday like those SF magazines that are worth a whopping $5 more than I paid for them 30 years ago :-)
- avmich 11y ago
  Extremely different companies. Blue Origin founded, IIRC, before SpaceX - yet has comparatively little to show, even though it had money of Bezos. Masten "graduated" from Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society - erps.org - from San Jose, CA area; the group still has projects going on!
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    Well, you can't expect a company that's motto is "Gradatim Ferociter" to move quickly. But they have flown a single stage rocket to the edge of space and their engines are going to be in ULA's new rocket.
    - avmich 11y ago
      The latter remains to be seen, the former is good - and the number of flights they had to achieve that is quite odd. Looks like Bezos is a follower of quite different development philosophy than e.g. John Carmack. Blue Origin way of doing things isn't clear - may be by design.
MrJagil 11y ago
Don't forget http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/ http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/ Is there anyone else to add to the list? The news we had "recently" on Indian rocket science was not about private endeavours, was it?
- heisenzombie 11y ago
  http://www.rocketlabusa.com/ http://www.rocketlabusa.com/ is a scrappy contender from New Zealand. (Not the same goals -- they're focusing on being super cheap way to get small payloads to LEO)

6stringmerc 11y ago

Love this, very inspirational and pragmatic. I like how down to Earth Masten comes across in the article (pun intended). Reminds me of the lesson learned in the restaurant business - over-estimate the wait time, deliver early, and let people enjoy! I think it's something about the inherent risks and rewards of flight that are a great challenge and temptation for advancement - space being a dream for so many from childhood. Maybe it makes us feel a little more important in such a grand universe. The Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics. They beat out the entire world into manned, powered flight. Creativity, some resources, and tenacity can do wonderful things.

InclinedPlane 11y ago
There's an important insight in there that I think a lot of people miss. It reminds me of the old, probably apocryphal, story about the maintenance guy who comes out to visit some machine that's malfunctioning, hears about what's wrong, then goes and hits it with a hammer, causing it to start working again. The business owner complains about the bill, since anyone can hit something with a hammer, so the technician creates an itemized receipt, wherein "knowing the right spot to hit" is the majority of the cost. So much of anything is knowing the right thing to build and the right way to build it. Everything else tends to be much easier problems to solve. The same thing is true in rocketry. And that's what's so exciting about these startups, they're not just trying to fill the shoes of past generations, they're innovating, they're doing research. They're developing the knowledge base and experience base that will serve as the foundation of a tremendous amount of future work. Once you've developed the fundamental technology components and figured out an optimum vehicle design then you just have scaling up and iterating (as SpaceX has done, for example), which is a lot more straightforward.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jwcooper 11y ago
  The crafty engineer was Charles Steinmetz, and the business owner balking at the invoice was Henry Ford [1]. EDIT: Maybe not so true after all [2]. I had never heard of Maston Space Systems. It's amazing they were able to compete with such massive names in Boeing, and Lockheed. [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinm... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10389203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10389203

hoorayimhelping 11y ago

I've heard of other small rocket companies using alcohol and lox as the fuel/oxidizer. Does anyone know if that is a stand-in for "real" fuels (e.g. RP-1 or H2) that they'll switch to after getting contracts or if they plan on using an alcohol-fueled engine as part of their strategy?

avmich 11y ago
I've heard of planning to use alcohol - ethyl alcohol - as fuel for Kliper spacecraft in RKK Energiya. Reminding that Soyuz capsule still uses hydrogen peroxide as its RCS fuel. So alcohol isn't that much of "non-real" fuel.
jccooper 11y ago
Probably they will switch as vehicles get into higher performance requirements. Alcohol's a great fuel to work with: clean burning, room temp, good cooling properties, but it'll be tempting to switch to something else when you need more performance--and have the money and experience to deal with the extra complexity. (And RP-1 isn't that much worse, unless you have a particular problem with coking and a reusable engine, while it gives a noticeable increase in ISP. If you can handle the low density, methane's nice and clean.) But part of the new wave of space development is to optimize for cost and simplicity instead of performance, and you certainly can do real stuff with alcohol; many early rockets used it. It's possible someone will keep using alcohol; Masten's suborbital stuff might certainly stay that way. Doubt they'll land on the Moon with alcohol, though.