10 ms·

>How about they put their (considerable, federal) money where their mouth is and get us to Mars. You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, w

>How about they put their (considerable, federal) money where their mouth is and get us to Mars. You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts to the tune of $5b[1] and an undisclosed amount from NY state[2]. Both companies are alike and fairly dependent on the federal government, Boeing less so considering their large aircraft market. The wonderful thing about capitalism is you don't have to arbitrarily pick the "good" from the "bad." You have them compete and ideally good things come from competition. Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here. On a more personal note, I think the CTS-100 is a beautiful spacecraft and would love to see it fly in 2018. Boeing can impress if they want to. I also love the fact that my kid is going to grow up in a world with many manned spacecraft by various organizations with various goals, not just the LEO-only shuttle I grew up with. I was just telling my wife about I'd love our son to see a manned rocket launch and realized that this 'sometime in the future' trip to Cape Canaveral is only a year or two away. Same with the first SLS test launch. 2018 is going to be an incredible year for manned space programs. It blows my mind how much grousing there is on the internet regarding the US's position in space. A few years without a manned program is such a tiny price to pay for all this change and innovation. This is an incredible time to be alive for space fans. I think we're going to look back at this period with a certain level of amazement the same way my parent's generation must have seen the initial space race. [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... [2] http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/23/my-love-hate-relationship-with-space-xs-elon-musk/ http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/23/my-love-hate-relationshi...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
codeisawesome 10y ago
That last bit - is a beautiful way to look at it.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here. He isn't though. He's just posturing for PR purposes. I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?[1] As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as traditional car companies "vowing" to beat Tesla: it's just PR, backed by perhaps showing off concept cars in car shows. [1]I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.
- 6d6b73 10y ago
  >How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results? You do know you're talking about Boeing here, right? They had somewhere around 300 launches with close to perfect success rate.
- valarauca1 10y ago
  How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results? Seriously? Well not counting their ICBM program. S-1C Program (Saturn V Rocket First Stage): 12 successful launches, 0 failures. IUS Program (Booster for interplanetary probes from Space Shuttle): 24 launches, 3 failures (2 Boeing's fault, 1 the space shuttle exploded). Delta II: 153 Launches, 2 Failures. Delta III: 3 Launches, 2 Failures. Delta IV: 33 Launches, 1 Failure. I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? No. The new ULA Vulkan launch system doesn't have it's first test flight scheduled until 2019. What about re-usable? Boeing (or really ULA) is developing the Vulkan Rocket. Which is partially recoverable, not fully. [1] The first launch of this vehicle is 2019. The entry level offering is quoted at ~$100mil per rocket (vs ~$164mil for a Delta IV) [2]. While a Falcon9 is $62mil [3]. I see why ULA lost their contract, Musk cut their knee caps off. [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recovery-768x479.jpg https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recove... [2] https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future-with-the-vulcan-rocket-family/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
transfire 10y ago
> You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts. $7,500 on a $75,000 car is not a large enough subsidy to "run" Tesla. It's incentive for energy efficiency and all cars manufactures get it. Moreover SpaceX does not get any "welfare" in any form. They have a contract job via the government's Commercial Space program.
- powertower 10y ago
  The $7,500 is the consumer subsidy. He is talking about the separate $5 billion corporate subsidy.
spdustin 10y ago
> SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS Falcon 1 and Merlin, Kestrel and Draco engines were funded with private capital; SpaceX was a space-faring company before NASA money got involved. COTS money went into developing the Falcon 9, and amounted to $278 million. They did get a bunch of cash from NASA for launching crew to the ISS aboard Dragon v2: $2.6 billion. NASA also gave money to Boeing for their CST-100: $4.2 billion. > Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts The bulk of Tesla's cash comes from sales, stocks and bond sales - incentives from the government take the form of tax credits, or state agencies offering their own incentives because they are themselves competing to hitch a ride on Elon's business ventures. And who can blame them! Boeing gets considerable subsidies and tax credits as well, as do other car manufacturers and defense contractors, let's not suggest Tesla is alone here. Also, Tesla was saved from near death by Daimler AG in early 2009, not by a "handout". In 2010, they received a low-interest loan from the government of $465 million, which they repaid in 2013 (the first automaker to repay their portion of the $8 billion loaned out). Boeing makes less than a third of its revenue from defense and space spending, and yet has still received far more money through federal cost-plus contracts than SpaceX has received from all its revenue sources combined. I don't think it's fair to characterize them as apples and apples here. Boeing keeps Elon honest by putting crew on ISS, or launching something to Mars, not by lobbying congress to slow Elon down with government red tape for matters that didn't pertain to the government to begin with. That's Boeing/Lockheed (ULS) using its position as one of the largest government defense and space contractors to keep their seat at the grown-ups table. That said, the CST-100 Starliner is quite a good looking craft that evokes memories of the Apollo program, but I personally like the sleek and swooping curves of Dragon V2 - plus the whole "lands on its legs" thing they've got going on for it. :) Photos of both can be seen here: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=73778 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=73778
- walrus01 10y ago
  On the plus side for Boeing, they have a very long track record of building things that live in space for long periods of time. Boeing acquired the Hughes geostationary satellite business based in the Los Angeles area a long time ago. There's many 10 and 15 year old fully functional geostationary telecom satellites out there in orbit (Boeing 702 bus, etc) in "production" use with the world's largest satellite telecommunications companies. That's a track record SpaceX can't lay claim to just yet. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/hs-702.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/hs-702.htm
babyrainbow 10y ago
>This is an incredible time to be alive.... Yea? Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. And we are happy, because we can see the associated fireworks? Don't get me wrong. I like the progress with the space stuff. But I just don't like the idea just because of that everything else is sunshine and rainbows...It is not. And it is not really a great time to be alive. It is an extremely boring time to be alive. Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. When radio waves were invented. Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? When they heard voices that came across the town? When they saw the first locomotive? When they saw the first airplane? Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive. Those were incredible times to be alive... How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Justin Beiber and Hilariy Clinton? How many great inventions of our times will they read with excitement? Elon Musks Hyper loop? No. I really don't think so. So yea. We are living in incredibly boring times.... EDIT: This comment is not relavant anymore since the parent comment has been edited to include "time to be alive for space fans.."...
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive. > Those were incredible times to be alive... No such time existed. Its not like "the past" all happened at once, or even in one lifetime. > How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Probably lots, many of which we're overlooking because of either excessive familiarity (in terms of art) or insufficient perspective to appreciate impact (in terms of science and technological inventions.) Lots of the people of the past we read about and hold up today, whether in artistic or technical fields, weren't recognized in their own time. Our time is, likely, no better at recognizing those among us who will be viewed as notable in the future.
- ygjb-dupe 10y ago
  > Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. Yes, we did. I don't know that we will have to abandon it, but we do know that human civilization is on the precipice of change, largely in part due to our relentless pace of technological process and reduction in global inequality. Setting aside income and wealth distribution on an individual level, most technology available to humans is more broadly available to humans across the globe than at any time in history. We failed to improve away from fossil fuels for largely economic reasons, and have caused irreparable damage to our ecosystem as result. That doesn't mean we haven't done incredible things along the way, and it doesn't mean that human civilization is going to come to an end, it simply means that it will change. > Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. There is the rub. Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered. From the conventionally excepted discovery of electricity to the invention of devices which can be used to generate and distribute electricity, development of modern infrastructure and advances, and the most recent experimental batteries (and if you don't think batteries are experimental, take a good look at Samsung's recent failures), we have been on a 2500 year journey (the first documented history of electrical phenomen was the triboelectric effect, and documented in amber by ancient greeks) to get where we are. We have vastly improved our understanding of how electricity works, but we haven't yet mastered it. We probably will never stop finding new and interesting ways to capture new forms of energy with the express goal of generating electricity, and it is almost certain that we haven't begun to imagine the different ways it can be used. Along the way, we have used electricity to improve virtually every aspect of human life. > Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? Yes, approximately. It suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS. It probably felt approximately the same way it did when I got my first internet connection, and decoupled my ability to learn from my (at the time) poor financial circumstances. > When they heard voices that came across the town? Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip. > When they saw the first locomotive? Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off, and then confusion and sadness when the Challenger accident unfolded in videos played on the news (I was 8 at the time). > Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive. Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet. Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations! > How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Has it occurred to you that the reason that we don't know all of the great minds and great artists that have emerged in the last century largely because the glut of invention, ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness? The great contemporary achievement is not that we have somehow failed to live up to our potential and there are no longer great people, it is that we have reduced the barrier to achievement so dramatically that almost anyone simply needs to try to have the opportunity to succeed in the way that only a select few were able to in the past. In what era could the child of a refugee grown to build one of the greatest technology empires we have seen? Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; his story of building Apple, being pushed out, building a new empire, and triumphantly returning to control of Apple and leading it into a golden age is quite literally legendary (seriously, it's an amazing story, even overlooking Jobs behaviour, personality, and all the dramatic license that my summary takes! Do you really believe that it was 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae or is it just a beter story when you leave out the Thespians and Thebans?). In what era could the child of an upper middle class family build an means of connecting more than one billion people each day? Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats. If Elon Musk achieves even a fraction of his dreams, he will be renowned in history as one of the most important contemporary great people. Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species, depending on how the next century plays out :) If you think we live in boring times, you would do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder, and maybe try living without the modern conveniences invented in the last 30-100 years, even for a week.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

codeisawesome 10y ago

That last bit - is a beautiful way to look at it.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here. He isn't though. He's just posturing for PR purposes. I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?[1] As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as traditional car companies "vowing" to beat Tesla: it's just PR, backed by perhaps showing off concept cars in car shows. [1]I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.

6d6b73 10y ago
>How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results? You do know you're talking about Boeing here, right? They had somewhere around 300 launches with close to perfect success rate.
valarauca1 10y ago
How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results? Seriously? Well not counting their ICBM program. S-1C Program (Saturn V Rocket First Stage): 12 successful launches, 0 failures. IUS Program (Booster for interplanetary probes from Space Shuttle): 24 launches, 3 failures (2 Boeing's fault, 1 the space shuttle exploded). Delta II: 153 Launches, 2 Failures. Delta III: 3 Launches, 2 Failures. Delta IV: 33 Launches, 1 Failure. I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? No. The new ULA Vulkan launch system doesn't have it's first test flight scheduled until 2019. What about re-usable? Boeing (or really ULA) is developing the Vulkan Rocket. Which is partially recoverable, not fully. [1] The first launch of this vehicle is 2019. The entry level offering is quoted at ~$100mil per rocket (vs ~$164mil for a Delta IV) [2]. While a Falcon9 is $62mil [3]. I see why ULA lost their contract, Musk cut their knee caps off. [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recovery-768x479.jpg https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recove... [2] https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future-with-the-vulcan-rocket-family/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
- enraged_camel 10y ago

transfire 10y ago

> You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts. $7,500 on a $75,000 car is not a large enough subsidy to "run" Tesla. It's incentive for energy efficiency and all cars manufactures get it. Moreover SpaceX does not get any "welfare" in any form. They have a contract job via the government's Commercial Space program.

powertower 10y ago
The $7,500 is the consumer subsidy. He is talking about the separate $5 billion corporate subsidy.

spdustin 10y ago

> SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS Falcon 1 and Merlin, Kestrel and Draco engines were funded with private capital; SpaceX was a space-faring company before NASA money got involved. COTS money went into developing the Falcon 9, and amounted to $278 million. They did get a bunch of cash from NASA for launching crew to the ISS aboard Dragon v2: $2.6 billion. NASA also gave money to Boeing for their CST-100: $4.2 billion. > Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts The bulk of Tesla's cash comes from sales, stocks and bond sales - incentives from the government take the form of tax credits, or state agencies offering their own incentives because they are themselves competing to hitch a ride on Elon's business ventures. And who can blame them! Boeing gets considerable subsidies and tax credits as well, as do other car manufacturers and defense contractors, let's not suggest Tesla is alone here. Also, Tesla was saved from near death by Daimler AG in early 2009, not by a "handout". In 2010, they received a low-interest loan from the government of $465 million, which they repaid in 2013 (the first automaker to repay their portion of the $8 billion loaned out). Boeing makes less than a third of its revenue from defense and space spending, and yet has still received far more money through federal cost-plus contracts than SpaceX has received from all its revenue sources combined. I don't think it's fair to characterize them as apples and apples here. Boeing keeps Elon honest by putting crew on ISS, or launching something to Mars, not by lobbying congress to slow Elon down with government red tape for matters that didn't pertain to the government to begin with. That's Boeing/Lockheed (ULS) using its position as one of the largest government defense and space contractors to keep their seat at the grown-ups table. That said, the CST-100 Starliner is quite a good looking craft that evokes memories of the Apollo program, but I personally like the sleek and swooping curves of Dragon V2 - plus the whole "lands on its legs" thing they've got going on for it. :) Photos of both can be seen here: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=73778 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=73778

walrus01 10y ago
On the plus side for Boeing, they have a very long track record of building things that live in space for long periods of time. Boeing acquired the Hughes geostationary satellite business based in the Los Angeles area a long time ago. There's many 10 and 15 year old fully functional geostationary telecom satellites out there in orbit (Boeing 702 bus, etc) in "production" use with the world's largest satellite telecommunications companies. That's a track record SpaceX can't lay claim to just yet. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/hs-702.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/hs-702.htm

babyrainbow 10y ago

>This is an incredible time to be alive.... Yea? Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. And we are happy, because we can see the associated fireworks? Don't get me wrong. I like the progress with the space stuff. But I just don't like the idea just because of that everything else is sunshine and rainbows...It is not. And it is not really a great time to be alive. It is an extremely boring time to be alive. Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. When radio waves were invented. Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? When they heard voices that came across the town? When they saw the first locomotive? When they saw the first airplane? Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive. Those were incredible times to be alive... How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Justin Beiber and Hilariy Clinton? How many great inventions of our times will they read with excitement? Elon Musks Hyper loop? No. I really don't think so. So yea. We are living in incredibly boring times.... EDIT: This comment is not relavant anymore since the parent comment has been edited to include "time to be alive for space fans.."...

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive. > Those were incredible times to be alive... No such time existed. Its not like "the past" all happened at once, or even in one lifetime. > How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Probably lots, many of which we're overlooking because of either excessive familiarity (in terms of art) or insufficient perspective to appreciate impact (in terms of science and technological inventions.) Lots of the people of the past we read about and hold up today, whether in artistic or technical fields, weren't recognized in their own time. Our time is, likely, no better at recognizing those among us who will be viewed as notable in the future.
ygjb-dupe 10y ago
> Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. Yes, we did. I don't know that we will have to abandon it, but we do know that human civilization is on the precipice of change, largely in part due to our relentless pace of technological process and reduction in global inequality. Setting aside income and wealth distribution on an individual level, most technology available to humans is more broadly available to humans across the globe than at any time in history. We failed to improve away from fossil fuels for largely economic reasons, and have caused irreparable damage to our ecosystem as result. That doesn't mean we haven't done incredible things along the way, and it doesn't mean that human civilization is going to come to an end, it simply means that it will change. > Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. There is the rub. Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered. From the conventionally excepted discovery of electricity to the invention of devices which can be used to generate and distribute electricity, development of modern infrastructure and advances, and the most recent experimental batteries (and if you don't think batteries are experimental, take a good look at Samsung's recent failures), we have been on a 2500 year journey (the first documented history of electrical phenomen was the triboelectric effect, and documented in amber by ancient greeks) to get where we are. We have vastly improved our understanding of how electricity works, but we haven't yet mastered it. We probably will never stop finding new and interesting ways to capture new forms of energy with the express goal of generating electricity, and it is almost certain that we haven't begun to imagine the different ways it can be used. Along the way, we have used electricity to improve virtually every aspect of human life. > Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? Yes, approximately. It suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS. It probably felt approximately the same way it did when I got my first internet connection, and decoupled my ability to learn from my (at the time) poor financial circumstances. > When they heard voices that came across the town? Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip. > When they saw the first locomotive? Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off, and then confusion and sadness when the Challenger accident unfolded in videos played on the news (I was 8 at the time). > Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive. Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet. Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations! > How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Has it occurred to you that the reason that we don't know all of the great minds and great artists that have emerged in the last century largely because the glut of invention, ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness? The great contemporary achievement is not that we have somehow failed to live up to our potential and there are no longer great people, it is that we have reduced the barrier to achievement so dramatically that almost anyone simply needs to try to have the opportunity to succeed in the way that only a select few were able to in the past. In what era could the child of a refugee grown to build one of the greatest technology empires we have seen? Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; his story of building Apple, being pushed out, building a new empire, and triumphantly returning to control of Apple and leading it into a golden age is quite literally legendary (seriously, it's an amazing story, even overlooking Jobs behaviour, personality, and all the dramatic license that my summary takes! Do you really believe that it was 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae or is it just a beter story when you leave out the Thespians and Thebans?). In what era could the child of an upper middle class family build an means of connecting more than one billion people each day? Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats. If Elon Musk achieves even a fraction of his dreams, he will be renowned in history as one of the most important contemporary great people. Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species, depending on how the next century plays out :) If you think we live in boring times, you would do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder, and maybe try living without the modern conveniences invented in the last 30-100 years, even for a week.