6 ms·

Statement from Elon Musk

118 points by rglovejoy 17y ago

msmith 17y ago
This is from today (Apr 15). The linked article doesn't have a date but the list of press releases does.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
pmichaud 17y ago
Summary: Orion wasn't going to work, so it's good Obama canceled it. He's looking forward to private industry solving all the problems while NASA works on interplanetary stuff. He thinks the president's upcoming speech about space is going to be important, so to stay tuned for it.
- skorgu 17y ago
  Minor nit: Orion wasn't going to make any sense financially. It probably would have eventually worked technically.
- physcab 17y ago
  It's interesting that after so many years they are actually going back to the old capsule design. I guess people are starting to realize that the Space Shuttle program may not have been actually worth it when you consider Saturn V's near 100% mission success and the fact that the Space Shuttle had two catastrophic failures.
  - AngryParsley 17y ago
    The Space Shuttle program has had 130 launches. The crew died twice. That's a failure rate of around 1.5%. The Apollo program had 11 launches and no loss of life... as long as you don't count the three astronauts who died on the ground in the Apollo 1 fire. Assuming the same failure rate of 1.5%: (1 - 0.015)^11 = 0.84. That means that if the Apollo program was just as (un)safe as the Space Shuttle program, we would have an 83% chance of seeing no loss of life in the Apollo missions. The Apollo program had the advantage of using big dumb boosters with no reusable parts, but the Space Shuttle program got to use newer materials and better engineering techniques. I'd estimate both were about equally unsafe. A 1% chance of death is way too high for any sort of civilian transportation. A simpler design (capsule + big dumb booster) with modern engineering and materials would be much safer than both.
    - physcab 17y ago
      You make some interesting points. I'm not sure what the failure rate would have been if the Apollo program were allowed to continue with the same design (albeit better materials and engineering), but its probably incorrect to assume it would be the same for the two craft because they are fairly different designs and have different physics (i.e Shuttle rocking back and forth before launch is due to its "piggybacking"). However the two most significant design changes that would have reflected far different failure rates are: 1) Change in fuel type and 2) Presence of an abort sequence. 1) In the Apollo design, the rocket was liquid propelled, thus it could have been shut off (theoretically) at any point in the launch sequence. The Space Shuttle by contrast has Solid Rocket Boosters, which once lit, do not turn off. 2) The Apollo rocket had an escape rocket mounted to the capsule that could have been fired and brought the crew to safety in the event that 1) did not occur. The Space Shuttle by contrast cannot enter into an abort sequence until those SRB's are done firing.
    - jmatt 17y ago
      Apollo 1 should count. Gus Grissom had been to space twice. Ed White once. They were the top candidates in the program at the time. The accident was clearly related to space exploration and the Apollo program. When we lost those astronauts it directly effected the outcome of the Apollo program since they were going to continue to actively participate in future missions. [1] As for the space shuttle, it is a failure of both complexity and the inability to adapt. Had it been either less complex or more adaptable it would have had a different fate. All of that being said it was designed to last 10 years or 100 missions[2]. That should be read whichever comes first. So all the reliability engineering that was run on the parts in the 70s did not assume the same parts would still be in use in the 00s. Such an accident should be expected when using hardware that was designed to have been retired over 10 years ago. My own take on it is the Apollo program was more dangerous and we were relatively lucky. Meanwhile the shuttle program was safer yet we didn't follow our own rules and got burned. Whether it's launching outside of recommended temperatures or running shuttles for twice as long as they were designed for... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program
CWuestefeld 17y ago
I really am glad that SpaceX exists, and I want them to be successful. To me, it represents a grand intersection of my technical interests, the dream of space travel that was instilled in me since I was a child, and my moral belief that government has no place in this (nor in many other things). SpaceX is making progress toward real commercial access to orbit. But is there any work being done by business farther out than that?
- physcab 17y ago
  We've had real commercial access to orbit for over 20 years. The solution SpaceX is offering now however is to give companies (or god-forbid, individuals) a much cheaper ticket to space, albeit at a much lower probability of that cargo actually getting there. Rocket launching will always be an expensive endeavor. It's the nature of the business. The interesting question now is whether the chance your cargo getting to space is proportional to cost, and is that something you're willing to risk as a customer.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > or god-forbid, individuals Why? Is there anything bad about giving individuals access to space?
- JulianMorrison 17y ago
  I think government space flight is a dead end, but for economic reasons foremost. NASA can only take a politically-bounded slice of a fixed size tax pie. It spends the money it was allocated and comes back with empty hands. Unless the USA is in a military-driven space race with a superpower rival, it's going to get the crumbs and it has no way of getting more than that. Success does not breed success, only photo-ops. If the photo-ops get stale, success can breed apathy and abandonment. A commercial space company comes back from each successful flight with more money than it set out. It causes the economy to grow, actually increasing the size of the pie, and the slice it gets is investment-bounded. Success will bring more investment. There is no political upper limit on how high it can scale. An interplanetary culture is going to require utterly enormous amounts of wealth by modern standards - only commerce has the potential to create that much wealth.
jamesshamenski 17y ago
The operational efficiency and profitability of SpaceX is extraordinary. Listen to Elon and you'll see where the trends are heading.
- FreeRadical 17y ago
  Do you have any more detail on the operational efficiency or profitability of Spacex? I read your comment before the article; which didn't provide much detail on this.
abstractbill 17y ago
Obama's speech sounds very interesting - I don't suppose it's being streamed anywhere? EDIT: Found it - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36569092#36569092 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36569092#36569092
- barmstrong 17y ago
  Did anything important come out of the talk - can anyone summarize who watched it?
  - natep 17y ago
    I watched it, and you should, too. It was a great speech. The best summary I can come up with: * Pres. Obama is really passionate about the space program (or at least talks like he is) * His earliest memory is waving a flag as astronauts visited Hawaii * He has a picture of Jupiter taken by the Hubble hanging in his private office * He's increasing NASA's budget * He's cutting Constellation and re-purposing Orion (2 failing programs, IMO) * He wants to see NASA to put humans farther into deep space * He wants to extend the life of the ISS by >5 years * He wants to send humans to an asteroid * He wants to send a human into a Mars orbit and back by 2030 * Next up, landing on Mars. * He's going to have a plan to give current (aka soon-to-be-former) shuttle engineers jobs by August 15. * He (or his speech writers) really like random space trivia
ehsanul 17y ago
I was slightly hopeful as I looked into their careers section. There are 99 open jobs apparently, which is great! And I'm just graduating with a BS in mechanical engineering, and they need interns doing tedious tasks as much as any other company right? But of course, due to government regulations, they only hire US citizens and permanent residents. Unfortunately, that rules me out of even the slightest chance. Oh well..
stretchwithme 17y ago
I don't agree with Obama very much, but this was a good decision. Bush clearly created this program in a quest to have his Kennedy-to-the-moon-the-cost-be-damned moment and it needed to be killed.
physcab 17y ago
I have a slightly more pessimistic outlook on SpaceX, but I'll admit that I'm slightly biased. My dad has worked on the Delta, Atlas, and Titan rockets close to 30 years. These rockets are expensive (an order of magnitude more than SpaceX), but they can do one thing that SpaceX can't: guarantee success. If you had to put up sensitive cargo (commercial or military) that costs on the order of $100 million (and sometimes much much more), would you entrust a fledgling company with its sparse mission success record or the more established company with proven success? And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as engineered for the past 20-30 years? Rocket launching doesn't go by the typical startup mantra. Mistakes are very real, very expensive, and have much more human impact. SpaceX seems more to me like fast food: their efficiency is awe-inspiring, but I worry at what significant cost?
- anamax 17y ago
  There are more than 10x as many people who can pay $1M for a launch than there are who can pay $10M. We've seen this before many times before. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex... Auspex vs Network Appliance, (early) Ford vs all the luxury car makers, and so on. > And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as engineered for the past 20-30 years? Except that that's not the choice that I have. My choice is between going up on a rocket with a 5% chance of failure or not going at all. Yes, there are folks who won't take that 5% chance, but there are a lot that will.
  - physcab 17y ago
    Well, I think the failure rate is somewhere around 60% not 5% (I think out of the 5 Falcon 1 launches, only 2 succeeded). But over time, that figure will go down dramatically as they perfect their model (hopefully). Anyways, if you really wanted to catch a flight to space there are other options. It's reported that you can buy a seat on the Russian Soyuz which is very reliable. If you want to go for lower earth orbit, then those distances are easier and cheaper to reach, and I believe there are other commercial craft right now. One thing that is often overlooked is that I think current aerospace companies have regulated profit margins if they do business with the government. So they don't have the incentive to make cheaper space craft even if they thought it would be a good idea. I'm not sure if SpaceX are subject to those same laws and regulations. But it would be a tragedy if they were able to operate with lower standards.
tjmc 17y ago
Despite Musk's obvious vested interest, he's spot on here. The achievements of Musk at SpaceX, John Carmack at Armadillo and Burt Rutan at Scaled are impressive enough on their own merits. Consider that all 3 companies combined are spending a tiny fraction of what was being thrown at Orion and there's no contest. The big aerospace companies seem to have lost their way - look at the Joint Strike Fighter or 787 debacles for example. Massive delays and cost overruns made sense under NASA's "cost plus" funding model. They need to get back to the "internal startup" philosophy exemplified by Skunkworks. Competitive commercial funding is the best way to get there.
dpifke 17y ago
While I don't disagree with canceling the current tactical plan ("let's build Ares/Orion"), I wish he hadn't canceled the current vision ("let's return to the Moon/go to Mars"). Maybe the two were inextricably linked, but seems like whatever efficiency we gain through privatization could just as easily be squandered by a NASA stumbling around without a purpose or motivation. The counterpoint to this seems to be this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand-challenges-21st-century-your-ideas-welcome http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand-challenges-2... ...which is a call for the next "Moon landing" scale project for the US to back. So at least at some level they're aware that these sorts of visions are needed, and (possibly quite correctly) the Moon return and Mars landing wasn't it.
sielskr 17y ago
The U.S. space program is a source of tremendous prestige to the U.S. government. People whose plans depend on the U.S. government's voluntarily letting private companies take over leadership of parts of the space enterprise should be aware of the strength of the government's need for prestige. (Prestige helps maintain moral legitimacy, which is necessary in the long term for the continued ability of exercise power.)
- berntb 17y ago
  Wow, 50 more billions was needed to develop Ares?! If USA is in dire need of prestige that doesn't come from its industry, why not put more money(+) into research to eradicate diseases of the world's poor, like malaria? Oh wait, an industrialist is already doing that... Why not e.g. give a few billions to DARPA for energy and health research? The USA should get both prestige and real jobs from that. (+) Say, a tenth of the money earned from the cost difference between Ares and the private alternatives being built now?

118 points by rglovejoy 17y ago

msmith 17y ago

This is from today (Apr 15). The linked article doesn't have a date but the list of press releases does.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

pmichaud 17y ago

Summary: Orion wasn't going to work, so it's good Obama canceled it. He's looking forward to private industry solving all the problems while NASA works on interplanetary stuff. He thinks the president's upcoming speech about space is going to be important, so to stay tuned for it.

skorgu 17y ago
Minor nit: Orion wasn't going to make any sense financially. It probably would have eventually worked technically.
physcab 17y ago
It's interesting that after so many years they are actually going back to the old capsule design. I guess people are starting to realize that the Space Shuttle program may not have been actually worth it when you consider Saturn V's near 100% mission success and the fact that the Space Shuttle had two catastrophic failures.
- AngryParsley 17y ago
  The Space Shuttle program has had 130 launches. The crew died twice. That's a failure rate of around 1.5%. The Apollo program had 11 launches and no loss of life... as long as you don't count the three astronauts who died on the ground in the Apollo 1 fire. Assuming the same failure rate of 1.5%: (1 - 0.015)^11 = 0.84. That means that if the Apollo program was just as (un)safe as the Space Shuttle program, we would have an 83% chance of seeing no loss of life in the Apollo missions. The Apollo program had the advantage of using big dumb boosters with no reusable parts, but the Space Shuttle program got to use newer materials and better engineering techniques. I'd estimate both were about equally unsafe. A 1% chance of death is way too high for any sort of civilian transportation. A simpler design (capsule + big dumb booster) with modern engineering and materials would be much safer than both.
  - physcab 17y ago
    You make some interesting points. I'm not sure what the failure rate would have been if the Apollo program were allowed to continue with the same design (albeit better materials and engineering), but its probably incorrect to assume it would be the same for the two craft because they are fairly different designs and have different physics (i.e Shuttle rocking back and forth before launch is due to its "piggybacking"). However the two most significant design changes that would have reflected far different failure rates are: 1) Change in fuel type and 2) Presence of an abort sequence. 1) In the Apollo design, the rocket was liquid propelled, thus it could have been shut off (theoretically) at any point in the launch sequence. The Space Shuttle by contrast has Solid Rocket Boosters, which once lit, do not turn off. 2) The Apollo rocket had an escape rocket mounted to the capsule that could have been fired and brought the crew to safety in the event that 1) did not occur. The Space Shuttle by contrast cannot enter into an abort sequence until those SRB's are done firing.
  - jmatt 17y ago
    Apollo 1 should count. Gus Grissom had been to space twice. Ed White once. They were the top candidates in the program at the time. The accident was clearly related to space exploration and the Apollo program. When we lost those astronauts it directly effected the outcome of the Apollo program since they were going to continue to actively participate in future missions. [1] As for the space shuttle, it is a failure of both complexity and the inability to adapt. Had it been either less complex or more adaptable it would have had a different fate. All of that being said it was designed to last 10 years or 100 missions[2]. That should be read whichever comes first. So all the reliability engineering that was run on the parts in the 70s did not assume the same parts would still be in use in the 00s. Such an accident should be expected when using hardware that was designed to have been retired over 10 years ago. My own take on it is the Apollo program was more dangerous and we were relatively lucky. Meanwhile the shuttle program was safer yet we didn't follow our own rules and got burned. Whether it's launching outside of recommended temperatures or running shuttles for twice as long as they were designed for... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program

CWuestefeld 17y ago

I really am glad that SpaceX exists, and I want them to be successful. To me, it represents a grand intersection of my technical interests, the dream of space travel that was instilled in me since I was a child, and my moral belief that government has no place in this (nor in many other things). SpaceX is making progress toward real commercial access to orbit. But is there any work being done by business farther out than that?

physcab 17y ago
We've had real commercial access to orbit for over 20 years. The solution SpaceX is offering now however is to give companies (or god-forbid, individuals) a much cheaper ticket to space, albeit at a much lower probability of that cargo actually getting there. Rocket launching will always be an expensive endeavor. It's the nature of the business. The interesting question now is whether the chance your cargo getting to space is proportional to cost, and is that something you're willing to risk as a customer.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > or god-forbid, individuals Why? Is there anything bad about giving individuals access to space?
JulianMorrison 17y ago
I think government space flight is a dead end, but for economic reasons foremost. NASA can only take a politically-bounded slice of a fixed size tax pie. It spends the money it was allocated and comes back with empty hands. Unless the USA is in a military-driven space race with a superpower rival, it's going to get the crumbs and it has no way of getting more than that. Success does not breed success, only photo-ops. If the photo-ops get stale, success can breed apathy and abandonment. A commercial space company comes back from each successful flight with more money than it set out. It causes the economy to grow, actually increasing the size of the pie, and the slice it gets is investment-bounded. Success will bring more investment. There is no political upper limit on how high it can scale. An interplanetary culture is going to require utterly enormous amounts of wealth by modern standards - only commerce has the potential to create that much wealth.

jamesshamenski 17y ago

The operational efficiency and profitability of SpaceX is extraordinary. Listen to Elon and you'll see where the trends are heading.

FreeRadical 17y ago
Do you have any more detail on the operational efficiency or profitability of Spacex? I read your comment before the article; which didn't provide much detail on this.

abstractbill 17y ago

Obama's speech sounds very interesting - I don't suppose it's being streamed anywhere? EDIT: Found it - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36569092#36569092 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36569092#36569092

barmstrong 17y ago
Did anything important come out of the talk - can anyone summarize who watched it?
- natep 17y ago
  I watched it, and you should, too. It was a great speech. The best summary I can come up with: * Pres. Obama is really passionate about the space program (or at least talks like he is) * His earliest memory is waving a flag as astronauts visited Hawaii * He has a picture of Jupiter taken by the Hubble hanging in his private office * He's increasing NASA's budget * He's cutting Constellation and re-purposing Orion (2 failing programs, IMO) * He wants to see NASA to put humans farther into deep space * He wants to extend the life of the ISS by >5 years * He wants to send humans to an asteroid * He wants to send a human into a Mars orbit and back by 2030 * Next up, landing on Mars. * He's going to have a plan to give current (aka soon-to-be-former) shuttle engineers jobs by August 15. * He (or his speech writers) really like random space trivia

ehsanul 17y ago

I was slightly hopeful as I looked into their careers section. There are 99 open jobs apparently, which is great! And I'm just graduating with a BS in mechanical engineering, and they need interns doing tedious tasks as much as any other company right? But of course, due to government regulations, they only hire US citizens and permanent residents. Unfortunately, that rules me out of even the slightest chance. Oh well..

stretchwithme 17y ago

I don't agree with Obama very much, but this was a good decision. Bush clearly created this program in a quest to have his Kennedy-to-the-moon-the-cost-be-damned moment and it needed to be killed.

physcab 17y ago

I have a slightly more pessimistic outlook on SpaceX, but I'll admit that I'm slightly biased. My dad has worked on the Delta, Atlas, and Titan rockets close to 30 years. These rockets are expensive (an order of magnitude more than SpaceX), but they can do one thing that SpaceX can't: guarantee success. If you had to put up sensitive cargo (commercial or military) that costs on the order of $100 million (and sometimes much much more), would you entrust a fledgling company with its sparse mission success record or the more established company with proven success? And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as engineered for the past 20-30 years? Rocket launching doesn't go by the typical startup mantra. Mistakes are very real, very expensive, and have much more human impact. SpaceX seems more to me like fast food: their efficiency is awe-inspiring, but I worry at what significant cost?

anamax 17y ago
There are more than 10x as many people who can pay $1M for a launch than there are who can pay $10M. We've seen this before many times before. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex... Auspex vs Network Appliance, (early) Ford vs all the luxury car makers, and so on. > And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as engineered for the past 20-30 years? Except that that's not the choice that I have. My choice is between going up on a rocket with a 5% chance of failure or not going at all. Yes, there are folks who won't take that 5% chance, but there are a lot that will.
- physcab 17y ago
  Well, I think the failure rate is somewhere around 60% not 5% (I think out of the 5 Falcon 1 launches, only 2 succeeded). But over time, that figure will go down dramatically as they perfect their model (hopefully). Anyways, if you really wanted to catch a flight to space there are other options. It's reported that you can buy a seat on the Russian Soyuz which is very reliable. If you want to go for lower earth orbit, then those distances are easier and cheaper to reach, and I believe there are other commercial craft right now. One thing that is often overlooked is that I think current aerospace companies have regulated profit margins if they do business with the government. So they don't have the incentive to make cheaper space craft even if they thought it would be a good idea. I'm not sure if SpaceX are subject to those same laws and regulations. But it would be a tragedy if they were able to operate with lower standards.

tjmc 17y ago

Despite Musk's obvious vested interest, he's spot on here. The achievements of Musk at SpaceX, John Carmack at Armadillo and Burt Rutan at Scaled are impressive enough on their own merits. Consider that all 3 companies combined are spending a tiny fraction of what was being thrown at Orion and there's no contest. The big aerospace companies seem to have lost their way - look at the Joint Strike Fighter or 787 debacles for example. Massive delays and cost overruns made sense under NASA's "cost plus" funding model. They need to get back to the "internal startup" philosophy exemplified by Skunkworks. Competitive commercial funding is the best way to get there.

dpifke 17y ago

While I don't disagree with canceling the current tactical plan ("let's build Ares/Orion"), I wish he hadn't canceled the current vision ("let's return to the Moon/go to Mars"). Maybe the two were inextricably linked, but seems like whatever efficiency we gain through privatization could just as easily be squandered by a NASA stumbling around without a purpose or motivation. The counterpoint to this seems to be this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand-challenges-21st-century-your-ideas-welcome http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand-challenges-2... ...which is a call for the next "Moon landing" scale project for the US to back. So at least at some level they're aware that these sorts of visions are needed, and (possibly quite correctly) the Moon return and Mars landing wasn't it.

sielskr 17y ago

The U.S. space program is a source of tremendous prestige to the U.S. government. People whose plans depend on the U.S. government's voluntarily letting private companies take over leadership of parts of the space enterprise should be aware of the strength of the government's need for prestige. (Prestige helps maintain moral legitimacy, which is necessary in the long term for the continued ability of exercise power.)

berntb 17y ago
Wow, 50 more billions was needed to develop Ares?! If USA is in dire need of prestige that doesn't come from its industry, why not put more money(+) into research to eradicate diseases of the world's poor, like malaria? Oh wait, an industrialist is already doing that... Why not e.g. give a few billions to DARPA for energy and health research? The USA should get both prestige and real jobs from that. (+) Say, a tenth of the money earned from the cost difference between Ares and the private alternatives being built now?