5 ms·

Too important for what?

by quest88 9y ago

TeMPOraL 9y ago
For the second space age. For an industry in space, for getting humanity beyond the confines of this single planet.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  If we are dependent on a single company to get beyond the confines of a single planet, we are probably stuck here. Kinda why I'm happy NASA still has their own plans, and other competitors are out there too. Hinging everything on one rocket isn't a good idea, and when the shuttle was retired, we ended up without a way to space for years.
  - gliboc 9y ago
    You realize this is not how it works? SpaceX is a pioneer: they show the path, others follow. There is no dependency on innovation. Also, NASA can't do any of this, which is why the US government is giving funds to SpaceX. Plus what about the real dependency of the NASA on political agenda and budget votes?
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      SpaceX also has a real dependency on political agenda and budget votes (as do all of Musk's companies as the case is: Tesla and SolarCity were built heavily on tax incentives from green initiatives, SpaceX depends on funding from NASA, and the Boring Company looks like it's gearing up to cash in on all those "infrastructure" promises everyone in our government's been demanding). Congress can absolutely decide to fund SpaceX less, or charge SpaceX more for use of government facilities, just as easily as they can pull the funding out from under SLS if they choose to. Elon Musk is very good at designing companies built on government handouts. ;) Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. We are past the "pioneer" stage of space launches: We've done it lots of times. The exciting part is now making space launches cheaper, regular, and more capable. SpaceX is not the only company working on doing those things.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > We are past the "pioneer" stage of space launches: We've done it lots of times. The exciting part is now making space launches cheaper, regular, and more capable. SpaceX is not the only company working on doing those things. Sure. But SpaceX is still leading a way, and is way ahead of everyone else. And before they started, literally nobody else cared. Existing launch companies were happy with their status quo. I'm not confident that the other companies currently working on cheap launches would survive if SpaceX folded, so I still believe we need SpaceX in the coming years to keep up the momentum.
      - squeegee5 9y ago
        That you've received so many downvotes is indicative of HN's perpetual Musk boner. Musk is a state-sponsored winner, a Jack Ma, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or Bill Gates. He is an undeserving, decade-long recipient of government grants and contracts obtained through relationships to politicians and career bureaucrats. His sole talent is finessing the work of skilled engineers and marketing that as his personal brand. He's not even a particularly good manager, as reflected in the varied outcomes of his businesses. If the government gave a dozen fresh MBA graduates the same amount of money and influence, maybe one of them will build an incredible business that stands on its own merit like SpaceX. Another might build something like Tesla, which takes on ten billion dollars of debt and fails to turn an annual profit over fourteen years of operation. A full half, like SolarCity, will lose money for years and reach bankruptcy proceedings. And none of them will have a cousin of loose ethics that is willing to rescue a business that failed on its merits.
        handsomechad 9y ago
        Why did you include Gates?
        nickik 9y ago
        I will give you some examples of how everything you say is utter garbage. Lets luck at the COTS program form NASA. They selected two companies, SpaceX and Kistler. SpaceX succeeded on everything and they flew the missions at the price agree on in the contract (witch was globally competitive). Kistler was not able and so they went down. The program succeeded and the US now has the by far the cheapest ISS supply vehicle and the only one that can return cargo (SpaceX btw added this feature on top themselves, it was demand by NASA). Once the contract COTS 2 was negotiated, SpaceX again made the single best and cheapest bid and was again selected in a competitive process against companies that are far larger and have more pull in Washington. The same goes for Commercial Crew. It was a competitive process that included many companies who have far more access to politicians and career bureaucrats then SpaceX had. And yet again, SpaceX was on of the selected, BECAUSE THEIR OFFER WAS JUST SO MUCH CHEAPER THEN ANYBODY ELSE. Have you ever consider that maybe SpaceX gets these contracts because they are just far cheaper then anybody else? Many of the numbers I am talking about here are public. You can go look it up. The reality is your argument is absolute bullshit that has absolutely no bases in reality. Now that was NASA, lets look at DoD. Clearly SpaceX only gets all these contracts because they play golf with so many generals, right? Again, totally false. Its the exact opposite, ULA had long been the prime contract to the point where the launches were no longer competitively bid. It took multiple law suits against the DoD before SpaceX was even allowed to compete. Then they had to go threw a very hard certification process. Once SpaceX was allowed to compete they massively underbid the competition to the point where ULA has actually stopped even bidding because they know they have no chance at winning in a fair competition. Also, the notion that SpaceX after 2008 depended on government contracts is totally false. Only about 1/3 of SpaceX launches are for the US government and they have tons of private launches on their waiting list. All in all, your entire argument is totally false.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    We're not dependent on a single company in principle, but it so happened in the last 10 years, that they were the only one who cared and had the means to do something about it. Now that they've rekindled the interest and shown the way to lower launch costs, competitors are showing up. Which is good, but I still fear it's early enough that if SpaceX folded now, other space companies would follow, and we'd be stuck again in the early post-Shuttle era. NASA, with its limited budget and constant micromanagement by politicians, doesn't want to be - and can't be - in the business of trucking things to orbit. That's why they're trying to outsource it as much as possible.
- quest88 9y ago
  But why is that important? It sounds really cool, but why do we want that? As far as I know nothing useful, that has benefited humanity, has come from the ISS or going to the moon.
  - 282883392 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
    - slaydemons 9y ago
      Has nothing to do with his question.
      - 282883392 9y ago
        "nothing useful that has benefited humanity" This is just a list of benefits that humans have gotten from space travel. Space travel in general is, in fact, beneficial to humanity and science.
        slaydemons 9y ago
        That's like saying world wars are beneficial to humanity because a bunch of shit gets invented to fight wars. No. Wars and so far space travel has done nothing for humanity. If you would have instead focused on inventing the inventions that came with fighting wars instead of fighting wars we still would have the inventions but would have been much more efficient.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Not really. That's not how the world works. Otherwise we'd have jumped from stone age straight to nuclear energy. The way this works: space exploration presents a set of compelling engineering challenges that extend our capabilities. People solve those challenges, and then other people find more mundane uses for resulting solution. But without the initial compelling challenge, those inventions would likely either took much longer, or would not have been made at all, because ones on the market were good enough. And that's just talking about trickle-down benefits. Then there's the whole lot of direct benefits from satellites - from the most obvious, like navigation and communication, to the less obvious, like weather monitoring, agriculture management, emergency response, national security, climate science, etc.
vincentleeuwen 9y ago
Making it to Mars http://www.spacex.com/mars http://www.spacex.com/mars

Too important for what?

TeMPOraL 9y ago

For the second space age. For an industry in space, for getting humanity beyond the confines of this single planet.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
If we are dependent on a single company to get beyond the confines of a single planet, we are probably stuck here. Kinda why I'm happy NASA still has their own plans, and other competitors are out there too. Hinging everything on one rocket isn't a good idea, and when the shuttle was retired, we ended up without a way to space for years.
- gliboc 9y ago
  You realize this is not how it works? SpaceX is a pioneer: they show the path, others follow. There is no dependency on innovation. Also, NASA can't do any of this, which is why the US government is giving funds to SpaceX. Plus what about the real dependency of the NASA on political agenda and budget votes?
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    SpaceX also has a real dependency on political agenda and budget votes (as do all of Musk's companies as the case is: Tesla and SolarCity were built heavily on tax incentives from green initiatives, SpaceX depends on funding from NASA, and the Boring Company looks like it's gearing up to cash in on all those "infrastructure" promises everyone in our government's been demanding). Congress can absolutely decide to fund SpaceX less, or charge SpaceX more for use of government facilities, just as easily as they can pull the funding out from under SLS if they choose to. Elon Musk is very good at designing companies built on government handouts. ;) Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. We are past the "pioneer" stage of space launches: We've done it lots of times. The exciting part is now making space launches cheaper, regular, and more capable. SpaceX is not the only company working on doing those things.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > We are past the "pioneer" stage of space launches: We've done it lots of times. The exciting part is now making space launches cheaper, regular, and more capable. SpaceX is not the only company working on doing those things. Sure. But SpaceX is still leading a way, and is way ahead of everyone else. And before they started, literally nobody else cared. Existing launch companies were happy with their status quo. I'm not confident that the other companies currently working on cheap launches would survive if SpaceX folded, so I still believe we need SpaceX in the coming years to keep up the momentum.
    - squeegee5 9y ago
      That you've received so many downvotes is indicative of HN's perpetual Musk boner. Musk is a state-sponsored winner, a Jack Ma, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or Bill Gates. He is an undeserving, decade-long recipient of government grants and contracts obtained through relationships to politicians and career bureaucrats. His sole talent is finessing the work of skilled engineers and marketing that as his personal brand. He's not even a particularly good manager, as reflected in the varied outcomes of his businesses. If the government gave a dozen fresh MBA graduates the same amount of money and influence, maybe one of them will build an incredible business that stands on its own merit like SpaceX. Another might build something like Tesla, which takes on ten billion dollars of debt and fails to turn an annual profit over fourteen years of operation. A full half, like SolarCity, will lose money for years and reach bankruptcy proceedings. And none of them will have a cousin of loose ethics that is willing to rescue a business that failed on its merits.
      - handsomechad 9y ago
        Why did you include Gates?
      - nickik 9y ago
        I will give you some examples of how everything you say is utter garbage. Lets luck at the COTS program form NASA. They selected two companies, SpaceX and Kistler. SpaceX succeeded on everything and they flew the missions at the price agree on in the contract (witch was globally competitive). Kistler was not able and so they went down. The program succeeded and the US now has the by far the cheapest ISS supply vehicle and the only one that can return cargo (SpaceX btw added this feature on top themselves, it was demand by NASA). Once the contract COTS 2 was negotiated, SpaceX again made the single best and cheapest bid and was again selected in a competitive process against companies that are far larger and have more pull in Washington. The same goes for Commercial Crew. It was a competitive process that included many companies who have far more access to politicians and career bureaucrats then SpaceX had. And yet again, SpaceX was on of the selected, BECAUSE THEIR OFFER WAS JUST SO MUCH CHEAPER THEN ANYBODY ELSE. Have you ever consider that maybe SpaceX gets these contracts because they are just far cheaper then anybody else? Many of the numbers I am talking about here are public. You can go look it up. The reality is your argument is absolute bullshit that has absolutely no bases in reality. Now that was NASA, lets look at DoD. Clearly SpaceX only gets all these contracts because they play golf with so many generals, right? Again, totally false. Its the exact opposite, ULA had long been the prime contract to the point where the launches were no longer competitively bid. It took multiple law suits against the DoD before SpaceX was even allowed to compete. Then they had to go threw a very hard certification process. Once SpaceX was allowed to compete they massively underbid the competition to the point where ULA has actually stopped even bidding because they know they have no chance at winning in a fair competition. Also, the notion that SpaceX after 2008 depended on government contracts is totally false. Only about 1/3 of SpaceX launches are for the US government and they have tons of private launches on their waiting list. All in all, your entire argument is totally false.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  We're not dependent on a single company in principle, but it so happened in the last 10 years, that they were the only one who cared and had the means to do something about it. Now that they've rekindled the interest and shown the way to lower launch costs, competitors are showing up. Which is good, but I still fear it's early enough that if SpaceX folded now, other space companies would follow, and we'd be stuck again in the early post-Shuttle era. NASA, with its limited budget and constant micromanagement by politicians, doesn't want to be - and can't be - in the business of trucking things to orbit. That's why they're trying to outsource it as much as possible.
quest88 9y ago
But why is that important? It sounds really cool, but why do we want that? As far as I know nothing useful, that has benefited humanity, has come from the ISS or going to the moon.
- 282883392 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
  - slaydemons 9y ago
    Has nothing to do with his question.
    - 282883392 9y ago
      "nothing useful that has benefited humanity" This is just a list of benefits that humans have gotten from space travel. Space travel in general is, in fact, beneficial to humanity and science.
      - slaydemons 9y ago
        That's like saying world wars are beneficial to humanity because a bunch of shit gets invented to fight wars. No. Wars and so far space travel has done nothing for humanity. If you would have instead focused on inventing the inventions that came with fighting wars instead of fighting wars we still would have the inventions but would have been much more efficient.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Not really. That's not how the world works. Otherwise we'd have jumped from stone age straight to nuclear energy. The way this works: space exploration presents a set of compelling engineering challenges that extend our capabilities. People solve those challenges, and then other people find more mundane uses for resulting solution. But without the initial compelling challenge, those inventions would likely either took much longer, or would not have been made at all, because ones on the market were good enough. And that's just talking about trickle-down benefits. Then there's the whole lot of direct benefits from satellites - from the most obvious, like navigation and communication, to the less obvious, like weather monitoring, agriculture management, emergency response, national security, climate science, etc.

vincentleeuwen 9y ago

Making it to Mars http://www.spacex.com/mars http://www.spacex.com/mars