6 ms·

Forget about comfort. Rocket engines are dangerous and unreliable compared to planes and any other mode of transportation. People aren't going to tolerate the r

Forget about comfort. Rocket engines are dangerous and unreliable compared to planes and any other mode of transportation. People aren't going to tolerate the risk.

Klathmon 8y ago
>Rocket engines are dangerous and unreliable compared to planes To be fair, that's the problem they are trying to fix. This is like telling Microsoft that personal-computers will never work because they are big, expensive, difficult to use, and crash all the time.
- MPSimmons 8y ago
  To be fair, only half of those statements have changed. Computers still crash all the time, just less frequently than they used to.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    But there's a magnitude difference there from "the early days". Plane crashes still happen too, but with significantly less frequency.
  - voidlogic 8y ago
    >Computers still crash all the time My personal XP is 20 years my computer crashed 1-5 times a day, now days my computer crashes maybe once every 4-6 months. That is considerable.
- NegativeLatency 8y ago
  In general if your PC crashes you don’t explode though.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    But now we have computers running our planes, running our cars, running our pacemakers. Your PC might not kill you, but the software running the drive-by-wire system in your car will. Still, my point wasn't to get into a discussion about the differences between software and rockets, but more to point out that their goal is to change those things about rockets. To make them reliable, safe and cheap. You can think they won't be able to pull it off, but saying that it will never work because it doesn't currently work that way seems a bit silly.
- computerex 8y ago
  > This is like telling Microsoft that personal-computers will never work because they are big, expensive, difficult to use, and crash all the time. That's not a fair comparison. The energy difference between a rocket engine and an airplane combustion engine is huge. Rockets are all about raw energy output and are essentially a bomb. The fuel is volatile, and rockets use a lot more fuel than planes. If a failure happens with rockets, the whole thing usually ends up blowing up catastrophically. Rockets are inherently more dangerous. But hey, more power to them. I would love it if we can make rocket flight safe enough for everyday use by everyone.

Forget about comfort. Rocket engines are dangerous and unreliable compared to planes and any other mode of transportation. People aren't going to tolerate the risk.

Klathmon 8y ago

>Rocket engines are dangerous and unreliable compared to planes To be fair, that's the problem they are trying to fix. This is like telling Microsoft that personal-computers will never work because they are big, expensive, difficult to use, and crash all the time.

MPSimmons 8y ago
To be fair, only half of those statements have changed. Computers still crash all the time, just less frequently than they used to.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  But there's a magnitude difference there from "the early days". Plane crashes still happen too, but with significantly less frequency.
- voidlogic 8y ago
  >Computers still crash all the time My personal XP is 20 years my computer crashed 1-5 times a day, now days my computer crashes maybe once every 4-6 months. That is considerable.
NegativeLatency 8y ago
In general if your PC crashes you don’t explode though.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  But now we have computers running our planes, running our cars, running our pacemakers. Your PC might not kill you, but the software running the drive-by-wire system in your car will. Still, my point wasn't to get into a discussion about the differences between software and rockets, but more to point out that their goal is to change those things about rockets. To make them reliable, safe and cheap. You can think they won't be able to pull it off, but saying that it will never work because it doesn't currently work that way seems a bit silly.
computerex 8y ago
> This is like telling Microsoft that personal-computers will never work because they are big, expensive, difficult to use, and crash all the time. That's not a fair comparison. The energy difference between a rocket engine and an airplane combustion engine is huge. Rockets are all about raw energy output and are essentially a bomb. The fuel is volatile, and rockets use a lot more fuel than planes. If a failure happens with rockets, the whole thing usually ends up blowing up catastrophically. Rockets are inherently more dangerous. But hey, more power to them. I would love it if we can make rocket flight safe enough for everyday use by everyone.