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Marketing materials aren't plans. Musk has made a strategy of "overpromise, maybe deliver", rebranded as "vision" or "ambitious goals". Some of what his compan

Marketing materials aren't plans. Musk has made a strategy of "overpromise, maybe deliver", rebranded as "vision" or "ambitious goals". Some of what his companies have delivered is impressive, but you never know what they're going to actually deliver until there are at least working prototypes.

ben_w 6y ago
Yeah, but that’s true for all space companies. The surprising thing about SpaceX is that SpaceX delivers more than other corporations which promise less than SpaceX promises.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX? That marketing scheme sure does work. It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Generally with more money behind them, too.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      > No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? > Generally with more money behind them, too. I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you subtract what they turn over to SpaceX I'm not sure that counts. Other aerospace companies have other obligations in the aero part of aerospace, so funds devoted to those obligations are not particularly relevant either.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        > Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? All of them? We call them cost-plus contracts, and they're very common in space/military projects. Bid crazily low, because the bid doesn't matter! For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
      - jiofih 6y ago
        They only got large funding from NASA after building fully production-ready rockets and demonstrating they could deliver. It took around $100m of private investment to get the first Falcon generation flying.
        kerkeslager 6y ago
        Yes, that's the "and investment" part of what I said.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      ESA and NASA are the only entities which have much recent operational experience of advanced use of ion drives; they've both launched and operated multiple ion drive propelled probes. And Airbus is the only manufacturer to have made _multiple_ ion drive propelled vehicles. Some commercial satellite companies, including SpaceX, use ion drives for station keeping, but this has been around for about 50 years. Currently, Airbus is probably in about as good a position to build something like this as anyone. They certainly have far more experience than SpaceX.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Can you go into more depth with this? Because I don’t understand why you consider the experience with satellite station keeping to be unimportant. What’s importantly different about the more recent ion drives?
        rsynnott 6y ago
        Since the 1970s, some satellites (particularly Soviet satellites) have had some form of electric thruster for stationkeeping; these fire as needed, but spend most of their time off. This has become more common since the 90s. A small number of probes have used ion thrusters for propulsion. These fire continuously for long periods (months). This is fairly new (late 90s on), and no-one has much experience with it, but NASA and ESA have had a few each.
        ben_w 6y ago
        Thanks; I would never have guessed that distinction was important. :)
  - sobellian 6y ago
    You don't need to wonder. Boeing has received much more funding for Starliner than SpaceX has for crewed Dragon.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      Boeing has liabilities which a new company doesn't.
      - sobellian 6y ago
        Even if we consider the two funding amounts equal for the sake of comparison (which is a real stretch), crewed Dragon has already delivered while the recent Starliner test flight was riddled with defects.
        hinkley 6y ago
        Being as optimistic as I can without being an idiot: it’s abundantly clear that they are still farting around with welding techniques, but in a complex project of this scale, somebody is always running behind schedule, and if it’s something new, then lots of people are (I worked on support software for the 787, and even among our cohort, my division was the only one that was only slightly behind schedule) and sometimes it’s enough for those people to be sort of scaffolding for everyone else. If Conway’s Law has any flex in it, you bend the mandate of each group to shift some of their responsibilities to teams that are getting better results and eventually something ships. I suspect this is how they get anything done. It might even be their organizing principle, a sort of self organizing system. The same might be true for SpaceX, I couldn’t say. What we do know is that they just accepted delivery of welding robots, and I don’t know if that was Plan A all along or they’ve given up on training people to consistently make a clean bead that’s 53 ft long.
      - sputr 6y ago
        I don't get that logic. So what if they have liabilities? They also had experiance, proprietary knowledge, tested supply chains, tooling etc. etc. I think the problem is that everyone is buying into the Musk==SpaceX story, which I think is wrong. He is a marketing gimmick that secures funding and cheap labor (through hype) and maybe some clients. If you ask me, from what I've seen the actual person responsible for SpaceX is it's president/COO: Gwynne Shotwell.
  - kanox 6y ago
    > It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding. This is not true, SpaceX was consistenly cheaper than the competition for launches and ISS resupply.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
> Marketing materials aren't plans. That's right, they aren't. Which is why it's mighty brave of the BBC to call it "first interplanetary cargo ship". We'll see who gets there first.
nscalf 6y ago
I that this has historically been the case, but I think there has been a lot more delivery in recent years. The estimates from Musk seem to be less off, and I think a massive part of that is that the ramp up to this point was all predicated on original design of parts. They design and build >90% of the parts in the space ships. I think now that they have a catalogue of parts they don't have to build from scratch, their design/development cycles for new products are much faster and predictable. This same thing goes for Tesla, I don't think Musk & co. get enough credit for building everything from scratch.

ben_w 6y ago

Yeah, but that’s true for all space companies. The surprising thing about SpaceX is that SpaceX delivers more than other corporations which promise less than SpaceX promises.

kerkeslager 6y ago
You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX? That marketing scheme sure does work. It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding.
- ben_w 6y ago
  No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Generally with more money behind them, too.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    > No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? > Generally with more money behind them, too. I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you subtract what they turn over to SpaceX I'm not sure that counts. Other aerospace companies have other obligations in the aero part of aerospace, so funds devoted to those obligations are not particularly relevant either.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      > Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? All of them? We call them cost-plus contracts, and they're very common in space/military projects. Bid crazily low, because the bid doesn't matter! For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
    - jiofih 6y ago
      They only got large funding from NASA after building fully production-ready rockets and demonstrating they could deliver. It took around $100m of private investment to get the first Falcon generation flying.
      - kerkeslager 6y ago
        Yes, that's the "and investment" part of what I said.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    ESA and NASA are the only entities which have much recent operational experience of advanced use of ion drives; they've both launched and operated multiple ion drive propelled probes. And Airbus is the only manufacturer to have made _multiple_ ion drive propelled vehicles. Some commercial satellite companies, including SpaceX, use ion drives for station keeping, but this has been around for about 50 years. Currently, Airbus is probably in about as good a position to build something like this as anyone. They certainly have far more experience than SpaceX.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Can you go into more depth with this? Because I don’t understand why you consider the experience with satellite station keeping to be unimportant. What’s importantly different about the more recent ion drives?
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        Since the 1970s, some satellites (particularly Soviet satellites) have had some form of electric thruster for stationkeeping; these fire as needed, but spend most of their time off. This has become more common since the 90s. A small number of probes have used ion thrusters for propulsion. These fire continuously for long periods (months). This is fairly new (late 90s on), and no-one has much experience with it, but NASA and ESA have had a few each.
        ben_w 6y ago
        Thanks; I would never have guessed that distinction was important. :)
- sobellian 6y ago
  You don't need to wonder. Boeing has received much more funding for Starliner than SpaceX has for crewed Dragon.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Boeing has liabilities which a new company doesn't.
    - sobellian 6y ago
      Even if we consider the two funding amounts equal for the sake of comparison (which is a real stretch), crewed Dragon has already delivered while the recent Starliner test flight was riddled with defects.
      - hinkley 6y ago
        Being as optimistic as I can without being an idiot: it’s abundantly clear that they are still farting around with welding techniques, but in a complex project of this scale, somebody is always running behind schedule, and if it’s something new, then lots of people are (I worked on support software for the 787, and even among our cohort, my division was the only one that was only slightly behind schedule) and sometimes it’s enough for those people to be sort of scaffolding for everyone else. If Conway’s Law has any flex in it, you bend the mandate of each group to shift some of their responsibilities to teams that are getting better results and eventually something ships. I suspect this is how they get anything done. It might even be their organizing principle, a sort of self organizing system. The same might be true for SpaceX, I couldn’t say. What we do know is that they just accepted delivery of welding robots, and I don’t know if that was Plan A all along or they’ve given up on training people to consistently make a clean bead that’s 53 ft long.
    - sputr 6y ago
      I don't get that logic. So what if they have liabilities? They also had experiance, proprietary knowledge, tested supply chains, tooling etc. etc. I think the problem is that everyone is buying into the Musk==SpaceX story, which I think is wrong. He is a marketing gimmick that secures funding and cheap labor (through hype) and maybe some clients. If you ask me, from what I've seen the actual person responsible for SpaceX is it's president/COO: Gwynne Shotwell.
- kanox 6y ago
  > It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding. This is not true, SpaceX was consistenly cheaper than the competition for launches and ISS resupply.

kspacewalk2 6y ago

> Marketing materials aren't plans. That's right, they aren't. Which is why it's mighty brave of the BBC to call it "first interplanetary cargo ship". We'll see who gets there first.

nscalf 6y ago

I that this has historically been the case, but I think there has been a lot more delivery in recent years. The estimates from Musk seem to be less off, and I think a massive part of that is that the ramp up to this point was all predicated on original design of parts. They design and build >90% of the parts in the space ships. I think now that they have a catalogue of parts they don't have to build from scratch, their design/development cycles for new products are much faster and predictable. This same thing goes for Tesla, I don't think Musk & co. get enough credit for building everything from scratch.