8 ms·

Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy." On the plus side, my friend from Lockhe

Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy." On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that. I had hoped see Starship hop 150m today[1] however that seems to have been scrubbed. There is a really good lesson here for folks which is ignore the people saying you won't be able to do something and just execute. They can't argue with results. EDIT: updated the link to point to the live camera pointed at the Starship SN5. Not sure what happened there. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbM7Vsz3kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbM7Vsz3kg

holler 6y ago
> There is a really good lesson here for folks which is ignore the people saying you won't be able to do something and just execute. I like this. Agree with your sentiment and as an armchair space fan, very excited to see the splash down. Can't help but feel inspired.
baybal2 6y ago
> On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that. I read somewhere that Musk have managed to hire top of the cream engineers of America's aerospace contractors, and NASA for very small money, relatively speaking, after NASA got its original "new crewed mission" project cancelled. And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well.
- getpost 6y ago
  It seems to me SpaceX's secret sauce is continuous iteration on vehicles that actually fly. It's hard to see how Boeing or Blue Origin can develop expertise with any confidence their designs will work, except, apparently, by going very slowly. Of course, Boeing has somewhat of a track record, but Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX and still hasn't achieved orbit.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    I don't think so. Musk has hired pretty much the same people who were making the same rockets for LM, Boeing, and NASA. Their experience surely contributed to their speed. To me, they give a feeling that they have some very experienced, and conservative type managing their engineering who does everything by the book.
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      I think there's some nuance here -- my take is that SpaceX has a very good balance of knowing when going slowly and carefully is critical (launching important customer vehicles, launching crewed missions), and when it's critical to move fast and iterate (eg, every other time). SpaceX has blown up a LOT of vehicles via mistakes, by iterating fast and learning from them. They use these as learning experiences, and if they can get a few satellites up in the interim, that's great (see: the starlink launches on re-used rockets). But when it comes to launching actual astronauts, they checked every one of NASA's million boxes. NASA and Boeing are unfortunately incapable of operating in fast-and-loose mode, even when it would be better to iterate and break a few rockets. The two-mode operation is why SpaceX dominates, and likely will continue to crush.
      - baybal2 6y ago
        I believe they are differentiated by not doing a lot of random iterations in comparison to the competition. Blue Origin for example managed to completely redo pretty much everything about their design few times over, while SpaceX had something resembling Falcon 1, and Falcon 9 on their drawing boards pretty much since the beginning. Too much pivots, too much iterations, and close to no straight advancements.
        bpodgursky 6y ago
        I mean, I wouldn't call that a real "iteration", since Blue Origin didn't actually build or launch any of those designs.
        6y ago
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  This is not exactly a fair take. the "new crewed mission" project has never been actually canceled. It's been delayed, and not due to lack of funding but poor execution. Constellation was better funded than commercial cargo and commercial crew and Orion has still been under development basically the whole time (although it changed names). Artemis continues, too. People want to make out SpaceX as if SpaceX is ideologically opposed to NASA or government funding and thus are hypocrites, when that has never been true. People like working at SpaceX because SpaceX gets stuff done and is developing truly transformative technology beyond the expendable paradigm of Apollo. Technology that will expand the availability of space to several orders of magnitude more people instead of just a handful of heroes. And NASA loves it.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > People want to make out SpaceX as if SpaceX is ideologically opposed to NASA or government funding and thus are hypocrites, when that has never been true I am not saying that
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  "And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well." That isn't really "ironic" though. All of the technology that NASA develops is "free" for any US company that wants to use it. Pre-pandemic NASA would host an annual NASA Technology exposition at Ames Research that was kind of like a science fair for nerds. There were posters, and often the original investigators, who would discuss what they did, what they discovered, how it could be used, etc. A number of bio-diesel companies got their start from NASA bio-diesel research. I much prefer that model to the one where the NSF or DARPA funds a university research program that then patents the research and holds it hostage to licensing fees. The other aspect of your comment is also somewhat out of touch with the relationship NASA has with space craft. NASA has never been the sole supplier of a space craft. They always let contracts to vendors who built components of spacecraft and then they integrated those components into a complete system. Many of the "big" components for space craft are not off the shelf, like engines, so unless you want the government in the rocket engine building business, you buy those from someone else. From the very first, NASA rockets such as Vanguard and Mercury Redstone were purchased from others. That said, NASA recognized as early as the Mercury project days that they were not ever going to be a "supplier" of rockets to third parties. They use rockets to do science and they need someone to buy them from. One need only look at the Space Launch System (SLS) to see the travails of NASA trying to project manage building rockets these days. The budgeting process is stuffed to overflowing with politics where congressional representatives make budget dollars contingent on them going to a company in their district or state, and science as a priority comes and goes depending on the administration. NASA didn't "give" SpaceX money, they bought rockets from SpaceX to meet their needs. Just like a startup that "lands" a big enterprise customer that buys their product and as a result provides the resources for the startup to both grow and build and deliver the product that was purchased. Looking at the price they paid, they got a good deal. The first "big" contract, the resupply missions, cost NASA way less than it would have if they had paid ULA to launch those missions. At the same time SpaceX made enough profit from that contract to continue improving the fundamentals. Once it was clear they could reliably get things into orbit, other people who wanted to buy "launch services" started inquiring. SpaceX has out competed every other launch provider in the world because they can launch a payload and make money on it at a price that doesn't cover the other vendors launch at all. And they can do that because they are vertically integrated (pun intended) providing the booster, the engines, and the delivery system. If you want to look at being "subsidized" by the government then you need look no further than the "cost plus" contracts that the government used to write for launch services. Those explicitly allowed the folks as ULA to scrape a few billion dollars off the top every year to "insure a domestic launch capability." Something you need if one third of your national defense rests on being able to use a rocket to put a bunch of nuclear warheads into someone's country[1]. So I think it is important to give credit where credit is due. Elon Musk re-imagined how the space launch industry might be structured and Gwen Shotwell effectively built a company that could execute on that re-imagining. This even when the existing companies in the space called Elon's ideas "fanciful", "ludicrous", or in one case "drug induced." I continue to watch Blue Origin as well, although I feel as if the team of Jeff Bezos and Bob Smith (the CEO) is not as strong here. It is particularly illuminating to compare choices they have made as a company (secrecy vs openness, prioritizing sub-orbital over orbital, Etc.) and how they have played out. [1] Hence the research programs of Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan to name a few.
- natch 6y ago
  That’s true of any space contractor. Elon acknowledges NASA’s contributions and the fact that they are standing in the shoulders of giants all the time. What are you getting at exactly?
justhw 6y ago
Hey Chuck, I followed your link and it's an RV review video :)
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Argh, and thanks! Not sure what happened there, updated the link to point to the LabPadre live shot of the Starship.
- rdiddly 6y ago
  Maybe he meant this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QhUoOwHN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QhUoOwHN8
  - leetrout 6y ago
    May the Schwartz be with you.
  - ChuckMcM 6y ago
    Here's a fun fact. A current Winnebago[1] of similar design to the one in the movie weighs 18,000 lbs, and 31' x 12' x 9' which is within the capability for Falcon 9 to both carry it in its Fairing (43' and 17' diameter) and to put it into low earth orbit. Falcon Heavy could put it into GEO Synchronous Orbit :-) [1] https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/motorhomes/class-a/intent https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/motorhomes/class-a/...
    - rdiddly 6y ago
      Oddly enough, putting it in terms of Winnebagos made it all the more impressive to me. I will henceforth stop making fun of articles and newscasts that use "layman's units" like coffee cups per football field or whatnot.
slowmovintarget 6y ago
“People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it” ― Bernard Shaw
- W-Stool 6y ago
  That went right into my quotes file.
- avindroth 6y ago
  Or “Lead the way, get behind me, or get out of the way.”
Animats 6y ago
Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy." Yes. Can we cancel the NASA Space Launch System now?
- metiscus 6y ago
  So in trying to answer your question I found this rather long-winded but nonetheless interesting and appropos link. https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/ https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/
  - sbierwagen 6y ago
    I read that article all the way to the end, which was quite a slog. (You can definitely tell this guy is in the business of stretching out content to fit in more ad breaks) The conclusion at the end appears to be "NASA didn't see Starship coming at all, and built a very conservative, very expensive expendable launch system, that underperforms Starship on every metric". There is a logical next step, after you come to that conclusion... It is, of course, very reasonable to wait for Starship to actually launch and demonstrate a couple flights. But I would be very very surprised if SLS still exists in two years.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > Can we cancel the NASA Space Launch System now? IMO, NASA/Congress will hang on to SLS for as long as it is remotely defensible. The US will need 2 heavy lift, large diameter rockets before SLS gets the axe. Once Starship and New Glenn are flying it'll be significantly more difficult to justify the $2 billion / year spent just on the SLS program (not counting the actual rockets, which are another $1 billion a pop).
  - taneq 6y ago
    Exactly. Governments and large multinationals don’t like relying on a single supplier for anything because a single supplier is a single point of failure. No matter how good a new option is, they’ll keep the old option on life support until they have a third option.
natch 6y ago
>On the plus side I didn't see where you had mentioned a negative side here. I can't think of one. And congrats on the dinner!
plazmatic 6y ago
Not at all.
jypepin 6y ago
sorry for my question but how is that impressive really? Aren't already a fair amount of other countries sending people to the international space station and back? I think even the founder of Cirque du Soleil went right? That's cool that spaceX is doing it, but I miss how this is such a big event?
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  It isn't a question of countries it is a question of being able to launch someone and bring them home. Prior to SpaceX the only two countries that had this capability were Russia and China. It is impressive that a company, not a country now also has that capability. Put another way, for the last 10 years if a US Person wanted to go up to the ISS they would have to buy a ticket on a Russian Soyuz, now they have a choice.

holler 6y ago

> There is a really good lesson here for folks which is ignore the people saying you won't be able to do something and just execute. I like this. Agree with your sentiment and as an armchair space fan, very excited to see the splash down. Can't help but feel inspired.

baybal2 6y ago

> On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that. I read somewhere that Musk have managed to hire top of the cream engineers of America's aerospace contractors, and NASA for very small money, relatively speaking, after NASA got its original "new crewed mission" project cancelled. And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well.

getpost 6y ago
It seems to me SpaceX's secret sauce is continuous iteration on vehicles that actually fly. It's hard to see how Boeing or Blue Origin can develop expertise with any confidence their designs will work, except, apparently, by going very slowly. Of course, Boeing has somewhat of a track record, but Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX and still hasn't achieved orbit.
- baybal2 6y ago
  I don't think so. Musk has hired pretty much the same people who were making the same rockets for LM, Boeing, and NASA. Their experience surely contributed to their speed. To me, they give a feeling that they have some very experienced, and conservative type managing their engineering who does everything by the book.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    I think there's some nuance here -- my take is that SpaceX has a very good balance of knowing when going slowly and carefully is critical (launching important customer vehicles, launching crewed missions), and when it's critical to move fast and iterate (eg, every other time). SpaceX has blown up a LOT of vehicles via mistakes, by iterating fast and learning from them. They use these as learning experiences, and if they can get a few satellites up in the interim, that's great (see: the starlink launches on re-used rockets). But when it comes to launching actual astronauts, they checked every one of NASA's million boxes. NASA and Boeing are unfortunately incapable of operating in fast-and-loose mode, even when it would be better to iterate and break a few rockets. The two-mode operation is why SpaceX dominates, and likely will continue to crush.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      I believe they are differentiated by not doing a lot of random iterations in comparison to the competition. Blue Origin for example managed to completely redo pretty much everything about their design few times over, while SpaceX had something resembling Falcon 1, and Falcon 9 on their drawing boards pretty much since the beginning. Too much pivots, too much iterations, and close to no straight advancements.
      - bpodgursky 6y ago
        I mean, I wouldn't call that a real "iteration", since Blue Origin didn't actually build or launch any of those designs.
      - 6y ago
Robotbeat 6y ago
This is not exactly a fair take. the "new crewed mission" project has never been actually canceled. It's been delayed, and not due to lack of funding but poor execution. Constellation was better funded than commercial cargo and commercial crew and Orion has still been under development basically the whole time (although it changed names). Artemis continues, too. People want to make out SpaceX as if SpaceX is ideologically opposed to NASA or government funding and thus are hypocrites, when that has never been true. People like working at SpaceX because SpaceX gets stuff done and is developing truly transformative technology beyond the expendable paradigm of Apollo. Technology that will expand the availability of space to several orders of magnitude more people instead of just a handful of heroes. And NASA loves it.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > People want to make out SpaceX as if SpaceX is ideologically opposed to NASA or government funding and thus are hypocrites, when that has never been true I am not saying that
ChuckMcM 6y ago
"And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well." That isn't really "ironic" though. All of the technology that NASA develops is "free" for any US company that wants to use it. Pre-pandemic NASA would host an annual NASA Technology exposition at Ames Research that was kind of like a science fair for nerds. There were posters, and often the original investigators, who would discuss what they did, what they discovered, how it could be used, etc. A number of bio-diesel companies got their start from NASA bio-diesel research. I much prefer that model to the one where the NSF or DARPA funds a university research program that then patents the research and holds it hostage to licensing fees. The other aspect of your comment is also somewhat out of touch with the relationship NASA has with space craft. NASA has never been the sole supplier of a space craft. They always let contracts to vendors who built components of spacecraft and then they integrated those components into a complete system. Many of the "big" components for space craft are not off the shelf, like engines, so unless you want the government in the rocket engine building business, you buy those from someone else. From the very first, NASA rockets such as Vanguard and Mercury Redstone were purchased from others. That said, NASA recognized as early as the Mercury project days that they were not ever going to be a "supplier" of rockets to third parties. They use rockets to do science and they need someone to buy them from. One need only look at the Space Launch System (SLS) to see the travails of NASA trying to project manage building rockets these days. The budgeting process is stuffed to overflowing with politics where congressional representatives make budget dollars contingent on them going to a company in their district or state, and science as a priority comes and goes depending on the administration. NASA didn't "give" SpaceX money, they bought rockets from SpaceX to meet their needs. Just like a startup that "lands" a big enterprise customer that buys their product and as a result provides the resources for the startup to both grow and build and deliver the product that was purchased. Looking at the price they paid, they got a good deal. The first "big" contract, the resupply missions, cost NASA way less than it would have if they had paid ULA to launch those missions. At the same time SpaceX made enough profit from that contract to continue improving the fundamentals. Once it was clear they could reliably get things into orbit, other people who wanted to buy "launch services" started inquiring. SpaceX has out competed every other launch provider in the world because they can launch a payload and make money on it at a price that doesn't cover the other vendors launch at all. And they can do that because they are vertically integrated (pun intended) providing the booster, the engines, and the delivery system. If you want to look at being "subsidized" by the government then you need look no further than the "cost plus" contracts that the government used to write for launch services. Those explicitly allowed the folks as ULA to scrape a few billion dollars off the top every year to "insure a domestic launch capability." Something you need if one third of your national defense rests on being able to use a rocket to put a bunch of nuclear warheads into someone's country[1]. So I think it is important to give credit where credit is due. Elon Musk re-imagined how the space launch industry might be structured and Gwen Shotwell effectively built a company that could execute on that re-imagining. This even when the existing companies in the space called Elon's ideas "fanciful", "ludicrous", or in one case "drug induced." I continue to watch Blue Origin as well, although I feel as if the team of Jeff Bezos and Bob Smith (the CEO) is not as strong here. It is particularly illuminating to compare choices they have made as a company (secrecy vs openness, prioritizing sub-orbital over orbital, Etc.) and how they have played out. [1] Hence the research programs of Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan to name a few.
natch 6y ago
That’s true of any space contractor. Elon acknowledges NASA’s contributions and the fact that they are standing in the shoulders of giants all the time. What are you getting at exactly?

justhw 6y ago

Hey Chuck, I followed your link and it's an RV review video :)

ChuckMcM 6y ago
Argh, and thanks! Not sure what happened there, updated the link to point to the LabPadre live shot of the Starship.
rdiddly 6y ago
Maybe he meant this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QhUoOwHN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QhUoOwHN8
- leetrout 6y ago
  May the Schwartz be with you.
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Here's a fun fact. A current Winnebago[1] of similar design to the one in the movie weighs 18,000 lbs, and 31' x 12' x 9' which is within the capability for Falcon 9 to both carry it in its Fairing (43' and 17' diameter) and to put it into low earth orbit. Falcon Heavy could put it into GEO Synchronous Orbit :-) [1] https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/motorhomes/class-a/intent https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/motorhomes/class-a/...
  - rdiddly 6y ago
    Oddly enough, putting it in terms of Winnebagos made it all the more impressive to me. I will henceforth stop making fun of articles and newscasts that use "layman's units" like coffee cups per football field or whatnot.

slowmovintarget 6y ago

“People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it” ― Bernard Shaw

W-Stool 6y ago
That went right into my quotes file.
avindroth 6y ago
Or “Lead the way, get behind me, or get out of the way.”

Animats 6y ago

Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy." Yes. Can we cancel the NASA Space Launch System now?

metiscus 6y ago
So in trying to answer your question I found this rather long-winded but nonetheless interesting and appropos link. https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/ https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  I read that article all the way to the end, which was quite a slog. (You can definitely tell this guy is in the business of stretching out content to fit in more ad breaks) The conclusion at the end appears to be "NASA didn't see Starship coming at all, and built a very conservative, very expensive expendable launch system, that underperforms Starship on every metric". There is a logical next step, after you come to that conclusion... It is, of course, very reasonable to wait for Starship to actually launch and demonstrate a couple flights. But I would be very very surprised if SLS still exists in two years.
nordsieck 6y ago
> Can we cancel the NASA Space Launch System now? IMO, NASA/Congress will hang on to SLS for as long as it is remotely defensible. The US will need 2 heavy lift, large diameter rockets before SLS gets the axe. Once Starship and New Glenn are flying it'll be significantly more difficult to justify the $2 billion / year spent just on the SLS program (not counting the actual rockets, which are another $1 billion a pop).
- taneq 6y ago
  Exactly. Governments and large multinationals don’t like relying on a single supplier for anything because a single supplier is a single point of failure. No matter how good a new option is, they’ll keep the old option on life support until they have a third option.

natch 6y ago

>On the plus side I didn't see where you had mentioned a negative side here. I can't think of one. And congrats on the dinner!

plazmatic 6y ago

Not at all.

jypepin 6y ago

sorry for my question but how is that impressive really? Aren't already a fair amount of other countries sending people to the international space station and back? I think even the founder of Cirque du Soleil went right? That's cool that spaceX is doing it, but I miss how this is such a big event?

ChuckMcM 6y ago
It isn't a question of countries it is a question of being able to launch someone and bring them home. Prior to SpaceX the only two countries that had this capability were Russia and China. It is impressive that a company, not a country now also has that capability. Put another way, for the last 10 years if a US Person wanted to go up to the ISS they would have to buy a ticket on a Russian Soyuz, now they have a choice.