7 ms·

Civilian apparently meaning non-government here, not non-military. I guess not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NASA_civilian_astrona

by tpmx 5y ago

Civilian apparently meaning non-government here, not non-military. I guess not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NASA_civilian_astronauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NASA_civilian_astrona...

mattlondon 5y ago
I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable. Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to give the guy credit for SpaceX and Tesla for that matter - I suspect history will look back on SpaceX and Tesla as being quite significant inflection points. It feels like we are at the Model-T or early commercial jet flight stage here but for spaceflight and EVs. What was once only for the super rich and gov/mil is now becoming available to more people, with rapid iteration/improvements and lower prices. More of it please!
- starfallg 5y ago
  Wouldn't Virgin Galactic's flight be the first for this then?
  - simonh 5y ago
    That would be the first private space flight, while this is the first private orbital flight.
  - pacificmint 5y ago
    Depends on your definition of ‘space mission’, I suppose. But clearly there is a difference between a suborbital flight with a few minutes of weightlessness and a flight that orbits for three days.
    - starfallg 5y ago
      Well that's exactly the point. GP didn't state whether a private space mission meant achieving orbit or not.
  - TomK32 5y ago
    How often the VSS Unity fly around the planet?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Surely the SpaceShipOne flight whose tech the Virgin Galactic’s flight was based on?
  - huhtenberg 5y ago
    They didn't even hit 100km mark, leave alone making an orbit.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      Not sure why you've been downvoted, but the world classes space at the Kármán line, 100km above Sea Level. Spaceship One reached this back in 2003, but Virgin Unity didn't. Blue Origin's New Shepard did reach 100km though, so was a "space trip". It was sub orbital though, so more Freedom 7 than Vostok 1 (Freedom 7 reached a far higher apogee and speed than New Shepard) SpaceX has the civilian equivalent of Vostok 1, albeit larger and far more advanced. It's an order of magnitude more impressive.
  - garyclarke27 5y ago
    Virgin Galactic only reached Mach 3 speed and was nowhere near achieving orbital velocity which requires Mach 23 (28,000 kph) ie order of magnitude more difficult.
    - mauvehaus 5y ago
      Serious question: while I understand making the comparison in Mach number to illustrate the difference in speed, is the speed of sound actually well defined near or above the Karman line?
      - hoseja 5y ago
        I had no idea either so I asked, apparently it's about 0.85 Mach: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+sound+at+100+km https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+sound+at+100+...
- bserge 5y ago
  It was a thing 10-20 years ago already. Civilians paid for a trip (on the Soyuz iirc) and got it. It was just very expensive.
  - callesgg 5y ago
    The Soyuz is a part of the Russian government driven space project.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    The difference is, that was a state-operated flight to the ISS which sold surplus seats. Equally, the shuttle could have carried a tourist on some missions. This flight is purely for paying customers, organized and conducted by a private company. If there were enough paying customers, SpaceX probably would be happy to have such a flight every month. With this mission, space travel has become something you can commercially book, though at a very steep price - that might come down with the Starship.
- thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achievements.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    It takes both engineering and leadership. There's no shortage of talent at NASA, but much of it has been and still is squandered over political machinations almost entirely unrelated to the task at hand. Case study: how the Space Shuttle was crippled by Air Force requirements that turned out to be completely unnecessary in the end.
  - rvz 5y ago
    > I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achievements. There you go. The hard work from brilliant engineers of any giant tech company to make all of this actually work and become a reality is always overlooked and the spotlight is focused on the individual who gives out unrealistic deadlines for the engineers to meet. If they meet the deadline, no one cares and it's business as usual. If they miss it; angry meetings, delays, reshuffles and layoffs happen.
  - regnerba 5y ago
    Totally agree! I have been avoiding Twitter the last few years but was recently going through Elon’s tweets. Something I noticed is that he is often giving credit to the teams at SpaceX and Tesla. There are a number of times where he responds to a tweet and point out how it was the teams at X company, and sometimes calling out people by name for their work. It was also something during his presentation during the Model S Plaid release. He said numerous times how important the teams at Tesla were to its success.
    - OneTimePetes 5y ago
      Sorry, but why does one go through someone elses tweets? Twitter is focused on current events - and they do not age well. So why read up on the past utterances of anyone? This seems.. strange.. sorry, if that offends.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  While Elon Musk deserves credit for SpaceX, I fail to see what credit he deserves for Tesla. The founders of Tesla and the designers of the first car should absolutely get credit, but Musk is neither. He delayed the release of their first car to get rid of the founder, in fact.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    The first Tesla is a car for rich people only. The reason for Tesla's 700b valuation is the innovation that Tesla has made in producing the model y and model 3 and the current goal of producing the first $25k mass produced electric car.
    - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
      > first $25k mass produced electric car That ship has sailed a few years ago: Volkswagen e-Up, Seat Mii, Renault Twingo, several models from BYD, Dacia Spring, Smart EQ, Fiat 500e, and even Renault Zoe or MG ZS in some markets. All under 25k€, including value added tax
      - Oreols 5y ago
        Indeed. I was recently considering getting an ev and it's amazing how much choice you have in the "budget" segment. Dacia Spring is 17k€ (VAT included) and it offers 250km of range. Granted, it's equipped only with an airco and a basic infotainment, but still. The only way Tesla can make a dent in this market is by offering autopilot and much greater range at 20k or so. Or by making a bloody fast car for young people (which will cannibalize their own sales probably).
  - simondotau 5y ago
    In all seriousness, founding a company and designing[0] a car aren't really remarkable achievements. This has been done many times. What's really impressive is moving from a glorified proof-of-concept to manufacturing at a massive scale—a feat rarely achieved by startup automotive companies anywhere in the world. [0] Especially when "design" really just means an electric drivetrain and bits of custom trim for a Lotus skateboard.
- mkl 5y ago
  > It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable. 10 years ago many people thought it would happen well before 2021. The "first operational Dragon spacecraft was launched in December 2010" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX) and commercial flights to the ISS were right around the corner (cargo first happened May 2012).
  - tellersid 5y ago
    I remember going to Disney Epcot Center as a kid and it showed how we would be living on the ocean floor by the year 2000. That is what I consider wild. If you told me as a kid that I will go my whole life without owning a robot and that the main difference is we will replace a rotary phone with a hand held phone I would want my money back. I guess poor Christa McAuliffe has been totally forgot about also.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      If you told my kids not only will they own a robot, their grandmother actually owns one, they wouldn't believe you. Just before they tripped over her roomba.
    - pc86 5y ago
      > I guess poor Christa McAuliffe has been totally forgot about also. Wasn't that a government flight aboard a government spacecraft that notably didn't make it to space? Not sure how that's related to a civilian flight aboard a civilian spacecraft.
    - hwc 5y ago
      I have two robots in my house that sweep & mop the floor.
    - mycall 5y ago
      You can still live the dream :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8hFLyWDOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8hFLyWDOM
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mlindner 5y ago
Civilian can mean different things in different contexts. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian In this case it's in the sense of meaning 2b.

by tpmx 5y ago

mattlondon 5y ago

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable. Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to give the guy credit for SpaceX and Tesla for that matter - I suspect history will look back on SpaceX and Tesla as being quite significant inflection points. It feels like we are at the Model-T or early commercial jet flight stage here but for spaceflight and EVs. What was once only for the super rich and gov/mil is now becoming available to more people, with rapid iteration/improvements and lower prices. More of it please!

starfallg 5y ago
Wouldn't Virgin Galactic's flight be the first for this then?
- simonh 5y ago
  That would be the first private space flight, while this is the first private orbital flight.
- pacificmint 5y ago
  Depends on your definition of ‘space mission’, I suppose. But clearly there is a difference between a suborbital flight with a few minutes of weightlessness and a flight that orbits for three days.
  - starfallg 5y ago
    Well that's exactly the point. GP didn't state whether a private space mission meant achieving orbit or not.
- TomK32 5y ago
  How often the VSS Unity fly around the planet?
- ben_w 5y ago
  Surely the SpaceShipOne flight whose tech the Virgin Galactic’s flight was based on?
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  They didn't even hit 100km mark, leave alone making an orbit.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Not sure why you've been downvoted, but the world classes space at the Kármán line, 100km above Sea Level. Spaceship One reached this back in 2003, but Virgin Unity didn't. Blue Origin's New Shepard did reach 100km though, so was a "space trip". It was sub orbital though, so more Freedom 7 than Vostok 1 (Freedom 7 reached a far higher apogee and speed than New Shepard) SpaceX has the civilian equivalent of Vostok 1, albeit larger and far more advanced. It's an order of magnitude more impressive.
- garyclarke27 5y ago
  Virgin Galactic only reached Mach 3 speed and was nowhere near achieving orbital velocity which requires Mach 23 (28,000 kph) ie order of magnitude more difficult.
  - mauvehaus 5y ago
    Serious question: while I understand making the comparison in Mach number to illustrate the difference in speed, is the speed of sound actually well defined near or above the Karman line?
    - hoseja 5y ago
      I had no idea either so I asked, apparently it's about 0.85 Mach: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+sound+at+100+km https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+sound+at+100+...
bserge 5y ago
It was a thing 10-20 years ago already. Civilians paid for a trip (on the Soyuz iirc) and got it. It was just very expensive.
- callesgg 5y ago
  The Soyuz is a part of the Russian government driven space project.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  The difference is, that was a state-operated flight to the ISS which sold surplus seats. Equally, the shuttle could have carried a tourist on some missions. This flight is purely for paying customers, organized and conducted by a private company. If there were enough paying customers, SpaceX probably would be happy to have such a flight every month. With this mission, space travel has become something you can commercially book, though at a very steep price - that might come down with the Starship.
thenoblesunfish 5y ago
When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achievements.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  It takes both engineering and leadership. There's no shortage of talent at NASA, but much of it has been and still is squandered over political machinations almost entirely unrelated to the task at hand. Case study: how the Space Shuttle was crippled by Air Force requirements that turned out to be completely unnecessary in the end.
- rvz 5y ago
  > I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achievements. There you go. The hard work from brilliant engineers of any giant tech company to make all of this actually work and become a reality is always overlooked and the spotlight is focused on the individual who gives out unrealistic deadlines for the engineers to meet. If they meet the deadline, no one cares and it's business as usual. If they miss it; angry meetings, delays, reshuffles and layoffs happen.
- regnerba 5y ago
  Totally agree! I have been avoiding Twitter the last few years but was recently going through Elon’s tweets. Something I noticed is that he is often giving credit to the teams at SpaceX and Tesla. There are a number of times where he responds to a tweet and point out how it was the teams at X company, and sometimes calling out people by name for their work. It was also something during his presentation during the Model S Plaid release. He said numerous times how important the teams at Tesla were to its success.
  - OneTimePetes 5y ago
    Sorry, but why does one go through someone elses tweets? Twitter is focused on current events - and they do not age well. So why read up on the past utterances of anyone? This seems.. strange.. sorry, if that offends.
tsimionescu 5y ago
While Elon Musk deserves credit for SpaceX, I fail to see what credit he deserves for Tesla. The founders of Tesla and the designers of the first car should absolutely get credit, but Musk is neither. He delayed the release of their first car to get rid of the founder, in fact.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  The first Tesla is a car for rich people only. The reason for Tesla's 700b valuation is the innovation that Tesla has made in producing the model y and model 3 and the current goal of producing the first $25k mass produced electric car.
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    > first $25k mass produced electric car That ship has sailed a few years ago: Volkswagen e-Up, Seat Mii, Renault Twingo, several models from BYD, Dacia Spring, Smart EQ, Fiat 500e, and even Renault Zoe or MG ZS in some markets. All under 25k€, including value added tax
    - Oreols 5y ago
      Indeed. I was recently considering getting an ev and it's amazing how much choice you have in the "budget" segment. Dacia Spring is 17k€ (VAT included) and it offers 250km of range. Granted, it's equipped only with an airco and a basic infotainment, but still. The only way Tesla can make a dent in this market is by offering autopilot and much greater range at 20k or so. Or by making a bloody fast car for young people (which will cannibalize their own sales probably).
- simondotau 5y ago
  In all seriousness, founding a company and designing[0] a car aren't really remarkable achievements. This has been done many times. What's really impressive is moving from a glorified proof-of-concept to manufacturing at a massive scale—a feat rarely achieved by startup automotive companies anywhere in the world. [0] Especially when "design" really just means an electric drivetrain and bits of custom trim for a Lotus skateboard.
mkl 5y ago
> It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable. 10 years ago many people thought it would happen well before 2021. The "first operational Dragon spacecraft was launched in December 2010" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX) and commercial flights to the ISS were right around the corner (cargo first happened May 2012).
- tellersid 5y ago
  I remember going to Disney Epcot Center as a kid and it showed how we would be living on the ocean floor by the year 2000. That is what I consider wild. If you told me as a kid that I will go my whole life without owning a robot and that the main difference is we will replace a rotary phone with a hand held phone I would want my money back. I guess poor Christa McAuliffe has been totally forgot about also.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    If you told my kids not only will they own a robot, their grandmother actually owns one, they wouldn't believe you. Just before they tripped over her roomba.
  - pc86 5y ago
    > I guess poor Christa McAuliffe has been totally forgot about also. Wasn't that a government flight aboard a government spacecraft that notably didn't make it to space? Not sure how that's related to a civilian flight aboard a civilian spacecraft.
  - hwc 5y ago
    I have two robots in my house that sweep & mop the floor.
  - mycall 5y ago
    You can still live the dream :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8hFLyWDOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8hFLyWDOM
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mlindner 5y ago

Civilian can mean different things in different contexts. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian In this case it's in the sense of meaning 2b.