28 ms·

Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors

222 points by danboarder 5y ago

throwbigdata 5y ago
Musk is moving the moochers’ cheese.
hourislate 5y ago
https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex
- danboarder 5y ago
  @hourislate Thanks, I think the amp link caused the original link to go to a login page, weird. @hn Maybe a mod can correct my op link with this one? I can no longer edit it.
  - dang 5y ago
    It wasn't you. Our software follows redirects and canonical URLs now and https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex led on a wild goose chase to a wordpress login flow. Sorry! I've fixed it above now. Edit: however, it's not the original source, so we've switched to that from https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex. Note this guideline: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - danboarder 5y ago
      Thank you!
- copperwater69 5y ago
  This link works
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  The original Politico article futurism article refers to: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/12/elon-musk-space-freaking-out-competitors-00008441 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/12/elon-musk-space-fre...
  - dang 5y ago
    Changed from https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex. Thanks!
iab 5y ago
> which Musk recently bragged could cost as little as $1 million per launch. Didn't realize you could brag about things that haven't happened
- ncmncm 5y ago
  And won't. I wonder if Tesla owners will ever get a refund for the self-driving feature they bought and will never work. SpaceX might be able to get to $1M marginal cost for a launch, but you can bet they will never sell launches for that.
  - randallsquared 5y ago
    > SpaceX might be able to get to $1M marginal cost for a launch, but you can bet they will never sell launches for that. So, if they mark it up by an order of magnitude for external customers, you're predicting that a Starship launch might be cheaper than a Falcon 9 launch is, today, with a capacity of a dozen times the Falcon 9?
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Sure? Cheaper per pound is fine, but teasing with prices 10x less than you will actually charge is no more honest than charging for a self-driving feature that kills people who rely on it.
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        Prices are not the same thing as costs.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        And goalposts are easy to move.
        mannerheim 5y ago
mikewarot 5y ago
Elon doesn't have to spread operations out across the country to keep jobs going in a bunch of congressional districts that sometimes shift on the outcomes of elections. He can just focus on getting things done. NASA would have to be given more leash than is possible in the current climate to actually have a hope of keeping up. The world as they know it might be coming to an end, of course they're worried.
- Railsify 5y ago
  Well said. Administration after administration comes and goes and neither party fixes the problem, it's almost like there is one party and the dual party system is just to extract donations during election season. I feel like it's all a big show.
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    which, of course, is self-fulfilling.
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    While what you say is true, its not actually why these things happen. Government projects are inefficient as a result of how power structures naturally work. Nothing more.
    - kansface 5y ago
      Its like Conway's law, but for engineering physical systems!
  - specialist 5y ago
    Collective action is hard.
- watersb 5y ago
  I've worked on a huge space science project that was scattered across multiple countries in order to get the funding scale that the proposal seemed to require. We got the impression that in order to get the thing built, if we had relied upon a single organization to fund the project, it would have been far more easy to kill during development. Most of us were new to this way of thinking. At the time, the engineers with the most experience in building these things had endured decades of minimal funding, and had learned to keep things as simple as possible. There was a lot of pushback against what was perceived as unnecessary complexity. What is the quote, that organizations will expand towards supporting the organization, rather than the goals of the organization... Well. Science is hard, rocket science more so. All of the other commercial launch programs have (as yet) failed to achieve anything close to sustainable orbital operations, unless they are also traditional aerospace defense contractors. ULA is Boeing/Northrop Grumman, and I can't recall but I think ArianneSpace is technically a commercial company rather than a national space agency. Both are very, very good at orbital launch. But comparing their funding structure to that of SpaceX seems a bit weird.
snarkerson 5y ago
Paying DoD prices for a civilian program never made sense. Add in constant program stretching due to a limited budget, I don't doubt NASA will look bad by comparison.
- smoyer 5y ago
  As a taxpayer, paying DoD prices for a military program also doesn't make sense (aside from the question of whether we even need most military programs).
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    I've worked at BAE Systems, Inc. and Raytheon and there is so much extra bullshit it will make your head spin. I'm a veteran and I left the industry in disgust. I will never consider defense software again unless there are some drastic changes. I've always said that the US Govt pays $10 for $1 worth of work. https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126691/-1/-1/0/SWAP%20FLYER.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126691/-1/-1/0/SWA... > The current approach to software development is a leading source of risk to DoD: it takes too long, is too expensive, and exposes warfighters to unacceptable risk. > Nothing is changing: most of this has been said before and the 1987 DSB report on military software pretty much says it all. What is it going to take to actually do something?
    - smoyer 5y ago
      Thanks for serving ... the rank and file of the military is truly dedicated in my experience and it would be great if a larger portion of the funding was spent on the human side of defense and if a larger portion of the decision making was left to the "normal people".
    - thereddaikon 5y ago
      I've been there as well and agree. The defense world is a headache. Everything slows you down. Its like trying to swim through fruit cake. Lockmart and Boeing are fortunate that SpaceX has no desire to get into the defense game beyond launching satellites for the Space Force. They wouldn't be as fast as their past work, half the friction in the defense world is imposed by the customer. But they would be faster than the incumbents.
henvic 5y ago
I love space exploration, so please don't take me wrong... I've got an unpopular opinion: For me, the state-sponsored space exploration of space (particularly, the Space Race) slowed down progress in the sciences and even for space exploration in the long run. Of course, people can point to me all sorts of technologies that appeared first during the race. Unfortunately, we don't have a fork or an alternative world where this didn't happen that we could use to compare, so anything I say pointing to the high-cost such endeavors had to society is almost always met with skepticism (if you argue this makes me wrong, you're committing a fallacy regardless if I'm right or wrong). It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective and long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my point. Yes, maybe humans would be on Moon only 30 years later. Still, there's a chance at least the wealthiest could afford a week-long vacation with their families today on the Moon. We could have labs and factories for specialized equipment that might benefit from a low-gravity environment in space or whatever.
- danboarder 5y ago
  "It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective and long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my point." Would you say the same thing regarding the Department of Defense and the Pentagon budget? I have heard good arguments that the military industrial complex is largely a bureaucratic deadweight cost to society, with few benefits (and generates the largest loss of life through Democide: https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM ). Anyway, I think perhaps your argument fits military waste spending even more than it does with regard to the space race and NASA. Or maybe it's just a characteristic of State spending in general (like the infamous story of a $640 toilet seat https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/only-the-pentagon-could-spend-640-on-a-toilet-seat/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/only-the-pentagon-... ).
  - henvic 5y ago
    Yes, and yes. To the point that it's mere noise compared to the waste and destruction of wealth caused by wars and conflicts caused by politicians. Economically speaking, the waste caused by the industrial-military complex worldwide is probably 10000 times worse, at least. Going off-topic: However, even though I'm a capitalist pig, the problem with this goes even far worse than economics: most murders recent history are related to state-sponsored conflicts, not the John Doe carrying a gun around to commit petty theft and accidentally murdering someone. It's hard to become aware of it as institutions like UNODC never includes armed conflict between states in the count, for starters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
fallingfrog 5y ago
The really baffling thing to me is that although certain technologies have come to pass in the last decade that made it easier to do what spacex has done, it’s been technically possible since probably the late 90’s. I’m absolutely certain that Elon musk isn’t the first person to come up with the idea of reusable rockets, and the people who actually did the work of designing those rockets were already around before Elon musk hired them. Tom Mueller, who was the first rocket engineer Musk hired, was building rocket engines in his garage out of frustration that nobody was taking him seriously at work. So the question is, how deep does institutional rot have to go to stifle innovation on this level industry wide? How does an organization dedicated to exploration become so utterly unable to take risks? There’s definitely something to learn here. I’m looking through the list of the heads of nasa, and they’re all trained scientists or engineers up until 1981 when Reagan appointed a business management executive to the position. If I could pinpoint anything as the inflection point, that’s probably it. After that it’s a mixture, but you get a lot of military generals and other members of the national security apparatus together with various business CEOs, and some mechanical engineers, and a couple rocket scientists too. But why did none of them try what spacex is doing? People from lower down in the organization were presumably shouting at them that they were wasting money. Everyone in an organization knows when the leadership is useless. It just baffles the mind. A fish rots from the head.
- Kadin 5y ago
  > I’m absolutely certain that Elon musk isn’t the first person to come up with the idea of reusable rockets, and the people who actually did the work of designing those rockets were already around before Elon musk hired them. Tom Mueller, who was the first rocket engineer Musk hired, was building rocket engines in his garage out of frustration that nobody was taking him seriously at work. So the question is, how deep does institutional rot have to go to stifle innovation on this level industry wide? How does an organization dedicated to exploration become so utterly unable to take risks? I don't think this is a NASA problem, it's really a problem across the US Federal government. You see it on the military side of government-funded technology programs as well. (If you want to see a really terrible example, look at the ongoing failure to produce a replacement for the M109 howitzer.) My personal theory is that it's mainly driven by funding mechanisms, especially those covered by FAR. It's not, as some people allege, that the government is particularly bad at things; the government is roughly as competent as any large corporation when it comes down to task execution. I've consulted both to private sector corps and the government, and the fundamental challenges are largely the same. Yes, government compensation structures (heavy on pensions) do tend to attract people in different phases of their careers and lives than, say, equity-heavy packages at a startup. But there's not much evidence linking this to performance. Rather, the difference is that the US government has an institutional attention-deficit disorder. What gets funded one year might get cancelled the next. No plan can possibly be accurate beyond the end of the current budget cycle, no priority fixed beyond the next election. Everyone is going for "quick wins", because they want to be able to justify the continuation of the project. This is not conducive to risk-taking, at all. Quite the opposite. What government PMs want are projects that can set a ~24 month goal, and then show monotonic progress towards that goal every month, like clockwork. Projects that can't show those kind of clean metrics are often managed to death, if they are even started at all. Private-sector organizations, particularly those run by single individuals without regard for short-term profitability, can take on risks that the government won't—basically can't—deal with. Elon Musk made some pretty big technical bets that paid off... but the government isn't allowed to play at that table with tax money.
gerikson 5y ago
Better be careful or they'll target the Tesla factories with moon rocks fired from mass drivers...
- thatjoeoverthr 5y ago
  Luckily, they’d have to get to the Moon first ;)
- Meerax 5y ago
  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress reference?
  - TecoAndJix 5y ago
    It is a reference to The Expanse (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/)
    - gerikson 5y ago
      The Expanse authors got it from Heinlein, which was what I was referencing ;)
    - tehbeard 5y ago
      ...no? In The Expanse it was rocks from the belt coated in "stolen" Mars stealth material. Luna's a UN colony, practically on Earth's doorstep, not a beligerent. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is the reference.
  - RegBarclay 5y ago
    That was my first thought. I haven't seen The Expanse, but in any case, Heinlein preceded The Expanse by decades.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      Science Fiction Science Fiction? It gets a bit meta there... but yeah, something something, shoulders of giants.
imglorp 5y ago
We used to think a four minute mile was impossible, until Roger Bannister in 1954. Think how all the other runners felt after that run: they had to catch up. Now it's done all the time and is the standard.
- csours 5y ago
  Capitalism "creates" efficiency by driving under-performers to change or driving them out of the market. Efficiency means not doing unnecessary things, not employing unnecessary people. They may have been doing something useful, or just something that someone thought was important. The important point is the question of what exactly you are being efficient at doing. As you drive towards a particular Pareto optimization, economic forces have changed what you need to optimize for, perhaps driven by your own optimization. The limiting factors have changed. If the moat of required competencies and capital allocation is large enough, you can hide a lot of inefficiencies (aka your boss's friends) for quite a long time. --- Edit: people can comment about crony capitalism etc if they like, my comment is not meant to be comprehensive, merely observational.
  - kiba 5y ago
    Capitalism isn't why SpaceX beats competitors. Rather, money's not the motivator that drive Elon Musk and his company. Defense contractors are a form of capitalism too. The market can impose some discipline, but it's up to the humans in the driver seat.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      > Defense contractors are a form of capitalism too. But different; the US is the best funded / most expensive military in the world by a big margin, and the defense contractors know it and develop weapons and price them accordingly. It's why they use fancy weapon systems instead of tried, tested and cheap Kalashnikovs. SpaceX is the Kalashnikov of rockets, if you think about it.
    - csours 5y ago
      I agree. Capitalism itself doesn't do anything; people working in a context tend to value what that context values. Capitalism drives efficient use of capital. Another context for SpaceX is the Moonshot - the big transformational project. In a Moonshot, everyone has to do more work than their job requires. This is called glue work and normally you should limit what glue work you do because you may not be rewarded for it. People working at SpaceX seem to believe in the mission and that is a reward in itself, which leads people to be motivated to bridge all those little gaps that form between job roles. I'd love to hear what other contexts people use to think about this.
tomkat0789 5y ago
> "SLS... its just not going to be a significant player in the future in space..." > Boeing’s Starliner... continues to be delayed. Man, is 'old space' good for anything? Over breakfast this morning I read the article below about problems from consolidation in defense. After a certain point, aren't these companies supposed to make money building things? Isn't there some will to succeed in the management above the engineers? How much longer will government bureaucrats allow the farce to continue? https://www.ft.com/content/c408c7bd-466a-496b-9889-9f83cc85e813 https://www.ft.com/content/c408c7bd-466a-496b-9889-9f83cc85e...
- Retric 5y ago
  It’s congress not government bureaucrats that are in charge of the really big ticket items. As such these companies setup manufacturing to be in an optimal set of districts to ensure their success even if it’s inefficient that’s just more pork.
  - fsloth 5y ago
    I'm not from USA, but my limited understanding is that the contractors (Boeing etc) work for Nasa, which in turn is guided by congress. And congress does not specify engineering or scientific goals, but how much government funds they want directed to their district. Hence it's broken from the start as a vehicle for engineering progress, but successful if the measure of success is to create jobs and subsidies.
    - wolf550e 5y ago
      Congress mandates specific technical details to force contractor choice and factory location in right district. For example RAC 2 (Saturn V reboot) won the NASA engineering trade off but congress mandated RAC 1 (shuttle tank, engines and boosters but without orbiter) becomes "SLS", to give jobs to shuttle contractors in their districts. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZx208bw0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZx208bw0g
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    That's the big difference, these contractors get given the contract with a big pile of restrictions on how they should build the thing, which usually aren't optimal in terms of cost or performance. Commercial companies like SpaceX on the other hand, who are spending their own money (i.e. no strings attached) have much more of a free hand on things like technology choice, architecture and procurement.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vertnerd 5y ago
For those of you playing along at home, the phrase: “At this point, I am highly confident we will get to orbit this year,” is a special thing that Musk says when development is taking longer than expected. Historically, everything that Musk is highly confident about either never happens or happens years later than promised. Don't hold your breath.
- hoseja 5y ago
  That's just Musk time. The rest of us not currently shorting TSLA can be highly confident they will get to orbit in 2-3 years.
  - qsdf38100 5y ago
    AKA bullshit time
    - darawk 5y ago
      Bullshit time that still ends in delivery of world changing products, pretty consistently. He can bullshit about timelines all he wants as long as he's delivering at this level eventually, as far as i'm concerned.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      "Reach for the stars, and if you miss, you might still land on the moon" time. Don't confuse big, hairy, audacious goals, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/big-hairy-audacious-goal-bhag.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/big-hairy-audacious-goa..., that push a group to push further than would have with "realistic" goals with bullshit.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thesausageking 5y ago
  That's been the history on self-driving cars: 2015: "We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." 2016: "I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem, I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy, safer than humans, but regulations should take at least another year." 2018: "I think probably by end of next year (2019) self-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least 100% to 200% safer than a person." 2019: "We need to be at 99.9999..% We need to be extremely reliable. When do we think it is safe for FSD, probably towards the end of this year then its up to the regulators when they will decide to approve that." 2019: "I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year." 2020: "I am extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. But I think at least some jurisdictions are going to allow full self-driving next year."
jmyeet 5y ago
I believe the general consensus of the informed is that Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted. There's a history of this. Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was originally built for to the point there are a couple of launches a year at best. Musk does deserve a lot of credit for SpaceX. The Falcon 9 vehicle is arguably the most reliable launch system we've ever made [1]. It's cheap to produce and launch. It's even cheaper once you factor in reuse. Starlink will probably be a game changer for many (but it isn't yet). But that doesn't matter because Starlink is driving down launch costs (with reuse) and improving the Falcon 9 track record. All of this for <$20B in investment, which is about the development cost of SLS. SLS hasn't even launched yet and will probably cost ~$1B/launch anyway. And it's not just an issue of throwing money at the problem. Blue Origin has had just as much money thrown at it and was founded years before SpaceX yet it still hasn't reached orbit and its BE-4 engines have been delayed years. Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised. [1]: https://www.thespacetechie.com/falcon-9-the-most-loved-rocket https://www.thespacetechie.com/falcon-9-the-most-loved-rocke...
- chipsa 5y ago
  Falcon Heavy was repeatedly delayed, but as you mentioned, Falcon 9 got repeatedly upgraded during that same time. They decided to allocate the resources to 9 instead of Heavy. However, they're not going to be doing that with Starship. I think they'll get it orbital before the end of 2024.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  It will get to orbit way before 2025. That just isn't that hard. Maybe 2025 before both parts land from oribt.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    Yeah, I think if they wanted to launch disposable starships they could do that right now and probably for lower cost than SLS. But just like SLS there isn't much market for a billion dollar ultra-heavy payload launch. It would be a waste of time to even demo that.
ptha 5y ago
From the article: That makes Starship, which conducted a successful flight to the edge of space last year, especially threatening to the contractors and their allies in Congress. So far Starship has flown to 12.5 km [1], which seems to be a stretch to describe as "the edge of space" [2]. It seems like the FAA Environmental Assessment for the "SpacePort" at Boca Chica has been delayed again from Feb 28th, by a month to March 28th [3]. If they recommend a full Environmental review that will delay progress even further. I believe Elon mentioned in the recent Starship update that they will move Starship testing to Cape Canaveral which already has permissions to launch Starship there if this is required [4] [5], but that will require building out an orbital pad for Starship. It will certainly be interesting to see how long it takes Starship to get to orbit. I would guess that the raptor 2 performance/reliability and also the heatshield performance will be significant challenges to overcome. When/if SpaceX do overcome them, the incumbents will be justified in "shitting the bed", as per the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SpaceX_Starship_flight_tests#Starship_test_flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SpaceX_Starship_flight... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line#Interpretations_of_the_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line#Interpre... [3] https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship/ https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo (SpaceX Starship update) [5] https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starship-orbital-cape-canaveral https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starship-orbital-cape-c...
- martyvis 5y ago
  The height reached was more of a limit imposed by FAA, and that SpaceX had more important things to demonstrate than to literally just burn more fuel and go straight up. I mean look at how they had to turn off engines as they ascended just to keep the velocity in check.
- maccam94 5y ago
  The heat shield isn't a blocker for getting to orbit, it's only needed to recover the second stage. Musk thinks that the Florida launch site will be ready before the end of the year anyway (and sure, add a few months for Elon Time, but they've already built one of them so the timeline should be fairly well understood). The overall economics and reliability may take another year or two to really get dialed in.
mLuby 5y ago
SLS is just Space Shuttle boosters, tanks, and engines in a new configuration. Falcon Heavy is just Falcon 9s in a new configuration. Now that Starship's shell is assembled, it looks 90% done. Which means there's only 90% hidden work left to do. The devil's always in the details. (BTW I'm a fan of all these rockets—ad astra per redundantiam.)
aaronbrethorst 5y ago
Cmd+F, "SHOTWELL", no results. Hmm.
nikkinana 5y ago
gsibble 5y ago
Falcon 9 has already made ever non-reusable rocket obsolete and look like a child's plaything by comparison. And the current industry players aren't even trying to compete. It's pathetic.
olliej 5y ago
This is so dumb, the moon contractors have decades of experience, whereas starship hasn't even got into orbit once. oh the contractors haven't even got off the ground once? huh
reso 5y ago
Seems unlikely to me that starship will get to orbit this year. They haven't received FAA approval to test launch to orbit from Boca Chia. SpaceX's tests usually fail multiple times before they succeed, so the clock hasn't even started. The interval at which they can run tests logistically is at minimum a few months. As well, we also know that the raptor engine production line is running much too slow. [1] Starship required 34 raptors for every test, so you can do simple math at how quickly they will be able to do tests based on how quickly they can build the engines. There's never been an engine production line which could build much more than one engine per week. It also seems likely that SpaceX will have to fundraise at least once at their current burn before Starship gets to orbit, so that could be a down round. [1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/ https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
chasd00 5y ago
i wonder if Musk regrets the political comments he's made on Twitter. I'm sure the current administration is not pushing the FAA to get the assessment done for Boca Chica. Quite the opposite I bet.
- Drblessing 5y ago
  Yes, because the real problem here is a citizen exercising their First Amendment right, not a government agency overstepping its role and becoming a political club to attack wrongthink.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    coming back to this way late, I wasn't trying to imply he was wrong to criticize or anything like that. What i meant was I can see people in the US Government slow walking every single permit/form SpaceX needs for no other reason than spite from a tweet. Something like "oh Musk doesn't like Warren eh? Well let's send the environmental review back through a security check for another 30 days". I can totally see things like that taking place.
    - Drblessing 5y ago
      My apologies! Yes, unfortunately, I agree with you.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  This administration seems to have had it out for Musk, or at least Tesla by constantly promoting Ford and GM as "leaders" in the EV industry for some reason, well before Musk started getting more politically vocal. That unfair favoritism of established companies over Tesla is more likely than not what's motivated him raising his voice. But also, not everyone in the government is this petty or stupid. The military in particular is keenly away of the potential strategic advantage Starship opens up to them that no other organization is anywhere close to being able to offer. And it would be absurdly dumb for this government to hamstring SpaceX over petty political grievances and risk giving China time to close the gap.
bogomipz 5y ago
>"The space agency’s first three Artemis moon missions over the next three years — including a human landing planned for 2025 — are all set to travel aboard the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, which are being built by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne and numerous other suppliers and engineering services firms." I'm guessing these companies enumerated in the last sentence are the "competitors" referenced in the article's actual title? How concerned would/should those companies be? Aren't those same suppliers constantly flush with regular defense contracts from the government? I don't know enough about them to know what percentage of their business is NASA vs regular defense/military contracting.
musicale 5y ago
I'd watch this movie.

222 points by danboarder 5y ago

throwbigdata 5y ago

Musk is moving the moochers’ cheese.

hourislate 5y ago

https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex

danboarder 5y ago
@hourislate Thanks, I think the amp link caused the original link to go to a login page, weird. @hn Maybe a mod can correct my op link with this one? I can no longer edit it.
- dang 5y ago
  It wasn't you. Our software follows redirects and canonical URLs now and https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex led on a wild goose chase to a wordpress login flow. Sorry! I've fixed it above now. Edit: however, it's not the original source, so we've switched to that from https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex. Note this guideline: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - danboarder 5y ago
    Thank you!
copperwater69 5y ago
This link works
gigglesupstairs 5y ago
The original Politico article futurism article refers to: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/12/elon-musk-space-freaking-out-competitors-00008441 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/12/elon-musk-space-fre...
- dang 5y ago
  Changed from https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex https://futurism.com/nasa-horrified-spacex. Thanks!

iab 5y ago

> which Musk recently bragged could cost as little as $1 million per launch. Didn't realize you could brag about things that haven't happened

ncmncm 5y ago
And won't. I wonder if Tesla owners will ever get a refund for the self-driving feature they bought and will never work. SpaceX might be able to get to $1M marginal cost for a launch, but you can bet they will never sell launches for that.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  > SpaceX might be able to get to $1M marginal cost for a launch, but you can bet they will never sell launches for that. So, if they mark it up by an order of magnitude for external customers, you're predicting that a Starship launch might be cheaper than a Falcon 9 launch is, today, with a capacity of a dozen times the Falcon 9?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Sure? Cheaper per pound is fine, but teasing with prices 10x less than you will actually charge is no more honest than charging for a self-driving feature that kills people who rely on it.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      Prices are not the same thing as costs.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        And goalposts are easy to move.
        mannerheim 5y ago

mikewarot 5y ago

Elon doesn't have to spread operations out across the country to keep jobs going in a bunch of congressional districts that sometimes shift on the outcomes of elections. He can just focus on getting things done. NASA would have to be given more leash than is possible in the current climate to actually have a hope of keeping up. The world as they know it might be coming to an end, of course they're worried.

Railsify 5y ago
Well said. Administration after administration comes and goes and neither party fixes the problem, it's almost like there is one party and the dual party system is just to extract donations during election season. I feel like it's all a big show.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  which, of course, is self-fulfilling.
- thereddaikon 5y ago
  While what you say is true, its not actually why these things happen. Government projects are inefficient as a result of how power structures naturally work. Nothing more.
  - kansface 5y ago
    Its like Conway's law, but for engineering physical systems!
- specialist 5y ago
  Collective action is hard.
watersb 5y ago
I've worked on a huge space science project that was scattered across multiple countries in order to get the funding scale that the proposal seemed to require. We got the impression that in order to get the thing built, if we had relied upon a single organization to fund the project, it would have been far more easy to kill during development. Most of us were new to this way of thinking. At the time, the engineers with the most experience in building these things had endured decades of minimal funding, and had learned to keep things as simple as possible. There was a lot of pushback against what was perceived as unnecessary complexity. What is the quote, that organizations will expand towards supporting the organization, rather than the goals of the organization... Well. Science is hard, rocket science more so. All of the other commercial launch programs have (as yet) failed to achieve anything close to sustainable orbital operations, unless they are also traditional aerospace defense contractors. ULA is Boeing/Northrop Grumman, and I can't recall but I think ArianneSpace is technically a commercial company rather than a national space agency. Both are very, very good at orbital launch. But comparing their funding structure to that of SpaceX seems a bit weird.

snarkerson 5y ago

Paying DoD prices for a civilian program never made sense. Add in constant program stretching due to a limited budget, I don't doubt NASA will look bad by comparison.

smoyer 5y ago
As a taxpayer, paying DoD prices for a military program also doesn't make sense (aside from the question of whether we even need most military programs).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I've worked at BAE Systems, Inc. and Raytheon and there is so much extra bullshit it will make your head spin. I'm a veteran and I left the industry in disgust. I will never consider defense software again unless there are some drastic changes. I've always said that the US Govt pays $10 for $1 worth of work. https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126691/-1/-1/0/SWAP%20FLYER.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126691/-1/-1/0/SWA... > The current approach to software development is a leading source of risk to DoD: it takes too long, is too expensive, and exposes warfighters to unacceptable risk. > Nothing is changing: most of this has been said before and the 1987 DSB report on military software pretty much says it all. What is it going to take to actually do something?
  - smoyer 5y ago
    Thanks for serving ... the rank and file of the military is truly dedicated in my experience and it would be great if a larger portion of the funding was spent on the human side of defense and if a larger portion of the decision making was left to the "normal people".
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    I've been there as well and agree. The defense world is a headache. Everything slows you down. Its like trying to swim through fruit cake. Lockmart and Boeing are fortunate that SpaceX has no desire to get into the defense game beyond launching satellites for the Space Force. They wouldn't be as fast as their past work, half the friction in the defense world is imposed by the customer. But they would be faster than the incumbents.

henvic 5y ago

I love space exploration, so please don't take me wrong... I've got an unpopular opinion: For me, the state-sponsored space exploration of space (particularly, the Space Race) slowed down progress in the sciences and even for space exploration in the long run. Of course, people can point to me all sorts of technologies that appeared first during the race. Unfortunately, we don't have a fork or an alternative world where this didn't happen that we could use to compare, so anything I say pointing to the high-cost such endeavors had to society is almost always met with skepticism (if you argue this makes me wrong, you're committing a fallacy regardless if I'm right or wrong). It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective and long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my point. Yes, maybe humans would be on Moon only 30 years later. Still, there's a chance at least the wealthiest could afford a week-long vacation with their families today on the Moon. We could have labs and factories for specialized equipment that might benefit from a low-gravity environment in space or whatever.

danboarder 5y ago
"It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective and long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my point." Would you say the same thing regarding the Department of Defense and the Pentagon budget? I have heard good arguments that the military industrial complex is largely a bureaucratic deadweight cost to society, with few benefits (and generates the largest loss of life through Democide: https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM ). Anyway, I think perhaps your argument fits military waste spending even more than it does with regard to the space race and NASA. Or maybe it's just a characteristic of State spending in general (like the infamous story of a $640 toilet seat https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/only-the-pentagon-could-spend-640-on-a-toilet-seat/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/only-the-pentagon-... ).
- henvic 5y ago
  Yes, and yes. To the point that it's mere noise compared to the waste and destruction of wealth caused by wars and conflicts caused by politicians. Economically speaking, the waste caused by the industrial-military complex worldwide is probably 10000 times worse, at least. Going off-topic: However, even though I'm a capitalist pig, the problem with this goes even far worse than economics: most murders recent history are related to state-sponsored conflicts, not the John Doe carrying a gun around to commit petty theft and accidentally murdering someone. It's hard to become aware of it as institutions like UNODC never includes armed conflict between states in the count, for starters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

fallingfrog 5y ago

The really baffling thing to me is that although certain technologies have come to pass in the last decade that made it easier to do what spacex has done, it’s been technically possible since probably the late 90’s. I’m absolutely certain that Elon musk isn’t the first person to come up with the idea of reusable rockets, and the people who actually did the work of designing those rockets were already around before Elon musk hired them. Tom Mueller, who was the first rocket engineer Musk hired, was building rocket engines in his garage out of frustration that nobody was taking him seriously at work. So the question is, how deep does institutional rot have to go to stifle innovation on this level industry wide? How does an organization dedicated to exploration become so utterly unable to take risks? There’s definitely something to learn here. I’m looking through the list of the heads of nasa, and they’re all trained scientists or engineers up until 1981 when Reagan appointed a business management executive to the position. If I could pinpoint anything as the inflection point, that’s probably it. After that it’s a mixture, but you get a lot of military generals and other members of the national security apparatus together with various business CEOs, and some mechanical engineers, and a couple rocket scientists too. But why did none of them try what spacex is doing? People from lower down in the organization were presumably shouting at them that they were wasting money. Everyone in an organization knows when the leadership is useless. It just baffles the mind. A fish rots from the head.

Kadin 5y ago
> I’m absolutely certain that Elon musk isn’t the first person to come up with the idea of reusable rockets, and the people who actually did the work of designing those rockets were already around before Elon musk hired them. Tom Mueller, who was the first rocket engineer Musk hired, was building rocket engines in his garage out of frustration that nobody was taking him seriously at work. So the question is, how deep does institutional rot have to go to stifle innovation on this level industry wide? How does an organization dedicated to exploration become so utterly unable to take risks? I don't think this is a NASA problem, it's really a problem across the US Federal government. You see it on the military side of government-funded technology programs as well. (If you want to see a really terrible example, look at the ongoing failure to produce a replacement for the M109 howitzer.) My personal theory is that it's mainly driven by funding mechanisms, especially those covered by FAR. It's not, as some people allege, that the government is particularly bad at things; the government is roughly as competent as any large corporation when it comes down to task execution. I've consulted both to private sector corps and the government, and the fundamental challenges are largely the same. Yes, government compensation structures (heavy on pensions) do tend to attract people in different phases of their careers and lives than, say, equity-heavy packages at a startup. But there's not much evidence linking this to performance. Rather, the difference is that the US government has an institutional attention-deficit disorder. What gets funded one year might get cancelled the next. No plan can possibly be accurate beyond the end of the current budget cycle, no priority fixed beyond the next election. Everyone is going for "quick wins", because they want to be able to justify the continuation of the project. This is not conducive to risk-taking, at all. Quite the opposite. What government PMs want are projects that can set a ~24 month goal, and then show monotonic progress towards that goal every month, like clockwork. Projects that can't show those kind of clean metrics are often managed to death, if they are even started at all. Private-sector organizations, particularly those run by single individuals without regard for short-term profitability, can take on risks that the government won't—basically can't—deal with. Elon Musk made some pretty big technical bets that paid off... but the government isn't allowed to play at that table with tax money.

gerikson 5y ago

Better be careful or they'll target the Tesla factories with moon rocks fired from mass drivers...

thatjoeoverthr 5y ago
Luckily, they’d have to get to the Moon first ;)
Meerax 5y ago
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress reference?
- TecoAndJix 5y ago
  It is a reference to The Expanse (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/)
  - gerikson 5y ago
    The Expanse authors got it from Heinlein, which was what I was referencing ;)
  - tehbeard 5y ago
    ...no? In The Expanse it was rocks from the belt coated in "stolen" Mars stealth material. Luna's a UN colony, practically on Earth's doorstep, not a beligerent. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is the reference.
- RegBarclay 5y ago
  That was my first thought. I haven't seen The Expanse, but in any case, Heinlein preceded The Expanse by decades.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Science Fiction Science Fiction? It gets a bit meta there... but yeah, something something, shoulders of giants.

imglorp 5y ago

We used to think a four minute mile was impossible, until Roger Bannister in 1954. Think how all the other runners felt after that run: they had to catch up. Now it's done all the time and is the standard.

csours 5y ago
Capitalism "creates" efficiency by driving under-performers to change or driving them out of the market. Efficiency means not doing unnecessary things, not employing unnecessary people. They may have been doing something useful, or just something that someone thought was important. The important point is the question of what exactly you are being efficient at doing. As you drive towards a particular Pareto optimization, economic forces have changed what you need to optimize for, perhaps driven by your own optimization. The limiting factors have changed. If the moat of required competencies and capital allocation is large enough, you can hide a lot of inefficiencies (aka your boss's friends) for quite a long time. --- Edit: people can comment about crony capitalism etc if they like, my comment is not meant to be comprehensive, merely observational.
- kiba 5y ago
  Capitalism isn't why SpaceX beats competitors. Rather, money's not the motivator that drive Elon Musk and his company. Defense contractors are a form of capitalism too. The market can impose some discipline, but it's up to the humans in the driver seat.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    > Defense contractors are a form of capitalism too. But different; the US is the best funded / most expensive military in the world by a big margin, and the defense contractors know it and develop weapons and price them accordingly. It's why they use fancy weapon systems instead of tried, tested and cheap Kalashnikovs. SpaceX is the Kalashnikov of rockets, if you think about it.
  - csours 5y ago
    I agree. Capitalism itself doesn't do anything; people working in a context tend to value what that context values. Capitalism drives efficient use of capital. Another context for SpaceX is the Moonshot - the big transformational project. In a Moonshot, everyone has to do more work than their job requires. This is called glue work and normally you should limit what glue work you do because you may not be rewarded for it. People working at SpaceX seem to believe in the mission and that is a reward in itself, which leads people to be motivated to bridge all those little gaps that form between job roles. I'd love to hear what other contexts people use to think about this.

tomkat0789 5y ago

> "SLS... its just not going to be a significant player in the future in space..." > Boeing’s Starliner... continues to be delayed. Man, is 'old space' good for anything? Over breakfast this morning I read the article below about problems from consolidation in defense. After a certain point, aren't these companies supposed to make money building things? Isn't there some will to succeed in the management above the engineers? How much longer will government bureaucrats allow the farce to continue? https://www.ft.com/content/c408c7bd-466a-496b-9889-9f83cc85e813 https://www.ft.com/content/c408c7bd-466a-496b-9889-9f83cc85e...

Retric 5y ago
It’s congress not government bureaucrats that are in charge of the really big ticket items. As such these companies setup manufacturing to be in an optimal set of districts to ensure their success even if it’s inefficient that’s just more pork.
- fsloth 5y ago
  I'm not from USA, but my limited understanding is that the contractors (Boeing etc) work for Nasa, which in turn is guided by congress. And congress does not specify engineering or scientific goals, but how much government funds they want directed to their district. Hence it's broken from the start as a vehicle for engineering progress, but successful if the measure of success is to create jobs and subsidies.
  - wolf550e 5y ago
    Congress mandates specific technical details to force contractor choice and factory location in right district. For example RAC 2 (Saturn V reboot) won the NASA engineering trade off but congress mandated RAC 1 (shuttle tank, engines and boosters but without orbiter) becomes "SLS", to give jobs to shuttle contractors in their districts. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZx208bw0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZx208bw0g
- HPsquared 5y ago
  That's the big difference, these contractors get given the contract with a big pile of restrictions on how they should build the thing, which usually aren't optimal in terms of cost or performance. Commercial companies like SpaceX on the other hand, who are spending their own money (i.e. no strings attached) have much more of a free hand on things like technology choice, architecture and procurement.

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vertnerd 5y ago

For those of you playing along at home, the phrase: “At this point, I am highly confident we will get to orbit this year,” is a special thing that Musk says when development is taking longer than expected. Historically, everything that Musk is highly confident about either never happens or happens years later than promised. Don't hold your breath.

hoseja 5y ago
That's just Musk time. The rest of us not currently shorting TSLA can be highly confident they will get to orbit in 2-3 years.
- qsdf38100 5y ago
  AKA bullshit time
  - darawk 5y ago
    Bullshit time that still ends in delivery of world changing products, pretty consistently. He can bullshit about timelines all he wants as long as he's delivering at this level eventually, as far as i'm concerned.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    "Reach for the stars, and if you miss, you might still land on the moon" time. Don't confuse big, hairy, audacious goals, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/big-hairy-audacious-goal-bhag.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/big-hairy-audacious-goa..., that push a group to push further than would have with "realistic" goals with bullshit.
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thesausageking 5y ago
That's been the history on self-driving cars: 2015: "We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." 2016: "I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem, I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy, safer than humans, but regulations should take at least another year." 2018: "I think probably by end of next year (2019) self-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least 100% to 200% safer than a person." 2019: "We need to be at 99.9999..% We need to be extremely reliable. When do we think it is safe for FSD, probably towards the end of this year then its up to the regulators when they will decide to approve that." 2019: "I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year." 2020: "I am extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. But I think at least some jurisdictions are going to allow full self-driving next year."

jmyeet 5y ago

I believe the general consensus of the informed is that Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted. There's a history of this. Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was originally built for to the point there are a couple of launches a year at best. Musk does deserve a lot of credit for SpaceX. The Falcon 9 vehicle is arguably the most reliable launch system we've ever made [1]. It's cheap to produce and launch. It's even cheaper once you factor in reuse. Starlink will probably be a game changer for many (but it isn't yet). But that doesn't matter because Starlink is driving down launch costs (with reuse) and improving the Falcon 9 track record. All of this for <$20B in investment, which is about the development cost of SLS. SLS hasn't even launched yet and will probably cost ~$1B/launch anyway. And it's not just an issue of throwing money at the problem. Blue Origin has had just as much money thrown at it and was founded years before SpaceX yet it still hasn't reached orbit and its BE-4 engines have been delayed years. Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised. [1]: https://www.thespacetechie.com/falcon-9-the-most-loved-rocket https://www.thespacetechie.com/falcon-9-the-most-loved-rocke...

chipsa 5y ago
Falcon Heavy was repeatedly delayed, but as you mentioned, Falcon 9 got repeatedly upgraded during that same time. They decided to allocate the resources to 9 instead of Heavy. However, they're not going to be doing that with Starship. I think they'll get it orbital before the end of 2024.
gameswithgo 5y ago
It will get to orbit way before 2025. That just isn't that hard. Maybe 2025 before both parts land from oribt.
- phkahler 5y ago
  Yeah, I think if they wanted to launch disposable starships they could do that right now and probably for lower cost than SLS. But just like SLS there isn't much market for a billion dollar ultra-heavy payload launch. It would be a waste of time to even demo that.

ptha 5y ago

From the article: That makes Starship, which conducted a successful flight to the edge of space last year, especially threatening to the contractors and their allies in Congress. So far Starship has flown to 12.5 km [1], which seems to be a stretch to describe as "the edge of space" [2]. It seems like the FAA Environmental Assessment for the "SpacePort" at Boca Chica has been delayed again from Feb 28th, by a month to March 28th [3]. If they recommend a full Environmental review that will delay progress even further. I believe Elon mentioned in the recent Starship update that they will move Starship testing to Cape Canaveral which already has permissions to launch Starship there if this is required [4] [5], but that will require building out an orbital pad for Starship. It will certainly be interesting to see how long it takes Starship to get to orbit. I would guess that the raptor 2 performance/reliability and also the heatshield performance will be significant challenges to overcome. When/if SpaceX do overcome them, the incumbents will be justified in "shitting the bed", as per the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SpaceX_Starship_flight_tests#Starship_test_flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SpaceX_Starship_flight... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line#Interpretations_of_the_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line#Interpre... [3] https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship/ https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo (SpaceX Starship update) [5] https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starship-orbital-cape-canaveral https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starship-orbital-cape-c...

martyvis 5y ago
The height reached was more of a limit imposed by FAA, and that SpaceX had more important things to demonstrate than to literally just burn more fuel and go straight up. I mean look at how they had to turn off engines as they ascended just to keep the velocity in check.
maccam94 5y ago
The heat shield isn't a blocker for getting to orbit, it's only needed to recover the second stage. Musk thinks that the Florida launch site will be ready before the end of the year anyway (and sure, add a few months for Elon Time, but they've already built one of them so the timeline should be fairly well understood). The overall economics and reliability may take another year or two to really get dialed in.

mLuby 5y ago

SLS is just Space Shuttle boosters, tanks, and engines in a new configuration. Falcon Heavy is just Falcon 9s in a new configuration. Now that Starship's shell is assembled, it looks 90% done. Which means there's only 90% hidden work left to do. The devil's always in the details. (BTW I'm a fan of all these rockets—ad astra per redundantiam.)

aaronbrethorst 5y ago

Cmd+F, "SHOTWELL", no results. Hmm.

nikkinana 5y ago

gsibble 5y ago

Falcon 9 has already made ever non-reusable rocket obsolete and look like a child's plaything by comparison. And the current industry players aren't even trying to compete. It's pathetic.

olliej 5y ago

This is so dumb, the moon contractors have decades of experience, whereas starship hasn't even got into orbit once. oh the contractors haven't even got off the ground once? huh

reso 5y ago

Seems unlikely to me that starship will get to orbit this year. They haven't received FAA approval to test launch to orbit from Boca Chia. SpaceX's tests usually fail multiple times before they succeed, so the clock hasn't even started. The interval at which they can run tests logistically is at minimum a few months. As well, we also know that the raptor engine production line is running much too slow. [1] Starship required 34 raptors for every test, so you can do simple math at how quickly they will be able to do tests based on how quickly they can build the engines. There's never been an engine production line which could build much more than one engine per week. It also seems likely that SpaceX will have to fundraise at least once at their current burn before Starship gets to orbit, so that could be a down round. [1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/ https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/

chasd00 5y ago

i wonder if Musk regrets the political comments he's made on Twitter. I'm sure the current administration is not pushing the FAA to get the assessment done for Boca Chica. Quite the opposite I bet.

Drblessing 5y ago
Yes, because the real problem here is a citizen exercising their First Amendment right, not a government agency overstepping its role and becoming a political club to attack wrongthink.
- chasd00 5y ago
  coming back to this way late, I wasn't trying to imply he was wrong to criticize or anything like that. What i meant was I can see people in the US Government slow walking every single permit/form SpaceX needs for no other reason than spite from a tweet. Something like "oh Musk doesn't like Warren eh? Well let's send the environmental review back through a security check for another 30 days". I can totally see things like that taking place.
  - Drblessing 5y ago
    My apologies! Yes, unfortunately, I agree with you.
anonporridge 5y ago
This administration seems to have had it out for Musk, or at least Tesla by constantly promoting Ford and GM as "leaders" in the EV industry for some reason, well before Musk started getting more politically vocal. That unfair favoritism of established companies over Tesla is more likely than not what's motivated him raising his voice. But also, not everyone in the government is this petty or stupid. The military in particular is keenly away of the potential strategic advantage Starship opens up to them that no other organization is anywhere close to being able to offer. And it would be absurdly dumb for this government to hamstring SpaceX over petty political grievances and risk giving China time to close the gap.

bogomipz 5y ago

>"The space agency’s first three Artemis moon missions over the next three years — including a human landing planned for 2025 — are all set to travel aboard the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, which are being built by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne and numerous other suppliers and engineering services firms." I'm guessing these companies enumerated in the last sentence are the "competitors" referenced in the article's actual title? How concerned would/should those companies be? Aren't those same suppliers constantly flush with regular defense contracts from the government? I don't know enough about them to know what percentage of their business is NASA vs regular defense/military contracting.

musicale 5y ago

I'd watch this movie.