4 ms·

Starship's advanced design is said to have NASA officials “sh**ting the bed”

9 points by throwaway743 5y ago

noughtme 5y ago
Weird title. I thought the whole point was to bring launch cost down and let Nasa go back to research and outsourcing it's directives.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  NASA gets its power from its budget and purchasing power. Starship drastically driving down the cost of lift diminishes NASA’s power and relevance (along with that of their subcontractors). Would you rather work for the checkbook bureaucrats (Webb and similar science aside)? Or the eccentric billionaire getting on stage, with Starship on the pad, saying “We are going to Mars.” SpaceX is becoming NASA faster than NASA can become SpaceX (to steal the Netflix/HBO analogy). Same goes for lift customers. TLDR Innovator’s Dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
  - genmud 5y ago
    I think that we should do whatever pushes the edge of science forward quickest and ideally in a manner that doesn’t sink all of our resources on one area of focus. If the way NASA does things isn’t the most effective way to do that, then that should be addressed. Long term (hundreds or thousands of years) as a species, we need to look to space.
samstave 5y ago
It will be interesting when we get to the point where were are deploying "supply pods" to Mars: Basically - flinging cargo-containers of supplies of X to Mars to orbit around the planet until we arrive to harvest them... It would appear that a Starship can launch ~33 tons per flight into orbit... Lets get a Space Port built out where we can store a bunch of cargo containers in space - but have a launching system from our orbit to fling containers of supplies from Earth to an orbit on Mars. Best idea would be to fling a bunch of space-station-space-port modules at Mars for assembly once robots arrive to assemble the modules. and we develop a method to fling a container between the ports, the ports catch the containers and put them in a grid/orbit/whatever... (ideally hex shaped containers designed to attach to one another...)
Havoc 5y ago
A week ago it was the people from the competition saying that not NASA. Appears something got lost along the way
dang 5y ago
Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342446 - Feb 2022 (302 comments)

9 points by throwaway743 5y ago

Weird title. I thought the whole point was to bring launch cost down and let Nasa go back to research and outsourcing it's directives.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
NASA gets its power from its budget and purchasing power. Starship drastically driving down the cost of lift diminishes NASA’s power and relevance (along with that of their subcontractors). Would you rather work for the checkbook bureaucrats (Webb and similar science aside)? Or the eccentric billionaire getting on stage, with Starship on the pad, saying “We are going to Mars.” SpaceX is becoming NASA faster than NASA can become SpaceX (to steal the Netflix/HBO analogy). Same goes for lift customers. TLDR Innovator’s Dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
- genmud 5y ago
  I think that we should do whatever pushes the edge of science forward quickest and ideally in a manner that doesn’t sink all of our resources on one area of focus. If the way NASA does things isn’t the most effective way to do that, then that should be addressed. Long term (hundreds or thousands of years) as a species, we need to look to space.

samstave 5y ago

It will be interesting when we get to the point where were are deploying "supply pods" to Mars: Basically - flinging cargo-containers of supplies of X to Mars to orbit around the planet until we arrive to harvest them... It would appear that a Starship can launch ~33 tons per flight into orbit... Lets get a Space Port built out where we can store a bunch of cargo containers in space - but have a launching system from our orbit to fling containers of supplies from Earth to an orbit on Mars. Best idea would be to fling a bunch of space-station-space-port modules at Mars for assembly once robots arrive to assemble the modules. and we develop a method to fling a container between the ports, the ports catch the containers and put them in a grid/orbit/whatever... (ideally hex shaped containers designed to attach to one another...)

Havoc 5y ago

A week ago it was the people from the competition saying that not NASA. Appears something got lost along the way

dang 5y ago

Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342446 - Feb 2022 (302 comments)