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SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
- strangesongs 5y ago"Precisely when, though, remains unclear" The subheading says so much
- mlindner 5y agoBecause there's a lot of uncertainty at the moment that depends on the result of the FAA environmental review. If there's a "yes", then launch is likely this year. If there's a "no", then launch is likely not this year.
- elkos 5y agoAren't environmental review services a thing in the USA? It's pretty commonly expected to seek such services and edhere to their recommendations prior to filling a launch request in many jurisdictions around the world since prior to launch you have to coordinate with several state authorities, and do some paperwork. I'm pretty sure any organization that's able to figure out such launch vehicle will be able to do their own due diligence.
- ben_bai 5y agoIt's already booked, but timeframe still unclear. We'll see when the first cargo missions succeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_program
- mlindner 5y agoThat's a separate topic. The test flights still need to happen first.
- walrus01 5y agoFor size comparison, interesting that they put a SLS block 1 in there, which has never flown or been to orbit, but didn't include the Soviet N1 which at least has flown a few times (in catastrophic, exploding fashion) but also has never been to orbit. They did include an Energia, which is a defunct program and has zero chances of ever getting manufactured again, same as the N1.
- colechristensen 5y agoI mean, the SLS is slated for a launch in the next few months and the N1 was a failed program that ended fifty years ago. I can see very well the reasons for including one and not the other.
- walrus01 5y agocertainly, but it's also not rare to see an N1 when doing a side-by-side comparison with the Saturn V
- mhh__ 5y agoEnergia could (could...) Fly again according to some recent chatter. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22515248/russia-super-rocket-energia/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22515248/rus...
- T-A 5y agoThat article is from 2018. And no, that proposal never went anywhere.
- mhh__ 5y agoI heard something about it recently I think, but yes I wouldn't bet more than a penny on it ever happening.
- panick21_ 5y agoNo, just no. The Russian announced about 20 major space projects every year and about 0.1 of them are ever more then that. Anybody that has watched the Russian space program knows this is nonsense. They have barley enough money to continue to fly their 50 year old rockets. Their supposed next generation rocket has barley ever flown. Since that article they have already announced like 3 other rockets as well. Russian space program is 50 year old soviet tech and a lot of political propaganda.
- spicybright 5y agoIf only we could lower that peskty 1% chance of exploding each flight down a smidge. Well, at least this means the rockets will be cheaper to replace!
- Tepix 5y agoWhat's the source for the 1%? It's not even flown into space yet. Its extremely high flight rate makes it likely that its reliability will be closer to planes than rockets eventually.
- mlindner 5y agoThey watched a popular youtube video that's making the rounds that claims that number as well as a couple of other incorrect statements.
- croddin 5y agoI'm guessing it is just referring to reliability of rockets in general. Reliability should be improved and being able to fly more rockets by being "fully and rapidly reusable" is the right approach. Planes would not have been able to become as safe as they are if we had to build a new one for each flight.
- jacquesm 5y ago> What's the source for the 1%? Toilet research.
- bryanlarsen 5y agohttps://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2020.html https://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2020.html Soyuz is the only rocket that has flown much more than 100 flights, and it has a reliability of 97%. Several other rockets, including Falcon 9, have flown enough successful flights that statistically their reliability is unlikely to be less than 99%, but we cannot know that it's any higher than that. NASA figures that the failure rate of a Dragon flight is about 1 in 500, but that's based on analysis rather than statistics and is likely quite wrong. Note that the highest chance of failure in their analysis is a micrometeorite collision rather than a rocket failure.
- kilroy123 5y agoIf you're ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going to see NASA Johnson Space Center. They have a full-size replica (?) Saturn V rocket on its side, you can see. You simply can't grasp how big these rockets are until you see it up close. It's like a tall building blasting off into space. They're humongous. I hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.
- sidewndr46 5y agoNot a replica, that one was actually flight certified but never used.
- CamperBob2 5y agoI found it depressing. Ships aren't built to stay in the harbor, and rockets aren't built to lie on their side rusting. They say we couldn't build another Saturn V if we tried. Apparently that old saw is true enough, at least for the original contractors.
- tjchear 5y agoFor lack of a political will or the technical know how?
- MPSimmons 5y agoIn order to make a vehicle like that, you need the tools to make it. That doesn't just include wrenches and hammers - it includes the tooling used to form the curve of the skin and the area you assemble the pieces into. Almost all of that is gone, disassembled or misplaced.
- CamperBob2 5y agoThe popular wisdom is that we literally lost some of the technical specs and drawings. A lot of the R&D would have to be redone from scratch... not that it wouldn't make sense to do that anyway, 50+ years later.
- geocrasher 5y agoThe thing that's impressive to me, in addition to the sheer size of these machines, is the engines. The Raptor 2 is groundbreaking. And there's 30+ of them between both stages. It's just incredible, and there's nothing like it that's been done.
- tablespoon 5y ago> The thing that's impressive to me, in addition to the sheer size of these machines, is the engines. The Raptor 2 is groundbreaking. And there's 30+ of them between both stages. It's just incredible, and there's nothing like it that's been done. I may be wrong, but isn't the reason there are so many engines on their rockets is because SpaceX isn't good at building big rocket engines?
- kragen 5y agoYes, but it's not just SpaceX; nobody is good at building big rocket engines.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI don't know much about it, but I'm interested to know why the space shuttle solid rocket boosters were so much more powerful than the F1 engine. 2 of them produced about 87% of the thrust of the 5 F1 engines on the Saturn V. I thought combustion chamber instability was the biggest issue with the big engines. Are solid rockets much more stable?
- panick21_ 5y agoSolid rockets don't really have that problem in the same way. The instability happens in the thrust charmer of a liquid engine resulting from non-uniform burning. The chamber is not very big if you compare it to the size of the tank. Once you press that non-uniform hot gas threw the neck out into the nozzle the expansion happening in the nozzle also expands those imbalances. So you can end up with different pressure pressure in different part of the nozzle leading to vibration and potentially the nozzle ripping itself into pieces. Solids rocket are like a candle with a hole threw it. They burn inside out, not from the button to the top. So there is not really a thrust chamber in the same way. A channel goes from buttom to the top inside the booster. So the 'thrust chamber' is essentially the hole length of the booster. And all that material gets pushed down in the direction of the nozzle. I have never heard any rocket engineer explicitly explain this, but my assumption is that on the way down when everything is pushed threw the neck the gas has time to mix enough so that the instabilities are not that large anymore. I also think the pressure is lower in a solid. Solids have higher thrust but lower efficiency. The thrust comes from the fact that in the solid fuel mix there is lots of other stuff that need to form the solid. Heavier elements that don't participate in burning (thus less efficient) but add thrust. Solids also have the draw back of being incredibly loud and having massive vibrations. Solids also can have 'stability' problems as in that if they are not correctly manufactured, they might not burn uniformly and that can lead to a whole lot of problems and additional vibrations too. Almost no new rocket company uses solids. Its far to expensive and operationally dangerous. At best you can reuse some outer shell, but not the expensive part.
- caycep 5y ago"dirt cheap Starship" kinda reminds me of a backwoods project where all that was needed to achieve spaceflight and warp drive was a drunk James Cromwell and a few wise-cracking Starfleet officers who traveled back in time...
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoMakes me think of John Varney's Red Thunder, where they use some old tanker rail cars...
- LeoPanthera 5y agoCochrane and Musk have a lot in common. Dr. Zefram Cochrane: Please! Don't tell me it's all thanks to me! I've heard enough about the great Zefram Cochrane! I don't know who writes your history books or where you get your information from, but you people got some pretty funny ideas about me! You all look at me as if I'm some kind of... saint, or visionary or something! Cmdr. William Riker: I don't think you're a saint, Doc. But you did have a vision. And now we're sitting in it. Cochrane: You wanna know what my vision is? Dollar signs, money! I didn't build this ship to usher in a new era for humanity. You think I wanna go to the stars? I don't even like to fly! I take trains! I built this ship so that I could retire to some tropical island... filled with naked women. THAT'S Zefram Cochrane. THAT'S his vision. This other guy you keep talking about, this historical figure? I never met him. I can't imagine I ever will.
- BugWatch 5y agoHonestly, I'd consider that an insult to Zefram. I'd rather say that Musk has more in common with agent Smith: "Me, me, me.".
- hirundo 5y ago> Mr Musk’s development philosophy is that “if things are not failing, you aren’t innovating enough.” My boss used to keep saying "move fast and break things!" Then a new guy seriously messed up and almost lost us a valuable client. The boss demanded an explanation. I said the new guy moved fast and broke things. He actually wrote that in the explanation to the client. I haven't heard that phrase from him since.
- adolph 5y agoFalcon 9's safety record would indicate that it is possible to have development cycles that push boundaries and maintain a high reliability production system. With regard to Musk's statements about the relationship between innovation and failure, below is a quote from the linked video about optimization in the development process, a quote that provides a more nuanced view than the pithy quote. Then, try very hard to delete a part or process. This is actually very important. If you’re not occasionally adding things back in, you’re not deleting enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards “Let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” But you can basically make “in case” arguments for so many things. And for a rocket that’s trying to achieve, trying to be the first fully reusable rocket…you have to run at tight margins because if you don’t run tight margins you get nothing to orbit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
- tooltower 5y ago"move fast and break things", but make sure you know the consequence of breaking it and have that pre-approved by your bosses, labeled with a large font "disclaimer" sign written in red ...
- mlindner 5y agoThe key corollary for "move fast and break things" is "but don't do it in production". SpaceX doesn't rapidly innovate things in production. Starship is not yet in production.
- Veedrac 5y agoCompared to oldspace they definitely do; Falcon 1 only flew a handful of times, and Falcon 9 has been continually upgraded. Musk has mentioned even the old F9 Block 5s (which are the newest block) are painful to refurbish versus the newer ones.
- kragen 5y agohttps://archive.is/1IIml https://archive.is/1IIml BTW, if you like the Energia rocket and heavy metal, you might like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVWfqOSdzs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVWfqOSdzs4. This quote (from the article) is astounding: > [SpaceX] has pulled off 111 Falcon 9 launches in a row without failure
- imglorp 5y agoThe last failure in flight was 2015. Since then there were 120 successful launches and no failures. There was one payload lost in 2016 during a static fire test.
- throwaway2037 5y agoThanks for the update. Did you get your count from this Wiki page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... I'm not sure if that is a reliable source. (Please don't read that comment as a general commentary about Wiki!)
- imglorp 5y agoYes, and me neither. But even if they're +/- several, ie how they count success vs failure, it's still a high number.
- panick21_ 5y agoIn terms of rocket launches Wikipedia is very good. I certainty don't know about a better source. Maybe SpaceX has a list public somewhere but I would not sure that is as up to date and detailed as Wikipedia.
- throwaway2037 5y agoReal question: Do you think that Space X (PR) employees primarily manage that Wiki page? It seems possible. No, I don't think that is weird or sinister. All of it could probably be verified with an afternoon of YouTube searches! It seems like something that Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell would publicly discuss / support. Both are quite intellectually direct in their public media appearances (less b/s than most corps).
- emkoemko 5y agohow will it be dirt cheap?
- mlindner 5y agoBy being fully (and rapidly) reusable.
- pfdietz 5y agoThe point mlindner is making is that the cost of launch vehicles is in the vehicle, not the propellant. So full rapid reuse, so you can refly the entire vehicle a lot, drives the cost per launch way down.
- caoilte 5y agoit's a bit like not scrapping 747s after their maiden flight. brings the costs down a bit
- asdfgasrgaer 5y ago
- cryptonector 5y agoExactly.
- kisstheblade 5y agoIt won't. They haven't been able to get costs down in 10 years now, actually they have gone up. And reusability has its own problems, like lowering the amount of payload by 25% (you need to save fuel for re-entry). You can maybe get 10-20% savings if you ever get it working (see previous failed attempts...). NOT Musk promised 100x price reduction for launches, that will never happen.
- panick21_ 5y agoTotal nonsense. Go look at any analysis of launch prices over the last 20 years, they have gone down. SpaceX came in with a very aggressive price and they have lowered it a bit since. However since they have no competition they have increased their own margin rather then lower the price further. That has made them a highly valuable company capable of investing in next generation. > And reusability has its own problems, like lowering the amount of payload by 25% (you need to save fuel for re-entry). That argument is equally dumb for all other types of transportation as it is for rockets. > You can maybe get 10-20% savings if you ever get it working (see previous failed attempts...). Complete nonsense. Hardware on a large rockets is above 80% of the cost and large fixed cost can be improved also by higher flight rates that re-usability make possible. Anybody that has studied that space seriously understand that massively lower cost are possible with full rapid re-usability.
- arcticbull 5y agoRemember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt cheap" is probably an Elon-ism, closer to "full self driving by 2018."
- kashkhan 5y agoweren't shuttle flights $2B each? List price of Falcon launch is <$70MM.
- bumby 5y agoI think there's a difference in methodology here. When those numbers of the shuttle are listed, they're including all the upfront R&D spread across the life-cycle of the program. I believe the Falcon costs disregard all those as a sunk cost and only list the actual "launch" costs
- caoilte 5y agoyep. $1.5billion in 2010 prices per flight including r&d. 1.2 without. which is still 1.5 billion per flight in 2021 prices. So Elon needs to get the price down to $15mil to hit his target. 5% is still pretty good tho. And it may go lower.
- bumby 5y agoI think this might miss the point. Is the $70MM/launch tag including the R&D? Does it include the R&D that is essentially given to SpaceX through their SpaceAct agreement? Imagine if Tesla gave me all their R&D and manufacturing know-how and offered to help me out whenever I hit a snag, wouldn't I look great by showing everyone how much cheaper I can build an EV? That's why I think it's a bit of a faulty comparison. Still great, but some of these comparison border on the edge of hype
- sydthrowaway 5y agoMusk is the Jekyll and Hyde of billionaires. Is George R. R. Martin writing his life story, Adaptation-style?
- kklisura 5y agoStarship can deliver 100 t payload to LEO. Does space industry really need that payload requirements? When you look at Falcon Heavy, it can deliver 68 t to LEO, but there was only one launch back in 2019.
- _Microft 5y agoTheir goal is to create a ship that‘s up to the task of setting up colonies on Mars. Their estimate is that at least 1 million metric tons of cargo to the surface of Mars are required for that. Favorable launch windows to Mars are occurring every two years. With a cargo mass capacity of 100t per ship, over a span of 20 years (=10 launch windows) that would still require 1000 launches per launch window in average. Let that sink in… Since a trip to Mars takes too long, a ship can only go once per launch window. So they would need as many ships as there are launches to Mars in a launch window.
- ngngngng 5y agoAre there really that few launch windows? I assume it's because this ship is larger than the others we've been launching all this time?
- jacquesm 5y agoIt's all about the proximity of the planets. Not about the size of the ship.
- randallsquared 5y agoNo, it's because the transfer orbit with the largest payload for the thrust is only available in a specific configuration of Mars and Earth, which only happen every 26 months or so. Note the spacing for launches for Mars missions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars
- extrapickles 5y agoYes. When you leave is extremely important as its mostly about the relative alignment of the planets. You can trade a massive amount of fuel to get their faster, but waiting a month can sometimes shave 3 months off the travel time. If you left on August 25 2022, you will arrive in July 2023. If you waited 1 month to leave, and left on September 26 2022 you would arrive in May 2023, months before the people who left earlier. This is all according to: https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php
- JaimeThompson 5y agoI think Gwynne Shotwell is the rather unsung hero keeping SpaceX running correctly day by day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell
- ProAm 5y agoThe sheer fact she has put up with Elon this long is nothing short of amazing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mlindner 5y agoBecause she obviously likes working with him. https://www.wired.com/story/how-elon-musk-gwynne-shotwell-join-spacex/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-elon-musk-gwynne-shotwell-jo...
- grecy 5y agoOne of my favourite passages in the SpaceX book is from Gwen after working with Elon for a couple of weeks. She worked really hard on a proposal about how they would go about selling the Falcon rocket to potential customers. Elon took one look and said "That's great. I don't want you to write reports and proposals, I want you to do it.". My god, I would give anything for a boss like that.
- redindian75 5y agowhich book is this? There are so many SpaceX/Musk books, would love to read a good/definitive one
- mlindner 5y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX-ebook/dp/B088FQK2K2 https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-Spac... The book is titled Liftoff. It's the best SpaceX book there is and is very accurate involving many interviews with early employees. Musk is in the book but he's not featured majorly. It's mostly about all the employees who worked on the early rockets.
- jmyeet 5y agoThe real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small. What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned. So now SpaceX has all this launch capacity without the matching demand for it. It's a big part of why Starlink exists. Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry and create demand but that takes years. It's likely Starship will launch ISS replacements but is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question.
- terafo 5y agoI believe that expendable upper stage alone costs 10 million. It can't cost them less than that.
- tigershark 5y agoI think that was in the region of 5-7M. If I remember correctly a Falcon 9 launch costs around $15M, maybe something less.
- trhway 5y ago>Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry ... is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that recent update Elon wants to launch non-stop several times a day to get several million tons into orbit), except for the high margin and/or already contracted stuff like NASA Moon. >The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. F9/Heavy are cheaper than competition, yet not that cheaper to enable new revolutionary uses. They also will never be made to the airline level of safety/robustness/operational simplicity/etc. which is one of the goals of Starship and its Raptor 2 engine. In particular - according to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Raptor_2_Full_Flow_Staged_Combustion_Cycle_Estimate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Rapt... the full flow allows them to run turbines under 600 C for fuel and under 500 C for oxygen pump on Raptor 2 - it feels like cheating :) being like steel temperatures, and they of course are using Inconel which gives them great reliability here, like in order of magnitude better than on other engines. That naturally translates into capability to perform many reuses with very frequent launches with minimal operational costs. If anything i think with Elon having blazed the path there is an opportunity to quickly start and ramp up SpaceX copycats(s) as whatever capacity the industry would produce at the Starship level low prices and high convenience the demand will still be bigger.
- golemiprague 5y ago
- russellbeattie 5y agoI recently read "Liftoff" about the early days of SpaceX [1]. Definitely recommended if you want to get a good overview of the company and industry. To me, it provided a lot of missing context and background that is really nice to have when reading articles like this one above. Though the book ends in 2008 - after SpaceX finally put a rocket into orbit on their fourth, and what would have been final, attempt - many of the plans talked about in the book are still ongoing, like the Mars mission. 1. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger
- WalterBright 5y agoJust think - we went from first flight to landing on the moon well within one lifetime.
- perilunar 5y agoYes. My grandfather went from horse-and-buggy and oil lamps to jet airliners and moon landings in his lifetime.
- WalterBright 5y agoI sometimes wonder what my great-aunt was thinking when she flew across the Atlantic in a jetliner. She remembered when the first automobile came to her village. I first flew across the Atlantic as a baby in a propeller airplane. The last time I crossed, it was in a 757, the airplane I worked on 40 years previously. The big advances in my lifetime were pretty much all in computers. Ironically, that was the one thing not predicted by any of the endless scifi books I read.
- hirundo 5y agoThe article doesn't mention using Starship for point-to-point transport on Earth. It would seem to make sense for fast long distance commercial travel, and for high value -- like military -- cargo delivery. I'd guess that such terrestrial applications could swamp the more cosmic ones in scale, just because this is where the money and demand is.
- ajnin 5y agoThe main problem with that idea is that rockets are incredibly loud and noisy. You couldn't launch anywhere close to population centers, where the transportation needs are, and if you need to take a boat to get to a launch platform far at sea you lose a lot of potential. Second problem is that it looks awfully like an ICBM. Lots of countries wouldn't like one of these flying in their direction, which would limit the amount of possible routes.
- cryptonector 5y agoImagine having to drive for three hours after a one hour flight halfway around the world and complaining that you had to drive three hours to save 16 hours of flying in a jet. That said, I don't see passenger rockets being a thing for quite some time.
- anticensor 5y agoI am sure there will be feeder high speed trains to feed those spaceports.
- uejfiweun 5y agoWhat's the best thing I can do to help out with this as a software engineer? Is SpaceX in need of any critical software components? I think this is honestly the coolest thing to happen in my entire lifetime so far, and I would love to be a part of it, but I'm not sure I'd be useful since I'm not a mechanical engineer.
- iyasu 5y agohttps://www.spacex.com/careers/ https://www.spacex.com/careers/ Plenty of places for SWE - embedded, enterprise software, flight software, etc. No prior knowledge on rockets needed.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoAsk them and see, I guess. There are software positions listed on their page.
- wnolens 5y agoThey hire. I interviewed for a role once, they were looking for C++ expertise.
- tjchear 5y agoHow was the interview process? Would be great to learn about the questions they ask.
- me_me_me 5y agoThey will need a lot of CGI graphics of the starship flying through the space, cuz this project will never take off anywhere near what Musk is promising. It sounds like I am overly negative but if you push the hype aside and let only facts speak for themselves: Orbital refueling - no technical details, just cgi images crew capacity - no details ship layout - no details stage 0 launch platform - no details life support - ummm scaled up dargon?? raptor 2 - 'its stripped raptor 1 and much better' (still in tests, not proven tech) refuealing and relaunching withing few hours - Falcon 9 takes 30days! Optimistically Starship is not going to be ready for human crew anywhere near 5-10 years. Also someone made a super cut of his 2022 update talk and its beat for beat the same thing he said in update from 2 years ago. Its not a good sign if you havent done anything in 2 years for a project that promises so much in few years time.
- ryan93 5y agoSo if humanity is wiped out how long can mars colonists survive? Will people just spend decades there on the off chance of human annihilation?
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/1IIml https://archive.is/1IIml
- xaxaxb 5y agoEntire news industry was formed using 'may' word.
- sidcool 5y agoI think that even if Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell stopped everything at SpaceX right now, their contributions with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are enough to etch their names in history. The three Falcon heavy boosters landing is nothing short of sci-fi coming true.
- kisstheblade 5y agoWhat have these two people actually done, except lying all the time? And abusing their workers? Also, these "magical" landings have been made 60 YEARS AGO! Go Musk! Hyperloop! FSD! Robotaxis! Semi! VTOL with pressurized air! Tesla robot! Pedo guy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24
- hparadiz 5y agoYou have a fundamental scientific misunderstanding of the difference in difficulty of landing a rocket that goes straight up and down and landing a rocket that has just put something into an orbital trajectory. If it's so easy why doesn't everyone do it?
- mft_ 5y agoNot sure if you’re interested in feedback, but your angry and extreme feelings about Musk and everything connected with him make your opinions too easy to disregard: you’ve made yourself the HN equivalent of the angry crazy guy shouting on a street corner. I know it’s the trend in the world, the established media, social media, etc. but it’s possible have have a more nuanced view on things than ALL VERY BAD or AMAZING AWESOME. For example, one can reasonably criticise Musk for his stupid outbursts on Twitter and elsewhere (and of course, also criticise the media for breathlessly reporting every bit of nonsense he spouts for clicks.) He is notoriously bad at predicting the timing of when things will happen. Robotaxis are probably 5+ years away, if ever. Tesla delivers their new models much later than promised, and has poor customer service. Hyperloop was a concept that would probably have been ignored were it not for the outsize attention that Musk gets. Etc. But… these views can reasonably coexist with also acknowledging that two of his companies have revolutionised their parts of our world within a very short space of time. SpaceX has revolutionised the commercial rocket space, and Tesla has driven the whole automotive industry towards building EVs by leading from the front. And it’s almost guaranteed that neither of those would have happened without them being led by Musk (and Shotwell).