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Starship is awesome. It's the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built. It's a major asset to the US military and its future capability. It has very sig

Starship is awesome. It's the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built. It's a major asset to the US military and its future capability. It has very significant launch safety issues in its current state. FAA enforcement is generally reasonable; they're professional and competent. I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree.

elteto 3y ago
Because people hate Musk (understandably so) and since, apparently, we can't hold nuanced opinions anymore, then they must also hate whatever the man has produced. By the way, I absolutely despise the man and his antics, but I don't want to live in a world where SpaceX fails, just to spite him.
- avmich 3y ago
  I'm thinking about rebranding SpaceX with Gwynne Shotwell persona - I think she at least spends greater fraction of her time on SpaceX matters than Elon these days.
  - darknavi 3y ago
    I normally say Gwynne Shotwell is underappreciated but I am really glad people here mention her. She is definitely the "rock" that holds the leadership team together it seems.
  - machdiamonds 3y ago
    Personally, I like it when the technical people are seen as the face of the company:https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
    - deleted 3y ago
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- sneak 3y ago
  I’m of the belief that the reason he has so suddenly become hated in the last few years (because it’s really unjustified, if you look purely at his works) is a direct result of engineering by those who would suffer if he continued his ascent without public opinion against him. None of the public narrative about him (especially the Twitter stuff) or the reasons people generally mock him make much sense, or are very relevant to 99% of the things he is actually spending time and resources on. It’s 100% manufactured. Starship and access to orbit, as well as Starlink (which cheap access to orbit enabled) are indeed insanely powerful geopolitical tools. Many of the existing geopolitical engineers would hate to see him not be firmly subordinate to themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FAA’s decision is being used as a bargaining chip here. You don’t get to do things like this in the USA unless you play ball 100% with the existing people who control access to orbit. Nobody is richer or more powerful than the people who presently control the satellite-based weapons and surveillance systems that the US operates. Nobody will be able to be in a position to replace or supplant them without some sort of negotiation with them. Imagine it: with a working Starship, Musk could replace GPS, Keyhole, and whatever the rods-from-god system is codenamed, in a matter of months (or perhaps weeks, if the payload design work is already underway), for anyone on the Earth who he thinks would benefit his goals. A lot of the leverage that exists against him (and can presently be used to constrain him) would be gone, never to return. It’s already fairly obvious that the geopolitical status quo on Earth is not very important to him.
  - rout39574 3y ago
    I think the recent wave of vitriol is mostly associated with his decision to destroy Twitter in the process of attempting to make it a safe space for racists. That and his seeming to align himself with our strategic adversaries on the world stage. The latter is possibly dismissable as "Well, that's just your opinion, man..." but he gives muscle to his opinion by making business decisions with strategic policy implications (e.g. turn off Ukraine starlink service at strategig moments..) The twitter vandalism is very clearly "his works".
    - sneak 3y ago
      [flagged]
- cryptoegorophy 3y ago
  Why people hate him? Seems like a lot of “media” hates him and that’s what causes people to hate this guy, not the guy itself but the media. He does have some questionable behaviour for a CEO, but I highly prefer that kind of ceo that talks what he thinks rather than the one that reads from the brochure to make shareholders happy. Positives are far far more outweigh the negatives in this case.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    If you want to discuss it, let's have a genuine discussion. You know many more and better reasons why people dislike Musk.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Go on reddit and ask them. They'll tell you that Elon Musk aligned himself with republicans aka 'literally nazis'. This outweighs anything positive he could possibly ever do. Any cred he once earned for himself by trying to popularize electric cars? Completely gone, he's a republican so he hates the environment. Building rockets is perceived to be little more than a cynical cover story for his real plan to ruin wetlands and murder ocelots.
    - lstodd 3y ago
      So this. On the ocelot question - he will cynically tickle them to death instead. This is about as reasonable discussion as can be had on the topic of Musk. Which is sad.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        The ocelot concern is a transparent farce.
  - elteto 3y ago
    Off the top of my head: - He has turned into a pro-Putin, right wing troll, regularly spewing out falsehoods on Twitter/X. - How he has (mis?)managed Twitter so far. - All the lying and broken promises regarding FSD and other shenanigans with Tesla stock (the “taking it private” debacle, the bitcoin pump and dump, etc). - All the COVID conspiracy idiocy and non-sense. I’m sure there’s plenty more I’m forgetting.
- HappyDaoDude 3y ago
  My initial issues with Musk was that he tended to push ideas and time frames WAY beyond what was reasonable. Tesla / Space X are already amazing in almost ever respect, it doesn't need all the silly hype machine on top of it. Yes, it is neat to think about Mars bases eventually but that should be a stretch goal not pushed as "It is 4 years away!". Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) but Musk had always promoted time lines and ambitions that were silly. Like point to point public rocket travel by 2030. The thing cannot land yet and they are already thinking 50 steps ahead with a stated date. That doesn't detract from Space X's achievements but it does cast a shadow over them as a whole.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    Who cares? If he builds the most advanced rocket in the world, nobody will remember he was late. Late is not a meaningful criticism when building things that have never been done before.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Hype = funding
  - jwells89 3y ago
    That over-ambitiousness is a big factor in attracting (and to some degree, keeping) talent I'd bet. It's one of SpaceX's key differentiators compared to incumbents where the overarching attitude seems to be, "well, we'll get back to the moon at some point in the future, maybe, if we're lucky". That's not to knock the brilliant people working for those companies but it's gotta be harder to be excited when it feels like the corporate gears are perpetually gummed up with cold tar.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    >Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) You do know that the next Artemis mission is in 2024? According to your timeline it would be delayed more than the much hated space launch system which actually went to the moon
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- cchance 3y ago
  Same i didn't mind him before he went completely nutters, but i can love SpaceX, Tesla and the companies without loving him, it seems other people have decided everyone at tesla and spacex are evil because an idiot owns the company.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - oezi 3y ago
    I don't know. At some point you have to draw a line. For me Elon has said enough problematic things that it is out of the question to buy a Tesla.
- senectus1 3y ago
  If you replace the words Elon Musk with "some guy" and talk about spaceX rather than some guy... it helps a heap
chasd00 3y ago
Iirc they’re waiting on the fish and wildlife service now and not the FAA. FWS is even more slow.
- dylan604 3y ago
  It's not like they could put out a public notice for all of the fish and wildlife to attend a planning & zoning meeting for their comment on the situation. Determining the effect of human endeavors on said fish & wildlife is a little more complicated that going door to door and informing them of their plans.
Me1000 3y ago
I'm a SpaceX fan and I've been excited to watch Starship's progress over the years, but this comment is a little premature. It might one day be the most capable rocket ever built, but it's not there yet. Starship has yet to reach orbit, the Raptor engines have a long ways to go before they become as reliable as the Merlin, and the recovery of the booster or ship are still a ways out too. There are still a lot of technical and regulatory hurdles Starship needs to cross.
- hersko 3y ago
  > Starship has yet to reach orbit Yeah, well they're trying but the FAA isn't letting them launch. It's possible the one they want to launch will make orbit, or maybe it will be the next one etc.. The point is it will never achieve anything if it keeps getting delayed by the FAA.
  - deprecative 3y ago
    > The point is it will never achieve anything if it keeps getting delayed by the FAA. If Elon didn't want things to be delayed so bad by the FAA maybe he shouldn't have launched on 4/20 for the lulz without adequate launch site infrastructure for such a launch. The FAA shouldn't let them launch until SpaceX has proven they've done the work and have done their best to mitigate these issues going forward - both the actual consequences and the decision processes that led to them. From what I remember the FAA basically rubber stamped SpaceX's incident report (or whatever it was called) that the Internet reported as being from the FAA itself.
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      > If Elon didn't want things to be delayed so bad by the FAA maybe he shouldn't have launched on 4/20 for the lulz [..] It's incredible that we live in a world where a statement like this has at least some veracity.
      - machdiamonds 3y ago
        This isn't true, the original launch was set for 4/17 but was delayed due to an issue: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/elon-musks-spacex-postpones-debut-flight-starship-rocket-system-2023-04-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/elon-musk...
elil17 3y ago
I don't think it's accurate to call it the most capable rocket ever built given that it hasn't been capable of getting into orbit thus far.
- eagerpace 3y ago
  No other rocket even in the planning stage comes close to Starship. No other rocket organization builds rockets the way SpaceX does. There just isn't a comparison to what they're doing that justifies criticism that they're unsuccessful or doing it wrong. It's a different process. I'm not saying that Musk is perfect, or that you're doing this, but people like to fault this wildly ambitious projects for what they haven't achieved. But when they do work they have an outsized impact on the status quo. When Starship succeeds (and I believe it's just a matter of time whereas Tesla FSD is still an "if") it will revolutionize space travel in ways that seem sci-fi today. State-of-the-art today is building machines that cost billions of dollars and throw them away after using them one time!
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    You are making two assumptions. One explicitly, that Starship will work in anything resembling its current design and promised operational paramters. This is by no means as guaranteed as you make it out to be (it's very much an if, not a when). The promises of rapid reusability are very much up in the air, and the whole many-engine design is also not proven in the slightest yet. Secondly, you're assuming that reusable rockets are better than one-time use ones. While this may be true for certain kinds of missions, it is not at all clear for many others. Reusable rockets fundamentally will have lower payload for the same thrust, for the simple reason that they need fuel for the return stage. They will also need to be made from sturdier materials to survive reentry, which again limits their capacity.
    - eagerpace 3y ago
      The first is a fair, but I'm not assuming that it has to work exactly as claimed. It's so far ahead of current tech that if it even marginally succeeds the stated objectives it will transform the industry. The second, I disagree, reusable is definitely better in every way. I'm sure there are edge cases where it needs to be proven or a particular mission, but no other machines are as costly and disposable. Rocket designs haven't evolved much over the last 50 years. Competitors all claim to want reusability but none of the major players are pursuing it seriously. Engine design and manufacturing is hilariously obsolete. NASA has become a jobs program instead of a innovator. I'm just happy to see a radical new approach to design, manufacturing and testing.
tsimionescu 3y ago
Maybe wait until it actually flies more than a few seconds without going off the rails before declaring it the greatest rocket ever built? Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable, rhier engines failed at a spectacular rate in the single full test launch that they conducted (maybe because of the ill-conceived launch site, maybe for other reasons).
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  Eh, people were happy to call the N1 the most powerful rocket ever for years even though it mostly qualified as a bomb and not a rocket. Starship's paper capabilities are indeed impressive. If they manage to make it work then great.
  - avmich 3y ago
    Another example would be Spruce Goose - which still has its name in the list of the largest aircrafts. So, no, Starship already has a place in history.
- avmich 3y ago
  > Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable They don't need to prove it to people who accept as the only proof the demonstration of the fact. Remember you can have proofs in different ways, and professionals are fully aware of this.
cedws 3y ago
Falcon is impressive. Dragon is impressive. Starship is a flying tin can.
- avmich 3y ago
  I'm amazed at how swiftly opinions like this change with the appearance of new facts.
justapassenger 3y ago
It's like saying in 1990 that Apple Newton is amazing product.
- deleted 3y ago
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- simondotau 3y ago
  The Apple Newton would have been absolutely mind boggling if it existed in 1990. Even as revealed in 1992 (and released in 1993) it was still quite the technological marvel in many respects. Its ultimate problem was that it was still ultimately more like a TI-83 graphing calculator than an iPhone. Much as people mocked the handwriting recognition, it was technology which could have been iterated upon. It turns out the key missing ingredient for the Newton was wireless internet access — and of course an internet worth connecting to.
jiggawatts 3y ago
> I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon that they would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars. There were several people here on HN screeching that a few lumps of concrete strewn on a beach is an ecological disaster of unfathomable proportions. Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink affecting their precious telescopes, while ignoring the minor detail that Starship will be able to launch a JWST-sized telescope weekly if they want to get above the atmosphere. We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.
- tw04 3y ago
  > We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter. Or because he constantly stomps on experienced engineers with stupid ideas and puts the whole thing at risk. Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea and yet Elon had to trump his own experts. Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk. At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions without having to cater to his ego and make him think the idea was his.
  - ethagknight 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - huytersd 3y ago
      Tesla is doing great, SpaceX has always been amazing. Twitter is failing. Elon Musk becomes less respectable by the day.
      - doubleg72 3y ago
        You must have missed TSLA last week earning call…
ethagknight 3y ago
The various replies in this thread witness that there is a purely irrational response to Elon's "harsh but mildly conservative" leanings that people can't seem to be mature enough to acknowledge that he has ramped up several major international corporations in a wildly entrepreneurial manner, yet these fools are focused on "yes well technically he had subsidies and a ruby mine" as if there's some cheat code he used that no one else like Boeing or Ford had access to.
- redundantly 3y ago
  Mildly? <insert Jennifer Lawrence okay sure gif here>
- lm28469 3y ago
  > people can't seem to be mature enough to acknowledge that he has ramped up several major international corporations in a wildly entrepreneurial manner Or you know, people acknowledge both but his dumbassery overshadows his genius by a long stretch. Bezos, Zuck &co at least have the decency to shut the fuck up when they should, which is 99.9% of the time on 99.9% of topics. That's all he would have to do to be more appreciated
psunavy03 3y ago
Because Elon doesn't realize his childish douchebaggery has that much of an impact on how some people view what are otherwise his very legitimate accomplishments as a businessman. Twitter/X most certainly not among those accomplishments.
golemotron 3y ago
The US is so polarized that all it takes is for an opinion to form on either the Left or the Right. The other side will form the opposite opinion to signal that it is different.
verandaguy 3y ago
>I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. A number of reasons, actually. - Because the entire idea of "the Earth is fucked, so let's go set up camp on Mars" is a train of thought that's only applicable to the ultra-rich, and in the current economic environment that's (pretty understandably) an unpopular idea. - Because after Starship's failed attempt at landing and highly-destructive launch earlier this year, people who care about the nearby wildlife refuge at Boca Chica are understandably not thrilled about continued ops there. - Because the man behind SpaceX -- whose past achievements are admittedly impressive, at least in the spaceflight industry -- is increasingly associated with deceptive marketing, poor design choices, and incompetent product management, and when a corporation like SpaceX relies on significant funding from taxpayers that's a troubling combination. - Personally, for me, coming from startups, "move fast and break things" scales terribly in terms of (for lack of a better word) social responsibility, and with the company's stated ambitions, I don't see this ending well. SpaceX does a lot of cool shit, but let's not pretend like they're advancing the state of human existence here. They're a commercial entity, even if not publicly traded, but with Musk at the helm that feels like the tradeoff between being purely profit-driven vs having later-years Howard Hughes behind the wheel. Anyway, it's pretty disingenuous to call Starship in particular "the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built." So far it's capable of doing a significantly suborbital hop and failing to land. You could argue that it's failed at the one thing a spacefaring vessel should, by definition, not fail at. I do trust in the FAA's judgement here, but I hope they work closely with Fish & Wildlife. The effects of climate change are increasingly endangering wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, and having chunks of concrete the size of a living room flying into the water isn't helping.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  I'm no fan of Elon Musk. Yet if you downplay the significance of cutting the cost of bringing mass to orbit by a factor of 1000, you really haven't thought through the implications of this enough. The whole "billionaires are going to leave earth behind" thing is as much of a dumb conspiracy theory as much of the stuff Elon is tweeting lately, by the way.
sschueller 3y ago
"I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. " Because people like Elon and Gwynne have knowingly lied or purposefully mislead the public regarding Space X. An example is the Point to Point travel, this is not every going to happen. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about rocketry etc. knows this has a zero percent chance of happening alone because of the noise it would case. In their presentation they had Zürich as a destination, Zürich is so small that you would blow out every window in the entire city. Launching starship in Zürich will never ever happen.
- cnlevy 3y ago
  Not from Zurich, but from an ocean platform 20km from the coast of every big coastal city. High speed trains (350km/h) will go direct to the airport from every city less than 500km away. I agree landlocked Zurich will have a hard time to get a spaceport. Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport
  - m4rtink 3y ago
    Bodensee will do: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance
    - cnlevy 3y ago
      Good idea, but the lake is too narrow for that From the Starship Noise Assessment https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/AppendixB_NoiseAssessment.pdf https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/AppendixB_No..., it looks like you need maybe 20 miles distance for a tolerable level of noise (around 100 dB) So I'm not sure regular launches from the lake will be tolerated by the lake shore's inhabitants. This is why Starship launch platforms should be 30km from shore (not 20km as I wrote previously)
  - imtringued 3y ago
    You literally can't build the spaceport that far away, if you are doing it over water, because there is nothing stopping the sound. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230306-just-how-loud-is-a-rocket-launch https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230306-just-how-loud-is... >Even 1.5 miles (2.4km) away, the noise from a Saturn V launch was recorded as being 120 decibels https://www.wkcgroup.com/tools-room/inverse-square-law-sound-calculator/ https://www.wkcgroup.com/tools-room/inverse-square-law-sound... Gets you 101.6 decibels from 20 km away. Okay, how about 200 km over water? 81.6 decibels. Okay as a yearly event, not something that should happen every week. Okay, how about 2000 km over water? 61.6 decibels. What was the point of this idea again?
heresie-dabord 3y ago
> I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. The fact in of itself of polarisation of public discourse exists because there is a polarisation industry innocuously named social media. It has subverted political discourse and education too. Despite this, there are still enough reasonable people for science and scientific progress to continue. However, one may right well feel pessimistic about the future.

elteto 3y ago

Because people hate Musk (understandably so) and since, apparently, we can't hold nuanced opinions anymore, then they must also hate whatever the man has produced. By the way, I absolutely despise the man and his antics, but I don't want to live in a world where SpaceX fails, just to spite him.

avmich 3y ago
I'm thinking about rebranding SpaceX with Gwynne Shotwell persona - I think she at least spends greater fraction of her time on SpaceX matters than Elon these days.
- darknavi 3y ago
  I normally say Gwynne Shotwell is underappreciated but I am really glad people here mention her. She is definitely the "rock" that holds the leadership team together it seems.
- machdiamonds 3y ago
  Personally, I like it when the technical people are seen as the face of the company:https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
  - deleted 3y ago
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sneak 3y ago
I’m of the belief that the reason he has so suddenly become hated in the last few years (because it’s really unjustified, if you look purely at his works) is a direct result of engineering by those who would suffer if he continued his ascent without public opinion against him. None of the public narrative about him (especially the Twitter stuff) or the reasons people generally mock him make much sense, or are very relevant to 99% of the things he is actually spending time and resources on. It’s 100% manufactured. Starship and access to orbit, as well as Starlink (which cheap access to orbit enabled) are indeed insanely powerful geopolitical tools. Many of the existing geopolitical engineers would hate to see him not be firmly subordinate to themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FAA’s decision is being used as a bargaining chip here. You don’t get to do things like this in the USA unless you play ball 100% with the existing people who control access to orbit. Nobody is richer or more powerful than the people who presently control the satellite-based weapons and surveillance systems that the US operates. Nobody will be able to be in a position to replace or supplant them without some sort of negotiation with them. Imagine it: with a working Starship, Musk could replace GPS, Keyhole, and whatever the rods-from-god system is codenamed, in a matter of months (or perhaps weeks, if the payload design work is already underway), for anyone on the Earth who he thinks would benefit his goals. A lot of the leverage that exists against him (and can presently be used to constrain him) would be gone, never to return. It’s already fairly obvious that the geopolitical status quo on Earth is not very important to him.
- rout39574 3y ago
  I think the recent wave of vitriol is mostly associated with his decision to destroy Twitter in the process of attempting to make it a safe space for racists. That and his seeming to align himself with our strategic adversaries on the world stage. The latter is possibly dismissable as "Well, that's just your opinion, man..." but he gives muscle to his opinion by making business decisions with strategic policy implications (e.g. turn off Ukraine starlink service at strategig moments..) The twitter vandalism is very clearly "his works".
  - sneak 3y ago
    [flagged]
cryptoegorophy 3y ago
Why people hate him? Seems like a lot of “media” hates him and that’s what causes people to hate this guy, not the guy itself but the media. He does have some questionable behaviour for a CEO, but I highly prefer that kind of ceo that talks what he thinks rather than the one that reads from the brochure to make shareholders happy. Positives are far far more outweigh the negatives in this case.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  If you want to discuss it, let's have a genuine discussion. You know many more and better reasons why people dislike Musk.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Go on reddit and ask them. They'll tell you that Elon Musk aligned himself with republicans aka 'literally nazis'. This outweighs anything positive he could possibly ever do. Any cred he once earned for himself by trying to popularize electric cars? Completely gone, he's a republican so he hates the environment. Building rockets is perceived to be little more than a cynical cover story for his real plan to ruin wetlands and murder ocelots.
  - lstodd 3y ago
    So this. On the ocelot question - he will cynically tickle them to death instead. This is about as reasonable discussion as can be had on the topic of Musk. Which is sad.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      The ocelot concern is a transparent farce.
- elteto 3y ago
  Off the top of my head: - He has turned into a pro-Putin, right wing troll, regularly spewing out falsehoods on Twitter/X. - How he has (mis?)managed Twitter so far. - All the lying and broken promises regarding FSD and other shenanigans with Tesla stock (the “taking it private” debacle, the bitcoin pump and dump, etc). - All the COVID conspiracy idiocy and non-sense. I’m sure there’s plenty more I’m forgetting.
HappyDaoDude 3y ago
My initial issues with Musk was that he tended to push ideas and time frames WAY beyond what was reasonable. Tesla / Space X are already amazing in almost ever respect, it doesn't need all the silly hype machine on top of it. Yes, it is neat to think about Mars bases eventually but that should be a stretch goal not pushed as "It is 4 years away!". Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) but Musk had always promoted time lines and ambitions that were silly. Like point to point public rocket travel by 2030. The thing cannot land yet and they are already thinking 50 steps ahead with a stated date. That doesn't detract from Space X's achievements but it does cast a shadow over them as a whole.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Who cares? If he builds the most advanced rocket in the world, nobody will remember he was late. Late is not a meaningful criticism when building things that have never been done before.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Hype = funding
- jwells89 3y ago
  That over-ambitiousness is a big factor in attracting (and to some degree, keeping) talent I'd bet. It's one of SpaceX's key differentiators compared to incumbents where the overarching attitude seems to be, "well, we'll get back to the moon at some point in the future, maybe, if we're lucky". That's not to knock the brilliant people working for those companies but it's gotta be harder to be excited when it feels like the corporate gears are perpetually gummed up with cold tar.
- imtringued 3y ago
  >Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) You do know that the next Artemis mission is in 2024? According to your timeline it would be delayed more than the much hated space launch system which actually went to the moon
deleted 3y ago
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cchance 3y ago
Same i didn't mind him before he went completely nutters, but i can love SpaceX, Tesla and the companies without loving him, it seems other people have decided everyone at tesla and spacex are evil because an idiot owns the company.
- deleted 3y ago
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- oezi 3y ago
  I don't know. At some point you have to draw a line. For me Elon has said enough problematic things that it is out of the question to buy a Tesla.
senectus1 3y ago
If you replace the words Elon Musk with "some guy" and talk about spaceX rather than some guy... it helps a heap

chasd00 3y ago

Iirc they’re waiting on the fish and wildlife service now and not the FAA. FWS is even more slow.

dylan604 3y ago
It's not like they could put out a public notice for all of the fish and wildlife to attend a planning & zoning meeting for their comment on the situation. Determining the effect of human endeavors on said fish & wildlife is a little more complicated that going door to door and informing them of their plans.

Me1000 3y ago

I'm a SpaceX fan and I've been excited to watch Starship's progress over the years, but this comment is a little premature. It might one day be the most capable rocket ever built, but it's not there yet. Starship has yet to reach orbit, the Raptor engines have a long ways to go before they become as reliable as the Merlin, and the recovery of the booster or ship are still a ways out too. There are still a lot of technical and regulatory hurdles Starship needs to cross.

hersko 3y ago
> Starship has yet to reach orbit Yeah, well they're trying but the FAA isn't letting them launch. It's possible the one they want to launch will make orbit, or maybe it will be the next one etc.. The point is it will never achieve anything if it keeps getting delayed by the FAA.
- deprecative 3y ago
  > The point is it will never achieve anything if it keeps getting delayed by the FAA. If Elon didn't want things to be delayed so bad by the FAA maybe he shouldn't have launched on 4/20 for the lulz without adequate launch site infrastructure for such a launch. The FAA shouldn't let them launch until SpaceX has proven they've done the work and have done their best to mitigate these issues going forward - both the actual consequences and the decision processes that led to them. From what I remember the FAA basically rubber stamped SpaceX's incident report (or whatever it was called) that the Internet reported as being from the FAA itself.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    > If Elon didn't want things to be delayed so bad by the FAA maybe he shouldn't have launched on 4/20 for the lulz [..] It's incredible that we live in a world where a statement like this has at least some veracity.
    - machdiamonds 3y ago
      This isn't true, the original launch was set for 4/17 but was delayed due to an issue: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/elon-musks-spacex-postpones-debut-flight-starship-rocket-system-2023-04-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/elon-musk...

elil17 3y ago

I don't think it's accurate to call it the most capable rocket ever built given that it hasn't been capable of getting into orbit thus far.

eagerpace 3y ago
No other rocket even in the planning stage comes close to Starship. No other rocket organization builds rockets the way SpaceX does. There just isn't a comparison to what they're doing that justifies criticism that they're unsuccessful or doing it wrong. It's a different process. I'm not saying that Musk is perfect, or that you're doing this, but people like to fault this wildly ambitious projects for what they haven't achieved. But when they do work they have an outsized impact on the status quo. When Starship succeeds (and I believe it's just a matter of time whereas Tesla FSD is still an "if") it will revolutionize space travel in ways that seem sci-fi today. State-of-the-art today is building machines that cost billions of dollars and throw them away after using them one time!
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  You are making two assumptions. One explicitly, that Starship will work in anything resembling its current design and promised operational paramters. This is by no means as guaranteed as you make it out to be (it's very much an if, not a when). The promises of rapid reusability are very much up in the air, and the whole many-engine design is also not proven in the slightest yet. Secondly, you're assuming that reusable rockets are better than one-time use ones. While this may be true for certain kinds of missions, it is not at all clear for many others. Reusable rockets fundamentally will have lower payload for the same thrust, for the simple reason that they need fuel for the return stage. They will also need to be made from sturdier materials to survive reentry, which again limits their capacity.
  - eagerpace 3y ago
    The first is a fair, but I'm not assuming that it has to work exactly as claimed. It's so far ahead of current tech that if it even marginally succeeds the stated objectives it will transform the industry. The second, I disagree, reusable is definitely better in every way. I'm sure there are edge cases where it needs to be proven or a particular mission, but no other machines are as costly and disposable. Rocket designs haven't evolved much over the last 50 years. Competitors all claim to want reusability but none of the major players are pursuing it seriously. Engine design and manufacturing is hilariously obsolete. NASA has become a jobs program instead of a innovator. I'm just happy to see a radical new approach to design, manufacturing and testing.

tsimionescu 3y ago

Maybe wait until it actually flies more than a few seconds without going off the rails before declaring it the greatest rocket ever built? Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable, rhier engines failed at a spectacular rate in the single full test launch that they conducted (maybe because of the ill-conceived launch site, maybe for other reasons).

thereddaikon 3y ago
Eh, people were happy to call the N1 the most powerful rocket ever for years even though it mostly qualified as a bomb and not a rocket. Starship's paper capabilities are indeed impressive. If they manage to make it work then great.
- avmich 3y ago
  Another example would be Spruce Goose - which still has its name in the list of the largest aircrafts. So, no, Starship already has a place in history.
avmich 3y ago
> Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable They don't need to prove it to people who accept as the only proof the demonstration of the fact. Remember you can have proofs in different ways, and professionals are fully aware of this.

cedws 3y ago

Falcon is impressive. Dragon is impressive. Starship is a flying tin can.

avmich 3y ago
I'm amazed at how swiftly opinions like this change with the appearance of new facts.

justapassenger 3y ago

It's like saying in 1990 that Apple Newton is amazing product.

deleted 3y ago
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simondotau 3y ago
The Apple Newton would have been absolutely mind boggling if it existed in 1990. Even as revealed in 1992 (and released in 1993) it was still quite the technological marvel in many respects. Its ultimate problem was that it was still ultimately more like a TI-83 graphing calculator than an iPhone. Much as people mocked the handwriting recognition, it was technology which could have been iterated upon. It turns out the key missing ingredient for the Newton was wireless internet access — and of course an internet worth connecting to.

jiggawatts 3y ago

> I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon that they would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars. There were several people here on HN screeching that a few lumps of concrete strewn on a beach is an ecological disaster of unfathomable proportions. Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink affecting their precious telescopes, while ignoring the minor detail that Starship will be able to launch a JWST-sized telescope weekly if they want to get above the atmosphere. We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.

tw04 3y ago
> We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter. Or because he constantly stomps on experienced engineers with stupid ideas and puts the whole thing at risk. Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea and yet Elon had to trump his own experts. Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk. At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions without having to cater to his ego and make him think the idea was his.
- ethagknight 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Tesla is doing great, SpaceX has always been amazing. Twitter is failing. Elon Musk becomes less respectable by the day.
    - doubleg72 3y ago
      You must have missed TSLA last week earning call…

ethagknight 3y ago

The various replies in this thread witness that there is a purely irrational response to Elon's "harsh but mildly conservative" leanings that people can't seem to be mature enough to acknowledge that he has ramped up several major international corporations in a wildly entrepreneurial manner, yet these fools are focused on "yes well technically he had subsidies and a ruby mine" as if there's some cheat code he used that no one else like Boeing or Ford had access to.

redundantly 3y ago
Mildly? <insert Jennifer Lawrence okay sure gif here>
lm28469 3y ago
> people can't seem to be mature enough to acknowledge that he has ramped up several major international corporations in a wildly entrepreneurial manner Or you know, people acknowledge both but his dumbassery overshadows his genius by a long stretch. Bezos, Zuck &co at least have the decency to shut the fuck up when they should, which is 99.9% of the time on 99.9% of topics. That's all he would have to do to be more appreciated

psunavy03 3y ago

Because Elon doesn't realize his childish douchebaggery has that much of an impact on how some people view what are otherwise his very legitimate accomplishments as a businessman. Twitter/X most certainly not among those accomplishments.

golemotron 3y ago

The US is so polarized that all it takes is for an opinion to form on either the Left or the Right. The other side will form the opposite opinion to signal that it is different.

verandaguy 3y ago

>I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. A number of reasons, actually. - Because the entire idea of "the Earth is fucked, so let's go set up camp on Mars" is a train of thought that's only applicable to the ultra-rich, and in the current economic environment that's (pretty understandably) an unpopular idea. - Because after Starship's failed attempt at landing and highly-destructive launch earlier this year, people who care about the nearby wildlife refuge at Boca Chica are understandably not thrilled about continued ops there. - Because the man behind SpaceX -- whose past achievements are admittedly impressive, at least in the spaceflight industry -- is increasingly associated with deceptive marketing, poor design choices, and incompetent product management, and when a corporation like SpaceX relies on significant funding from taxpayers that's a troubling combination. - Personally, for me, coming from startups, "move fast and break things" scales terribly in terms of (for lack of a better word) social responsibility, and with the company's stated ambitions, I don't see this ending well. SpaceX does a lot of cool shit, but let's not pretend like they're advancing the state of human existence here. They're a commercial entity, even if not publicly traded, but with Musk at the helm that feels like the tradeoff between being purely profit-driven vs having later-years Howard Hughes behind the wheel. Anyway, it's pretty disingenuous to call Starship in particular "the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built." So far it's capable of doing a significantly suborbital hop and failing to land. You could argue that it's failed at the one thing a spacefaring vessel should, by definition, not fail at. I do trust in the FAA's judgement here, but I hope they work closely with Fish & Wildlife. The effects of climate change are increasingly endangering wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, and having chunks of concrete the size of a living room flying into the water isn't helping.

jupp0r 3y ago
I'm no fan of Elon Musk. Yet if you downplay the significance of cutting the cost of bringing mass to orbit by a factor of 1000, you really haven't thought through the implications of this enough. The whole "billionaires are going to leave earth behind" thing is as much of a dumb conspiracy theory as much of the stuff Elon is tweeting lately, by the way.

sschueller 3y ago

"I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. " Because people like Elon and Gwynne have knowingly lied or purposefully mislead the public regarding Space X. An example is the Point to Point travel, this is not every going to happen. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about rocketry etc. knows this has a zero percent chance of happening alone because of the noise it would case. In their presentation they had Zürich as a destination, Zürich is so small that you would blow out every window in the entire city. Launching starship in Zürich will never ever happen.

cnlevy 3y ago
Not from Zurich, but from an ocean platform 20km from the coast of every big coastal city. High speed trains (350km/h) will go direct to the airport from every city less than 500km away. I agree landlocked Zurich will have a hard time to get a spaceport. Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport
- m4rtink 3y ago
  Bodensee will do: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance
  - cnlevy 3y ago
    Good idea, but the lake is too narrow for that From the Starship Noise Assessment https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/AppendixB_NoiseAssessment.pdf https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/AppendixB_No..., it looks like you need maybe 20 miles distance for a tolerable level of noise (around 100 dB) So I'm not sure regular launches from the lake will be tolerated by the lake shore's inhabitants. This is why Starship launch platforms should be 30km from shore (not 20km as I wrote previously)
- imtringued 3y ago
  You literally can't build the spaceport that far away, if you are doing it over water, because there is nothing stopping the sound. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230306-just-how-loud-is-a-rocket-launch https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230306-just-how-loud-is... >Even 1.5 miles (2.4km) away, the noise from a Saturn V launch was recorded as being 120 decibels https://www.wkcgroup.com/tools-room/inverse-square-law-sound-calculator/ https://www.wkcgroup.com/tools-room/inverse-square-law-sound... Gets you 101.6 decibels from 20 km away. Okay, how about 200 km over water? 81.6 decibels. Okay as a yearly event, not something that should happen every week. Okay, how about 2000 km over water? 61.6 decibels. What was the point of this idea again?

heresie-dabord 3y ago

> I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. The fact in of itself of polarisation of public discourse exists because there is a polarisation industry innocuously named social media. It has subverted political discourse and education too. Despite this, there are still enough reasonable people for science and scientific progress to continue. However, one may right well feel pessimistic about the future.