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The problem is that when the proof is wrong, as in this case a related conjecture held up for 40 years, which is not a "proof" per se, but still ostensibly an e

The problem is that when the proof is wrong, as in this case a related conjecture held up for 40 years, which is not a "proof" per se, but still ostensibly an extremely high reliability indicator of correctness. Another example is when SpaceX was first experimenting with reusable self landing rockets. They were being actively mocked by Tory Bruno, who was the head of ULA (basically an anti-competitive shell-but-not-really-corp merger between Lockheed and Boeing), claiming essentially stuff along the lines of 'We've of course already thoroughly researched and experimented with these ideas years ago. The economics just don't work at all. Have fun learning we already did!' Given that ULA made no efforts to compete with what SpaceX was doing it's likely that they did genuinely believe what they were saying. And that's a company with roots going all the way back to the Apollo program, with billions of dollars in revenue, and a massive number of aerospace engineers working for them. And the guy going against them was 'Silicon Valley guy with no aerospace experience who made some money selling a payment processing tool.' Yet somehow he knew better.

necovek 2y ago
All the cases you bring up are not "proofs": a conjecture is very much not one, it's just that nobody bothered to refute this particular one even if there were results proving it isn't (cited in the paper). Similarly, ULA had no "proof" that this would be economically infeasible: Musk pioneered using agile ship-and-fail-fast for rocket development which mostly contradicted common knowledge that in projects like these your first attempt should be a success. Like with software, this actually sped things up and delivered better, cheaper results.
- vkou 2y ago
  Also, SpaceX was exactly one failed launch (with every prior one being a failure) from bankruptcy. Had that one also been a failure, he wouldn't be running the US government and we'd all be talking about how obviously stupid reusable rockets were.
  - necovek 2y ago
    Had they received the same grant money as Boeing ($4.2b vs $2.6b), it wouldn't have been such a close call. I'd also note that they were also late by 3 years or so: this did not produce miracles, it was just much cheaper and better in the end than what Boeing is still trying to do.
    - Manabu-eo 2y ago
      He is talking about Falcon 1, not CCDev. There was no close call at CCDev, nor any grant money for Falcon 1.
      - necovek 2y ago
        Thanks for the correction/clarification. Still, I would be surprised if SpaceX did not greatly benefit from knowledge gained in Falcon 1 development when building their Falcon 9 rocket and then optimizing it for reusability — they started development of Falcon 9 while Falcon 1 was still operating.
  - NateEag 2y ago
    This illustrates beautifully how stupid labeling ideas stupid is. To know that that an idea or approach is fundamentally stupid and unsalvageable requires a grasp of the world that humans may simply not have access to. It seems unthinkably rare to me.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  On the other hand, I knew from the beginning that the Space Shuttle design was ungainly, looking like a committee designed it, and unfortunately I was right. (Having a wing, empennage and landing gear greatly increased the weight. The only thing that really needs to be returned from space are the astronauts.)
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Let alone on launch. It's amusing that NASA is supposed to be this highly conservative safety-first environment, yet went with a design featuring two enormous solid rocket boosters. We knew better than this even during the Saturn era was very much a move fast and break things period of development.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      There is nothing wrong with solid rocker boosters for that application. The issue is they failed to figure out figure out the limits and launched when it was too cold. (they also should have investigated when they saw unexpected non-fatal seal issues) Solid boosters are more complex and so Saturn could not have launched on time if they tried them. So for Saturn with a (arbitrary) deadline not doing them was the right call. Don't confuse right call with best call though: we know on hindsight that Saturn launched on time, nobody knows what would have happened if they had used solid boosters.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        I wasn't referencing Challenger in particular. I'm speaking more generally. SRBs are inherently fire and forget. This simply increases the risk factor of rockets substantially, and greatly complicates the risks and dangers in any sort of critical scenario. In modern times when we're approaching the era of rapid complete reuse, they're also just illogical since they're not meaningfully reusable.
        bluGill 2y ago
        The SRBs were resued. Like everything on the shuttle there was far more rebuilding needed before they were reused, but they were resued.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  The Apollo missions, of which Boeing was a key player, were also a 'ship and fail fast' era. It led to some humorous incidents like the strategy for astronaut bathroom breaks to simply be 'hold it' which was later followed up by diapers when we realized on-pad delays happen. Another one was the first capsule/command module being designed without even a viewport. Of course it also led to some not so humorous incidents, but such rapid advances rarely come for free. In any case Musk definitely didn't pioneer this in space.
  - necovek 2y ago
    Sure, it's better to frame it as "reintroduction": for those early attempts to be succesful with Soviets pushing on the other side as well, it is a strategy that works the fastest. Thanks for the funny incidents as well, and my empathy for the not so funny ones!
  - eru 2y ago
    > Of course it also led to some not so humorous incidents, but such rapid advances rarely come for free. Luckily, you can run a lot higher risks (per mission) when going unmanned, and thus this becomes a purely economic decision there, almost devoid of the moral problems of manned spaceflight. Manned spaceflight has mostly been a waste of money and resources in general.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Eventually you cannot run high risks in unmanned. If a rocket fails getting a satellite to orbit just build a new one. However missions to the outer planets are often only possible once every several hundred years (when orbits line up) and so if you fail you can't retry. Mars you get a retry every year and a half (though you get about a month). If you want to hit 5 planets that is a several hundred year event. And the trip time means if you fail once you reach the outer planet all the engineers who knew how the system works have retired and so you start from scratch on the retry (assuming you even get the orbits to line up)
      - eru 2y ago
scheme271 2y ago
Do we know that the economics work for SpaceX? It's a private company and it's financials aren't public knowledge, it could be burning investor money? E.g. Uber was losing around 4B/yr give or take for a very long time.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  You can't know anything for certain but most of every analysis corroborates what they themselves say - they're operating at a healthy (though thin) margin on rocket launches and printing money with Starlink. The context of this of course is that they've sent the cost of rocket launches from ~$2 billion per launch during the Space Shuttle era, to $0.07 billion per launch today. And the goal of Starship is to chop another order of magnitude or two off that price. By contrast SLS (Boeing/NASA's "new" rocket) was estimated to end up costing around $4.1 billion per launch.
  - varjag 2y ago
    To be fair cost per launch was in that ballpark already ($$0.15-0.05) with Ariane, Atlas and Soyuz non-reusable vehicles. SpaceX maintains the cost just about to undercut the competition.
    - eru 2y ago
      I think they maintain the price there. They'll want to drive the cost as low as possible, because price - cost = profit for them. A penny saved is a penny earned.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Does SpaceX have any investors other than Musk? I thought he bootstrapped it.
  - skissane 2y ago
    Musk owns 42% of SpaceX's total equity and 79% of the voting equity. The non-Musk shareholders range from low-level SpaceX employees (equity compensation) through to Alphabet/Google, Fidelity, Founders Fund. There are actually hundreds of investors. If you are ultra-wealthy, it isn't hard to invest in SpaceX. If you are the average person, they don't want to deal with you, the money you can bring to the table isn't worth the hassle–and the regulatory risk you represent is a lot higher
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
I think Musk had a better imagination and the money to fund that imagination without constraints or internal politics.

necovek 2y ago

All the cases you bring up are not "proofs": a conjecture is very much not one, it's just that nobody bothered to refute this particular one even if there were results proving it isn't (cited in the paper). Similarly, ULA had no "proof" that this would be economically infeasible: Musk pioneered using agile ship-and-fail-fast for rocket development which mostly contradicted common knowledge that in projects like these your first attempt should be a success. Like with software, this actually sped things up and delivered better, cheaper results.

vkou 2y ago
Also, SpaceX was exactly one failed launch (with every prior one being a failure) from bankruptcy. Had that one also been a failure, he wouldn't be running the US government and we'd all be talking about how obviously stupid reusable rockets were.
- necovek 2y ago
  Had they received the same grant money as Boeing ($4.2b vs $2.6b), it wouldn't have been such a close call. I'd also note that they were also late by 3 years or so: this did not produce miracles, it was just much cheaper and better in the end than what Boeing is still trying to do.
  - Manabu-eo 2y ago
    He is talking about Falcon 1, not CCDev. There was no close call at CCDev, nor any grant money for Falcon 1.
    - necovek 2y ago
      Thanks for the correction/clarification. Still, I would be surprised if SpaceX did not greatly benefit from knowledge gained in Falcon 1 development when building their Falcon 9 rocket and then optimizing it for reusability — they started development of Falcon 9 while Falcon 1 was still operating.
- NateEag 2y ago
  This illustrates beautifully how stupid labeling ideas stupid is. To know that that an idea or approach is fundamentally stupid and unsalvageable requires a grasp of the world that humans may simply not have access to. It seems unthinkably rare to me.
WalterBright 2y ago
On the other hand, I knew from the beginning that the Space Shuttle design was ungainly, looking like a committee designed it, and unfortunately I was right. (Having a wing, empennage and landing gear greatly increased the weight. The only thing that really needs to be returned from space are the astronauts.)
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Let alone on launch. It's amusing that NASA is supposed to be this highly conservative safety-first environment, yet went with a design featuring two enormous solid rocket boosters. We knew better than this even during the Saturn era was very much a move fast and break things period of development.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    There is nothing wrong with solid rocker boosters for that application. The issue is they failed to figure out figure out the limits and launched when it was too cold. (they also should have investigated when they saw unexpected non-fatal seal issues) Solid boosters are more complex and so Saturn could not have launched on time if they tried them. So for Saturn with a (arbitrary) deadline not doing them was the right call. Don't confuse right call with best call though: we know on hindsight that Saturn launched on time, nobody knows what would have happened if they had used solid boosters.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      I wasn't referencing Challenger in particular. I'm speaking more generally. SRBs are inherently fire and forget. This simply increases the risk factor of rockets substantially, and greatly complicates the risks and dangers in any sort of critical scenario. In modern times when we're approaching the era of rapid complete reuse, they're also just illogical since they're not meaningfully reusable.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        The SRBs were resued. Like everything on the shuttle there was far more rebuilding needed before they were reused, but they were resued.
somenameforme 2y ago
The Apollo missions, of which Boeing was a key player, were also a 'ship and fail fast' era. It led to some humorous incidents like the strategy for astronaut bathroom breaks to simply be 'hold it' which was later followed up by diapers when we realized on-pad delays happen. Another one was the first capsule/command module being designed without even a viewport. Of course it also led to some not so humorous incidents, but such rapid advances rarely come for free. In any case Musk definitely didn't pioneer this in space.
- necovek 2y ago
  Sure, it's better to frame it as "reintroduction": for those early attempts to be succesful with Soviets pushing on the other side as well, it is a strategy that works the fastest. Thanks for the funny incidents as well, and my empathy for the not so funny ones!
- eru 2y ago
  > Of course it also led to some not so humorous incidents, but such rapid advances rarely come for free. Luckily, you can run a lot higher risks (per mission) when going unmanned, and thus this becomes a purely economic decision there, almost devoid of the moral problems of manned spaceflight. Manned spaceflight has mostly been a waste of money and resources in general.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Eventually you cannot run high risks in unmanned. If a rocket fails getting a satellite to orbit just build a new one. However missions to the outer planets are often only possible once every several hundred years (when orbits line up) and so if you fail you can't retry. Mars you get a retry every year and a half (though you get about a month). If you want to hit 5 planets that is a several hundred year event. And the trip time means if you fail once you reach the outer planet all the engineers who knew how the system works have retired and so you start from scratch on the retry (assuming you even get the orbits to line up)
    - eru 2y ago

scheme271 2y ago

Do we know that the economics work for SpaceX? It's a private company and it's financials aren't public knowledge, it could be burning investor money? E.g. Uber was losing around 4B/yr give or take for a very long time.

somenameforme 2y ago
You can't know anything for certain but most of every analysis corroborates what they themselves say - they're operating at a healthy (though thin) margin on rocket launches and printing money with Starlink. The context of this of course is that they've sent the cost of rocket launches from ~$2 billion per launch during the Space Shuttle era, to $0.07 billion per launch today. And the goal of Starship is to chop another order of magnitude or two off that price. By contrast SLS (Boeing/NASA's "new" rocket) was estimated to end up costing around $4.1 billion per launch.
- varjag 2y ago
  To be fair cost per launch was in that ballpark already ($$0.15-0.05) with Ariane, Atlas and Soyuz non-reusable vehicles. SpaceX maintains the cost just about to undercut the competition.
  - eru 2y ago
    I think they maintain the price there. They'll want to drive the cost as low as possible, because price - cost = profit for them. A penny saved is a penny earned.
mike_hearn 2y ago
Does SpaceX have any investors other than Musk? I thought he bootstrapped it.
- skissane 2y ago
  Musk owns 42% of SpaceX's total equity and 79% of the voting equity. The non-Musk shareholders range from low-level SpaceX employees (equity compensation) through to Alphabet/Google, Fidelity, Founders Fund. There are actually hundreds of investors. If you are ultra-wealthy, it isn't hard to invest in SpaceX. If you are the average person, they don't want to deal with you, the money you can bring to the table isn't worth the hassle–and the regulatory risk you represent is a lot higher

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

I think Musk had a better imagination and the money to fund that imagination without constraints or internal politics.