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by blkhawk 2y ago

[flagged]

Animats 2y ago
Gwynne Shotwell, not Musk, runs Space-X. She is very good at it. She really is a rocket scientist.
- beAbU 2y ago
  I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship because of the Musk association. The money might be good, the work fantastic and exciting, but at some point saying "I work at SpaceX/Tesla/whatever" will become dangerous to one's health? Musk put good people in charge of some of these companies, Gwynne Shotwell is a great example, but his sphere if influence is big enough that the collateral damage could be significant.
  - aredox 2y ago
    SpaceX has a clear mission; Tesla not so much. What is the use of building electric cars "to save the planet" while your boss is enabling a ton more environmental damage using the money from Tesla sales and charger network (and his giant compensation package)?
    - spacebanana7 2y ago
      I’d argue Tesla has succeeded in its original mission of bringing electric cars to the masses. Profitability, vehicle autonomy, market share etc weren’t really the reasons why the company was founded.
      - aredox 2y ago
        Yeah, but now?
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Tesla has succeeded in its original mission of bringing electric cars to the masses Sort of. China has done more for this mission than Tesla, certainly Musk, at this point.
  - saturn8601 2y ago
    I think we need like a wiki for people to read all the stories that people have posted about working for Musk companies to understand why so many people stay. I have recently seen so much misinformation about Musk being pushed. Its completely fair to criticize a person that deserves intense criticism, it just does a disservice to other readers if the entire context is not explained because it then propagates false assumptions about Musk which he then uses to 'surprise' his critics because they were operating under incorrect beliefs. At this point, no not going to happen. The money sucks given how much you work, no work/life balance. These people already sacrificed their personal lives to get the company to this point. No other company is getting to Mars first. If you are an Olympic class engineer, would you really just walk away from getting to be a part of history? I guess unless you are at the top of your field you are not going to feel the same as these guys. Regarding engineers burning out, given that Tesla and SpaceX are some of the most desired companies for new Engineering grads Musk will have a continual supply of engineers to grind down to dust as the old ones become useless to him.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      A wiki is exactly what you don't want if the problem is "misinformation". A Supreme Court ruling that NDAs and non-disparagement agreements violate the first amendment, however, that might help.
    - bluescrn 2y ago
      There'll always be young people excited to work on the cutting edge of something they're passionate about, even if it means being horribly overworked and underpaid. See also the games industry, movie VFX, etc.
      - saturn8601 2y ago
        Thats a good point. I'm thinking how is Musk able to attract so many of them? His payroll obligations are enormous(think about how many he employs across all is factories). We need competitors to Musk, preferably nicer, that can attract the best of the best. I guess in order to fight a psychopath you need tendencies of being a psychopath yourself?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship For whom? There isn't another ship. (Literally. Ariane has nothing, ULA is on its deathbed, Blue Origin might do something in the 2030s and nobody is moving from Hawthorne to Xi'an.) SpaceX remains a jewel of American industry and technological achievement. If you're an ambitious aerospace engineer, SpaceX is the only place where you'll see your cutting-edge work launched.
    - ragebol 2y ago
      There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX. Now that SpaceX has shown reuse is possible, it's easier to convince anyone that reuse is viable. Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers to get on this too.
      - skissane 2y ago
        The issue is that space launch is a lot smaller market than EVs with a lot higher unit costs. I think the majority of the companies you mention are going to fail, because the market isn’t big enough for them all. Rocket Lab is most likely to survive because they’ve already got a decent sized business even though it is primarily at the low end, but moving up the market is arguably easier than starting from scratch. The others are competing not just against SpaceX, but also Blue Origin (which despite being rather slow is still way ahead of most of the companies you mention), as well as against Rocket Lab and each other
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX These are all smallsat launchers. I have worked with a few of their teams and have mad respect for their work. But between launch cadence, fundraising and mission profile, they’re not comparable to SpaceX. > Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers SpaceX has a global commanding position and domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed. It’s fair to say it has a monopoly in commercial launch outside niche operations, e.g. dedicated smallsat.
  - igleria 2y ago
    there are a lot of extremely intelligent people that would want to work for musk. why ? beats me, but reality is reality.
  - someothherguyy 2y ago
    If they do, what is the net harm? The technology that SpaceX was losing money to for decades is now known. Their moat isn't as deep or wide as it used to be. See Space Pioneer, CAS Space, Galactic Energy, LandSpace, ...
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      How many of the companies you mentioned have even one reusable flight to show for, much less a proven track record? Catching up to SpaceX is something even us Europeans haven't accomplished.
      - someothherguyy 2y ago
        > How many of the companies you mentioned have even one reusable flight to show for All of them?
  - bluescrn 2y ago
    > I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship because of the Musk association. The money might be good, the work fantastic and exciting, but at some point saying "I work at SpaceX/Tesla/whatever" will become dangerous to one's health? Meanwhile, plenty of people still work in industries such as oil+gas, tobacco, gambling, military tech, etc. No hate, no threats, business as usual.
- martindbp 2y ago
  No, we can hate Musk all we want, but we shouldn't rewrite history because we despise him. He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer Musk founded SpaceX. He hasn't been a chief engineer in anything but title for a long time. To the extent he deserves respect, it's in giving its team the insulation he's denied Twitter and the American people.
    - fastball 2y ago
      So you think he had no hand in the engineering decisions and work surrounding Starship? On what are you basing this? Because most sources I've seen seem to indicate he is very involved.
      - notahacker 2y ago
        I think the most obvious answer is that he was both heavily involved in key strategic decisions and not as technical as someone holding the Chief Engineer title usually would be. And is evidently less involved now, as he's doing more other stuff (SpaceX also appears very focused on "things that make a profit in near-earth space" rather than "things that might be needed for a near tern Mars mission"...) Certainly he's more useful to organizations when he goes in with the approach of listening to engineers' ideas to build stuff than when he goes in with the approach of gutting the organization in revenge for things he's taken exception to.
        fastball 2y ago
        Do you think engineering managers are doing a ton of technical work day-to-day? Because a "Chief Engineer" is a level (or two or three) above that. Of course the Chief Engineer isn't doing a ton of low-level technical works, that's not the job.
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
  [dead]
- mihaaly 2y ago
  Aren't you attempting to disconnect something that is not disconnected?
- verzali 2y ago
  She's a mechanical engineer, not a rocket scientist (though the term is overrated anyway, there are plenty of "rocket scientists" who do very boring things).
baq 2y ago
[flagged]
- someothherguyy 2y ago
  One of the most consequential substance abuse issues of all time?
  - baq 2y ago
    I don't dare guess which place exactly since we probably don't know about a lot of those cases, but definitely up there.
- incognito124 2y ago
  He would never abuse substances! He loves the substances!
- alkonaut 2y ago
  Is there no vetting of people who either hold office or senior government positions in the US now? One of the most basic things you do when doing a security clearance is checking that you don't have any bad things in your closet. Substance abuse, debt to shady people, gambling habit, mistresses, ... anything and everything that could be used to blackmail you would be a big fat no on your security clearance. Their 4chan accounts and every gaming chat since 1998 should be scanned for weird comments. I get that it's hard to do for top elected officials - they are elected with flaws and all after all, and it's the job of the people to try to guess and judge whether someone, say, has had unknown extramarital affairs or holds bad debt, that could lead to them being compromised. Not saying Musk would insta-fail his security clearance process but he sure wouldn't have a good time being questioned about what he said in a 4chan post or game chat in 2004, or being asked about every pill he took since 2000.
  - skissane 2y ago
    > One of the most basic things you do when doing a security clearance is checking that you don't have any bad things in your closet. I knew a guy years ago who was going for a security clearance. And he was really worried about them asking about illegal drug use, and he told them the truth about his extensive past history of it. And then they told him they weren’t worried about it because the fact he’d been honest about it meant there was low risk of him being blackmailed over it, so they gave him his security clearance. (Not the US, Australia, maybe the rules are different here.)
ReptileMan 2y ago
Taking a break from the culture war does a lot of good. Some people on both sides have been whipping themselves into frenzy that the world is going to end for decade and a half now (almost two if we count the tea party) and it shows at the temps people going to therapy have been growing. Take a break. Take a kitkat. It's going to fine. In four or eight years the other side will take power and you will have your revenge.
- Philpax 2y ago
  Fine for you, perhaps, but not fine for everybody.
- cheema33 2y ago
  > Take a break. Take a kitkat. It's going to fine. Tell that to people in Ukraine who were invaded by Russia. They were provided support by the US. Our leader and Musk are now blaming the victim and want them to surrender to the invader. Or pay $500B for US to give them additional support. This is what we have come down to. People are dying and we are trying to shake them down like a mafia. Even mafia bosses are not that heartless. Tell the Ukrainian kids hiding under desks from incoming missiles to take a break and take a kitkat.
  - ReptileMan 2y ago
    US have absolutely no obligations towards Ukraine. It may aid or deny aid based on US interests, but Ukraine's are irrelevant. UK has only obligation towards US kids. And US have a long history of shaking down people dying in the trenches - like the Louisiana purchase and Alaska Purchase. And Ukraine is Europe's not US problem anyway.
    - TinkersW 2y ago
      It isn't about obligations, it is about the best interest of the US. Which is very clearly not handing everything to Russia for no good reason, and for nothing at all in return.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
zozbot234 2y ago
Startship is a huge deal in the industry. It does everything that the Space Shuttles used to, and a lot more besides. The focus on it is entirely justified AFAICT.
- nicce 2y ago
  It doesn’t justify bypassing safety regulation checks
  - flanked-evergl 2y ago
    Mind citing?
    - nicce 2y ago
      Normally, when a vehicle like this crashes, there is an inspection. Historically there have been and they have been finished normally. It was started also this time: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/faa-spacex-starship-explosion https://www.fox7austin.com/news/faa-spacex-starship-explosio... E.g. in 2023 such inspection lasted around 5 months and "63 corrective actions the company "must take to prevent mishap reoccurrence"" was stated by FFA. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closes-spacex-starship-mishap-investigation https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closes-spacex-starship-mish... However, this time, as the article states, it was suddenly "finished". Nothing. They wouldn't have time to conclude it properly.
      - flanked-evergl 2y ago
        Not a citation of the claim you made.
- sumeno 2y ago
  It doesn't do much other than rapid unscheduled disassemblies so far
sebazzz 2y ago
Regardless of all the political angles, I'm very curious how the (apparently legal) interference of Musk in the FAA will play out when it comes to SpaceX.
hackeraccount 2y ago
Musk can be oversold to be sure but I wouldn't say he got lucky. SpaceX has made a number of unconventional (or at least unconventional at the time) technical decisions that seem to have paid off. He's either really good at picking the right people and then trusts them or he's got an eye for the correct decision. It's too many times to call it luck.

[flagged]

Animats 2y ago

Gwynne Shotwell, not Musk, runs Space-X. She is very good at it. She really is a rocket scientist.

beAbU 2y ago
I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship because of the Musk association. The money might be good, the work fantastic and exciting, but at some point saying "I work at SpaceX/Tesla/whatever" will become dangerous to one's health? Musk put good people in charge of some of these companies, Gwynne Shotwell is a great example, but his sphere if influence is big enough that the collateral damage could be significant.
- aredox 2y ago
  SpaceX has a clear mission; Tesla not so much. What is the use of building electric cars "to save the planet" while your boss is enabling a ton more environmental damage using the money from Tesla sales and charger network (and his giant compensation package)?
  - spacebanana7 2y ago
    I’d argue Tesla has succeeded in its original mission of bringing electric cars to the masses. Profitability, vehicle autonomy, market share etc weren’t really the reasons why the company was founded.
    - aredox 2y ago
      Yeah, but now?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Tesla has succeeded in its original mission of bringing electric cars to the masses Sort of. China has done more for this mission than Tesla, certainly Musk, at this point.
- saturn8601 2y ago
  I think we need like a wiki for people to read all the stories that people have posted about working for Musk companies to understand why so many people stay. I have recently seen so much misinformation about Musk being pushed. Its completely fair to criticize a person that deserves intense criticism, it just does a disservice to other readers if the entire context is not explained because it then propagates false assumptions about Musk which he then uses to 'surprise' his critics because they were operating under incorrect beliefs. At this point, no not going to happen. The money sucks given how much you work, no work/life balance. These people already sacrificed their personal lives to get the company to this point. No other company is getting to Mars first. If you are an Olympic class engineer, would you really just walk away from getting to be a part of history? I guess unless you are at the top of your field you are not going to feel the same as these guys. Regarding engineers burning out, given that Tesla and SpaceX are some of the most desired companies for new Engineering grads Musk will have a continual supply of engineers to grind down to dust as the old ones become useless to him.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    A wiki is exactly what you don't want if the problem is "misinformation". A Supreme Court ruling that NDAs and non-disparagement agreements violate the first amendment, however, that might help.
  - bluescrn 2y ago
    There'll always be young people excited to work on the cutting edge of something they're passionate about, even if it means being horribly overworked and underpaid. See also the games industry, movie VFX, etc.
    - saturn8601 2y ago
      Thats a good point. I'm thinking how is Musk able to attract so many of them? His payroll obligations are enormous(think about how many he employs across all is factories). We need competitors to Musk, preferably nicer, that can attract the best of the best. I guess in order to fight a psychopath you need tendencies of being a psychopath yourself?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship For whom? There isn't another ship. (Literally. Ariane has nothing, ULA is on its deathbed, Blue Origin might do something in the 2030s and nobody is moving from Hawthorne to Xi'an.) SpaceX remains a jewel of American industry and technological achievement. If you're an ambitious aerospace engineer, SpaceX is the only place where you'll see your cutting-edge work launched.
  - ragebol 2y ago
    There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX. Now that SpaceX has shown reuse is possible, it's easier to convince anyone that reuse is viable. Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers to get on this too.
    - skissane 2y ago
      The issue is that space launch is a lot smaller market than EVs with a lot higher unit costs. I think the majority of the companies you mention are going to fail, because the market isn’t big enough for them all. Rocket Lab is most likely to survive because they’ve already got a decent sized business even though it is primarily at the low end, but moving up the market is arguably easier than starting from scratch. The others are competing not just against SpaceX, but also Blue Origin (which despite being rather slow is still way ahead of most of the companies you mention), as well as against Rocket Lab and each other
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX These are all smallsat launchers. I have worked with a few of their teams and have mad respect for their work. But between launch cadence, fundraising and mission profile, they’re not comparable to SpaceX. > Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers SpaceX has a global commanding position and domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed. It’s fair to say it has a monopoly in commercial launch outside niche operations, e.g. dedicated smallsat.
- igleria 2y ago
  there are a lot of extremely intelligent people that would want to work for musk. why ? beats me, but reality is reality.
- someothherguyy 2y ago
  If they do, what is the net harm? The technology that SpaceX was losing money to for decades is now known. Their moat isn't as deep or wide as it used to be. See Space Pioneer, CAS Space, Galactic Energy, LandSpace, ...
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    How many of the companies you mentioned have even one reusable flight to show for, much less a proven track record? Catching up to SpaceX is something even us Europeans haven't accomplished.
    - someothherguyy 2y ago
      > How many of the companies you mentioned have even one reusable flight to show for All of them?
- bluescrn 2y ago
  > I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship because of the Musk association. The money might be good, the work fantastic and exciting, but at some point saying "I work at SpaceX/Tesla/whatever" will become dangerous to one's health? Meanwhile, plenty of people still work in industries such as oil+gas, tobacco, gambling, military tech, etc. No hate, no threats, business as usual.
martindbp 2y ago
No, we can hate Musk all we want, but we shouldn't rewrite history because we despise him. He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer Musk founded SpaceX. He hasn't been a chief engineer in anything but title for a long time. To the extent he deserves respect, it's in giving its team the insulation he's denied Twitter and the American people.
  - fastball 2y ago
    So you think he had no hand in the engineering decisions and work surrounding Starship? On what are you basing this? Because most sources I've seen seem to indicate he is very involved.
    - notahacker 2y ago
      I think the most obvious answer is that he was both heavily involved in key strategic decisions and not as technical as someone holding the Chief Engineer title usually would be. And is evidently less involved now, as he's doing more other stuff (SpaceX also appears very focused on "things that make a profit in near-earth space" rather than "things that might be needed for a near tern Mars mission"...) Certainly he's more useful to organizations when he goes in with the approach of listening to engineers' ideas to build stuff than when he goes in with the approach of gutting the organization in revenge for things he's taken exception to.
      - fastball 2y ago
        Do you think engineering managers are doing a ton of technical work day-to-day? Because a "Chief Engineer" is a level (or two or three) above that. Of course the Chief Engineer isn't doing a ton of low-level technical works, that's not the job.
kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
[dead]
mihaaly 2y ago
Aren't you attempting to disconnect something that is not disconnected?
verzali 2y ago
She's a mechanical engineer, not a rocket scientist (though the term is overrated anyway, there are plenty of "rocket scientists" who do very boring things).

baq 2y ago

[flagged]

someothherguyy 2y ago
One of the most consequential substance abuse issues of all time?
- baq 2y ago
  I don't dare guess which place exactly since we probably don't know about a lot of those cases, but definitely up there.
incognito124 2y ago
He would never abuse substances! He loves the substances!
alkonaut 2y ago
Is there no vetting of people who either hold office or senior government positions in the US now? One of the most basic things you do when doing a security clearance is checking that you don't have any bad things in your closet. Substance abuse, debt to shady people, gambling habit, mistresses, ... anything and everything that could be used to blackmail you would be a big fat no on your security clearance. Their 4chan accounts and every gaming chat since 1998 should be scanned for weird comments. I get that it's hard to do for top elected officials - they are elected with flaws and all after all, and it's the job of the people to try to guess and judge whether someone, say, has had unknown extramarital affairs or holds bad debt, that could lead to them being compromised. Not saying Musk would insta-fail his security clearance process but he sure wouldn't have a good time being questioned about what he said in a 4chan post or game chat in 2004, or being asked about every pill he took since 2000.
- skissane 2y ago
  > One of the most basic things you do when doing a security clearance is checking that you don't have any bad things in your closet. I knew a guy years ago who was going for a security clearance. And he was really worried about them asking about illegal drug use, and he told them the truth about his extensive past history of it. And then they told him they weren’t worried about it because the fact he’d been honest about it meant there was low risk of him being blackmailed over it, so they gave him his security clearance. (Not the US, Australia, maybe the rules are different here.)

ReptileMan 2y ago

Taking a break from the culture war does a lot of good. Some people on both sides have been whipping themselves into frenzy that the world is going to end for decade and a half now (almost two if we count the tea party) and it shows at the temps people going to therapy have been growing. Take a break. Take a kitkat. It's going to fine. In four or eight years the other side will take power and you will have your revenge.

Philpax 2y ago
Fine for you, perhaps, but not fine for everybody.
cheema33 2y ago
> Take a break. Take a kitkat. It's going to fine. Tell that to people in Ukraine who were invaded by Russia. They were provided support by the US. Our leader and Musk are now blaming the victim and want them to surrender to the invader. Or pay $500B for US to give them additional support. This is what we have come down to. People are dying and we are trying to shake them down like a mafia. Even mafia bosses are not that heartless. Tell the Ukrainian kids hiding under desks from incoming missiles to take a break and take a kitkat.
- ReptileMan 2y ago
  US have absolutely no obligations towards Ukraine. It may aid or deny aid based on US interests, but Ukraine's are irrelevant. UK has only obligation towards US kids. And US have a long history of shaking down people dying in the trenches - like the Louisiana purchase and Alaska Purchase. And Ukraine is Europe's not US problem anyway.
  - TinkersW 2y ago
    It isn't about obligations, it is about the best interest of the US. Which is very clearly not handing everything to Russia for no good reason, and for nothing at all in return.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago

zozbot234 2y ago

Startship is a huge deal in the industry. It does everything that the Space Shuttles used to, and a lot more besides. The focus on it is entirely justified AFAICT.

nicce 2y ago
It doesn’t justify bypassing safety regulation checks
- flanked-evergl 2y ago
  Mind citing?
  - nicce 2y ago
    Normally, when a vehicle like this crashes, there is an inspection. Historically there have been and they have been finished normally. It was started also this time: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/faa-spacex-starship-explosion https://www.fox7austin.com/news/faa-spacex-starship-explosio... E.g. in 2023 such inspection lasted around 5 months and "63 corrective actions the company "must take to prevent mishap reoccurrence"" was stated by FFA. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closes-spacex-starship-mishap-investigation https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closes-spacex-starship-mish... However, this time, as the article states, it was suddenly "finished". Nothing. They wouldn't have time to conclude it properly.
    - flanked-evergl 2y ago
      Not a citation of the claim you made.
sumeno 2y ago
It doesn't do much other than rapid unscheduled disassemblies so far

sebazzz 2y ago

Regardless of all the political angles, I'm very curious how the (apparently legal) interference of Musk in the FAA will play out when it comes to SpaceX.

hackeraccount 2y ago

Musk can be oversold to be sure but I wouldn't say he got lucky. SpaceX has made a number of unconventional (or at least unconventional at the time) technical decisions that seem to have paid off. He's either really good at picking the right people and then trusts them or he's got an eye for the correct decision. It's too many times to call it luck.