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I frequently wonder what steps SpaceX security has to take, given the insane geopolitical significance of reusable rockets and cheap access to orbit.
by sneak 1y ago
I frequently wonder what steps SpaceX security has to take, given the insane geopolitical significance of reusable rockets and cheap access to orbit.
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- pythonguython 1y agoSpacex rocketry tech is subject to ITAR regulations. That restricts who they’re allowed to contract with, data encryption and handling, but altogether those regulations are quite bare. It likely wouldn’t be enough to stop a state actor or rogue employees.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pc86 1y agoI think ITAR is mostly just to stop the outright sale of controlled items to foreign entities, not necessarily to prevent IP theft or corporate espionage.
- blackguardx 1y agoI worked on an ITAR-controlled camera once and it was drilled into me than even allowing a non-US person to view the output images of the camera constituted an ITAR violation.
- 0xffff2 1y agoRight, which is all well and good if you're a benevolent actor, but ITAR really doesn't do anything at all to stop you from intentionally committing (corporate or actual) espionage if you want to. There should still be controls to prevent you from violating ITAR either accidentally or on purpose.
- blackguardx 1y agoThe controls are you go to jail if you get caught. At least this is what one is told in the mandatory ITAR compliance trainings. That seems to be how the law works for most crimes.
- pc86 1y agoIt's an incentive but it's certainly not a control. Controls stop something from happening, they don't respond to it after the fact. Controls would be things like security checkpoints, network monitoring, random searches, that sort of thing. "You will go to jail if you kill someone" isn't a control against murder.
- de6u99er 1y agoI don't think what SpaceX is doing is that hard to replicate. There's already competitors launching smaller payloads for smaller costs per weight. Just a matter of time until they creep into SpaceX's market, while SpaceX tries to build a starship inspired by the Futurama rocket.
- sneak 1y agoIt is insanely valuable, both commercially and strategically. If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. I think you vastly underestimate how difficult rocketry is. There’s a reason “rocket science” is colloquially a metaphor for an extremely difficult and technical task.
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoThe problem lies in forming and managing such a huge organisation that deals with the problem in an efficient and lean way, not the technical aspects. The materials science aspect is a challenge, not to produce, but to produce with a sane cost. The rocket science aspect of things (namely the linearisation of the booster model in order to be able to be solved in constant time by an MPC) is more or less a solved problem. Coordinating such complex interconnected systems will always remain one.
- tonyhart7 1y agoso it still "rocket science", you saying that the hard part is to make it lean and efficient isn't that what they do in SpaceX????, your comment literally counterproductive
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoIt is comparably hard to creating a lean and efficient car manufacturing company. Yet you don't hear people throw the phrase "automotive science" around. Rocket science has some niche parts that are very hard indeed. But this is not where the major challenge lies.
- colechristensen 1y agoLots of space technology is classified as weapons subject to export control. ITAR has plenty of rules about who can see information. US immigration status generally has to be green card or citizen, and country of origin and any second citizenships are considered. ("export control" in this sense really doesn't have to do with moving a physical object out of the country but sharing information, to the extent that a conversation in an elevator could be an export violation. most export violations amount to emails being sent to the wrong person) When I worked briefly in defense, for example, there would be regular random searches of my stuff as I exited the building and security would wander the building and look at what you left out on your desk while you went to lunch. Entirely seriously they told us not to wear our badge in public if we left the building and not to leave our laptops in our cars because someone might follow us and steal it. Had colleagues who were visiting a foreign country for work have their hotel rooms obviously thoroughly and messily searched while they were out. They also do national security missions so there are folks there with high clearances. Thing is that even if you did steal a bunch of information, that doesn't mean you could just copy and be successful. Any one of a million things can go wrong with a self-landing rocket that will cause it to explode, you can't just steal the whole system of operation that keeps these things from happening. You couldn't steal all of the secrets of a circus performer and suddenly be able to juggle chainsaws while riding a unicycle.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- chilmers 1y agoSo, this is admittedly a little tinfoil, but I wouldn't be surprised if Musk is happy for some degree of espionage to happen. If it looked like there was a possibility of China getting this capability first, it would light a fire under the US government to give financial and regulatory assistance to the Starship program.
- amelius 1y agohttps://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/elon-musk-claims-patents-are-for-the-weak-his-portfolio-suggests-otherwise/ https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/elon-musk-claims-pate...
- bilbo0s 1y agoMusk does seem to think in terms of how much money he can get from the government for his companies. But to be fair, government subsidies are a successful strategy for entrepreneurs who want to make a lot of money. Maybe they shouldn't be? And I think honest people can have that debate. But you can't really argue against the effectiveness of government subsidy as a path to prosperity for the guy getting the money.
- sockp0pp3t 1y agoThis worked for at least one Burisma employee
- sharpshadow 1y agoIt’s primarily in the government interest in subsidising, except when it’s a corrupted subsidy.
- indoordin0saur 1y agoDespite his faults he does seem to care about the actual lofty mission statements of his companies more than just straight profit. Otherwise, you wouldn't see bizarre things like him directing Tesla to open source all their patents.
- m4rtink 1y agoI would say the main element of their success is not really in any specific close kept secrets - its in actually committing to reusable rockets and keep working until they had a working system. While there are some really nice components and clever ideas (Merlin/Raptor engines & very good guidance tech) this all really has been doable for decades in less efficient form. But so far no one other than Space X has been able to win against all the naysayers who were so sure only single use rockets are ever going to work, get enough funding to build a partial RLV & then operate it successfully as a business. I don't think it depends on any single technology or a set of them only they have access to - rather that they have been able to persist and see it through, unlike all the other RLV projects that never got funding to go past the paper stage or very simply not viable (Space shuttle).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bwfan123 1y agoThere is a very nice chapter in the somewhat dated but classic book Business Adventures [1] on trade-secrets and what happens when employees of one company move to another. In chapter 11, "A man, his knowledge, and his job", there is a story of a "space-suit" manufacturer Goodrich suing an employee for moving to its rival Latex for stealing trade-secrets. The story is timely in context of Meta hiring researchers from open-ai, deepmind etc for 100s of millions for the knowledge in their heads of the recipes which work for making superior LLMs - the knowledge of which is empirical and may take years to discover. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street/dp/1497644895 https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-St...
- mooglevich 1y agoFWIW, outside of the chapter bwfan123 references, this entire book is an excellent read. Great stories and even better writing - it's one of my personal faves :)
- AlotOfReading 1y agoYou could also argue that they're hiring people for the general expertise they have in developing frontier LLMs. Distinguishing trade secrets from general knowledge is difficult and employees building the latter to make them more valuable to new employers is an explicit policy goal of US employment law.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoWhat is the story?
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoI imagine SpaceX having pretty fishbowl conference rooms for customers in the center of everything, with guest network ports just segmented off from the main but using the same hardware. Oh man that would stress me out if I was IT. And of course the '<Customer name> needs to print something off and needs access to the MFCs'. No, you print it out for them, like has been discussed and agreed to and keeps with ITAR. 'No, they need access, and now. Because I'm a sales guy and I won't tell them no' but if they get into/past the MFC, it's all on IT and IT being bad at their job/security, not the sales guy that demanded they get physical access.