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I 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

I 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 ago
It 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    so 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 ago
      It 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.
- vFunct 1y ago
  SpaceX itself replicated the DC-X from the 90's. The reason the DC-X was cancelled was because of the economics. Reusable rockets are a solved problem, with only the economics of it a barrier (see Space Shuttle). SpaceX has to rely on their own investor funding for Starlink to remain a viable entity.
  - peterfirefly 1y ago
    The DC-X was stupid, dumb, insane, bunkers, and a waste of money and not replicable. "sure, let's put four RL-10 hydrogen engines on it! They are expensive and the worst possible for the low-altitude flights we are going to do so some sucker will believe we can do multi-stage reusable flights to orbit". "sure, we don't actually need to go to orbit anyway. That was always a dumb idea. Who said we ever wanted to do that? No, suborbital is really useful, we promise. And we are going to do it with a single stage (using hydrogen) cuz we are so smart and the future and everything!" "sure, let's build a specialized hydrogen tank in a stupid shape." "sure, let's give the whole single-stage low-altitude rocket a k00l shape that makes it more expensive." "People knowing it can't be done shouldn't interrupt people doing it wrong."
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  >If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. There is a 100% chance multiple countries/companies will have replicated it in the next decade. If SpaceX never existed, they likely would have achieved it at the same pace regardless. This is the same with EVs. If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same rise. There is a tendency to attribute the early movers with innovation in the inevitable, where we all stand on the shoulders of others and just reach a little higher. As to the rocket science misnomer, that's a space race hangover where an engineering role was extremely public and celebrated, but in actual reality "rocket science" is a mediocre field with miserable pay and high unemployment. As to how valuable it is, "insanely"? The world has a fairly finite launch need, such that SpaceX made a whole new business -- Starlink -- to make work for their capacity. Economically the space launch business is relatively minuscule.
  - dagw 1y ago
    If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same rise. would have seen the same rise _eventually_. I know from a friend that worked R&D at a major car company that Tesla really lit a fire under then and 'forced' them to push their own EV experiments from proof of concepts to commercial product much faster than they where originally thinking about doing it.
    - llm_nerd 1y ago
      The EV ventures of most automakers are massive money losers (just as it always has been for Tesla outside of selling green credits and subsidies). But for sure they all rushed to get there not because the EVs themselves were valuable, but because of the insanity of the capital markets where Tesla is valued at a trillion dollars at a 200x P/E, while the rest of the market is at like a 7-14x ratio. Everyone wanted some of that irrational hype.
  - jmpman 1y ago
    I question your EV take. Tesla proved a business model, the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth, and now on to the lowest cost per mile robotaxi. Simply knowing that a solution exists and is financially viable, is enough to motivate the competition.
pc86 1y ago
This comment has big "I could build a better SpaceX I just don't want to" vibes.
- indoordin0saur 1y ago
  If only my dad had an emerald mine then I'd be the billionaire rocket scientist CEO
  - pc86 1y ago
    https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min... TLDR: It's nonsense.
    - relaxing 1y ago
      Funny how many words it takes to say Elon’s dad in fact own a stake in an emerald mine, invest in Elon’s business, and give Elon an incredibly privileged upbringing.
      - pc86 1y ago
        There's a lot of unanswered questions from the article which is seems anyone with even mediocre skills as a journalist should be willing and able to answer. It mentions the mine "collapsed" in 1989. Does that mean literally? Just financially? Was there an insurance payout? Did everyone lose their investment? Did Errol Musk own 1% or 90%? * In quoting another article, it does say: "Errol Musk, an engineer, owned a small percentage of an emerald mine and had a couple of good years before the mine went bust and wiped out his investment." Elon graduated from college less than 10 years later but says he was $100k in debt. Was he actually in debt? Did he spend years paying that off or did he (or someone else) pay it off shortly after in a lump sum or very quickly? His dad provided $20k of a $200k seed round for Zip2, was the rest also from friends and family or more institutional investors? Did his dad receive equity for that or was it a gift? Reading through the article again (and a little more closely than before) it doesn't seem Elon had "an incredibly privileged upbringing" but maybe that's a mix of good PR and this now being 40-some years ago? They're referred to as upper middle class but if that's all it takes to be "incredibly privileged" then 90% of the kids born to people reading HN are also incredibly privileged. Arnold's piece seems to contradict basically everything else in the article so I'm not sure what to make of it, but it also sounds like he made about $350k profit over the lifetime of his ownership in the mine? Certainly not nothing but it's not opulence and it doesn't sound like most (any?) of that made its way to Elon.

sneak 1y ago

It 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 ago
The 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 ago
  so 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 ago
    It 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.
vFunct 1y ago
SpaceX itself replicated the DC-X from the 90's. The reason the DC-X was cancelled was because of the economics. Reusable rockets are a solved problem, with only the economics of it a barrier (see Space Shuttle). SpaceX has to rely on their own investor funding for Starlink to remain a viable entity.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  The DC-X was stupid, dumb, insane, bunkers, and a waste of money and not replicable. "sure, let's put four RL-10 hydrogen engines on it! They are expensive and the worst possible for the low-altitude flights we are going to do so some sucker will believe we can do multi-stage reusable flights to orbit". "sure, we don't actually need to go to orbit anyway. That was always a dumb idea. Who said we ever wanted to do that? No, suborbital is really useful, we promise. And we are going to do it with a single stage (using hydrogen) cuz we are so smart and the future and everything!" "sure, let's build a specialized hydrogen tank in a stupid shape." "sure, let's give the whole single-stage low-altitude rocket a k00l shape that makes it more expensive." "People knowing it can't be done shouldn't interrupt people doing it wrong."
llm_nerd 1y ago
>If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. There is a 100% chance multiple countries/companies will have replicated it in the next decade. If SpaceX never existed, they likely would have achieved it at the same pace regardless. This is the same with EVs. If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same rise. There is a tendency to attribute the early movers with innovation in the inevitable, where we all stand on the shoulders of others and just reach a little higher. As to the rocket science misnomer, that's a space race hangover where an engineering role was extremely public and celebrated, but in actual reality "rocket science" is a mediocre field with miserable pay and high unemployment. As to how valuable it is, "insanely"? The world has a fairly finite launch need, such that SpaceX made a whole new business -- Starlink -- to make work for their capacity. Economically the space launch business is relatively minuscule.
- dagw 1y ago
  If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same rise. would have seen the same rise _eventually_. I know from a friend that worked R&D at a major car company that Tesla really lit a fire under then and 'forced' them to push their own EV experiments from proof of concepts to commercial product much faster than they where originally thinking about doing it.
  - llm_nerd 1y ago
    The EV ventures of most automakers are massive money losers (just as it always has been for Tesla outside of selling green credits and subsidies). But for sure they all rushed to get there not because the EVs themselves were valuable, but because of the insanity of the capital markets where Tesla is valued at a trillion dollars at a 200x P/E, while the rest of the market is at like a 7-14x ratio. Everyone wanted some of that irrational hype.
- jmpman 1y ago
  I question your EV take. Tesla proved a business model, the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth, and now on to the lowest cost per mile robotaxi. Simply knowing that a solution exists and is financially viable, is enough to motivate the competition.

pc86 1y ago

This comment has big "I could build a better SpaceX I just don't want to" vibes.

indoordin0saur 1y ago
If only my dad had an emerald mine then I'd be the billionaire rocket scientist CEO
- pc86 1y ago
  https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min... TLDR: It's nonsense.
  - relaxing 1y ago
    Funny how many words it takes to say Elon’s dad in fact own a stake in an emerald mine, invest in Elon’s business, and give Elon an incredibly privileged upbringing.
    - pc86 1y ago
      There's a lot of unanswered questions from the article which is seems anyone with even mediocre skills as a journalist should be willing and able to answer. It mentions the mine "collapsed" in 1989. Does that mean literally? Just financially? Was there an insurance payout? Did everyone lose their investment? Did Errol Musk own 1% or 90%? * In quoting another article, it does say: "Errol Musk, an engineer, owned a small percentage of an emerald mine and had a couple of good years before the mine went bust and wiped out his investment." Elon graduated from college less than 10 years later but says he was $100k in debt. Was he actually in debt? Did he spend years paying that off or did he (or someone else) pay it off shortly after in a lump sum or very quickly? His dad provided $20k of a $200k seed round for Zip2, was the rest also from friends and family or more institutional investors? Did his dad receive equity for that or was it a gift? Reading through the article again (and a little more closely than before) it doesn't seem Elon had "an incredibly privileged upbringing" but maybe that's a mix of good PR and this now being 40-some years ago? They're referred to as upper middle class but if that's all it takes to be "incredibly privileged" then 90% of the kids born to people reading HN are also incredibly privileged. Arnold's piece seems to contradict basically everything else in the article so I'm not sure what to make of it, but it also sounds like he made about $350k profit over the lifetime of his ownership in the mine? Certainly not nothing but it's not opulence and it doesn't sound like most (any?) of that made its way to Elon.