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SpaceX got so good that even test flights that go well aren't news anymore.

• tonyhart7 1y ago
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  • martin-t 1y ago
    Counterpoint: I dislike Musk because he's narcissist (subtypes: strongly communal, somewhat grandiose) but I don't wanna see spaceX fail. I just don't want abusive individuals in positions of power to have so much influence and to be given credit for the technical achievements of others.
    • misiti3780 1y ago
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      • King-Aaron 1y ago
        The person above you is not wrong. Objectively people who fawn over Musks wealth and achievements without commenting on his nefarious qualities and blatant illegal behaviour recently need a reality check.
        • misiti3780 1y ago
          you need to break some eggs to make an omelette. it's not a coincidence that he is landing skyscrapers while you're talking shit about him on HN.
          • toss1 1y ago
            Yes, you need to break some eggs to make an omelette, but you do not need to spend more than a quarter-Billion dollars to help elect an administration working to end democracy in order to build a new spacecraft. In fact the spacecraft development would likely go better without any political intervention at all; it is widely seen as a distraction, and rightly so.
            • misiti3780 1y ago
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              • deleted 1y ago
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              • toss1 1y ago
                Nice offtopic whataboutism tic you have there... The point was that it is and was completely unnecessary for the particular omlette of making new self-landing spacecraft to break the particular eggs of spending all that time and money on politics. They are two entirely different pursuits, negating the GP comment. As for Harris, you are comparing an exaggerated number for total campaign spend to Musk's $250-$400 million spending as a single donor to a campaign in which he was not running. Comparing apples-to-apples, the Trump and Harris campaigns spent comparable amounts [0], and that is officially, not counting the massive media coverage Trump obtains for free. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/c3613e1b-c15d-47b8-a502-400c4114c09e https://www.ft.com/content/c3613e1b-c15d-47b8-a502-400c4114c...
                • King-Aaron 1y ago
                  It should be noted also, that to normal people, the answer is yes - any politician wasting taxpayer money is a huge problem. It is absurd when people bring up the whataboutism as if everyone is as politically biased as they themselves are.
                  • misiti3780 1y ago
                    I'm not politically biased. I'm an independent and didn't like either candidate in 2024
                • misiti3780 1y ago
                  Elon said the reason he spent that money was because he thought a Harris presidency would be a disaster for the country, worse than a 2nd Trump presidency. You may not agree with it, but that doesn't make it "nefarious" and "blatantly illegal." I actually don't particularly like Elon and I don't like Trump or Harris and didn't vote for either. I also have no issues pointing out his accomplishments. I was pointing out that every time SpaceX or Tesla do something cool, people like you show up and have to make it political, which is super annoying and possibly a violation of the HN guidelines.
          • King-Aaron 1y ago
            Does it need to be a competition in your eyes? Is allowing root-level access to the nations critical government infrastructure for his cronies and removing funding for organisations investigating his companies for wrongdoing the necessary broken eggs to land a flying skyscraper? I don't understand why 'the ends justify the means' is a good answer.
            • misiti3780 1y ago
              "root-level access to the nations critical government infrastructure" - link to what you are referring to please?
              • King-Aaron 1y ago
                I am sure you haven't been living under a rock during the DOGE debacle.
        • dotnet00 1y ago
          Not every mention of Musk needs to be accompanied by a disclaimer of not supporting his idiotic self-defeating politics. This isn't reddit. Speaking of politics though, it was a bit jarring to see the "USA! USA!" chanting. I get the intent (disliking the government doesn't mean disliking America), but it's kind of awkward to see a large crowd of immigrants doing it as the admin their boss supports is pretty blatantly harassing immigrants regardless of citizenship.
          • misiti3780 1y ago
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            • potato3732842 1y ago
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              • firesteelrain 1y ago
                Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit It’s in the HN guidelines
                • potato3732842 1y ago
                  What part of "hn isn't becoming reddit it's always a fixed distance from it" was unclear? JFC.
            • firesteelrain 1y ago
              “ Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. ” Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
              • misiti3780 1y ago
                sorry :) wont do it again.
    • dotnet00 1y ago
      He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Books documenting SpaceX's early days make it pretty clear that Musk had a pretty significant role in putting in place the kind of thinking that has allowed SpaceX to blow open the commercial space market. Both also have at least some understanding of what they're paying for considering the tours and testimony from former employees. They also frequently thank the employees for their successes.
      • gtowey 1y ago
        > He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. As much as I love space exploration, I think it's actually a problem that so few people get to decide where so much money goes. Imagine if instead we as a society could put it towards better education, healthcare, public transportation so that the downstream effect is a society with many more aerospace engineers and astrophysicist, who dont have to instead focus on working corporate jobs just to afford housing. We might foster a society where space exploration is an ongoing societal goal instead of a playground for the elite.
        • DoesntMatter22 1y ago
          We put far more money into healthcare and education, by a literal order of magnitude. US spends 1.75 trillion on education per year, and 2.12 trillion on healthcare. People make it out like we aren't putting a ton of money into this stuff when those are literally are two biggest expenses. Space X is a drop in the bucket compared to that.
        • dotnet00 1y ago
          I would love such a society, but I think the way space funding has been in most parts of the world shows that most people are just not good judges of what is and is not worth spending on. It seems very few people actually understand the importance of funding R&D that isn't directly improving their life, such that it takes some stubborn rich people to actually show that something is worth doing. Kind of like other countries all working on Falcon and Starship inspired rockets after seeing that the concepts can work. As other examples, we have particle accelerators (everyone knows about the colliders like LHC and assumes they're luxury projects with no relevance to improving lives, yet they led to the development and side-by-side refinement of synchrotron light sources, which are very important for modern science) and medical tech like what led up to mRNA vaccines and Ozempic. I would say we need a society that trusts experts and also holds said experts accountable, but then again, most of SpaceX's founding employees were not conventional aerospace experts, which was part of why they were able to question a lot of the corrupt/inefficient practices that traditional aerospace people dismissed as being standard and necessary practice.
  • didibus 1y ago
    The thing Elon does well I feel, is he takes real experts with know-how and talent, and puts them on the cool project they want to work on and just lets them cook. It sounds like a no-brainer management strategy, but it's surprisingly rare in practice. People will lend on random teams and projects, projects won't try to push any envelope but just be the next thing marketing or product came up with to boost some metrics or acquire some new customer, etc. Now I might be entirely wrong as I never worked at one of his companies, but it's the impression I get and most of his success, Tesla and SpaceX, I think he really managed to snatch the experts away from where they worked because of that. At least I think this holds for bootstrapping. And then that top talent left, and now since the major innovations have already landed, probably you can just churn out grunt out-of-schoolers to iterate and keep the lights on.
    • DoesntMatter22 1y ago
      That and the other thing I think he does that's just as important is go get things unstuck. When there is bureaucracy and managers getting in the way he gets it through. Very under appreciated IMO.
    • panick21_ 1y ago
      This isn't really the case. For Falcon 1 he hired a bunch experts but a pretty small handful. Then he hired a lot of really young hungry engineers. And its also hard to say that 'top talent left'. Because arguable some of the achievements after some of those people left is bigger then before. Tom Mueller for example build the Merlin engine, but claims to be more proud of the team he build that then went on to build Raptor. So clearly even while some talented people left, many others joined. SpaceX is not 'iterating and keeping the lights on' they are always going for something harder in the next iteration.
      • didibus 1y ago
        Well, I don't mean it's not talented people that join, I'd assume it's all top grade students. But the initial best-in-class experts in the field I mean. I agree with a small handful, I think that's also necessary. A select few best in class experts is ideal, because too many and they don't have room to lead and start stepping on each other and entering debates and so on. You take best in class experts in the field, give them a team of top tier workers under them that can follow and deliver. In turn they learn from the best. I think for Starship and Starlink he followed the same playbook though. He brought in best in class specialists to bootstrap them.
  • gtowey 1y ago
    As one of the aforementioned, yes I don't mind seeing his projects blow up. I'm sure Starship will make it to orbit, but I'm betting that the claim of 100 tons to orbit is where it will miss the mark. And that is the crux of the issue IMO -- because getting the new rocket engines to be reliable enough can always be accomplished by dialing back on its efficiency and overall thrust capabilities. I'm waiting to see if they will be able to deliver on its claims.
  • sixothree 1y ago
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    • Sparyjerry 1y ago
      He's not a nazi though. It's literally only those on the opposite political spectrum saying that. He waved and literally described the motion in words as he was doing it.
      • Rebelgecko 1y ago
        I believe the woman who gave him his Auschwitz tour leans politically conservative and yet...
      • sixothree 1y ago
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        • dzhiurgis 1y ago
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        • mlindner 1y ago
          That's a completely unfair thing to say. It's a meme at this point even that if you elevate your arm upwards at any angle between 90 and 180 you're automatically treated as having made a nazi salute. What matters is the context around it, as has always been the case. And the context is not that of a nazi salute. The people who insist on it being a nazi salute are just disingenuous people pushing an angle for their own virtue signalling. It's tiresome.
          • sixothree 1y ago
            You're literally just wrong. It's not a meme "at this point". It's _always_ been a thing people recognize as a nazi salute. Plus the context surrounding Elon is certainly not supporting your argument. Actual truth" conspiracy theory, George Soros comments, "DEI must die", transgender comments, amplification of racism and harassment.
  • ericcumbee 1y ago
    the people that hate musk are going to find something wrong with it "The Ship blew up on landing" and the musk lovers will do the opposite when things actually go wrong.
    • spwa4 1y ago
      And the many more people he fired through DOGE? What will they do and how justified is that?
• bigyabai 1y ago
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  • vardump 1y ago
    Do you have some insider information how SpaceX is managed?
    • danpalmer 1y ago
      A bunch of info came out a few years ago. Shotwell is widely known to be effective and a great leader, and to insulate most people at SpaceX from Musk. She's the reason the Falcon program works so well. However things changed with Starlink, as it was an org controlled by a Musk loyalist and apparently got a lot of control very quickly internally. They prioritised loyalty over experience and capability and forced out some long term SpaceX folks who had made Falcon a success. Starlink was mostly ex Tesla and Boring people at the beginning I think. I think Starship is somewhere in the middle. It started as a Musk hobby project but has now got contracts and is the future of the company so Shotwell is involved.
      • stinkbeetle 1y ago
        > A bunch of info came out a few years ago. Shotwell is widely known to be effective and a great leader, and to insulate most people at SpaceX from Musk. > She's the reason the Falcon program works so well. A bunch of rumors and hearsay is an unreasonable basis for making these kinds of claims with such confidence. The reality is the public does not know much about how Musk's companies and projects are run, and most people are emotionally ill equipped to have a rational discussion about it no matter how much we know of it.
        • bigyabai 1y ago
          This opinion is always so funny to me. Sometimes HN is afraid to judge someone on-grounds, other times they're afraid to draw conclusions that might make them look bad. Apple: "Nobody knows exactly how it's ran, but it's preeminently clear that Steve Jobs was a true MBA and had an almost perfect track record." Tesla: "Nobody knows exactly how it's ran, but we can say for sure it's probably not the social media edgelord/ketamine addict doing a bang-up job."