6 ms·

SpaceX plans to become a mobile carrier

10 points by BlueBerry2001 2mo ago

rvz 2mo ago
You may not want to hear this but SpaceX is the next Google.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  Between the financials on one side, vs. graveyard, innovation by buying startups, dropping "don't be evil", and ads everywhere on the other, I don't know if you're suggesting this is good or bad.
  - rvz 2mo ago
    Both Google and SpaceX have a near monopoly in the services that they operate that have high demand.
    - ben_w 2mo ago
      > services that they operate that have high demand. "high" doing heavy lifting there, I think. SpaceX has a lot of demand for rocketry… from itself, in the form of Starlink. Starlink has segments where it's a near monopoly but those segments are low-demand, and segments where it's high demand but those segments aren't a monopoly. Outside Starlink, there's not a particularly vast mass of stuff people want to launch right now.
- Zigurd 2mo ago
  You mean Theranos, right?
  - rvz 2mo ago
    Care to explain what investment fraud SpaceX just committed?
    - Zigurd 2mo ago
      Starship has as much chance of working to spec as the Theranos machine. Except the scam is three orders of magnitude or more larger. But if you take a step back and ignore the hype, the rocket is way too big for orbital delivery of payloads, and there is a very real likelihood that it will never get beyond low Earth orbit. It will work any day now was exactly Elizabeth Holmes's pitch.
      - jfengel 2mo ago
        That seems an odd comparison. Theranos was complete vaporware. You've seen Starship; it goes into space and comes down in a controlled fashion. Maybe it won't work out; they've certainly had a lot of problems. But why compare it to something that didn't exist at all?
        Zigurd 2mo ago
        The Theranos machine actually did run blood tests. But only a very limited number of blood tests can be run on a finger prick sample due to limitations on the volume collected, contamination, etc. In other words it was a wild ass idea from an entrepreneur who lacked knowledge of how blood tests actually work. That's not too dissimilar.
      - ben_w 2mo ago
        > Starship has as much chance of working to spec as the Theranos machine. Don't get me wrong, I'm skeptical about SpaceX's business model (I really must make more time to work on that blog post about orbital compute…), but no, that's just plain wrong. And I agree with you there's a real risk about going past LEO: between the booster still not landing reliably, and the team being still so lacking in confidence that after all this time the orbits still have not been circularised, there's a decent risk LEO is all it is good for. But even in expendable mode, where it's not going to be any good at all for the Moon or Mars, this is still a cheap LEO solution. And so far, Starship has actually been to space and back. It's taken so many test flights and cost so much during development (so far) that I think it compares mediocrely to the Soviet N1, and the US Saturn V and Space Shuttle, but that's a huge improvement over Theranos. Now, it may fail for unrelated reasons (spoiler from blog draft: data centres should not be in space), but the going-to-space part of SpaceX seems reasonably sound.
mapping365 2mo ago
Surely this justifies the trillion dollar valuation.
jaggs 2mo ago
I hear they're also planning on opening an artisan Italian food truck on the dark side of the moon to capture an early slice of all that anticipated Mars traffic. Should be rad.
ai_critic 2mo ago
The incredibly obvious play here is teleoperation and low-latency robotics, and then selling that capacity to whoever handles the bot hardware. It remains to be seen if public investors are as ambitious as the engineers.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  > It remains to be seen if public investors are as ambitious as the engineers. And what politicians do when "Damn immigrants coming here taking our jobs" turns into "Damn remote workers, staying right where we insisted they stay, still taking our jobs"

10 points by BlueBerry2001 2mo ago

rvz 2mo ago

You may not want to hear this but SpaceX is the next Google.

ben_w 2mo ago
Between the financials on one side, vs. graveyard, innovation by buying startups, dropping "don't be evil", and ads everywhere on the other, I don't know if you're suggesting this is good or bad.
- rvz 2mo ago
  Both Google and SpaceX have a near monopoly in the services that they operate that have high demand.
  - ben_w 2mo ago
    > services that they operate that have high demand. "high" doing heavy lifting there, I think. SpaceX has a lot of demand for rocketry… from itself, in the form of Starlink. Starlink has segments where it's a near monopoly but those segments are low-demand, and segments where it's high demand but those segments aren't a monopoly. Outside Starlink, there's not a particularly vast mass of stuff people want to launch right now.
Zigurd 2mo ago
You mean Theranos, right?
- rvz 2mo ago
  Care to explain what investment fraud SpaceX just committed?
  - Zigurd 2mo ago
    Starship has as much chance of working to spec as the Theranos machine. Except the scam is three orders of magnitude or more larger. But if you take a step back and ignore the hype, the rocket is way too big for orbital delivery of payloads, and there is a very real likelihood that it will never get beyond low Earth orbit. It will work any day now was exactly Elizabeth Holmes's pitch.
    - jfengel 2mo ago
      That seems an odd comparison. Theranos was complete vaporware. You've seen Starship; it goes into space and comes down in a controlled fashion. Maybe it won't work out; they've certainly had a lot of problems. But why compare it to something that didn't exist at all?
      - Zigurd 2mo ago
        The Theranos machine actually did run blood tests. But only a very limited number of blood tests can be run on a finger prick sample due to limitations on the volume collected, contamination, etc. In other words it was a wild ass idea from an entrepreneur who lacked knowledge of how blood tests actually work. That's not too dissimilar.
    - ben_w 2mo ago
      > Starship has as much chance of working to spec as the Theranos machine. Don't get me wrong, I'm skeptical about SpaceX's business model (I really must make more time to work on that blog post about orbital compute…), but no, that's just plain wrong. And I agree with you there's a real risk about going past LEO: between the booster still not landing reliably, and the team being still so lacking in confidence that after all this time the orbits still have not been circularised, there's a decent risk LEO is all it is good for. But even in expendable mode, where it's not going to be any good at all for the Moon or Mars, this is still a cheap LEO solution. And so far, Starship has actually been to space and back. It's taken so many test flights and cost so much during development (so far) that I think it compares mediocrely to the Soviet N1, and the US Saturn V and Space Shuttle, but that's a huge improvement over Theranos. Now, it may fail for unrelated reasons (spoiler from blog draft: data centres should not be in space), but the going-to-space part of SpaceX seems reasonably sound.

mapping365 2mo ago

Surely this justifies the trillion dollar valuation.

jaggs 2mo ago

I hear they're also planning on opening an artisan Italian food truck on the dark side of the moon to capture an early slice of all that anticipated Mars traffic. Should be rad.

ai_critic 2mo ago

The incredibly obvious play here is teleoperation and low-latency robotics, and then selling that capacity to whoever handles the bot hardware. It remains to be seen if public investors are as ambitious as the engineers.

ben_w 2mo ago
> It remains to be seen if public investors are as ambitious as the engineers. And what politicians do when "Damn immigrants coming here taking our jobs" turns into "Damn remote workers, staying right where we insisted they stay, still taking our jobs"