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Elon Musk Wants SpaceX to Replace Russia as NASA's Space Station Transport
- jotm 13y agoI thought this was always the plan... Why pay a foreign (and not so friendly) country when a private company can do it cheaper, faster and better (and you have much more influence over it)?
- valarauca1 13y agoThe number of titles that follow the format, "Elon Musk wants X" I think are starting to warrant a browser extension that replaces them with "No Mr. Bond Elon Musk wants the World" or something similar.
- reuwsaat 13y agoI was just thinking something along the same line! If you look at him early in his career he was much more of an introvert. He appears to play to the press to increase the exposure of his companies which have missions in which he truly believes. He's said something to the same effect. As someone who believes in the missions of the companies he's help found and run, I'll excuse this annoyance. But yes, agreed, enormous annoyance.
- larrydag 13y agoReading more into the article Elon's SpaceX has a genuine argument. The US Administration specifically put certain Russian dignitaries (some of which are part of Russia's space program) on the sanctions list for Russia's involvement in Ukraine. SpaceX brought it up with the Federal courts which the US Administration should have already enforced. Now on the flip side it seems that SpaceX is putting their relationship with NASA as a priority. You would think they would want Russia as a client in the future as well but I think that will never happen now.
- djcapelis 13y agoMusk and Russia burnt bridges a long while back when they screwed him and made fun of him when he was trying to first start doing space. He got fed up and in sentiment along the lines of "fuck you, I'll do it myself" decided to go make his own rockets instead. I strongly doubt he is interested in being polite to Russian rocket industry.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoSomeone else posted the article link a few days ago on HN, but it went like so: Elon: I'm here for 3 ICBMs. The price is $21 million, correct? Russians: No, the price is now $21 million for 1 ICBM. You don't have that kind of money? You can't play with the big boys. Elon: on the plane ride home How hard can it be to build a rocket? The Russians also had a salvage tug off the Space Coast leading up to the CR3 resupply mission (it was the most powerful salvage tug in the world at its commissioning). Take that for what its worth.
- reuwsaat 13y agoElon's priority is to keep SpaceX healthy as a business and lay the regulatory framework required so that human life can become multi-planetary. Simple as that.
- XorNot 13y agoRussia isn't going to be in a position to afford to launch it's own satellites for a good long while in the future, and no one not in Russia would want to help them given the way they're currently acting as a government. Plenty more money from pretty much anywhere else in the world to be had in terms of payloads, but in a practical sense I suspect it's a lot easier to launch US-based payloads then ones from overseas - shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
- jon-wood 13y ago> Shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy. While I certainly don't disagree, we're talking about a company who's business is shipping sensitive satellites into orbit, so they're probably better positioned to know how to undertake shipping them round the world than most people!
- sschueller 13y agoShould just replace his name with Hugo Drax [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax
- osipov 13y ago...and conversion of HN into 4chan is complete
- Pxtl 13y agoI was thinking Hank Scorpio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEsjd1WZuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEsjd1WZuY
- pepon 13y agoI was thinking about the classical "My butt" replacement. Like in https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt
- valarauca1 13y agoI use this myself, that's what I was hoping for.
- bnferguson 13y agoBe careful if you use the GitHub "Web Flow" (edit button on files on GitHub) and this Extension. Saw one commit where someone was editing a readme to make some small correction. Well, the extension went ahead and replaced all the instances of "the cloud" with "my butt" along side his changes. He didn't notice, and it was amazing.
- batmansbelt 13y agoHa! I love that one. Good pop culture reference!
- wwwwwwwwww 13y agoI'll get around to that right after I make the one that changes all instances of "Hacker" to "Rockstar" on HN and in the hiring threads.
- valarauca1 13y agoActually a generic addon that let you swap any 2 parses. Because I really want something that replaces, "Full Stack Engineer" with "Knows python AND java-script". Because every time I hear that parse I cringe, 75% of the Linux Stack is C, how is a full stack engineer skating by without knowing it?!
- bayesianhorse 13y agoYou can replace "Elon Musk wants X" to "Elon Musk will achieve X" ...
- mabbo 13y agoAlso, Pepsi wishes to replace Coke at McDonald's.
- pitnips 13y agoMore like Boeing wants to replace Airbus (if US airlines strictly used Airbus) in the US.
- reuwsaat 13y agoMore like Google wants to replace Halliburton.
- reuwsaat 13y agoConfused about downvote? SpaceX is a start-up in Silicon Valley. Google is a start-up in Silicon Valley. Russia is providing a commercial service in an established industry with huge start-up costs to the US Governement. Halliburton is providing a commercial service in an established industry with huge start-up costs to the US Governement. SpaceX has a founder whose background is not in this industry. Google has founders whose backgrounds are not in the business of providing Government services. Russia is very much in the business of providing government services. Halliburton is very much in the business of providing government services. Seems like a solid analogy.
- kelseyfrancis 13y ago>SpaceX is a start-up in Silicon Valley. SpaceX is based in Los Angeles.
- muyuu 13y agoIf Airbus was a nation with a rogue government.
- waps 13y agoNow if we could only get Airbus to, say, invade France, my investment in Boeing would start paying off.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoThis is already in the cards via the commercial crew development process. SpaceX has already flown a pressurized capsule and returned it safely to Earth several times, they are currently working on a manned capsule which will be one of the most capable manned spacecraft in quite some time. And it will almost certainly be used to ferry US crew to the ISS. However, a lot of people don't realize that the commercial crew program is not fully funded by congress. There's a little bit of funding for developing certain novel aspects of manned spacecraft, which has been doled out to the current commercial crew hopefuls (SpaceX, Boeing, and SNC). But, even if any or all of those companies deliver a capable manned spacecraft there's no guarantee whatsoever that there will be money available for a contract. One of the important things that Musk is doing here is drawing attention to that fact.
- sidcool 13y agoIf it was anyone else, I would have been sceptical, but it's Elon Musk.
- osipov 13y agohe is constantly lionized on HN but what did he personally accomplish besides getting acquired by PayPal?
- ykl 13y agoHe built Tesla Motors and SpaceX, for a start.
- jerf 13y agoAnd I'd further observe in context that SpaceX has already delivered to the Space Station, in rockets designed to carry humans that simply haven't been certified and trusted by experience yet, as opposed to rockets that are fundamentally incapable of carrying humans for some reason. It's essentially impossible to have any more credibility here without actually having delivered astronauts to the space station, which is nearly the only step remaining.
- sidcool 13y agoI deeply respect the man for his vision. I watched a documentary on him. In 2008, he was close to bankruptcy. He had a fleet of Tesla cars that had to be recalled due to faults. SpaceX had had three failed launches and he had no money to pour in. What did he do? He thought of trying for the fourth and final time. It worked!! In his own words, Elon said with tears in his eyes, that if the fourth launch had failed, he would have been broke. The next day he got a call from NASA. That saved SpaceX. I know hero worship is not very healthy, but can't help but marvel at Elon's vision.
- gutnor 13y agoNo need to be skeptical - that's logical, why use a foreign country as your main provider, especially a country you are not always in agreement with. The larger question though is if that is beneficial for the market as a whole. The idea of NASA not doing stuff internally is to benefit from the cost efficiency of the market. If NASA uses mainly SpaceX, they run the risk of creating a Halliburton like symbiosis and in that case you wonder why they don't do stuff internally rather than giving a share of taxpayer money to private shareholder and destroying the whole market by over-favoring one company in particular.
- higherpurpose 13y ago> Musk, also the founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors (TSLA), established SpaceX in 2002 as part of his broader mission to make other planets habitable by humans. That reads like something you'd see in history books 100 years from now, after we've already inhabited other planets.
- eiji 13y agoThe russian space program and their entanglement with NASA is something I would really like to keep going forward. I think I understand the other factors, but this helps to keep US politics in check, even if just by a tiny bit.
- JPKab 13y agoIf you think that anything space related has pull on US politics, you are wrong. Our current congress would cut NASA's funding in a heartbeat if it remotely conflicted with any of their interests.
- avelis 13y agoThis is unfortunately true per Neil Degrasse Tyson's (NDT) speech in front of Congress to increase NASA's federal budget. It currently stands at 0.48% of the Federal Budget. There is a great youtube video highlighted NDT's points on this. I believe the video was around the initiative http://www.penny4nasa.org http://www.penny4nasa.org
- yincrash 13y agoSanctions are worthless as a chess move if we're willing to still give them tons of money through things like NASA.
- bayesianhorse 13y agoThe only thing keeping US politics "in check" is US citizens. So far, I'd rather have a world "slightly dominated" by the US rather than by the Chinese or Russians...
- jrjr 13y agoI agree the entanglement is a good thing, but our dependence on them might have been contributory to their boldness on Ukraine, deterrence is still needed. Cooperation and interdependence prevents these events.
- Zenst 13y agoNot sure if will replace just yet as the industry has a very robust tried and tested approach and rightly so when safety is concerned. Yes the Russian set-up is older than Windows XP, but they keep on updating and patching it. When you view it like that, it works. Now that all said, yes some competition is needed and SpaceX can only be a good thing. But even if the better solution on many levels, including politics. It is still a very young platform that will take a few a bit more time to get that level of not only knowing that it works. But also knowing what can go wrong. It is often in engineering better to have a part that you know exactly how it will fail than a better part that you do not know exactly how it will fail. That is what separates safely engineering design in contrast to IT people who are more conditioned to new is better mentality. So when you read about some 8 bit system running on a bit of kit that your dad would of deemed old, it is not because the latest is better, it is because it just works and all possible fault outcomes have been worked out fully.