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SES-10 Mission

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Re: SES-10 Mission

#191

Post by throwaway74658 »

eliaspro wrote: post #65
braymundo wrote: post #44

Fantastic!!! Being able to watch a reusable rocket land perfecty, from my mobile phone while casting to a TV, over a computer network​, while located in southern Brazil makes me SO PROUD to be human!

It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable - the complexity behind each and every component, process, research and engineering making this possible - and then start bitching about the new Emoji set on their smartphone

All due respect I find little evidence among these posts that people on HN really understands what's going on nor that they can put it in context of the history, current developments or future of the field. Between the tangible nature of launching things into space and the hype of the company, every launch becomes amazing. Which is of course okay, it's good to be excited about things.

But don't come dragging with how "people don't understand" when the majority of people here spend much of their time much closer to pushing Emojis than engineering rockets. Next week there's will be about as much amazement here for the world changing potential Amazon changing their packaging to a different colour.

"People" will realize that it's amazing when they see the results, but they will also ask the obvious questions like "How many times can you reuse a rocket?", "How much cheaper will it be to put things in space?", "Is that a good thing, a bad thing or both?" i.e. the interesting parts that remain unanswered. At least if there's still decent documentaries around and not only "top 10 extreme mega things".

Re: SES-10 Mission

#192

Post by sqeaky »

afterburner wrote: post #189
eliaspro wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable - the complexity behind each and every component, process, research and engineering making this possible - and then start bitching about the new Emoji set on their smartphone

Recycling a rocket isn't anywhere near as interesting as building the first rocket. Rockets are oooold technology; the rest is automated control systems, whose most interesting breakthroughs came when enabling oddities like stealth planes to fly when they should tumble out of the sky under purely human control. In short, this is more an iteration than a breakthrough. Not to take away from the effort of course.

It is an iteration than it seems many experts thought impossible.

For everyone else's benefit the F-117 was that stealth airplane, it was like trying to fly bricks in the shape of an airplane and needed constant computer adjustments because it wasn't very aerodynamically stable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk

Re: SES-10 Mission

#193

Post by kirrent »

acover wrote: post #174
nickik wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can not compare all launches. Most of these launches are not competitive. SpaceX mostly competes with Arianspace for the truly commercial launches. SpaceX has captured around 50% of that market and the share is increasing. ULA competes mostly on the Air Force launches. They still have capabilities that SpaceX does not have (large fairings) and some that SpaceX will not have for a long time (vertical integration).…

> plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers Source? Wasn't ULA the only provider for years as Boeing and Lockheed argued it would be cheaper to merge.

The EELV program doesn't actually require two different providers to guarantee access to space. It requires two different families of launch vehicles. ULA had the Atlas V and Delta IV families.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#194

Post by grondilu »

andrewchambers wrote: post #185
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.

If people can get rich from colonizing Mars, it will be attempted. I don't think there is any financial incentive for mt Everest however. Interplanetary trade will be a huge business. Think of the old east India trading companies only bigger.

> Think of the old east India trading companies only bigger.

There is no spice on mars. Even if there was, it would not make sense to transport it to Earth[1]. It's not clear what would be the business model. The only thing I see is tourism : hotels, casinos, etc. So basically like Las Vegas, but on mars. Just as in Futurama [2].

Could be cool, but probably not exactly the romantic image Musk's supporters might have in mind.

1. "Well, I think any natural resource extraction on Mars would be - the output would be for Mars. It definitely wouldn't make sense to transport Mars stuff 200 million miles back to Earth. Honestly, if you had like crack-cocaine on Mars, in like prepackaged pallets, it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here. It's be good times for the Martians, but not back here. Resources would be for a colony to use." http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroast...

2. http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Mars_Vegas

Re: SES-10 Mission

#195

Post by greglindahl »

kirrent wrote: post #193
acover wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers Source? Wasn't ULA the only provider for years as Boeing and Lockheed argued it would be cheaper to merge.

The EELV program doesn't actually require two different providers to guarantee access to space. It requires two different families of launch vehicles. ULA had the Atlas V and Delta IV families.

... and Delta IV Medium is being retired, because it's expensive and no longer needed as the second medium launch vehicle.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#196

Post by sqeaky »

grondilu wrote: post #122
hayd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help thinking that those people who get excited > about building a city on mars are completely delusional. That's what they once said about walking on the moon.

Well, there is probably a reason why nobody thought it was worth doing it again ever since. More seriously though, just because many projects were wrongly considered foolish in the past, does not mean one can not point at a new one and call it foolish. History tends to remember those who turned out to be brilliant, and forget all those who genuinely were foolish. The example I like is Franz Reichelt [1]. People aroun…

Was he really foolish or just ahead of his time and willing to brave the risks?

OK, that one guy was foolish he should have started small and worked his way up. Perhaps a death defying leap onto a mattress, would have been better. But there are plenty of others who were close to a variety of successes and them not succeeding doesn't mean they were foolish.

There must have been hundreds or thousands of potential aviators, but we remember the brothers at Kittyhawk because of their success. This doesn't make the others fools, likely they were successful in some of their other plans or iterated on designs more like the flyer afterwards. From all of their perspectives as long as they minimized danger, unlike Franz, they would live to see another day and keep attempting High risk High reward situations.

This is much the same with startups today. Plenty made their fortunes in tech startups and while history might call all but a few failures, many are relaxing with their millions or even just comfortable enjoying their backup plan of a high tech job and settling down with a family.

EDIT - Grammar, wording and spelling.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#197

Post by platypii »

grondilu wrote: post #122
hayd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help thinking that those people who get excited > about building a city on mars are completely delusional. That's what they once said about walking on the moon.

Well, there is probably a reason why nobody thought it was worth doing it again ever since. More seriously though, just because many projects were wrongly considered foolish in the past, does not mean one can not point at a new one and call it foolish. History tends to remember those who turned out to be brilliant, and forget all those who genuinely were foolish. The example I like is Franz Reichelt [1]. People aroun…

Franz Reichelt clearly failed in his approach, but his idea was not crazy -- today we have wingsuits that can fly.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#198

Post by annon »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #180
jacquesm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ok with aiming high and en-passant solving cheap access to orbit. Anything else is gravy, imagine if that dream did not exist this whole saga would not have happened. Dreams are good, they allow people to expend energy chasing that dream and the spin-offs from that may be worth as much or more to humanity than the original dream, even if we may not be able to figure out what path that might take today. I'm certai…

It's a bit disappointing to me that poverty, human trafficking, addiction, habitat destruxtion, cultural erasure, genocide, torture, extinction, etc aren't very powerful motivators for such people. I feel such pressure to use our new skills to solve these problems, but I know 10 years ago they were a combination of invisible/impossible to me. If I hadn't been aggressively pushed by smart feminists to examine my life…

Do you have an equation for easing violence? There is an equation that tells us how to get to mars - we only need to design a machine that meets the requirements.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#199

Post by ufmace »

Amazing! I genuinely think that this is a bigger deal than the moon landings.

The moon landings were pretty awesome in their own way, but at the end of the day, with the way they were done, it was basically a stunt. None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier.

This paves the way for the costs of space flight to be cut in half, or even a little further. This has the potential to set off an exponential chain of growth of space travel. The further they cut prices, the more customers and launches there are. The more customers there are, the more profit they make, to be plowed back into better, more reliable, and more reusable rockets. And the more incentive their competitors have to come up with their own reusable rockets. The more reusable they are, the further they can bring prices down. Every step reinforces the next, and in 30-50 years, the price of a launch may well be a tenth of what it is today. Maybe closer to a hundredth.

What will we build when access to space costs 1% of what it does today? Maybe a huge space station, or a moon colony, or asteroid mining, or all of the above. The more traffic we have to space, the more infrastructure we build, and the cheaper and more reliable it all gets. Off-world colonies might become about as practical as a trip to and colony in Antarctica is today - still tough and hazardous, but well within the budget and vision of any developed nation. This is freakin' awesome for the future!

Re: SES-10 Mission

#200

Post by sidcool »

ufmace wrote: post #199

Amazing! I genuinely think that this is a bigger deal than the moon landings. The moon landings were pretty awesome in their own way, but at the end of the day, with the way they were done, it was basically a stunt. None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier. This paves the way for the costs of space flight to be cut in half, or even…

"A small thrust for a rocket, a big boost for mankind"

I am super happy for this achievement.

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