Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SES-10 Mission

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 368 posts

Re: SES-10 Mission

#241

Post by sixQuarks »

ams6110 wrote: post #239
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…

The space program of the 1960s, culminating with the moon landings, seems like a far greater achievement to me than what SpaceX is doing, adjusted for the state of the art.

Nasa was spending close to 5% of the federal budget back then, about $35-40 billion per year in today's dollars. The space program cost hundreds of billions.

spaceX has done it by raising less than $1.5 billion total

Re: SES-10 Mission

#243

Post by grondilu »

issa wrote: post #235
grondilu wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I don't like is that Musk stated that he expects that colonization project to be a public-private partnership. That means that the government will put money into it, and I'm not OK with the State investing in what is to me nothing but an extraordinarily exotic real-estate project. Going to mars for science is ok. Going there and build insanely expensive accommodations, just for the sake of living there, is…

I think the stated reason for building a sustainable city on Mars--to ensure that a disaster on Earth doesn't end the species--is a damned good one. The science and other technology that will come as a result of the colonization is just bonus.

> I think the stated reason for building a sustainable city on Mars--to ensure that a disaster on Earth doesn't end the species--is a damned good one.

It's stupid. If we can live on mars, we can live on Earth no matter what happens to it. I don't see anything that could turn Earth into worse a place to live than mars.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#244

Post by rtkwe »

sixQuarks wrote: post #241
ams6110 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The space program of the 1960s, culminating with the moon landings, seems like a far greater achievement to me than what SpaceX is doing, adjusted for the state of the art.

Nasa was spending close to 5% of the federal budget back then, about $35-40 billion per year in today's dollars. The space program cost hundreds of billions. spaceX has done it by raising less than $1.5 billion total

It helps drive the costs down when you're not inventing the entire field basically from scratch. Not saying what they've accomplished isn't impressive but it's very much a 'standing on the soldiers of giants' situation.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#245

Post by Joeri »

Cyph0n wrote: post #78
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

And when, say, an amazing archeological artifact is uncovered, we probably won't appreciate the complexity that went into that, and the folks at ArcheologistNews will be pissed. There are so many fields and so many complex processes. I can assure you that any one of: the world of power transmission, or offshore oil drilling rigs, or commercial shipping, or chemical process design and optimization, or tons of other st…

For me one of the amazing miracles is the supermarket. The logistics to get all those products there in time year round are astounding. A supermarket can only exist because of a planet-wide system of incredible complexity.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#246

Post by Joeri »

gallerdude wrote: post #100
Cyph0n wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when, say, an amazing archeological artifact is uncovered, we probably won't appreciate the complexity that went into that, and the folks at ArcheologistNews will be pissed. There are so many fields and so many complex processes. I can assure you that any one of: the world of power transmission, or offshore oil drilling rigs, or commercial shipping, or chemical process design and optimization, or tons of other st…

I've always pondered that I'd love to read in on these other fields, see what they find interesting and new.

You should read the pleasures and sorrows of work by alain de botton. He does a deep dive in several industries to understand what drives the people there.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#247

Post by Rebelgecko »

quotemstr wrote: post #231
jacquesm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not talking about cheaper, they are talking about more reliable.

Well, you can combine cheapness and reliability by looking at total cost after launch insurance.

That's not really a fair comparison. The amount of money you lose if something bad happens is more than just the cost of replacing your payload (which is what insurance covers)

Re: SES-10 Mission

#248

Post by doikor »

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…

Everything today is better then yesterday and tomorrow everything will be better then today (on average on a global a scale for all the issues you pointed out). Progress is being made all the time. But the news/media mostly just reports the failings/problems/issues (sells better) so it feels like everything is getting worse.

(There are some looming issues on the horizon like climate change etc. which might change this course in the future.)

Re: SES-10 Mission

#249

Post by narrator »

Makes up for the rocket they lost. Actually, now they're ahead if you count the insurance payout. People should stop saying we need to spend X trillions to get to Mars. They should instead say we can't get to Mars until technology is good enough that it will cost less than X billions or even millions.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#250

Post by ykl »

rtkwe wrote: post #244
sixQuarks wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nasa was spending close to 5% of the federal budget back then, about $35-40 billion per year in today's dollars. The space program cost hundreds of billions. spaceX has done it by raising less than $1.5 billion total

It helps drive the costs down when you're not inventing the entire field basically from scratch. Not saying what they've accomplished isn't impressive but it's very much a 'standing on the soldiers of giants' situation.

*shoulders of giants. :)
Post reply on HN