291–300 of 368 posts
For nostalgia's sake, here's Elon's speech to employees after the first successful launch of Falcon 1 (flight 4), in 2008 at Kwajalein Atoll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FQhtMrUQlE&t=32m30s (speech begins at 32:30, in case link doesn't work)
Why does this video look like it was shot in 1990? Camera quality can't have been that bad in 2008, can it?
I can't wait until I have a talk with my kids when they realize the significance of this day: Kid: Daddy, ou mean when you were growing up, they threw away rockets each time? Me: Yes Kid: Doesn't that make them expensive? Me: Yes. And then not long after will be the other talk: Kid: Daddy, you mean people used to be in charge of driving themselves in cars? Me: Yes Kid: Did people ever die? Me: Millions Good job Elon…
> Kid: Daddy, you mean people used to be in charge of driving > themselves in cars? A few generations will pass till this question will be asked. There might be self-driving cars sooner than that, but it will be a looooong time till manual driving is a very rare thing. Also, why wait for fully self-driving cars to prevent fatalities? Why not to implement collision-avoidance subsystem into the cars which are controlle…
It's already seeping into production cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system
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…
> None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier. This is not entirely fair. The actual landings (which did teach us a lot about the moon) were just the tip of an iceberg. Consider project Gemini [1] for example. A dozen missions and several astronaut-weeks of space time to get hang of such consepts as rendezvous and docking of two space…
I understand the enthusiasm, but I don't see enough hard data to convince me this will be a commercial success. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... , SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. Factors that might prevent this from making this economically superior to 'just' ramping up productio…
Now they have proved the principle of booster re-use they can adjust their manufacturing and launch schedules to take advantage of that going forward.
If I were a SpaceX investor or customer I'd want the manufacturing pipeline and launch schedules to be based as much as possible on facts, not hopes. But now that core re-use is a demonstrated fact, they can be adjusted accordingly without posing unacceptable business risk.
The obvious question: how much cheaper will a reusable rocket make it, per pound, to put a payload in orbit?
Well, if you go to the extreme case (the entire rocket is reusable with _no_ refurbishment) the cost of rocket fuel is $200,000 while the approximate cost of the hardware is in the range of $60M. So, in the extreme case it would be _massively_ cheaper. On the order of 99% savings. At the moment, SpaceX is only reusing a portion of the rocket (the first stage, not the second stage or the fairings ). And that re-used p…
I estimate those costs would be $20-25MM; still, a big savings on a brand-new rocket each time!
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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…
Sounds like zero supply of something a colony might want to pay for. Trade goes both ways. I never took a guess at time frames this could happen in.
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>I can't wait until I have a talk with my kids when they realize the significance of this day https://goo.gl/photos/7rT5rxvsP9AxVZxn6 My four year old daughter, watching the launch with rapt attention. When we watched the Echostar 23 launch two weeks ago, she asked why it didn't land... Crazy that rockets landing is already totally normal for her.
Your backyard is a forest? Looks awesome :) btw, I suggest disabling sharing geo location of photos ( https://photos.google.com/settings - Remove geo location in items shared by link).
Fair point about the geo location (I actually assumed Google would have stripped all metadata by default, like any real image sharing service...), I'm not super concerned about it though. I use my real name on HN, my employer and other details are pretty trivial to find. If someone wanted to find me, they wouldn't have to work too terribly hard as it is. If they do... well, I'm an American who likes to spend time in the woods. Draw whatever conclusions from that you will...
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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.
How about a major asteroid strike?
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>I can't wait until I have a talk with my kids when they realize the significance of this day https://goo.gl/photos/7rT5rxvsP9AxVZxn6 My four year old daughter, watching the launch with rapt attention. When we watched the Echostar 23 launch two weeks ago, she asked why it didn't land... Crazy that rockets landing is already totally normal for her.
Kudos for Doing Parenting Right. So many 'parents' dump their kids in front of Cartoon Network, and ignore them for 18 years.
Also, Stavros is right, the twins were playing in the other room with Caspar Babypants YouTube videos playing. ;)