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

SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

nasa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 839 posts

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#441

Post by luma »

sandworm101 wrote: post #160
ChuckMcM wrote: post #86

It is hard to convey how "sustainable" this feels to me. For the first time, humans have gone into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close. And the last thing I'm feeling is the a…

>> into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. If we are talking pure commercial travel, it is a vehicle without a destination. The ISS is definitely not a commercial project. There are lots of reasons for the ISS to exist, and they have changed over time, but it has never been a money-making venture. While the dragons certainly do come in under budget, they are a more…

I can think of one commercial case for people in space: servicing existing systems in orbit. There have been a handful of STS missions that involved EVAs to service everything from the Hubble's famous mirror to correcting launch issues with commercial communication satellites like STS-49: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-49

I doubt there's enough of a need for this sort of thing to keep a venture afloat, but manned missions have been flown for commercial purposes in order to service existing spacecraft.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#443

Post by ric2b »

BurningFrog wrote: post #416
nickik wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you got downvotes. You are correct. Tourists drive a whole lot of the economy in many nations and its where many people work. At the moment it might be tourism for rich people, but that's how it has to start.

I guess people find it vulgar. Space should be for noble missions in the service of all mankind.

Because the tax payer has paid for nearly all of this and the goal was certainly not for some billionaire couple to get into the hundred mile high club.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#444

Post by adventured »

voqv wrote: post #121
kharak wrote: post #102

I'm glad that the space age has been rekindled. I wish Europe would do something similar.

Thinking of Europe, I have a feeling that it's just surreal that this launch is happening in America at the same time with the events in Minneapolis

Given the size of the US, it's comparable to riots going on in France persistently while there are none in Germany. Some cities are affected, some are not. 99% of the US isn't seeing any riot problems right now.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#445

Post by nickik »

sunstone wrote: post #394
aeturnum wrote: post #205

How wonderful! Congratulations to the entire Space X team, this is a real accomplishment and I'm sure not one that came easily. It's exciting to see relatively small companies fulfilling roles that people thought might require massive military contractors. Elon is an interesting figure. He is, I think, a paradigmatic example of the imperfect creator. His undeniable success in difficult endeavors can create an aura of…

Perhaps a more interesting comparison is between Elon the CEO of Tesla and Elon the CEO of SpaceX. You may notice that these are two very different personalities that serve two different corporate requirements. The Elon of SpaceX introduces himself as "I'm proud to be here representing the SpaceX team." The Elon of Tesla is smoking up on camera, throwing humongous ball bearings at the Cybertruck windows, sleeping in…

I think you are pretty wrong, I see absolutely no difference at all and I follow both companies pretty closely.

The media is just much more actively following Tesla in because they are marketing to the general population there is a far more detailed view on Tesla.

However overall Elon is pretty much just Elon al the time. Elon talks about the Starship pretty much like he does about the Cybertruck. These are just products he is working on, he informs people about what is going on, changes that they are doing and so on.

Both during SpaceX and Tesla talks he gives about equal time thanking the team as far as I can tell. We know that Elon for example pushed the team to develop phase shut off for Merlin engine. We know that Elon was pushing for adopting steal on the Starship. With both companies its not totally clear when what decisions are made (as makes sense with private companies), but overall I think its pretty much the same.

Most of his twitter shananigans have nothing to do with Tesla or SpaceX, or have to do with both. The Tesla factory opening was of course about Tesla, but his comments in general about Corona were not. His Thailand diver thing was not about a particular company either.

> The Elon of Tesla is smoking up on camera

In that interview he spent about equal time on both companies

> sleeping in his sleeping bag while trying to bring Model 3 production through the Shadow of the Valley of Death

He has said much the same kind of stuff for SpaceX stuff too. Not specifically sleeping in the factory but overwork after failures, not sleeping for a long time and so on.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#446

Post by wmeredith »

aeturnum wrote: post #205

How wonderful! Congratulations to the entire Space X team, this is a real accomplishment and I'm sure not one that came easily. It's exciting to see relatively small companies fulfilling roles that people thought might require massive military contractors. Elon is an interesting figure. He is, I think, a paradigmatic example of the imperfect creator. His undeniable success in difficult endeavors can create an aura of…

AM I the only one that feels like the Elon sucks/is a genius thing are just two sides of the same coin? Geniuses are rarely well adjusted.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#447

Post by trhway »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #388
losvedir wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe intercontinental travel? I was watching the launch live stream and at one point, they said, "if they abort in this zone, the crew will land just off the coast of Ireland". That was like 9 minutes after liftoff! So if I understand that correctly, if you go to space, you can travel from Florida to Ireland in ~20 minutes?

The thought of a next-gen trillionaire spending the millions of dollars required to launch a freaking rocket just so he can get to Europe in twenty minutes instead of the couple hours a supersonic airliner would take.. man, talk about ostentatious.

There aren't supersonic airliners. Anyway, let's calculate. Starship having passenger capacity about that of Concord, say 100, would burn 1000 ton, $1M, of fuel and oxygen, per a suborbital transcontinental flight. Capital cost say $100M per Starship. Say amortize over 100 flights. So $20K/ticket. Double for operations. $40K/ticket. I don't see any supersonic in near and mid future coming even close. If I remember correctly my middle school physics, ballistic trajectory is the most efficient one :)

If anything, DOD is already the first in line for suborbital cargo, not warheads mind you, delivery using Starship.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#448

Post by dgritsko »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #363
stickfigure wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get access to rare materials that can be immensely valuable. Why would you want to send humans to get it? Space is really inhospitable for humans, but machines seem to like it just fine. Offshore oil and gas mining is rapidly being automated, and if they could, they would eliminate humans from the process altogether. Nobody wants to go out and live on a frozen windblown metal can full of industrial machinery, i…

I don't know much about the intricacies of asteroid mining, but human beings are very capable entities. As great as machines like the Mars rovers are, there's no comparison. A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. When I was reading the daily diaries of one of the rover drivers, it was incredible how much effort and thought went into the most trivial activities. A…

Do you have a link to said "daily diaries?" They sound fascinating, but this is the first I've heard of them.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#449

Post by ric2b »

piyh wrote: post #339
joubert wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have more information? (Who, what for)

Tom Cruise and presumably at least one camera person for a movie on the ISS

He just wants to go to space and get a tax deduction by counting it as a business expense.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#450

Post by [deleted] »

spopejoy wrote: post #353
Reedx wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new normal has just been defined. Amazing to see. "Thank you for flying with Falcon 9 today", as though it's an airplane.

So many cheeky touches! It's such a different vibe than the NASA launches of old. It's old news but I still was caught off guard by announcers flatly referring to "Of Course I Still Love You" EDIT this is not a criticism, I really like it. Maybe "cheeky" is the wrong term, I'm bad with Anglicisms

[deleted]
Post reply on HN