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

541–550 of 839 posts

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#541

Post by jokit »

nutjob2 wrote: post #393
lazyjones wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope we can move away from the "elon sucks" v.s. "elon is a genius" dichotomy and into a culture of acknowledging accomplishment while insisting claims in other areas be fully justified. Until then, I'll happily consider Elon's or even John Carmack's opinion over those of Elon's numerous, noisy but otherwise uninteresting critics on the Internet and elsewhere.

How much weight should I give the opinion of someone who calls someone who disagrees with him "the pedo guy"? It's a serious question. Elon may run some successful companies, but beyond that his credibility has taken a beating on any number of fronts. How much credit should Elon get for heading companies full of other people who do the actual work? Could another leader do a better job, given Elons unsteady behaviour?

Anyone who does anything for decentralization is good in my book. That everything Elon does is to that end has me a big fan.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#542

Post by nickik »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #154

Quick note: Boeing got the big bucks at $5B or so for their crewed services because they have the "better" more reliable design. SpaceX only got $3B or so. Boeing running roughly 60%+ more per seat as well. So a real accomplishment so far for SpaceX to pull this off.

This is very wrong.

The Commercial Crew contract started with NASA providing guidelines of what they wanted.

Multible companies could give a suggestion of their design and how much it would cost.

The two best of those were suggested. The amount of money was not assigned based on their evaluation what was better, that is absolutely not the case.

Rather they selected 2 proposals that had the best combination based of factors, including cost, design, program reliability and so on.

So Boeing was luck that their (at that point) high status got them selected over the cheaper bid of Sierra Nevada (who tried to fight the choice).

So its not like they first selected the two companies and then assigned them money based on how good their designs were.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#543

Post by bolasanibk »

somebrody wrote: post #516
greeneggs wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space tourism to the ISS is just US taxpayers paying for billionaires' vacations. Yes, NASA charges a fee, but it is tiny relative to the cost of the service. If somebody develops a private space station, great. Until then, this isn't an industry that deserves any support.

https://www.space.com/bigelow-spacex-tourist-flights-space-s...

Bigelow Aerospace lays off entire workforce - Mar 23 2020 https://spacenews.com/bigelow-aerospace-lays-off-entire-work...

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#545

Post by usefulcat »

Chathamization wrote: post #510
Rebelgecko wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on…

Perhaps ironically, advances in technology have generally served to make human space exploration more expensive, not less expensive, when compared to the alternative (unmanned/robotic exploration).

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#546

Post by elif »

yreg wrote: post #360
modeless wrote: post #329

Perhaps of interest to HN, the cockpit displays seen in the videos are HTML pages rendered in Chromium. https://twitter.com/alteredq/status/1266853705632145409?s=19 SpaceX recently released a browser game where you use the real flight UI to dock with the ISS: https://iss-sim.spacex.com/

Aren't physical buttons that you can feel with your touch safer than touch screens?

I don't think so. an interactive UI can have context-dependent actions, confirmation dialogs, disable access to buttons, etc.

When what is happening is basically an artificial computer process with human overrides, It could be a little disingenous to have a physical switch.

For instance: imagine there's some pump that the computer won't let you disable because disabling it would cause an explosion. You are in an emergency and flip a switch intending to disable it. You now don't know the internal state of the process... whether the switch flip did what you intended or not.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#547

Post by bolasanibk »

thechao wrote: post #434
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be astounded if there were no space hotel projects shopping around for finance already. Although I think given the likely customer profile we're at least as likely to get Vegas-in-Orbit - casinos, hookers and all - as labs and exploration.

http://bigelowaerospace.com/

They laid off all their employees earlier this year.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#548

Post by kiba »

trentdk wrote: post #537
Chathamization wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on…

I appreciate your thoughts, but they are sad thoughts to me. Isn’t there something about “exploration” that seems important to a non-neglible amount of humans? I don’t want everything we do to serve the rat race we’re in. Let’s loose our money on something amazing.

We send humans into space because we want to, science and engineering benefits are side rewards.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#549

Post by Chathamization »

trentdk wrote: post #537
Chathamization wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on…

I appreciate your thoughts, but they are sad thoughts to me. Isn’t there something about “exploration” that seems important to a non-neglible amount of humans? I don’t want everything we do to serve the rat race we’re in. Let’s loose our money on something amazing.

Sure, as a society we do some things purely for emotional reasons. But we should be honest about that - we shouldn't pretend that the reason we're building the Washington monument is because of it's potential use as a grain silo.

There's a lot more to exploration than space exploration (I think exploring something like the human brain will end up having a greater emotional and practical impact myself). But even if we just look at space exploration, we don't really get a lot from human space flight. As I said, in situations where it's possible to use human astronauts, robots seem like they would be more effective. And for most of the places in our solar system, we simply won't be able to use humans at all anytime soon. The missions to, say, Europa are going to be done by robots.

Still, many people, including myself, enjoyed watching the launch. Maybe something like this is more analagous to a cathedral or memorial.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#550

Post by [deleted] »

Chathamization wrote: post #510
Rebelgecko wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN