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SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

nasa.gov

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Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#561

Post by babesh »

amluto wrote: post #553
babesh wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can invest in SpaceX indirectly and directly. You have SpaceX indirectly through some mutual funds and actually through Google since Google’s VC arm invested in SpaceX. I have a tiny bit in those two via a mutual fund and Google. The problem is both have SpaceX as a very small percentage of their portfolio. There is also Virgin Galactic but I don’t have that. One material Robert Zubrin is interested in is a rare…

Do you perhaps mean Helium-3? The only interesting rare form of Hydrogen is Tritium, and Tritium is rather nasty stuff.

You are right.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#562

Post by sandworm101 »

wongarsu wrote: post #511
sandworm101 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

On the ISS you can produce higher quality optical fiber than on earth [1]. A demonstration fabrication unit is already on the ISS, and NASA has recently published prices for using the ISS for commercial tasks such as this. I suspect many other manufacturing methods can also benefit from zero gravity, and as launch costs drop more of these will be explored. 1: https://upward.issnationallab.org/the-race-to-manufacture-…

The company that sent that demonstrator does not intend manufacture at the station. The plan is, once the tech is proven, to launch a dedicated robotic craft. It would do the work and return on its own. That moots all sorts of docking/navigation problems, dramatically reducing the complexity of the craft.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#563

Post by rtkwe »

stickfigure wrote: post #288
babesh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just need to look further. You get access to rare materials that can be immensely valuable. Read https://www.amazon.com/Case-Space-Revolution-Spaceflight-Pos... Also with that short term outlook you wouldn’t have many things. The Internet was not initially commercial. It was designed to provide communications in the event of a nuclear attack. Yet here we are now and we have reaped immense benefits from that inves…

> 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…

There's still no real substitute for having a person on site to do work when machines breakdown or get stuck and the problems with trying to use machines in their place get worse as the time lag between the machine and it's operators gets worse. Even on modern automated oil rigs there are people driving, repairing and monitoring the systems locally.

Really we're pretty far from semi-autonomous systems for stuff like mining, we're just starting to get problem solving working in AI just look at the DARPA challenge for how far we are from being able to assign relatively small tasks to resolve problems.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#564

Post by bouncycastle »

mikepurvis wrote: post #508
bouncycastle wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a moon-base or mars-base would be an interesting experiment for humans. 1. Have a backup of our species in case something happens to Earth. 2. A great experiment in anthropology! It could help us rethink how we organize life on earth. As far as I see, a moonbase would be a "greenfield project" on land that doesn't belong to any nation, where they have to build everything from scratch. How will they organize?…

There are plenty of inhospitable places here on earth where you could set up your anthropology experiment— deep under the ocean, for example, heck there was even a series of videogames made about this exact scenario. :)

That's right. I'd like to see that happen too. Although I'd argue that space has much more abundant materials & resources due to its vastness. Minus the geopolitical baggage.

More importantly, there is a bootstrap problem. Where are the funds going to come from? There is no commercial benefit from such an experiment except perhaps tourism. On the other hand, a space colony could develop a self sustainable economy, developing various enterprises from tourism, mining to manufacturing

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#565

Post by fizixer »

TheDong wrote: post #333
TeMPOraL wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the general problem of infrastructure-like endeavors. "If you build it, they will come" absolutely applies to infrastructure.

"If you build it, they will come" suffers from confirmation bias. You can easily look back at things people have built and people have come to (computers, planes, cars, etc)... But there are far more things people built that no one came for, and which we don't even know of because no one wanted them. Solar roadways is an example of something that was an infrastructure project that was built out in a few places, and b…

And the ""If you build it, they will come" suffers from confirmation bias" point-of-view comes from the myopic vision that most scientific minded folks have when it comes to engineering projects.

And the worst offenders of this narrow-mindset are, wait for it, no less but the trained scientists themselves (not all, but the ones who didn't have exposure to engineering thought).

When we (engineers) say: "If you build it, they will come", what we really mean is this:

- If you build it, and they come, great.

- If you build it, and they don't come, too bad. Let's try something else.

- No one predicts the future like an oracle, but we'll try our best to make our claims come to fruition.

Our audience (the investors) knows that. We (engineers) are not out there for the truth. We're out there to try things out based on an educated guess, give it our best shot, and see what happens.

That's how the real world works.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#566

Post by sailfast »

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.

The goal was to do it for the same price per seat as an economy ticket, and in a carbon-neutral way because of how the fuel was manufactured.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-spacex...

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#567

Post by nexuist »

shoulderfake wrote: post #418
sakopov wrote: post #39

It's absolutely incredible to see this. So much work to get us here. So much work just to organize this launch event. Seeing astronauts getting dropped off in one of the most technologically advanced automobiles on Earth and walk into the capsule sitting on top of a rocket which is the Pinnacle of humanity's biggest advancements in technology and space is astounding and goosebumps-enducing. What a time to be alive!

I dont get it, wasnt this already accomplished? Whats the big deal ? The space station already exists, astronauts have gone there before.

This is a big deal because a group making up a medium-sized private company with a private company budget was able to accomplish what a nation-state sized government with an unlimited budget was able to accomplish ~40 years ago. And if they can do it, then it won't be long before other companies do it too, which means that space travel will no longer be limited by political ambitions or realities.

This is the Apple II moment of space travel: when megacorporation giants were squeezed out of the market in a few short years by some dudes working out of their garages.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#568

Post by est »

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 wonder are there any locks that prevent astronauts from touch the wrong buttons on the screen?

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#569

Post by fasteddie31003 »

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…

I think it's hilarious how HN dislikes Elon. Elon is edgy, non-pc, and speaks his mind. All traits I see looked down upon in Silicon Valley.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#570

Post by est »

_0w8t wrote: post #293
runawaybottle wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait wait, you’re telling me there’s Javascript floating around in space (not including web traffic being sent through satellites)?

I am skeptical about UI. How do they implement that triple redundancy as a protection against radiation damage?

I assume if Tesla is using QT under Linux, Dragon would probably do the same?
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