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SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

arstechnica.com

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Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#141

Post by throwntoday »

matmatmatmat wrote: post #132

I'm stunned at the level of "optimism" in these comments. Guys, we're not going to be setting up colonies on Mars, we're not going to setting up heavy industry in space. There is literally no. point. at. all. Mars is less hospitable than even the least hospitable places on Earth. "Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space (no amount of rocket development will e…

I am equally stunned at the level of "pesimism" in your comment. We used to do things just because, just for the thrill of exploration, and pushing the limits of human civilization. If Elon wants to spend his money on this, and the government as well for their own reasons, why are you so frustrated? Plenty of money gets spent on fixing problems on Earth.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#142

Post by 0x_rs »

matmatmatmat wrote: post #132

I'm stunned at the level of "optimism" in these comments. Guys, we're not going to be setting up colonies on Mars, we're not going to setting up heavy industry in space. There is literally no. point. at. all. Mars is less hospitable than even the least hospitable places on Earth. "Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space (no amount of rocket development will e…

Man belongs wherever he wants to go – and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

Quote aside, I haven't found the heavy industry statement you seem to be talking about. Is it about that Bezos tweet or whatever? There's some great promising manufacturing techniques in zero-g, but it seems incredibly obvious sending anything in space or low orbit now and in the near future requires expending more energy than whatever its refinement or manufacturing will be worth. Furthermore, no, you can't fix Earth now. The only possible way to achieve that is eradicating humanity. Don't start talking about war, famines or whatever without imagining the disastrous consequences they may have (overpopulation, et cetera). The best humanity can do is continue experimenting and developing new technologies to at least improve the lives of the majority of people.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#143

Post by matmatmatmat »

kbenson wrote: post #135
matmatmatmat wrote: post #132

I'm stunned at the level of "optimism" in these comments. Guys, we're not going to be setting up colonies on Mars, we're not going to setting up heavy industry in space. There is literally no. point. at. all. Mars is less hospitable than even the least hospitable places on Earth. "Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space (no amount of rocket development will e…

> Also, uh, why don't we just fix Earth? Oh, that's not sexy? No, of course not, because real problems are always more complicated than simple, inspirational ideas or a colony run by a dictator. Fixing your run down car will never provide the same level of utility and redundancy that having two cars will. Preferably you do both. If you live in a somewhat remote location, and your wife is pregnant and you know she nee…

This argument would have a lot more merit if Earth and Mars were similar, but they're utterly not. The difficulty, expense, and risk of setting up life on Mars absolutely pales in comparison to cleaning-up life on Earth.

Suppose there were a Mars colony. How many years before that colony could go on indefinitely if it didn't have support from Earth?

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#144

Post by adampk »

SahAssar wrote: post #133
jvm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an annoying argument. The government gave $18B to the SLS and so far has vapor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System The government spent $211B on the shuttle program and got 133 launches. SpaceX will probably surpass that number this year at a fraction of the cost. NASA's record on rockets since Apollo has been abysmal. I don't think government is necessarily bad (the Russians did a much be…

SpaceX has had very impressive successes, some government programs have failed or run over budget. Some government programs were also impressive, both in the US and abroad. I think we can all agree on those points. The point of the GP that I (and I think many others) react to is the "Only in America things like this can happen" part. I just don't get American exceptionalism I guess.

Do you mean you don't understand why American's would think that America has done incredible things, or do you not believe America has done incredible things?

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#145

Post by adampk »

Ancapistani wrote: post #131
cblconfederate wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bootstrapping itself by extending tech designed decades ago? that doesn't sound right. Until today, the biggest rocket design was still the soviet N1 from the 60s. It's good to celebrate space achievement but rewriting history is annoying

The novel thing here isn’t the tech, but the scale at which it’s being developed and the price point that they’re targeting.

I am struggling to understand the comments here that seem to not think that what SpaceX has done isn't more than the natural rate of progress.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#146

Post by perl4ever »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #71
hirundo wrote: post #2

Elon appears to be building a large ground-locked monument to demonstrate his argument in this tweet: Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars. -- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/13548625…

> The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs into more than one basket. We are very far from a self sustaining society and economy on Mars. Easily a century or more. I'm cheering on SpaceX, but find this talking point of Elon's very tiresome. It's little more than sci-fi fantacism. As just a simple example: no one knows what childhood development is going to be like at 40% of earth's gravity. And t…

>We can extend modern medical care to the entire world

What do you mean by "modern" medical care?

Do you think that will make a significant difference in life expectancy?

The difference between, say, Rwanda and the USA is less than ten years, I believe. Comparable to the gender gap in some countries like Russia.

What about the gap between countries like the USA and UK versus Japan at the top? Is that important to close?

(My info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...)

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#147

Post by dmix »

throw0101a wrote: post #98
908B64B197 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in America things like this can happen. A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical hardware to commodity; SpaceX is doing the same thing with flight hardware. Contrast that with previous generation engines (the RS-25 comes to mind) with a sticker price of 125 millions... per engine! [0] [0] https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-d…

> Only in America things like this can happen. > A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical hardware to commodity; Silicon Valley did not bootstrap itself. It received untold billions of dollars from the US government during the Cold War (and lots of stuff happened during the WW2 economy, when the US was the Allies' armorer). Do you thin…

I thought SpaceX was based near LA and more recently doing a lot of work in Texas? Is it really a Silicon Valley company?

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

> SpaceX was first headquartered in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. By November 2005, the company had 160 employees.

> El Segundo is a city in Los Angeles County, California,

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#148

Post by matmatmatmat »

0x_rs wrote: post #142
matmatmatmat wrote: post #132

I'm stunned at the level of "optimism" in these comments. Guys, we're not going to be setting up colonies on Mars, we're not going to setting up heavy industry in space. There is literally no. point. at. all. Mars is less hospitable than even the least hospitable places on Earth. "Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space (no amount of rocket development will e…

Man belongs wherever he wants to go – and he'll do plenty well when he gets there. Quote aside, I haven't found the heavy industry statement you seem to be talking about. Is it about that Bezos tweet or whatever? There's some great promising manufacturing techniques in zero-g, but it seems incredibly obvious sending anything in space or low orbit now and in the near future requires expending more energy than whatever…

> Man belongs wherever he wants to go – and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

I find this level of optimism completely unwarranted. Plenty of people have died trying to go places they hadn't gone to before, or if they simply had to leave where they were. Explorers, places with overpopulation, refugees, I mean, the list really goes on.

> Furthermore, no, you can't fix Earth now. The only possible way to achieve that is eradicating humanity.

I disagree, and I think this is far too pessimistic. Food security, climate change, politics, all huge, huge problems, but there's real progress being made on all those fronts.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#149

Post by CamperBob2 »

piercebot wrote: post #59
908B64B197 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in America things like this can happen. A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical hardware to commodity; SpaceX is doing the same thing with flight hardware. Contrast that with previous generation engines (the RS-25 comes to mind) with a sticker price of 125 millions... per engine! [0] [0] https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-d…

What is it about America (or other countries) that makes you think this couldn't happen anywhere else?

The fact that it didn't happen anywhere else.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#150

Post by matmatmatmat »

abledon wrote: post #136
matmatmatmat wrote: post #132

I'm stunned at the level of "optimism" in these comments. Guys, we're not going to be setting up colonies on Mars, we're not going to setting up heavy industry in space. There is literally no. point. at. all. Mars is less hospitable than even the least hospitable places on Earth. "Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space (no amount of rocket development will e…

> because real problems are always more complicated than simple, inspirational ideas Colonizing another planet 'is' a real problem? Also, if we can 'just fix Earth' tell us how we convince all nations to come together and sing Kumbaya, put aside our resource differences and disarm all nuclear missiles (I'm looking at you North Korea)

That's a silly strawman argument; no one is seriously asking for this.
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