SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #193

throw0101a wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disrupting sectors like telecom Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own citizens with the coöperation of the US telcos, so what chance would foreigners have? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) As a Canadian I would certainly like more competition, but I can certainly see the reas…

Telecoms are protected sectors in the same way that Banking and Entertainment are, they are strategic industries, and 'wire tapping' while somewhere on the list of issues, is down the list. Canada's position on foreign ownership and trade is fairly consistent with norms in advanced countries, and fairly liberal, probably more so than most nations. Non-market forces also play a huge role in this, for example, irrespec…

> Entertainment

Never understood putting barriers and quota on entertainment (as well as government subsidies). Companies like Disney and Marvel both made billions simply by making content people want to watch. Canada is pretty much free to export its content anywhere and sell it. Why not simply compete?

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

#212

Post by adventured » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #73

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…

Where in America are these magical semiconductors being made?

> Where in America are these magical semiconductors being made?

You're unaware that the US is one of the world's leading manufacturers of semiconductors?

For 2019 the US exported $44 billion worth of semiconductors. The third largest export for the US, behind airplanes ($130 billion) and oil ($152 billion for all oil products).

There are only a few major semiconductor manufacturing nations and the US is among them.

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

#213

Post by trixie_ » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

matmatmatmat wrote: post #143

kbenson wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars is orders of magnitude easier than fixing all the problems on Earth.

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

#214

Post by repsilat » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:05 AM UTC

fiftyfifty wrote: post #126

milansuk wrote: post #14

In 2019, Elon tweeted[0] that the price of one Raptor engine is under $1M with the goal going under 250K for the next version. Any recent info where there are now? I'm still surprised they moved to this orbital fly so quickly without doing more tests. Going from 3 engines to almost 30 is crazy. Also, If I understand it right, both booster and starship will end up in the ocean. I hope they will be able to reuse at lea…

This is hardly beyond standard practice in the industry. The SLS is going to orbital flight with no flight testing. Heck the Falcon Heavy launched a car past Mars' orbit on it's first flight. I think SpaceX's main goal was to refine their manufacturing process and make sure they can achieve a certain level of consistency in building these things. The fact that they installed all these Raptors before even doing a pres…

> hardly beyond standard practice in the industry. The SLS is

Perhaps explaining GP's surprise: I've heard SpaceX's testing philosophy contrasted against this sort of thing. That none of their tests are "too big to fail". On the other hand, according to this narrative they also stress iteration speed over success rate, and ramping up fast works to that end too.

Maybe they were getting diminishing returns (in terms of lessons learnt) in small scale tests though. No doubt there are phenomena you only see in larger tests, and (as you say) their confidence in getting the smaller stuff right might be quite high.

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

#215

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #177

asadlionpk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tough times make tough people. But their next generation is usually soft sadly.

Meanwhile here in Oakland, this is what Mathematics teaching looks like in schools [PDF]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... These people are actively undermining the American spirit - I am saying this as an immigrant to USA and a person of color. I am fine with understanding racism in USA, it is completely unacceptable to inject this into STEM education. The next generation is going to g…

Come on, they are right next to a world class math department (Berkley).

Instead of paying for a committee of bureaucrats (with generous pensions!) to write about "racism in math", why not hire a couple of undergrads as extra tutors for students of color struggling with math?

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

#216

Post by ryan93 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

s5300 wrote: post #60

paxys wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. I'm as much into spaceships as the next nerd, but people need to get real. The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generati…

Consider the fact, that the publicly richest citizen on Earth, as well as one of the people behind one of the largest financial transaction sites, may have genuinely already concluded that, as the history of politics among other things have shown, that the Earth/humanity may simply be unsavable, for whatever reasons they find. He has a lot of talent at his disposable, and presumably information to a decent bit of oth…

Elon has special information about whether humanity is worth saving? Lmao

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

#217

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

rpmisms wrote: post #191

systemvoltage wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile here in Oakland, this is what Mathematics teaching looks like in schools [PDF]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... These people are actively undermining the American spirit - I am saying this as an immigrant to USA and a person of color. I am fine with understanding racism in USA, it is completely unacceptable to inject this into STEM education. The next generation is going to g…

There was also a recent incident in Virginia: (Virginia Drops Advanced Math)[ https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/virginia-to-drop-adv... ] This disgusts me. Some kids are stupid (Apologies for blunt language, but it's true, life is unfair.) or have poor home lives, so let's remove education that can help them have better lives because some of the struggling kids are black . Counterintuitive, oversensitive, and d…

> because some of the struggling kids are black

What about the black overachievers? Princeton certainly didn't lower the bar for him [0]

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/10/us/princeton-first-black-vale...

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

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Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #181

piercebot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

US government space funding, as a percent of GDP, is the second highest in the world. The only country which beats the US at %GDP government space funding is Russia; but in absolute terms government space funding in the US is 7 times that of Russia, due to how much bigger US GDP than Russia's is. SpaceX has received a lot of business from the US government (both NASA and military) and is hoping to receive a lot more…

> Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well.

Why not simply... follow the model that worked?

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

#219

Post by sangnoir » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

nickik wrote: post #46

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…

Musk always gets unreasonable angry if he feels something slows him down. They have really not been slowed down that much FAA. So everybody should just chill out. Btw, for people interest, this interview with Ken Davidian FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation is interesting: https://www.interplanetary.org.uk/podcast/episode/90af4411/2...

I have a feeling Musk and the FAA have very different standards around public safety. He has his differences with the SEC and NTSB too, but I feel the FAA hews far closer to the public safety end of the spectrum, and not the "move fast and break things(bones)" end.

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

#220

Post by throw0101a » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #170

SahAssar wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither, the term refers to the belief that the US is somehow inherently different from other nations, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism Saying that something "could only happen in America" (usually) indicates a view that America is somehow unique (as in the American exceptionalist view). I'm not saying that America hasn't done great things, or that Americans shouldn't believe they have…

The rhetoric of American exceptionalism annoys me a lot. But occasionally I think it has some justification. And I think SpaceX is one of those rare cases. I just can't see a firm like SpaceX existing in any other country. The US offers a unique combination of easy access to capital, relatively low regulation, and high government funding for private space ventures, which I doubt you will find anywhere else.

> The US offers a unique combination of easy access to capital, relatively low regulation, and high government funding […]

Yes. And none of those things are historically unique.

They just happen to be true now in the US, partly because the US is the large economy in the world. But those things were true during different times in history in other countries.

Do you think it was a coïncidence that the Industrial Revolution kicked off in the UK, when they just happened to be one of the larger economies in the world at that time? Where did all the early research in electricity happened, in the US? Do you think Volta, Ampère, or Hertz are American names? Or the concept of interchange able parts (see the book The Perfectionists by Winchester)? Where was the internal combustion engine invented? The American space program was kickstarted by a bunch Germans.

Of course culture helps as well. Britain actually lost its initial lead in the chemical industry, even though things started there:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauveine

Fiddling with industrial chemicals was poo-pooed by the British intelligentsia, so the industry in Germany ended up surpassing Britain (e.g., BASF). See the book Mauve by Simon Garfield for a pretty good history on this:

* https://www.simongarfield.com/books/mauve/

It may be that the US has the go-go culture now that other countries used to have.

What is happening now in the US is a great thing, but to call "unique" is an insult to countless historical figures IMHO.