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

#241

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #225

darknavi wrote: post #187

Reading some of these comments makes me wonder what it was like when explorers were trying to justify exploring the "New World". Humans have been exploring forever. Why stop now?

I think a lot of people are just pissed off seeing someone succeed so much at something that wasn't supposed to be possible (resuable rockets). Makes them feel worse about their own mediocre lives. This wouldn't have been a problem in the past. You'd just shrug off the crazy explorers and write them off as soon to be dead. Now, evidence of their success and relentless progress is shoved in our face every day.

[deleted]

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

#242

Post by mrDmrTmrJ » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #218

skissane wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because there are a lot of other factors that are different. Other countries have different interest rates, tend to have much smaller markets to sell into, and tend to have much more tightly regulated labor markets. There's also an absence of large tech acquirers that exist in the US.

VC economics rely on a portfolio theory of a few gigantic winners making up for the other losses. So if different economic conditions creates a difference in the ultimate size of our 'winners' than you have to figure out how to have fewer (or smaller) losses.

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

#243

Post by dnautics » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

throwaway3neu94 wrote: post #130

throw0101a wrote: post #98

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; 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…

> Do you think it a coïncidence that most spy satellites are launched from Vandenberg? It's not a coincidence, it's geography. It is desirable for reconnaissance satellites to cover the entire planet regularly. That means high inclination orbits. That means southward launches (as opposed to eastward). That requires a launch site with ideally lots of ocean and not a lot of population to the south/southeast. The US doe…

technically you could also do northward launches, but if you look at the geography of the US, it does not cooperate and provide northward ocean in many places.

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

#244

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #239

jollybean wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all good points, but the rest of the world turns out, pound for pound, Engineers that are just as good and crazy. But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc.. Also, the % of US immigrants that are on the 'high end' is relatively smaller. Migration to the US, when you include off the books migration, is a little bit towards the low skilled end. But definitely the smaller relative port…

> But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc.. So their bankers and politicians just can't compete.

[deleted]

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

#245

Post by emkoemko » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

jvm wrote: post #119

throw0101a wrote: post #98

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; 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…

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…

and yet it would be nice to still have the shuttle program... so far nothing is capable of EVA like the shuttle was so any repairs in space are still not possible, like they did in the past with the shuttle.

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

#246

Post by skissane » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #220

skissane wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Revolut…

> And none of those things are historically unique.

I never said it was historically unique, if by that you mean without any historical parallel. Of course if you look at other industries and other historical periods, you will see other cases where a certain industry in a certain country has pulled ahead. And US leadership in space (or any other industry) is not guaranteed to last forever, and is in fact unlikely to last forever. But the US does provide a supportive environment for private space entrepreneurship which is unique in the world today.

The US has both some unique strengths and unique flaws. It is a world leader in both the space industry and in mass incarceration. The first is something it can be proud of, and the second is something of which it should be ashamed. Neither lead is guaranteed to be permanent, so in neither way is it unique in an absolute historical sense, but in both ways it is unique relative to the world of today.

> Do you think Volta, Ampère, or Hertz are American names?

I feel like you are arguing, not against anything I actually said, but things you are imagining I said. I'm not an American. I'm perfectly capable of being critical of the US (there is much I could say on that topic) but I also think it has its strengths and SpaceX is evidence of some of them.

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

#247

Post by dnautics » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #111

throw0101a wrote: post #98

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; 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…

>> Notwithstanding the millions that NASA gave them in their early stages. And the billions spent on the technologies that allow those engines to exist. SpaceX didn't invent rocket engines. It stands on the shoulders of many giants going back through Apollo to the early days. There are even traces of Soviet tech in the raptor (ie closed cycle). Nearly all of that work was funded by taxpayers ... and by whatever funde…

> SpaceX didn't invent rocket engines

They kind of did invent full-flow engines though, which were an unattained holy grail of rocketry.

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

#248

Post by mlyle » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #184

sfblah wrote: post #101

I genuinely don't understand what the point of all this is. Is this all about sending people to Mars? Is it basic research? What is the end goal here? I don't follow this too much, so I'm hoping someone can paste me a link to something I can read to explain the justification for building this thing.

The point is making orbital launches cheaper. Musk may have some further goals, but they will probably be irrelevant. Predicting the consequences of new technology is always difficult. Falcon 9 was the first attempt to achieve this, but it failed. Apart from grabbing the majority of the commercial launch market, it didn't really change anything. The number of orbital launches per year is roughly the same it has been…

> Falcon 9 was the first attempt to achieve this, but it failed. Apart from grabbing the majority of the commercial launch market, it didn't really change anything. The number of orbital launches per year is roughly the same it has been since the 1960s.

Eh, but upmass is significantly up, despite it taking less mass to do stuff in space and stuff lasting longer.

Not to mention that it may take a long time from launch getting cheaper for payload to really start to take advantage of it. If launch stays sustainably cheap, it may be time to start analyzing the economics of space power stations, etc, again, which were almost feasible with worse technology at much higher launch costs.

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

#249

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #219

nickik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#250

Post by skissane » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #242

908B64B197 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because there are a lot of other factors that are different. Other countries have different interest rates, tend to have much smaller markets to sell into, and tend to have much more tightly regulated labor markets. There's also an absence of large tech acquirers that exist in the US. VC economics rely on a portfolio theory of a few gigantic winners making up for the other losses. So if different economic conditions…

Your points are true, but I think other factors also play a role. What makes, for example, Australian investors behave differently to American investors? No doubt differences in economy size, regulatory regimes, etc, make a difference. But I also think some of it is due to differences in national culture. People have been talking about "tall poppy syndrome" as an element of Australian culture for decades; people don't say the same thing about American culture. (That said, it looks to me like the concept, but not the name, is increasingly making inroads into the US.)