Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

nypost.com

121–127 of 127 posts

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

appart from meteorological satellites and the like, for what space industry is useful?

Some reading on this topic. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://interestingengineering.com/15-space-age-inventions-a...

ok i agree there is some tech transfer with NASA, so is with CERN for instance. this is however national space programs.

my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Elon Musk deserves credit for SpaceX, I fail to see what credit he deserves for Tesla. The founders of Tesla and the designers of the first car should absolutely get credit, but Musk is neither. He delayed the release of their first car to get rid of the founder, in fact.

Apart from being a proof of concept (MVP if you prefer) the original roadster has had little influence on Tesla's success.

Disagree.

During those times, that car is the only thing that made combustion engine people even note Tesla — because of its blinding performance.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some reading on this topic. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://interestingengineering.com/15-space-age-inventions-a...

ok i agree there is some tech transfer with NASA, so is with CERN for instance. this is however national space programs. my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?

Current level of regulations of space tourism corresponds to the fact that we do not yet know much what will need regulating and what not.

Regulations around rocket launches have been hashed out over decades of practice. We do not yet have this kind of practical experience with space tourism.

As for the tech produced by commercial space programs: I do not know how open it is going to be, but the know-how established during development will move around as people leave their employees and join others or create their own space startups. I think this might be the most important effect: massive expansion of the pool of experienced engineers.

A historical analogy: contemporary Silicon Valley was basically founded by engineers (called the Traitorous Eight) who left a mismanaged semiconductor startup owned by William Shockley.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#124
post #2

Civilian apparently meaning non-government here, not non-military. I guess not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NASA_civilian_astrona...

Civilian can mean different things in different contexts. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian

In this case it's in the sense of meaning 2b.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#125
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree! I have been avoiding Twitter the last few years but was recently going through Elon’s tweets. Something I noticed is that he is often giving credit to the teams at SpaceX and Tesla. There are a number of times where he responds to a tweet and point out how it was the teams at X company, and sometimes calling out people by name for their work. It was also something during his presentation during the Mod…

This is a pretty new development. The cynic in me thinks he's finally listened to some PR people on how to get people to like him. It sort of coincided with the SNL appearance, too.

> This is a pretty new development.

No it's not at all. It's something he's done since the very beginning. You can go back to the 2000s with the first few public interviews he's given since starting Tesla and SpaceX after accomplishments (first few years of both had no accomplishments to redirect praise) and he's constantly redirecting to the team. It's always driven me nuts how many people misquote him and consistently ignore all these redirections of praise.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#126

Is this something SpaceX eventually plan to commercialise, like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are doing? Seems to me that orbital spaceflight as a proposition is an order of magnitude more enticing than scratching the Kármán line. And for the people who could afford it, they'd surely pay an order of magnitude more.

> Is this something SpaceX eventually plan to commercialise, like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are doing?

This IS commercialized. Jared Isaacman contacted SpaceX and expressed interest in buying a flight. SpaceX put him in touch with people and then he bought the flight. Other missions have already been bought as well and likely several more that haven't been mentioned.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#127

3 days in space means that there must be facilities for eating, and toilet facilities. Are these detailed anywhere?

There's a toilet on the ceiling and they're packing a bit of fresh food that they'll eat first. After that it's "space food".
Post reply on HN