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SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

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Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate framing it this way but your passionate hating has me doing it - do you build rockets? Or cars? What exactly do you do that gives you such certainty in bringing down these people who have already achieved so much? Their "dream big" mentality is sorely lacking in a society full of cynical, dead eyed and uncreative drones focused on nothing but financing their own survival or excesses. Applaud it, don't try to b…

The real problem with Musk is that he seems to be a narcissist and a good hypeman. His achievements are that he invested in the right companies and then he ousted the original visionaries / founders... and finally claiming he is the founder... see Tesla. Also a real leader usually gives credit where credit is due. Not once have I seen where Musk has credited his team. And don't get me started with how he's calling a…

From what I can tell Musk is literally a founder of SpaceX. I know he was a dick to the founders of Tesla, and he deserves shit for that, but it is a fact that Tesla has come very far since then under his leadership, and any claim that the founders would have done better is pure speculation. And of course the teams at these companies deserve credit, which he consistently admits. People who are obsessed with tearing down Tesla/SpaceX are often inconsistent in that any good thing these companies do cannot be attributed at all to Elon, because “he’s just a grifter hypeman, the team/other founders deserve the credit”, but any bad press they get is somehow entirely Elon’s fault. The truth is just that he’s partially responsible for all the good and the bad.

From accounts of people who have actually worked with him, he’s a legitimately smart guy with a laser focus on executing, albeit a micromanager. All the people I’ve seen saying he’s just some idiot MBA type who doesn’t actually believe what he’s selling are random media personalities and pundits. I can’t claim to know which is true, but one is certainly more credible than the other.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#392

What's the best thing I can do to help out with this as a software engineer? Is SpaceX in need of any critical software components? I think this is honestly the coolest thing to happen in my entire lifetime so far, and I would love to be a part of it, but I'm not sure I'd be useful since I'm not a mechanical engineer.

They will need a lot of CGI graphics of the starship flying through the space, cuz this project will never take off anywhere near what Musk is promising. It sounds like I am overly negative but if you push the hype aside and let only facts speak for themselves: Orbital refueling - no technical details, just cgi images crew capacity - no details ship layout - no details stage 0 launch platform - no details life suppor…

> They will need a lot of CGI graphics of the starship flying through the space,

SpaceX in its whole history has shown very, very little CGI. Specially compared to many other traditional rocket companies.

> Orbital refueling - no technical details, just cgi images

We know for a fact that NASA was very, very impressed with SpaceX work on orbital refueling. In their bid for the moon mission they got a special shout out from NASA because their approach to it was so much further developed then anybody else.

They also have a contract with NASA about demonstrating cryo fuel transfer in space.

Have you ever consider that just because they are sharing everything with you personally doesn't mean they haven't thought about it?

> crew capacity - no details > ship layout - no details

Why would they provide details? The crew capacity is not a fixed thing. Depending on the mission the internals will be different. We know what NASA is planning for the moon. In that version there will be very tiny crew.

Likely a somewhat larger crew for the Polaris program. And probably somewhat more for the DearMoon project.

Compared to making a fully reusable super heavy this is peanuts.

> life support - ummm scaled up dargon??

Do you have anything to say other then '??'? Yes, those are machines exist and if you have a larger inside you need to add more of them. This is totally possible and not a '??'. If you are not constraint by weight then doing that is totally reasonable.

And NASA own evaluation of the HLS bid also thought it was reasonable.

Its not reasonable for a Mars flight, but that by far not one of the first missions, they have lots of time to continue to work on that technology.

> raptor 2 - 'its stripped raptor 1 and much better' (still in tests, not proven tech)

They have produced many more of them that many other rocket engine program produced in their hole history. They have test-fired them many, many, many times and they have done full duration test fires as well.

> refuealing and relaunching withing few hours - Falcon 9 takes 30days!

You can't just look at Falcon 9 and say 'this proves it'. That's nonsense. They have many Falcon 9s, why would they try to rush a landed booster into service when they have 10 others waiting.

Falcon 9 often lands in the ocean and it takes a week+ until they even get it back.

> Also someone made a super cut of his 2022 update talk and its beat for beat the same thing he said in update from 2 years ago. Its not a good sign if you havent done anything in 2 years for a project that promises so much in few years time.

Of course and he talked about the same thing in 2016 as well. Because the talks are not primarily about technical details.

Also, your comment is just plane nonsense. We have cameras on their production and launch site literally every day. If anybody thinks that they have not made progress in 2 years then they have not been paying attention and are just deliberately making disingenuous argument.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#393

I recently read "Liftoff" about the early days of SpaceX [1]. Definitely recommended if you want to get a good overview of the company and industry. To me, it provided a lot of missing context and background that is really nice to have when reading articles like this one above. Though the book ends in 2008 - after SpaceX finally put a rocket into orbit on their fourth, and what would have been final, attempt - many o…

Eric Berger is working on his next book about Falcon 9 and re-usability already.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#394

I think that even if Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell stopped everything at SpaceX right now, their contributions with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are enough to etch their names in history. The three Falcon heavy boosters landing is nothing short of sci-fi coming true.

What have these two people actually done, except lying all the time? And abusing their workers? Also, these "magical" landings have been made 60 YEARS AGO! Go Musk! Hyperloop! FSD! Robotaxis! Semi! VTOL with pressurized air! Tesla robot! Pedo guy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24

Your comments about rocket landings just speak of your own ignorance. Even the guy who made video you linked wouldn't agree with your terrible opinion.

> Hyperloop

What lie? Have you actually done any research.

Musk said he worked on something, he is not gone develop it as he has no time, but if somebody else wants to, they can. And to help that he opened up this BluePaper:

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperl...

That's literally it. No produce was ever promised. The only thing that was promised was to deliver a BluePaper and they did.

> Semi

A produce they are delivering in slow numbers and there is no question that they will deliver more. Its a question of battery availability and business strategy.

> VTOL with pressurized air!

Again not true. You keep mixing up things talked about and things promised.

For the new Roadster they said they would work on a SpaceX package that would be able to for a small time hover a vehicle. They have neither sold that package only talked about that they are working on it.

> Pedo guy!

So guy was an asshole to him, and then he was an asshole back. They are both not the nicest people. So what.

> FSD! Robotaxis!

Like many others he was wrong in their prediction. Like many others were on the same topic. Ok, fair. But the rest of your comment is nonsense.

> And abusing their workers?

More nonsense. Tesla workers with stock options have done far better then any autoworkers. Many SpaceX engineers retired as millionaires. Overall working at SpaceX its highly likely that you would have made more then comparable engineers specially of comparable seniority.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#395

how will it be dirt cheap?

It won't. They haven't been able to get costs down in 10 years now, actually they have gone up. And reusability has its own problems, like lowering the amount of payload by 25% (you need to save fuel for re-entry). You can maybe get 10-20% savings if you ever get it working (see previous failed attempts...). NOT Musk promised 100x price reduction for launches, that will never happen.

Total nonsense.

Go look at any analysis of launch prices over the last 20 years, they have gone down.

SpaceX came in with a very aggressive price and they have lowered it a bit since. However since they have no competition they have increased their own margin rather then lower the price further.

That has made them a highly valuable company capable of investing in next generation.

> And reusability has its own problems, like lowering the amount of payload by 25% (you need to save fuel for re-entry).

That argument is equally dumb for all other types of transportation as it is for rockets.

> You can maybe get 10-20% savings if you ever get it working (see previous failed attempts...).

Complete nonsense. Hardware on a large rockets is above 80% of the cost and large fixed cost can be improved also by higher flight rates that re-usability make possible.

Anybody that has studied that space seriously understand that massively lower cost are possible with full rapid re-usability.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the update. Did you get your count from this Wiki page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... I'm not sure if that is a reliable source. (Please don't read that comment as a general commentary about Wiki!)

In terms of rocket launches Wikipedia is very good. I certainty don't know about a better source. Maybe SpaceX has a list public somewhere but I would not sure that is as up to date and detailed as Wikipedia.

Real question: Do you think that Space X (PR) employees primarily manage that Wiki page? It seems possible. No, I don't think that is weird or sinister. All of it could probably be verified with an afternoon of YouTube searches! It seems like something that Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell would publicly discuss / support. Both are quite intellectually direct in their public media appearances (less b/s than most corps).

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem with Musk is that he seems to be a narcissist and a good hypeman. His achievements are that he invested in the right companies and then he ousted the original visionaries / founders... and finally claiming he is the founder... see Tesla. Also a real leader usually gives credit where credit is due. Not once have I seen where Musk has credited his team. And don't get me started with how he's calling a…

Both can be true at the same time. He has a fragile ego and weird behavior on the social networks. At the same time, SpaceX is by far the most successful of all the space startups that have emerged in this century. Most of its competitors are not even unsuccessful, but outright dead. Blue Origin, financed by Bezos, hasn't yet managed to reach the orbit after 22 years of operation. Yes, it is possible that random forc…

SpaceX is in big part successful through what looks like corrupt self-dealing and fraud. They bailed out SolarCity with NASA funded bonds and then instead of taking the L when SolarCity was to go bankrupt, Tesla bailed them out with a fake demo of non-functionable solar shingles followed by an acquisition.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#398
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both can be true at the same time. He has a fragile ego and weird behavior on the social networks. At the same time, SpaceX is by far the most successful of all the space startups that have emerged in this century. Most of its competitors are not even unsuccessful, but outright dead. Blue Origin, financed by Bezos, hasn't yet managed to reach the orbit after 22 years of operation. Yes, it is possible that random forc…

SpaceX is in big part successful through what looks like corrupt self-dealing and fraud. They bailed out SolarCity with NASA funded bonds and then instead of taking the L when SolarCity was to go bankrupt, Tesla bailed them out with a fake demo of non-functionable solar shingles followed by an acquisition.

SpaceX has delivered fundamental breakthroughs in commercial space launch. Any analysis of the company that omits this is extremely disingenuous and makes me suspect ignoble motivations behind the critique.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#399
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem with Musk is that he seems to be a narcissist and a good hypeman. His achievements are that he invested in the right companies and then he ousted the original visionaries / founders... and finally claiming he is the founder... see Tesla. Also a real leader usually gives credit where credit is due. Not once have I seen where Musk has credited his team. And don't get me started with how he's calling a…

From what I can tell Musk is literally a founder of SpaceX. I know he was a dick to the founders of Tesla, and he deserves shit for that, but it is a fact that Tesla has come very far since then under his leadership, and any claim that the founders would have done better is pure speculation. And of course the teams at these companies deserve credit, which he consistently admits. People who are obsessed with tearing d…

Good points. I was only talking about Tesla.

What I was trying to get across is that a founder's own value system and motivations of why a founder is doing a thing are an important factor for the longevity of a company.

To me it appears that Musk is only in it for himself and his legacy. Eventually this will become more apparent and the loyalty and followership he's enjoying will drop.

He's more of a hypeman than a true visionary.

See how he hyped up his other ventures... solar city, self-driving cars you can make money with, electric trucks, hyperloop, etc... still waiting for that self-driving car which should be available 'next year' and that was in 2018 or something.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#400
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Here's another way of putting that: SpaceX has designed it so F9 and Starship payloads will be interchangeable. That's not quite the same thing. You can't just take an F9 payload and bolt it on top of an Ariane rocket. > Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cann…

The target cost for starship is $2M per launch for a much bigger payload. If they achieve that (but even if they arrive to several multiple of that) Falcon 9 is dead. It’s as simple as that.

> The target cost for starship is $2M per launch for a much bigger payload. If they achieve that (but even if they arrive to several multiple of that) Falcon 9 is dead. It’s as simple as that.

I wonder if that is entirely true.

There may still be a market for smaller bespoke launches that SpaceX won't want to cede to competitors (though this depends on the cadence of Starship launches, the latency of getting a payload included, and so on), and SpaceX may benefit from keeping F9 around as a platform that allows further iteration on the engines (though this depends on estimates of the increased risk for Starship launches that have a mix of engine versions).

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