Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 421 posts

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

#191

Post by rpmisms »

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…

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 directly hindering

Dragging everyone down because some diversity quotas aren't met is awful. Unless there's clear evidence that teaching advanced math directly contributes to racism, teach it, make it harder. Make our kids work and succeed and fail again.

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

#192

Post by ctoth »

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.

This article does a pretty good job of explaining the overall plan.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-pl...

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

#193

Post by jollybean »

throw0101a wrote: post #109
908B64B197 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why Canada would restrict international players from disrupting sectors like telecom (a commodity really) but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing.

> 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, irrespective of what the auto-trade policies actually are between the US and Japan ... the Japanese would simply never allow US firms to compete on equal terms there.

Cultural factors, some more systematic and institutionalized than others, provide enough impetus that they represent at least as much of an issue as anything agreed upon formally by trade representatives.

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

#194

Post by terafo »

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…

>"Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space

There are things that you just can't do on Earth because of gravity. And if price of putting things into orbit goes down it will open door to a lot of innovations in space manufacturing and within a decade it will have it's first "killer app". I can bet on it.

> no amount of rocket development will ever overcome those physics

This is simply not true. Your saying sounds like "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible". There's way more resources outside of our gravity well than inside of it and moving things from space to earth is cheaper than other way around. Yes, moving all heavy industry to space is complicated and very expensive, but it will be eventually done.

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

colordrops wrote: post #9
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…

Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about doing a bit of critical thinking on this. What about all the resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc? They dwarf everything put into space exploration, and are arguably less useful. Do you make the same tired comments when those industries are brought up? An…

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by jollybean »

foxyv wrote: post #80
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?

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with American sub-culture, the US dollar, our crazy university system, and immigration. This is speculation on my part so take it with a BIG grain of salt. The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are so…

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 portion of 'hardcore talent' is still actually quite large in real terms, and yes, they do disproportionately contribute. It frankly doesn't take a large quantity.

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

#197

Post by CalChris »

throwthere wrote: post #179
SahAssar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have some other country in mind that could support a nascent space company?

The point wasn't just about SpaceX. "A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months". That semiconductor manufacturing industry is largely overseas and has been for awhile.

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by lfuller »

sandworm101 wrote: post #175
devoutsalsa wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching the Falcon Heavy take off & land was one of the coolest things in my life. Watching Starship take off, land, and blow up was neat. The fact that these things build on previous accomplishments doesn’t make them any less impressive. Enjoy the ride & don’t poop on the party.

>> Enjoy the ride & don’t poop on the party. Legitimate criticism of SpaceX fanboys is not "Pooping on the party". People who pretend that this is a ground-up space program, an icon of how private enterprise is always better at everything, need to be educated in the history of spaceflight. I myself could build a car in my garage that is better/faster/cheaper than everything available in decades past. That doesn't mea…

If you truly believe that you can make a car that is significantly better than the current state of the art AND turn it into a viable business at scale, then what are you waiting for? You’ll be a billionaire.

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

#200

Post by ctoth »

jonahbenton wrote: post #168
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…

Sorry, this is such an absolutely absurd argument. What are minimal capital and time requirements to do this eggs in more than one basket thing? Not talking about an orbiting space whatever but a real, sustainable ecology on another planet. The depth of our ignorance even about whole classes of basic science there, notwithstanding the number and scale of engineering problems to solve.... Is there any reality where th…

Almost as if he's thought about the thing he's devoted a good chunk of his life and wealth towards, here's Musk:

“The point at which one says the goal is to make life multi-planetary, it means that we need to have a self-sustaining city on Mars,” Musk said. “That city has to survive if the resupply ships stop coming from Earth for any reason whatsoever. Doesn’t matter why. If those resupply ships stop coming, does the city die out or not? In order to make something self-sustaining, you can’t be missing anything. You must have all the ingredients. It can’t be like, well this thing is self-sustaining except for this one little thing that we don’t have. It can’t be. That’d be like saying, ‘Well, we went on this long sea voyage, and we had everything except vitamin C.’ OK, great. Now you’re going to get scurvy and die—and painfully, by the way. It’s going to suck. You’re going to die slowly and painfully for lack of vitamin C. So we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the vitamin C there on Mars. Then it’s like, OK, rough order of magnitude, what kind of tonnage do you need to make it self-sustaining? It’s probably not less than a million tons.”

That’s not a precise number, of course. It’s a rough estimate. But Mars settlers will need vast quantities of stuff. The settlers will need to build an entire industrial base to mine the Red Planet, and there are many steps in mining. To make consumer products requires a huge infrastructure base to refine and shape materials. “I’ll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I’d like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars,” Musk said.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-pl...

Post reply on HN