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

Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 351 posts

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#81

Post by kaycebasques »

I respect the clarity of the vision and the drivenness to make the vision a reality.

I disagree with the vision. The best analogy I can think of right now is high school kids renting a hotel for a party and trashing it and then doing the same thing next week. That’s humanity right now.

There is no Planet B until we build a mutualistic relationship with the one that created us.

And yes when I say “there is no Planet B” I’m being vaguely spiritual. I believe Earth is a creature and somehow won’t allow one of its creations to explore the stars until that creation learns mutualism. But I’m also being pragmatic: A) colonialism was a big motivation in our last 2 world wars and we still have intense colonizer memes circulating through our societies B) we now have the means to destroy ourselves thoroughly C) Mars is the crown jewel of potential colonies right now.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#82

Post by Diederich »

WoodenKatana wrote: post #10

Elon Musk is beyond obsessed with reaching Mars. I feel bad for his employees

Working at a Musk company usually is, from what I've heard, a rigorous, fast-moving and stressful experience. It's expected, from the top all the way down, that people move really fast and push really hard.

So, given that, here's my question: is it not well known, ahead of time, that's the environment? How many people are truly surprised once they hire on?

I've been a long-time fan of most of Musk's work, acknowledging that the man is deeply flawed.

Yet even though I personally believe in most of what Musk wants to accomplish, I will never work at any of his companies, even though I'm quite qualified for several roles in each.

I believe in the mission, but my personal and family time is even more important to me.

Note that all of the above is, roughly, talking about salaried/technical/management positions, and not, roughly, about hourly.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#83

Post by grecy »

martythemaniak wrote: post #57

Slightly off-topic but apart from Mars-related things, I don't think are appreciating how big of a deal Starship/Super Heavy will be. Because space is hard and expensive, when designing payloads, they also have to be over-engineered to make sure you're getting the most out of your ride, which then makes the rockets over-engineered and expensive to make sure they don't blow up carrying the precious cargo. It's a posit…

> What if you knew you could get a cheap ride anywhere anytime?

That's exactly the premise of Starlink. SpaceX know they can launch those things 100x cheaper (1000x ?) than ever before in history, so they're churning them out and throwing them up. Even though the ones going up right now aren't "finished" it doesn't matter, because replacing them with new and better ones is so cheap.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#84

Post by kiba »

kaycebasques wrote: post #81

I respect the clarity of the vision and the drivenness to make the vision a reality. I disagree with the vision. The best analogy I can think of right now is high school kids renting a hotel for a party and trashing it and then doing the same thing next week. That’s humanity right now. There is no Planet B until we build a mutualistic relationship with the one that created us. And yes when I say “there is no Planet B…

We can do both.

Cheap and rapid space launch may allow us to put polluting industries where they belong: in space.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#85

Post by _carl_jung »

kaycebasques wrote: post #81

I respect the clarity of the vision and the drivenness to make the vision a reality. I disagree with the vision. The best analogy I can think of right now is high school kids renting a hotel for a party and trashing it and then doing the same thing next week. That’s humanity right now. There is no Planet B until we build a mutualistic relationship with the one that created us. And yes when I say “there is no Planet B…

The pursuit of sustainable living and the pursuit of a multi-planetary existence are parallel endeavours, not serial ones. Perhaps the view from Mars will instil a renewed perspective on our dependence on Earth, and teach us lessons on ecological management via terraforming.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#86

Post by Diederich »

PedroBatista wrote: post #18

I don't know about the Starship a week but he definitely fulfils his hyperbolic bullshit per day quota. And it's mostly "our" fault, "we" let him getaway with so much shit ( from market manipulation to criminal workplace offences ) because he entertains our egos with the promise of getting all our problems solved ( which is ridiculous at so many levels ). OK let's pretend Elon builds one Starship a week, at which cos…

> the promise of getting all our problems solved

Where has that been promised? He's working on a rather small set of big problems, which is a far cry from 'all our problems', don't you think?

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#87

Post by toomuchtodo »

luckyscs wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model I suggest is used in Germany, and works well for both the business and the workers. On a smaller scale, Costco implements something similar in the US with positive results (Customers and employees before shareholders, but shareholders still profit).

I'd rather have something like a engineering corps that could keep engineers employees during recessions when the private sector can't afford it. Almost like and engineering reserve. I'd rather have the stability than more profit.

I agree! The US did this as part of the New Deal [1], it was called the Works Progress Administration (WPA) [2], making the federal government the largest employer at the time. You'd want to integrate that with employee unions; during good times, businesses work with unions to source labor. During hard times, the government steps in as the employer of last resort, using cheap nation state debt issuance to fund infrastructure projects to fill in private investment gaps. You of course then have to pay back that debt with taxes when the economy is booming again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Summary_of_First_and_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#88

Post by aguyfromnb »

peeters wrote: post #74
aguyfromnb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They designed and built a custom welding machine _and_ a custom X-Ray machine for building tank domes in four weeks? Can any engineer speak to whether this is actually progress, or even necessary? It seems like every time something goes wrong, Elon "invents" a way to do it better. I'm old enough to remember rescue subs, battery swaps, brain implants that will cure autism, factories spitting out factories, solar shi…

I'm not in that area, but I struggle to find an analogue of a large pressurized tank on Earth where mass is the dominant cost factor. You might have equally big tanks on Earth, under equal pressures, but it will be more cost-effective to just increase the material used on the shell of the tank to solve your problems. Whereas in space, every kg that can theoretically be removed from the launch vehicle is worth investi…

>So yes it seems reasonable to me that these are groundbreaking challenges.

Isn't weld strength something engineers would know/understand in advance, though? How would it come as a surprise that the welds would fail under pressure?

It seems strange to me that Musk could be spending so much time working on Starship, and somehow a "badly designed, badly built, and badly checked" rocket makes it to the platform and explodes.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#90

Post by paulsutter »

ajnin wrote: post #45
addisonl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Musk has come to believe the only way to realistically achieve this is through trial and error, by iterating closer and closer to the right design" This how everything is made. Revolutionary.

No, not in aerospace. The common approach is to spend years designing, simulating, and then actual tests come at the very end, and sometimes you don't even test because you can't or it would be too expensive. That's what Boeing are doing with their own rockets; Mars missions until now didn't really go through an iterative process; satellites are usually manufactured only by one and they better work once in orbit.

SpaceX built an incredible custom simulator in order to design the methane engines used in Starship[1]. Right now they are experimenting with manufacturing techniques, which is much less amenable to simulation

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2zhad6/spacex_at_gp...

Post reply on HN