So I’ve heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I’m scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.
I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.
Is it because it’s not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they’re like “Yea yea but this is different it’s crazy bro”
Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?
A lot of people pointed out a lot of firsts, huge cost reductions, regular flights, but let’s look from the opposite direction ……
Mass to orbit. SpaceX came from nowhere not too many years ago, jumped ahead of established manufacturers, until now they launch most of the worlds satellite mass to orbit, with an unparalleled success record, even with the recent failures. And this is with a rapidly growing space market
Everything they’ve achieved has not only let them scale up far surpassing the rest of the industry across the world, combined, but with reliability and cost to attract all that business
I don’t know what it would take for you to call it a revolution, but the impact on space business is revolutionary
Imagine you want to build a cabin in a very remote place in Alaska.
Getting there is quite difficult, you did it a few times in the 60’s but the path is so bad that you had to throw the truck away each time (around $45,000 per trip, for the truck + gas)
You are still planning to build your cabin but having to buy a new truck for each trip is not great, plus the fact that only one company can make this SLS truck so you can’t get more than once a year.
Building a cabin in these circumstances is close to impossible.
Now SpaceX makes a new Starship truck that can go all the way AND be reused. The trip from the hardware store to the build site now only costs you around $100 for the gas plus truck expenses AND you can now do the trip to the hardware store multiple times a day !
Now building the cabin becomes way more accessible.
Replace the Alaskan cabin with a scientific base on the moon or Mars and multiply the amounts by 100,000 and you have an approximation of the situation
NASA could have done this if they had the budget. Instead we’d rather give huge tax cuts to billionaires so they can build a private sector NASA to charge NASA exorbitant sums to use their private vehicles. It’s the most asinine and innefficient way of going about it.
Space X has less bureaucracy and can pursue other commercial ventures. The amount nasa pays is high, but it’s still cheaper than continuing their old program
Plus NASA can’t afford the risk. If SpaceX failed, no big deal. We would have lost some money and everyone would ridicule Musk. If NASA tried it and failed, they would not only have lost five times the money, but would be parylized by investigations, audits, cutbacks. NASA does a LOT more than just rockets and it would all be at risk
Plus notice NASA has been investing in multiple commercial programs where possible. 3 big rocket programs. Two crew capsules and multiple cargo capsules. Multiple space stations, etc. NASA could not have created this redundancy on their own
No, NASA has the budget. They already spent $50 billion on the development of SLS and Orion, Starship development cost is estimated to be around $10 billion.
So in theory with the money they spent on SLS they could have built 5 starship program.
The problem is that NASA has to follow political interests, sometimes the political interests align with technical interest and we get great things like the Apollo program.
They also have a very tight tolerance of failure. Every failure made in the engineering process brings more and more scrutiny by those holding the purse strings in Washington.
Specially this. How space x handles failures is a very hard nono in my book. “But we test in the field” is what space x says, and as a software developer its like saying “we test in production”.
Yes youll get something use able faster, but its way way more costly in the long run and is nasty in between.
My arse they cant test this stuff on earth. We have simulations, models, calculations, test, everything. Yes, things can and will sometimes still fail when going in production ( in flight ) but you want to lower the risk of it failing cause its costly as fuck.They dont seem to care though.
Also, im not saying what they are building towards is bad, it really really isnt, but their methods is… Bad
Not a fan, but it generally boils down not to where they can fly but how they differ in other aspects, mainly cost.
SpaceX is currently the world pioneer in heavy reusable rockets, which is another way to say they are the only ones to launch big stuff up there so cheap, and it gets even better.
They are essentially doing the good side of capitalism - making stuff cheaper - applied to space, one of the most expensive industries in the world.
You’ve supported none of these hollow, false claims.
SpaceX is a hole where government subsidy goes to die without purpose. They said they’d fly multiple manned cargo missions to a city they’d built on a terraformed Mars by 2022. How we doing?
Instead, musk was just served a divorced, sexually assaulted a woman and tried to bribe her with a horse, publicly destroyed twitter for the Saudis and stuck his whole gender affirming surgery reshaped face into trump’s sloppy, bediapered asshole on stage - all while giving him $50 million dollars a month to interfere with an American election and demonize immigrants… as an immigrant.
I might be wrong on the side of cost efficiency, this is just common perception and you can inform me, but where did I tell anything about Musk himself?
I do think he is an asshole, but this is irrelevant to the topic
musk is spacex is musk.
And "I might be wrong"after the fact is a pleasant way to say, “I completely pulled my previous assumption out of my ass while stating it plainly as fact”
Yeah but they’re not and they don’t.
Thet didn’t pioneer reusable rockets, that was done decades ago already, and they’re not cheap either
SpaceX sull hasn’t done anything hat wasn’t done better long before. They do party hard reen a rocket of theirs explodes, which I never saw NASA do
You might check your research a bit, go beyond Facebook GeForce your “facts”
The(y) didn’t pioneer reusable rockets
They did pioneer reusable orbital liquid fueled rockets, closest before that was the space shuttle’s SRBs (solid fuel, dumped and fished out the ocean).
and they’re not cheap either. They’re expensive,
They are incredibly cheap to operate by rocket standards, the reason why they haven’t lowered the pricetag is:
a. Would absolutely be an anti-trust against them if they didn’t stay close to competitors (monopoly by simply being too good is a thing)
b. Capitalism baby, they have no real competitor so they can make a crazy profit (and because of point A they basically have to unless they want to be sued to oblivion).
and they’re floating on government grants
Contracts* They have government contracts. Government requests a service, SpaceX provides the service, SpaceX gets paid, simple as that. They have gotten subsidies to expand Starlink, but every ISP gets that and even then they have been declined it countless times because AT&T, etc. have lobbied against them.
SpaceX s(ti)ll hasn’t done anything hat wasn’t done better long before.
I’m sorry, what other rockets and space capsules can be reused? What other rocket can be returned directly on the launch pad?
They do party hard (wh)en a rocket of theirs explodes, which I never saw NASA do.
Because they see milestones being completed in the testing program, it’s about where it exploded (it was gonna explode either way, planned or unplanned).
They managed to get their super duper new heavy rocket in an uncontrolled spin in low earth orbit! I’m sorry, Noy impressed by results that are less than half of what -again- NASA did in the 60’ and 80’ of the last century.
NASA sent a 50m tall, 9m wide second stage that was designed to be fully reusable with full-flow staged engines and then transferred super-chilled fuel between tanks? Cool! Which system was that? Would love to read about it!
This is a very interesting argument. Like many people, I am not familiar with rocket building. Do you mind providing some sources so we can judge for ourselves?
Thanks in advance!
It’s not like they hide and launch. As much as I would like to not have Musk as the CEO, the company itself is great despite Musk, so overall a win. Musk is just the idiot they need at the top. Others might be too risk adverse and just create NASA 2.0. We all know NASA sucks at flying anything.
In my opinion Space X is a great company and its engineers, just like Tesla, is what keeps them innovative rather than the racist idiot riding on their shoulders… example Boeing. The engineers made great planes, the business assholes made great money. So if we can keep the idiot at the top making risky crazy promises and funneling money into the company, then the engineers will have great ideas to demonstrate and all the technicians and office workers and cleaning crew, all of them will have a job. Putting money into Tesla is basically pumping the economy. The results is currently a constellation of temporary Internet satellites. That’s at least something.
They are essentially doing the good side of capitalism - making stuff cheaper
I mean yeah, it’s cheaper due to technological advancement, but I fail to see how that’s an effect of capitalism. I’d argue similar developments would have been made even without capitalism. I just don’t think we would have the desire to leave this place without capitalism, but that’s besides the point.
It’s not clear to me how SpaceX has managed to do things for cheaper. Are they cutting labor? QC?
Two things, mainly. They do a lot of the production steps in-house, as opposed to having a web of subcontractors (who have their own subcontractors)for each component. But the big thing is just efficiency of scale. Building and launching 100 rockets per year doesn’t cost 100 times more than one launch per year.
They really haven’t yet. The concept is that reusable rockets will be cheaper than soviet era single use rockets… eventually.
On a surface level it makes sense, taking a rocket refurbishing it, and refueling sounds cheaper. But its not. Not yet anyways. Too complex and expensive presently.
They are able to reuse the rockets
I don’t know they just launched and caught a rocket yesterday, that’s pretty fucking cool.
Because no one else is doing space things as well as spaceX is even if you think they suck.
Rockets are just cool tech. So is space tech. It grabs our imagination in a way that most terrestrial things dont.
People like space and his company is doing a lot of space
Not a Tesla fan and I absolutely despise the cult around Elon. SpaceX is a bit different though. Luckily with Elon’s many, many side project misadventures he’s pretty hands-off with SpaceX. Ultimately it comes down to being largely engineer driven and given sufficient (but yes, still government) funding to try new things without the scrutiny of direct government agencies. The hours are usually terrible from what I hear, but this varies team to team.
My biggest complaint is that they do lowball engineers using the stock as reasoning for why it’s worth accepting. FWIW historically that has been the case, and many engineers there do effectively have golden handcuffs. But expecting infinite golden handcuff level growth forever is unrealistic.
Building your qualifications to teach advanced courses in being blasé?
I read that nasa can’t even make saturn v rockets anymore. that the design documents and manufacturing techniques weren’t properly archived and everyone that worked on them has died by now. idk if any of that is true.
That’s kind of like saying that ford can’t make a model t anymore.
I’m sure they could, there’s just no reason to.
I’m also sure the contractors that built the Saturn V, those that are still in business, could build equivalent parts today if the government asked.
The Saturn five was an absurdly large rocket designed specifically to get 3 people from earth to the moon. It was insanely expensive per launch, and the only reason it ever flew was because the government was writing nasa blank checks in order to beat the soviets.
Today the government wants a reasonable dollar figure for a launch, and the days of spending a billion dollars per launch are long past.
Yep, $2B/launch now
It is true that we cannot make Saturn V rockets anymore.
The drawings are preserved, and even if they weren’t, we have a few examples of unflown ones on display to study. There has been some institutional knowledge lost, several components were made by welding techniques we don’t use anymore. Also, many of the components and materials used in the Saturn V are not manufactured anymore and are not available.
Building another Saturn V isn’t entirely impossible, but the amount of retooling and re-engineering we’d have to do to the designs to get a flyable rocket we might as well just start over and call it a clean sheet design. Like Falcon Heavy, which put a sports car into solar orbit, or SLS which flew an Orion capsule around the moon in 2022.
What you’re asking is akin to: why are people impressed by the airplane? We’ve already reached the Americas and India by boat.
SpaceX, and others actually are not advancing science per se, but are greatly improving/optimising the engineering so that it can be used in cheaper ways by science.
There’s also the issue that after the moon landing we didn’t really improve that much and much of the knowledge faded
There’s also the issue that after the moon landing we didn’t really improve that much and much of the knowledge faded
SpaceX is not run by Elon and he’s kept from being involved closely by a buffer of people that keep him from getting too close to making any “elon” level changes.
SpaceX is successful despite Musk, not because of. And the woman who runs it knows that and keeps Musk away from any important decisions or impacts.
So the stuff they’re doing is legit, cool aerospace stuff.
It’s just not something Musk should take credit for. He does/will. But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
That’s not true in the least. He is CEO, CTO and Chief rocket designer. He’s deeply involved in every step
“deeply involved in every step” absolutely not, because if he was it would be painfully obvious.
He’s far too busy with X, Trump, and his relationship drama to have any time to do anything close to being involved. Of the company’s he’s bought or been involved in creating SpaceX is toward the bottom of his priorities from what I hear.
He can give himself whatever titles he likes, that doesn’t mean he makes any positive technical contribution.
Watch a few of the multi hour interviews he given while raining through explaining everything. He knows what he’s doing if you’ve not been paying attention. Lots of reasons to not like him but your completely wrong on this one
I have watched them. He’s just repeating things. He has no grasp of engineering or astrophysics at a fundamental level. He is a sales guy.
The same is true for his software engineering skills. They are novice level, at best. Watching his engineering brainstorm sessions at Twitter was a painful experience. He only knows how to talk the talk. He constantly misuses key tech jargon and design patterns. His engineering group will literally come whenever he makes a suggestion.
You worked with him at Twitter?
My dude.
I’m a Principal software engineer with 27 years in the industry. I run a team of highly tenured, extremely badass engineers for an extremely large enterprise corporation with 30k+ employees.
I know what I’m on about when it comes to software development.
I’ve watched the musk interviews and behind the scenes brainstorming sessions for the Twitter 2.0 idea. He’s a hack.
What are your qualifications for praising him?
I’m guessing they let him name the Of Course I Still Love You?
Those names are taken from Iain M. Banks’ Culture sci-fi series.
Which is hilarious, as the eponymous Culture is the epitome of luxury gay space anarchism. Pan-sexual, non-monogamous space hippies that can (and do) change their biological sex just by thinking about it. People so past the idea of “gender” that they consider giving any serious weight to the concept barbaric.
I know it’s a rhetorical question: but is Elon stupid or something?
But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
He’s also a stupid doodoo brain, with poop and pee in his pants! Cacca doodoo!
Gee wizz mate, calm the frik down, we don’t need that language around here!
NASA, nor anyone else, has done this before. I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you say NASA did this already.
I hate Elon just as much as the next guy, but pretending that this wasn’t a marvel of engineering is really disingenuous. People with intelligence beyond my comprehension made that a reality, and just because the company had his face on it, it doesn’t make it any less impressive
This was right below your post in my feed:
Wait, when did NASA land a fully reusable rocket like fucking Buck Rogers?
Then do it again, but capture it with the freakin’ launch tower?
When did NASA even have a reusable rocket? Oh, the shuttle, the bastardized money pit for NSA/NRO/Air Force, that appears to have been designed to orbit a surveillance satellite chassis, which most people know as Hubble (it’s one of many, this one being used to surveil the universe, instead of the earth).
And the shuttle was a quasi-reusable orbiter, not a rocket.
I believe NASA could also refurbish and re-use the SRBs, but the big orange tank was expended with every flight. The Space Shuttle Main Engines are actually still in service, we have a small inventory of them and they either have been or will be flown since 2011.
But I would definitely say that the moment the Falcon Heavy’s two booster stages returned to Cape Canaveral and made synchronized powered landings was the moment 21st century space flight arrived. SpaceX is head and shoulders above what anyone else is doing with reusable rockets and spacecraft. Meanwhile Boeing is in the broom closet huffing Lysol and muttering about quarterly earnings.
They could reuse the SRB but the cost to refurbish them was like 90% of a new one. So it wasn’t terribly useful.
Did you just talk shit on the shuttle and Hubble? Whaaat?
The shuttle was a massive and unsafe waste of space ship.
Not sure what Hubble did to catch this stray however.
Can I just add that “fucking Buck rogers” is an excellent phrase and all three words can mean sex and when combined they don’t.
Honestly “Buck fucking Rogers” is a pretty big missed opportunity
