I get what "full Uber" is trying to mean but it seems like a pretty silly concept. And I don't see the connection between one company's bookings and another's funds raised.
On a personal note, I'd say it's pretty sad that a taxi company is raising more than a company attempting to further the technological front. Not popular to say anything against Uber here these days, but this is not against Uber specifically, more the perverted culture that we live in. Imagine these 8+ billion going to cancer research, for example.
Uber is buying up robotics departments and pushing into autonomous vehicles. They're definitely furthering the technological front. Also, I think you'll find plenty of criticism of Uber around here, it's not one of the most well-regarded companies.
Uber hasn't done anything meaningful to further the technological front yet -- certainly nothing that is or will affect all of humanity. And we are literally talking about Rocket Science here...
There was a lot of "first" in the previous comment, which might as well be synonymous with "front" in this context.
As an example, Linux wasn't the first UNIX-like kernel or the even the first free UNIX-like kernel, but it (with GNU) was the first free UNIX-like kernel to bring a UNIX-like kernel to the mainstream PC world and span the entire vertical range of computing scale from microcontrollers to TOP500 supercomputers. I'd call that expanding the technological front.
Edited for GNUtical correctness, which makes it quite a bit harder to read
That is a ridiculous, close minded statement. You enjoy the fruits of space experimentation on the ISS every day. In addition, much of what is space technology today and the research done to develop it finds its way to civilian aviation, transportation and so many other fields. But you enjoy your naive, small scale, narrow point of view. Like a horse with a saddle, ignorance is a bliss.
First off, SpaceX had little/nothing to do with any of the stuff you mentioned.
Second, I am not devaluing what SpaceX has done or is trying to do. I am a big fan actually of such ventures which strive to find new frontiers.
My reply was in the context of this thread where lot of people are dissing Uber saying they are not a real technology company, and people lamenting the fact that a taxi company raised more money than a space faring company.
I was pointing out the close-mindedness (if you will) of those people. Uber is having tremendous impact in the here and now across the world, and touching the lives of millions of people. What they have done is nothing to dismiss. Also the vision of the future they are working towards could be even more transformative (possibly save hundreds of thousands of lives a year).
What SpaceX is trying is far more riskier and ambitious and its rewards for humanity (if it succeeds) lay further into the future and may end up having greater impact on the future of humanity (or it may not). In the interim its impact is limited (because it is a long-term project).
It makes no sense to compare the two ventures as some competition. The worlds needs both. There is nothing wrong with the fact that Uber has a greater valuation than SpaceX. Uber provides greater value to their customers right now. And they could provide greater returns to their investors sooner (if they chose to ). SpaceX as of now is much more riskier investment and its real returns lay farther in the future.
Helped keep the peace between the USSR and the USA through the cold war, by giving them something to collaborate on and so build some trust and keep communication going.
Well, we can imagine another world where we still have superpowers with nukes pointed at each other but without big civil collaborative science projects going on between them.
Both worlds could end up in an all-out nuclear war, but which one do you think is more likely?
Well, without going down the road of trying to find plausible probabilities for imaginary scenarios it is difficult to chip away at either hypothesis, given we do not have a variety of different earths to test on.
Space technology in the 60s certainly resulted in wider benefit. Today? There's definitely some innovation happening, but broadly (compared to, say, consumer electronics) space is an incredibly slow moving, incredibly risk averse field. It often takes decades for components developed for other fields to end up in space.
A satellite today will probably be filled with electronic components designed 20 years ago. Justifying doing anything new is hugely expensive and so rarely happens.
Ultimately, in the past designing for space was a new field with rapid development but as the field has matured the huge cost involved in launching anything has made the whole industry hugely risk averse. There is innovation happening from new players (cube sats, spacex), but even these areas are mostly about finding cheaper ways to do things rather than inventing new stuff.
Both Uber and SpaceX are technically 'transportation companies' in a loose sense. None of the things you listed above really further any field in basic science and academia. SpaceX's achievements simply sound cooler because it is with big rockets and more tangible to write down for record keeping. They are essentially using rocket tech in a new, different way that employs a new business model for success - which, surprise surprise, is exactly what Uber does as well but with terrestrial transport vehicles.
>certainly nothing that is or will affect all of humanity.
If we're setting the goal post for "furthering the technological front" at "helping all of humanity" then technology is at a standstill and the Internet is a failure. After all, fewer than 50% of the world uses the Internet.
Uber has improved my quality of life, and improved the ability of my social group to get together despite being fairly spread out. Before installing uber, I paid for transportation maybe twice a year. Now it's closer to twice a month. That's pretty significant.
I'm glad SpaceX is doing well, but I'm also glad Uber is going well.
Totally tangential, but I'm genuinely curious where you live if you've only needed to pay for transportation twice a year. (Assuming you are counting car and bike maintenance and car fuel in that comment?)
If people can get around cheaper and more easily using Uber than they could previously using taxis, that's an enabler for better productivity and quality across the entire economy.
Not even to mention that Uber, in complete opposition to taxis, is massively incentivised to drive self-driving tech forwards as quickly as possible. That will be a huge, huge multiplier on the above.
Your use of 'perverted culture' in reference to demand for improvements in transport services puzzles me. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your intent. People getting around, seeing other people, working with other people is the very basis of, well.. everything in our economy, and in our lives.
Even if only on an academic level, I really struggle to see how anyone couldn't be excited by the improvements companies like Uber are making right now, and the potentially more drastic improvements they could make in the future, in this sector.
Thanks for this. I was not aware of Uber's investments in the field, and I didn't want to compare Uber in particular. By "perverted culture", I meant the high-tech world in general, where Facebook buys Instagram and WhatsApp for billions of dollars for ... uhm ... important reasons. I am not holier than though myself, I participate in the crazy spending myself. But seeing the numbers here just made me think.
You somehow think Uber is going to continue subsidize taxi travel forever? Is that what all these investors are putting money into, of course not. The technological mertis of Uber does not take that much money. They might be working on self-driving cars, but so are several other startups and car companies. Just not as some lofty future goal, but as actual incremental improvements.
I think most peoples excitment over Uber is reactionary. Because they clearly aren't as excited about all the other companies that are now using similar technology without the poor ethics of Uber.
I don't like some of Uber's ethics but its execution overall has been exceptional. There is one impressive technical component around matching up riders along the same route. Otherwise, the Uber service is mostly just well-executed technology. But where Uber is way beyond others is operations, scale, marketing, etc. All worthy characteristics even if they don't resonate so much with a pure technical crowd.
Also, on a gross basis, Uber's 20-25% take rate makes it wildly profitable.
I'm going to disagree. It's a slippery slope to start making comparisons like that because the logical conclusion is that you only spend money on cancer research.
Also, I think transportation is fundamental and worth investing in. And further, it's (currently) a pretty good and very flexible way for a variety of people to earn income.
Billions of dollars a year already go into cancer research. Infinite funding != faster progress.
I'd say the allocation of capital has been fairly efficient. Uber will be doing self driving vehicles(among other companies), and that will be as transformational as the automobile itself.
Also "cancer" is not one disease. It's thousands of separate diseases.
Moreover, technology is not a straight line. For example as far as cancer research goes, computer gaming and the incredible investment in graphics card technology (and the consumer market for it) has done more to help in recent years as a general effort then any other specific advance.
But people have definitely sat around saying "we shouldn't spend money on this..."
It's not clear how or why the comparison exists except due to Uber being at the forefront of the current tech zeitgeist. There are many other things to compare this too. I am not clear on how informing the reader about the amount of funding Uber has raised and SpaceX's revenue from contracts actually clarifies and helps to provide proper perspective of the amount of money SpaceX has under contract. There is only mention of Uber in the title and once in the article, but the mention and comparison have worked to make everyone think about Uber (look at the current comments in this submission :))
Space-X has a big order book, but that's not investment funding. That's potential future sales. Space-X only gets paid when they deliver a successful launch.
Space-X has had a huge future launch manifest for years, but they've never been able to keep up with their announced launch schedule. Now they no longer put dates on their launch manifest. Compare the current manifest [1] with one from a year ago [2] They're about 15 missions behind their announced schedule from last year.
well to get it as investment funding it sounds like they just need to emulate Uber's model. So a Spaxe-X app where you can book Space, Space-X, Space-XL, Space-Black, and Space-SUV trips to various solar destinations.
Clearly since Russia messed with Ukraine SpaceX' well being now has a national security aspect to it. Government support will be there for it if for nothing else but a goad for NASA to work faster.
They might be behind schedule but Musk is known for setting unrealistically aggressive targets. His companies may missed the milestones but they're still streets ahead of anyone else.
SpaceX' track record has been nothing short of amazing so far and is likely to continue once it get's its supply chain wrinkles ironed out.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadThe first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket (Falcon 1) to reach orbit (28 September 2008)
The first privately funded company to successfully launch (by Falcon 9) Orbit and recover a spacecraft (Dragon) (9 December 2010)
The first private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the International Space Station (25 May 2012)
The first private company to send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit
As an example, Linux wasn't the first UNIX-like kernel or the even the first free UNIX-like kernel, but it (with GNU) was the first free UNIX-like kernel to bring a UNIX-like kernel to the mainstream PC world and span the entire vertical range of computing scale from microcontrollers to TOP500 supercomputers. I'd call that expanding the technological front.
Edited for GNUtical correctness, which makes it quite a bit harder to read
Not really. It's literally doing what was done before, 30 years ago.
I booked a ride on Uber just the other day.
edit: typo
First off, SpaceX had little/nothing to do with any of the stuff you mentioned.
Second, I am not devaluing what SpaceX has done or is trying to do. I am a big fan actually of such ventures which strive to find new frontiers.
My reply was in the context of this thread where lot of people are dissing Uber saying they are not a real technology company, and people lamenting the fact that a taxi company raised more money than a space faring company.
I was pointing out the close-mindedness (if you will) of those people. Uber is having tremendous impact in the here and now across the world, and touching the lives of millions of people. What they have done is nothing to dismiss. Also the vision of the future they are working towards could be even more transformative (possibly save hundreds of thousands of lives a year).
What SpaceX is trying is far more riskier and ambitious and its rewards for humanity (if it succeeds) lay further into the future and may end up having greater impact on the future of humanity (or it may not). In the interim its impact is limited (because it is a long-term project).
It makes no sense to compare the two ventures as some competition. The worlds needs both. There is nothing wrong with the fact that Uber has a greater valuation than SpaceX. Uber provides greater value to their customers right now. And they could provide greater returns to their investors sooner (if they chose to ). SpaceX as of now is much more riskier investment and its real returns lay farther in the future.
What has manned (!) space flight ever done for us?
edit - there is other stuff as well, but 'peace' seemed the best option to go with given the way you phrased the question - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Hubble_I...
(One competing hypothesis is `nukes kept the peace'.)
Both worlds could end up in an all-out nuclear war, but which one do you think is more likely?
I was thinking of rather more evidence-based evidence.
A satellite today will probably be filled with electronic components designed 20 years ago. Justifying doing anything new is hugely expensive and so rarely happens.
Ultimately, in the past designing for space was a new field with rapid development but as the field has matured the huge cost involved in launching anything has made the whole industry hugely risk averse. There is innovation happening from new players (cube sats, spacex), but even these areas are mostly about finding cheaper ways to do things rather than inventing new stuff.
If we're setting the goal post for "furthering the technological front" at "helping all of humanity" then technology is at a standstill and the Internet is a failure. After all, fewer than 50% of the world uses the Internet.
I'm glad SpaceX is doing well, but I'm also glad Uber is going well.
Not even to mention that Uber, in complete opposition to taxis, is massively incentivised to drive self-driving tech forwards as quickly as possible. That will be a huge, huge multiplier on the above.
Your use of 'perverted culture' in reference to demand for improvements in transport services puzzles me. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your intent. People getting around, seeing other people, working with other people is the very basis of, well.. everything in our economy, and in our lives.
Even if only on an academic level, I really struggle to see how anyone couldn't be excited by the improvements companies like Uber are making right now, and the potentially more drastic improvements they could make in the future, in this sector.
I think most peoples excitment over Uber is reactionary. Because they clearly aren't as excited about all the other companies that are now using similar technology without the poor ethics of Uber.
Also, on a gross basis, Uber's 20-25% take rate makes it wildly profitable.
Also, I think transportation is fundamental and worth investing in. And further, it's (currently) a pretty good and very flexible way for a variety of people to earn income.
I'd say the allocation of capital has been fairly efficient. Uber will be doing self driving vehicles(among other companies), and that will be as transformational as the automobile itself.
Moreover, technology is not a straight line. For example as far as cancer research goes, computer gaming and the incredible investment in graphics card technology (and the consumer market for it) has done more to help in recent years as a general effort then any other specific advance.
But people have definitely sat around saying "we shouldn't spend money on this..."
After all you've got to expand before making money. Or so the current thinking appears to go.
and here is the page that has all their contracted future launches:
http://www.spacex.com/missions
Space-X has had a huge future launch manifest for years, but they've never been able to keep up with their announced launch schedule. Now they no longer put dates on their launch manifest. Compare the current manifest [1] with one from a year ago [2] They're about 15 missions behind their announced schedule from last year.
[1] http://www.spacex.com/missions [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20140917002523/http://www.spacex...
They might be behind schedule but Musk is known for setting unrealistically aggressive targets. His companies may missed the milestones but they're still streets ahead of anyone else.
SpaceX' track record has been nothing short of amazing so far and is likely to continue once it get's its supply chain wrinkles ironed out.