Indeed. Too bad Boeing and Lockheed didn't have competition in any real sense for the past 40 years or we'd be a lot closer to Mars.
Sometimes it boggles the mind how much money the gov't spends to achieve fairly pedestrian ends. Solid rocket boosters for the shuttle is a good example. Just a big kickback for the ICBM business in Colorado, no real science behind using them to put people in space :(
That's a solid point, but the Ariane 5 does not do manned flight either. SRBs are less safe than liquid fuel engines too, no way to shut SRBs down on ignition ... sweet.
SRBs weren't reusable in any real sense, what was left after splashdown had to be completely disassembled, separately refurbished, and then reassembled. Using the SRBs also made operations much more expensive, since any prep work done after they were mated to the Shuttle was extremely hazardous.
I've read that's in part because they were pushing the edge of the state of the art at the time they were designed, sports cars were used as an analogy.
Of course, it remains to be seen if SpaceX's scheme for engine reuse will pan out.
Which is another way in which the Shuttle platform wasn't that much reusable. Falcon 9 and future SpaceX rockets are intended to be just refueled and relaunched, without having to disassemble the engines after every landing.
"Had to be..." is not quite true. How the SSME/RS-25 was designed to operate and could be operated is not the same as how NASA chose to operate it. Particularly after Challenger.
Came here just to say this: Musk wanting to reach Mars is a wonderful thing, but that he was able to lit a fire under other people's assess has a huge multiplier effect. I would imagine other entities (even other countries) are also entering the race even if no public announcement is made.
How can you say that? Cooperation is a wonderful thing. Why is it a good thing that two separate entities, with the exact same goal, are keeping secrets from each other and inhibit the development towards that goal with the only reason being ownership and the ability to withold these technologies from the public? I mean, I get that regular zombies would say that competition is good - but a programmer? Haven't you heard about open source? Geez..
I think that Boeing certainly would say whatever they can to make people buy their stock. Competition is such a sham, and as per usual: nobody is arguing for why cooperation is bad, ya'll just keep spewing that corporate bs.
> I think that Boeing certainly would say whatever they can to make people buy their stock.
They can, and this may be one of those times. But that doesn't mean it isn't driven by competition, or at least the desire to be seen to compete.
> Competition is such a sham
It isn't when it works. Competition is why you can afford a car, most of the stuff in your house, an internet connection and so on. In places where there is only one vendor prices are as a rule a lot higher than when multiple parties court the same group of potential customers.
> and as per usual: nobody is arguing for why cooperation is bad
Cooperation has it's place, nobody needs to argue why cooperation would be bad. But in the case of Boeing and SpaceX it is fair to call them competitors because they are independent entities looking to serve the same customers.
And by the way, it's a false dichotomy between cooperation and competition in the case of companies one alternative to both competition and cooperation is cartel forming.
Competition keeps corporations consumer-centric due to the need to be the best available option.
Competition creates different perspectives and solutions due to the need to innovate to survive.
Competition drives people to do their best, due to human nature.
Oh, yeah. Corporations are so consumer-centric. Especially Boeing who's been grinding down our atmosphere for decades.
Competition creates one sole perspective: make more money than the others. This gives companies no swinging room to be 'good' instead of profitable. Also, corporations are completely void of democracy and shouldn't be legal.
> Why is it a good thing that two separate entities, with the exact same goal, are keeping secrets from each other and inhibit the development towards that goal... Haven't you heard about open source?
Even in open source, there are often competing solutions to the same problem. Rather than have a joint committee decide the best approach (to the code, to the development process, etc), the decision is made by users choosing which software works for them. That's good.
The "keeping secrets" part is what's different. It would be nice for consumers if these companies shared knowledge while they compete, as open source software projects do. But 1) their secrets won't stay secret forever, 2) the ability to have secrets helps them compete, and 3) it's an acceptable short-term loss for the long-term gain of more effort spent on the problem.
We tried a "lets stop competition and just have the government run everything with everyone sharing everything." It was called Communism and was responsible for the deaths of 100m people, set up some of the worst regimes history has ever seen, had unparalleled human rights disasters, and people today are still paying the price of such mistakes in a variety of ways. If you think approaches like these work, then I suspect you have an overly-idealized view of human nature.
Trade secrets aren't that common. Most of what these companies do are taught at college. Implementation differences, marketing/advertising, finding new and different markets, etc matter. Innovation quickly spreads by its nature. Having different companies with different management styles and no company, ideally, being 'too big to fail' is a social benefit, not a liability. The tedium of reinventing the wheel is a small price to pay here, especially when you consider how quickly/cheaply this tedium is tackled in practice.
>Haven't you heard about open source?
FOSS has failed to take over many important markets. It is full of boneheaded decisions and PHB-type antics as well as teenage-level drama, forks, and angry fanboyism. Heck, a lot of open source 'successes' are only such because a proprietary commercial entity took an open codebase and layered closed and proprietary layers on top of it (OSX, Android, Safari, etc). Its not a fix-all for the human endeavor. Competitive approaches make sense and have been proved to be effective over and over to the point where this isn't even arguable. Imagine if someone told Elon that he should just get a job at NASA instead of trying to start his own company. If you heard that I imagine you'd be singing a different tune. Why the double standard with Boeing then?
I think a lot of young people are fed this kind of far-lefty politics from a young age to be anti-corporate anti-US and anti-competition without ever being exposed to the positive aspects of those things. I think if you grew up reading Chomsky/Zinn/Trotsky/Marx, you're doing yourself a disservice on how well capitalism works and the benefits of the US-led capitalistic experiment we're all part of that has been paying dividends for two hundred plus years and continues to with ex-communist nations doing nothing but copying our system as best they can. Even 'Socialist' nations are little more than capitalist democracies with token social welfare spending via taxation.
I wouldn't bury competition as outdated just yet. Those who have in history have themselves been buried.
Simple:you can't scale an engineering effort witout limits. However, you can have as many parallel engineering efforts as you like. They can cross pollinate ideas as much as they want to, but it's very hard to share parts of the process unless they are mundane components that can be outsourced.
Openness in itself is not bad but is not a requirement for unique engineering. See what Lockheed's Skunkworks did with SR-71 for example.
They boosted on decades of aeronautics research and individual talent - these provided the raw materials. They then combined these to reach the specific design intent.
In short: you can share a theory but not a chain of command or process without costs of then having a process to control this sharing.
It's also much better to have parallel vehicle designs at this early age of our space efforts than pour everything into a single megaeffort.
Who is "they" and how will they "make" SpaceX fail? Boeing has been in the space business for a long time. Why is the news only interesting when it involves an SV darling?
By fostering a larger talent pool competition insures a dynamic long term future, lack of it it often leads to creative stagnation. This is the case in natural systems as well.
Cooperation between parties with differing goals and management styles results in design (and subsequent dismissal) by committee, whereas competition unhindered by interference from the motivated parties results in landing humans on the Moon.
Yes, if everyone were altruistically motivated to get humans to Mars, we would all contribute our dollars and work together to make it happen.
But in the real world, a lot of people who don't care beans about Mars can still be motivated to invest in the effort by the prospect of investment gains. And those gains require for-profit competition.
I see that everyone is realizing the value in this particular PR line, "Mars Ho!". Given the degree of extreme hope I see in the world of intelligent and educated people regarding this issue, I suspect it might work for a while too. At some point though, it's going to become clear that no current group has any real intentions, not to mention clear ideas, to make a Mars colony work.
For better or for worse we've got "terrorists" as the boogieman for the foreseeable future. But it's a good thought.
I just don't see Boeing being able to do this. They've gotten fat on US government defense dollars, they're not going to be able to do anything outside the ordinary, because they'll risk losing those sweet, sweet defense billions. That is, if they can compete with SpaceX,the Air Force will ask why ULA can't do better while it's on the Air Force nickel. That will cause Boeing to shy away from any innovation that the Air Force doesn't overpay for.
Please, explain to me why your so certain these are empty statements. Im genuinely curious.
If I recall correctly, the first stage of the "moon race" was more generalized, especially to the press. Also Musk himself has a pretty strong history of not sharing much of the meat of a plan till it happens.
We knew how to keep people alive on the way to the Moon, alive on the Moon, and had a reliable way back. We didn't start off the race by declaring our intention to colonize the Moon.
So I look at the issues which made Mars 'hard' a while ago, and whether or not they're solved or if Musk is on the way to solving them.
Micrometeorite shielding. Not solved
Radiation shielding. Not solved
Long term microgravity health effects. Not solved
Sufficient understanding of the human microbiome to keep it thriving off-world. Not even addressed
To me this is just ridiculous. ULA is so far behind SpaceX. The whole Vulcan engine recovery thing just seems so likely to fail and they have to wait for the BE-3 and who knows how far out that will be.
I was at the event, and this 'vow' didn't really come off as a vow to beat Musk.
We all know about Musk, but Muildenburg is someone worth checking out. His story is about as classic Americana as it gets. Raised in the midwest. Parents and grandparents were farmers. Trained as an engineer and then went to work for Boeing right out of school... I think he said what he said because he was just trying to share the room's enthusiasm to do big things with our future. Besides, he just might be right, so it might be worth taking a look at him.
Sure, they could beat Musk to Mars if they succeed in lobbying congress to enact laws forcing SpaceX' accidents to be investigated by the FAA. ULA is railing over losing their exclusive USAF launch contracts and shouting down SpaceX whenever they can, it seems. How about they put their (considerable, federal) money where their mouth is and get us to Mars.
>How about they put their (considerable, federal) money where their mouth is and get us to Mars.
You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts to the tune of $5b[1] and an undisclosed amount from NY state[2].
Both companies are alike and fairly dependent on the federal government, Boeing less so considering their large aircraft market. The wonderful thing about capitalism is you don't have to arbitrarily pick the "good" from the "bad." You have them compete and ideally good things come from competition. Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here.
On a more personal note, I think the CTS-100 is a beautiful spacecraft and would love to see it fly in 2018. Boeing can impress if they want to. I also love the fact that my kid is going to grow up in a world with many manned spacecraft by various organizations with various goals, not just the LEO-only shuttle I grew up with. I was just telling my wife about I'd love our son to see a manned rocket launch and realized that this 'sometime in the future' trip to Cape Canaveral is only a year or two away. Same with the first SLS test launch. 2018 is going to be an incredible year for manned space programs. It blows my mind how much grousing there is on the internet regarding the US's position in space. A few years without a manned program is such a tiny price to pay for all this change and innovation. This is an incredible time to be alive for space fans. I think we're going to look back at this period with a certain level of amazement the same way my parent's generation must have seen the initial space race.
>>Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here.
He isn't though. He's just posturing for PR purposes.
I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?[1]
As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as traditional car companies "vowing" to beat Tesla: it's just PR, backed by perhaps showing off concept cars in car shows.
[1]I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.
How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?
Seriously? Well not counting their ICBM program.
S-1C Program (Saturn V Rocket First Stage): 12 successful launches, 0 failures.
IUS Program (Booster for interplanetary probes from Space Shuttle): 24 launches, 3 failures (2 Boeing's fault, 1 the space shuttle exploded).
Delta II: 153 Launches, 2 Failures.
Delta III: 3 Launches, 2 Failures.
Delta IV: 33 Launches, 1 Failure.
I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program?
No. The new ULA Vulkan launch system doesn't have it's first test flight scheduled until 2019.
What about re-usable?
Boeing (or really ULA) is developing the Vulkan Rocket. Which is partially recoverable, not fully. [1] The first launch of this vehicle is 2019. The entry level offering is quoted at ~$100mil per rocket (vs ~$164mil for a Delta IV) [2]. While a Falcon9 is $62mil [3].
I see why ULA lost their contract, Musk cut their knee caps off.
Boeing's SLS rocket (which is, at its best, 1/4th the power of SpaceX's ITS) depends on NASA to spend ~$60 billion before it could get half a dozen people to Mars in the late 2030s. Updates to the Delta IV heavy could've gotten there sooner and for ~$10 billion, but Boeing is not able/willing to spend its own money to do it; it wants to use government money to get there, and the government wasn't interested in their existing hardware. It's a shame, really. [0]
From [0]: "Senator Orrin Hatch made sure the new rocket used solid boosters, manufactured in his state. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby insisted that Marshall Space Flight Center design and test the rocket. Florida Senator Bill Nelson brought home billions of dollars to Kennedy Space Center to “modernize” its launch facilities."
Yuck.
ITS, on the other hand, is claimed to cost ~$10 billion, and begin putting people on Mars (in lots larger than half a dozen, mind you) sometime in the 2020s. Yeah, it's ambitious. They've missed other ambitious deadlines.
I personally feel, subjectively of course, that SpaceX is more ambitious and "hungry" to go to Mars than Boeing is. But that's just my gut feeling, and I have no data to back that feeling up.
> You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts.
$7,500 on a $75,000 car is not a large enough subsidy to "run" Tesla. It's incentive for energy efficiency and all cars manufactures get it.
Moreover SpaceX does not get any "welfare" in any form. They have a contract job via the government's Commercial Space program.
Falcon 1 and Merlin, Kestrel and Draco engines were funded with private capital; SpaceX was a space-faring company before NASA money got involved. COTS money went into developing the Falcon 9, and amounted to $278 million.
They did get a bunch of cash from NASA for launching crew to the ISS aboard Dragon v2: $2.6 billion. NASA also gave money to Boeing for their CST-100: $4.2 billion.
> Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts
The bulk of Tesla's cash comes from sales, stocks and bond sales - incentives from the government take the form of tax credits, or state agencies offering their own incentives because they are themselves competing to hitch a ride on Elon's business ventures. And who can blame them! Boeing gets considerable subsidies and tax credits as well, as do other car manufacturers and defense contractors, let's not suggest Tesla is alone here.
Also, Tesla was saved from near death by Daimler AG in early 2009, not by a "handout". In 2010, they received a low-interest loan from the government of $465 million, which they repaid in 2013 (the first automaker to repay their portion of the $8 billion loaned out).
Boeing makes less than a third of its revenue from defense and space spending, and yet has still received far more money through federal cost-plus contracts than SpaceX has received from all its revenue sources combined.
I don't think it's fair to characterize them as apples and apples here. Boeing keeps Elon honest by putting crew on ISS, or launching something to Mars, not by lobbying congress to slow Elon down with government red tape for matters that didn't pertain to the government to begin with. That's Boeing/Lockheed (ULS) using its position as one of the largest government defense and space contractors to keep their seat at the grown-ups table.
That said, the CST-100 Starliner is quite a good looking craft that evokes memories of the Apollo program, but I personally like the sleek and swooping curves of Dragon V2 - plus the whole "lands on its legs" thing they've got going on for it. :)
On the plus side for Boeing, they have a very long track record of building things that live in space for long periods of time. Boeing acquired the Hughes geostationary satellite business based in the Los Angeles area a long time ago.
There's many 10 and 15 year old fully functional geostationary telecom satellites out there in orbit (Boeing 702 bus, etc) in "production" use with the world's largest satellite telecommunications companies. That's a track record SpaceX can't lay claim to just yet.
Yea? Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. And we are happy, because we can see the associated fireworks?
Don't get me wrong. I like the progress with the space stuff. But I just don't like the idea just because of that everything else is sunshine and rainbows...It is not. And it is not really a great time to be alive. It is an extremely boring time to be alive. Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. When radio waves were invented. Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? When they heard voices that came across the town? When they saw the first locomotive? When they saw the first airplane? Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
Those were incredible times to be alive...
How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Justin Beiber and Hilariy Clinton? How many great inventions of our times will they read with excitement? Elon Musks Hyper loop?
No. I really don't think so. So yea. We are living in incredibly boring times....
EDIT: This comment is not relavant anymore since the parent comment has been edited to include "time to be alive for space fans.."...
> Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
> Those were incredible times to be alive...
No such time existed. Its not like "the past" all happened at once, or even in one lifetime.
> How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning?
Probably lots, many of which we're overlooking because of either excessive familiarity (in terms of art) or insufficient perspective to appreciate impact (in terms of science and technological inventions.)
Lots of the people of the past we read about and hold up today, whether in artistic or technical fields, weren't recognized in their own time. Our time is, likely, no better at recognizing those among us who will be viewed as notable in the future.
> Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years.
Yes, we did. I don't know that we will have to abandon it, but we do know that human civilization is on the precipice of change, largely in part due to our relentless pace of technological process and reduction in global inequality. Setting aside income and wealth distribution on an individual level, most technology available to humans is more broadly available to humans across the globe than at any time in history. We failed to improve away from fossil fuels for largely economic reasons, and have caused irreparable damage to our ecosystem as result. That doesn't mean we haven't done incredible things along the way, and it doesn't mean that human civilization is going to come to an end, it simply means that it will change.
> Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented.
There is the rub. Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered. From the conventionally excepted discovery of electricity to the invention of devices which can be used to generate and distribute electricity, development of modern infrastructure and advances, and the most recent experimental batteries (and if you don't think batteries are experimental, take a good look at Samsung's recent failures), we have been on a 2500 year journey (the first documented history of electrical phenomen was the triboelectric effect, and documented in amber by ancient greeks) to get where we are.
We have vastly improved our understanding of how electricity works, but we haven't yet mastered it. We probably will never stop finding new and interesting ways to capture new forms of energy with the express goal of generating electricity, and it is almost certain that we haven't begun to imagine the different ways it can be used.
Along the way, we have used electricity to improve virtually every aspect of human life.
> Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema?
Yes, approximately. It suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS. It probably felt approximately the same way it did when I got my first internet connection, and decoupled my ability to learn from my (at the time) poor financial circumstances.
> When they heard voices that came across the town?
Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
> When they saw the first locomotive?
Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off, and then confusion and sadness when the Challenger accident unfolded in videos played on the news (I was 8 at the time).
> Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet. Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
> How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning?
Has it occurred to you that the reason that we don't know all of the great minds and great artists that have emerged in the last century largely because the glut of invention, ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
The great contemporary achievement is not that we have somehow failed to live up to our potential and there are no longer great people, it is that we have reduced the barrier to achievement so dramatically that almost anyone simply needs to try to have the opportunity to succeed in the way that only a select few were able to in the past.
In what era could the child of a refugee grown to build one of the greatest technology empires we have seen? Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; his story of building Apple, being pu...
> largely in part due to our relentless pace of technological process and reduction in global inequality...
Reduction in global inequality? I don't know what you mean.
>Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered.
Agreed. My mistake. I don't know what the point is with the rest of that section. I was suggesting that the invention of ways to convert electricity to other forms of energy should have looked like magic at that time. With steam engines, at least you can see what is driving the wheel. But when a motor gets driven by just a wire connected to it or a bulb lighting up should have felt like magic at the time....
>I suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS.
I doubt. Once you have electricity carrying signals, it does not seem much more exciting that signals can be used transfer different kinds of data. So all the wonder of Internet does not feel so wonderful that way. It is just a scaled up telephone exchange...nothing more.
> Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
Same thing...
>Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off...
People freaked out when they first saw an automobile. No one freaked off when they saw a rocket lifted off. If you want to evoke the same kind of wonder today, I am afraid nothing short of antigravity will do.
> Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet.
Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising. You say that we have more access to science and arts more than ever. But we also have access to any kind of sick porn, and guess what our new generation of kids are hooked up on? Internet have opened multitudes of new channels to feed never ending Ads that inject insecurities into their minds and make them feel inadequate and make them buy buy and buy more and more stuff that they don't really need.
>Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
Ha ha. From where? From bowels of your smartphone, where their heads are buried? I would be surprised if the future generations will be able to hold a proper conversation face to face without the help of their smartphones to cue them in the right time to start speaking...
> ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
You mean, there is greatness everywhere? I don't get you. Single out greatness?
> Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats;
> Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats.
Oh my. No comments for this one.
>Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species...
No. Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution. It is like paying one credit card bill with another credit card. The real solution is to stop/reduce spending when you are short on cash. In this case, that would be to learn to co-exist peacefully without waging the never ending fights/wars for resources, and learn to limit our extravagance so that our home does not go up in flames. And do that without turning the whole lot of human population to complete imbecils.
>do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder..
My sense of wonder is just fine. It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine something more wonderful than a rocket taking off.....
> Reduction in global inequality? I don't know what you mean.
Contrast the distribution of available technology across the globe throughout history. While there are still pockets of people stuck between the neolithic and bronze age, for the most part, more people have access to more technology than ever before.
Economic disparity is enormous, but the general quality of life for those not living in societies in active war zones, or for societies that don't have despots or leaders that are deliberately withholding technology and resources ('lost tribes' that are not lost, simply xenophobic, or nations like North Korea where state inflicted poverty and restricted access to technology is a means of control).
> comments dismissive of my sense of wonder (several comments)
I disagree, but then again, my experiences are subjective ;)
> Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising.
Yes, you are correct. I don't agree with your assertion that there is a new generation of kids hooked on porn, but I could be convinced if you shared links to peer reviewed studies.
I agree with you on advertising, but then again, we only had two decades of experience with a connected culture, and we haven't even achieved 'hyper-connectivity' in the sense that everyone is connected, all the time. Time will tell if the advertisers win, but there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Humans are addicted to connection (in the human sense), and the first generation of connected adults are proving to be more discerning and aware of privacy than people expected when it comes to using technology to connect to other people.
> Dismissive comments about examples of greatness
If you don't think Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are examples of greatness, how about:
Physicists
- Stephen Hawking
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Richard Feynman
Artists
- Banksy
- Photographers Steve McCurry (Afghan Girl, an iconic photo), Nick Ut (photo from Vietnam war)
- Richard Serra
- Vik Muniz
Each notable for their contributions on the front of research and practical application as opposed to specific technologies
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- Ron Rivest
- Adi Shamir
- Len Adelman
- Alan Turing
- Edsger Dijkstra
The list goes on, and on, and on. We aren't just living on the shoulders of giants, we are living amongst them. And by the way, Justin Beibers music may not meet your taste, but Van Gogh, Kafka, and Bach were artists whose contributions weren't appreciated until after their deaths and in some case for generations.
> Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution.
No, it's not. A short term solution would be doubling down and investing in building facilities that meet modern atmospheric expectations and attempting to survive as we burn the rest of the world down around us. A short term solution would be attempting to stifle the economic progress of undeveloped countries as they ride the fossil fuel train to something like economic equivalency instead of investing in and being the early adopters that drive down the cost of environmentally alternatives such that other countries can modernize themselves.
Another short term solution would be to trigger a set of EMPs in orbit that would knock out the last 100 years of technological development and force us to build technologies that don't rely on the ready availability of fossil fuels while we reacquire our current level of sophistication.
Going to another planet, and learning how to survive there, including how to properly manage and keep an environment pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion (a core requirement to survive in a hostile environment) is most certainly not a short term solution.
> It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine someth...
Will respond to just one of your points. Don't think we will be going anywhere with the rest of them..
>Going to another planet, and learning how to survive there, including how to properly manage and keep an environment pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion...
We are not able to keep ourselves from completely ruining the environment here on earth. That we would be able to "learn to keep the environment on mars or what ever world pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion" is just wishful thinking.
What I think is that the short sightedness we have, as a species will be our doom. And worse, our core system of existence, require people to be more and more short sighted.
So, as much as we might not like it, unless we, as a species, learn to cultivate sustainable habits, we are going to be selected against in this race to become a space faring species. We just might end up going to Mars or a couple of other worlds. But that would buy us some time, but that is about it be it.
It is <whatever adjective> time to be alive that you choose it to be. The fact that you aren't teary eyed with joy about today's endeavors just tells me that you've got a laundry list of historical achievements you want to make before you croak it. Oh, what, you expect all that striving and effort from the rest of us?
Spend your precious time contributing (beyond tossing out criticism), try to sing the praises of good things when you get the chance, and you might not be filled with regret in your later years.
> Spend your precious time contributing (beyond tossing out criticism), try to sing the praises of good things when you get the chance, and you might not be filled with regret in your later years.
No. Any fool can sing praises. But instead, try to criticise and question every one of those supposedly good thing that gets thrown in your way. Or else you might not have a later year at all...
The reason we are in this mess in the first place, is that there were too many to sing praises and too few to look beyond the immediate future, and all those voices that did look beyond the immediate future and warned about it, were overwhelmed, and were looked down as you now look down on me and my comment...
I get it, you see yourself as the watchman on the tower. You're telling people to not be suckers, sheep, etc. Wake up, don't look at the bright and shiny, there are REAL problems here. Am I hearing you correctly now?
Griping, by itself, is repulsive. Getting grumpier because others are turned off by you doesn't help. In my opinion, rather than doubling down on the grouchiness, the best thing you can do is flip the script; turn off the complaints and retort with leadership or ideas on how you'd improve things.
I doubt you're as skeptical and questioning as you think you are, though. You use lots of hyperbolic language which makes me think you've bought into a lot of hype.
I said "As I see it, there is nothing in your comment that is worthy of a reply. So not bothering.". I guess that had too little sugar coating for HN's taste...
What I'm interested to know, is what's in it for both companies - besides notoriety?
It's going to cost billions to reach Mars, and more billions to develop things to a "good enough" point to actually make the round trip feasible - and so far, at least to my knowledge, we've found nothing of enough value to make trips there economically viable for a for-profit corporation.
Sure, they'll get government contracts, but that doesn't pay for the first trip there (which appears will be entirely on their own/investors dime).
There aren't massive gold or platinum deposits we've found - and even if there were, surely it would be difficult to extract and recover due to mass.
I firmly believe Musk is totally willing to bankrupt his company (and himself) to achieve his goal of landing on Mars, but are his investors? What about Boeing and Lockheed Martin (ULA)?
At least with a government landing on Mars, you can expect science to be conducted. What does a for-profit company do there, when there's not much to make a profit from?
What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
After they have conclusively proven the success of their large launcher with countless launches to get all the equipment and supplies in orbit and the SpaceX mission leaves for Mars what is SpaceX going to do? Sit on it's laurels and wait for the mission to reach Mars? Or maybe allow anyone to launch massive payloads into space on a very well proven platform.
If SpaceX can show they are have a very capable platform for heavy lifting before anyone else they can retain that position for a long time. Moon bases, Hubble replacements, long term space stations all need heavy launch capabilities. SpaceX wants to sell them their premier service.
> I firmly believe Musk is totally willing to bankrupt his company (and himself) to achieve his goal of landing on Mars, but are his investors?
It would seem so, yes.
> What about Boeing and Lockheed Martin (ULA)?
Doubtful. Their motivation is to earn profit. Elon's motivation is his "pioneerism" (the doctrine behind the act of pioneering).
> At least with a government landing on Mars, you can expect science to be conducted.
It's been 44 years since humans physically conducted science on another body. Robots are great for "doing science" that's planned out in advance, humans are great for "doing science" ad-hoc.
> What does a for-profit company do there, when there's not much to make a profit from?
I just don't see SpaceX as a for-profit company when its leader unabashedly says that profiteering would ruin his vision for SpaceX. The fact that people keep throwing money at them just underscores the human (and, yes, corporate) drive to stand behind him.
> What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
That's the most wonderful thing of all. We don't know what would happen next. To quote Richard Feynman (emphasis added): "Some people say, 'How can you live without knowing?' I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know."
I imagine this is to compete in the talent war heating up for Aero/Astro engineers, with sexy companies like Space X and Blue Origin siphoning the best talent from places like Boeing.
His plan isn't to land on Mars. His plan is to settle Mars. At the end of the day, it means that humanity will have a second planet to call home. If you have difficulty calculating the value of that, it's because it's incalculable.
(Of course in the process of landing a million people on Mars, he'll need to balance the books to make it financially sustainable. I do have some questions about how he'll do that, but can envision a handful of ways to make it work. The actual value, however, is almost entirely off-book.)
> what's in it for both companies - besides notoriety?
Financially:
(1) It's a wonderful tech demo and brand builder to attract customers who want to buy a ride to LEO on a very reliable rocket.
(2) To get to mars without a national-sized budget, they need to make the entire project stack cheaper and more reliable than ever before, which helps them sell rides to LEO cheaper than the competition.
(3) What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
Musk says he is dead serious about a permanent colony on Mars as insurance against human extinction on Earth. There's no end game - it's the beginning of life spreading from the Earth.
I think that the big play with SpaceX is that it will open up tons of avenues of that we haven't even thought about. Going back to his keynote a few days ago he is assessing multiple parts of space travel and trying to bring costs down orders of magnitude - and if they are the only group that can do it at those costs, then it seems like it will completely change what is possible to do in space.
First, as others have pointed out, there's a promise of profits that SpaceX can sell. Similar to Amazon, who were and are selling investors on the promise of growing and owning online retail, SpaceX can sell investors on the promise of growing and owning the space industry--travel, mining, government contracts, and more.
Secondly, it's worth noting that "billions" isn't as big of a number as you'd think in the context of modern capital markets. PwC published a paper recently that estimated there'd be $100 trillion in so-called assets under management (AuM) by 2020. (http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2014/pwc-global-asse...) The market capitalization of Amazon _today_ is $400 billion.
Theoretically, SpaceX could easily raise all the money it needs and more. I don't know how practical that would be, or even if that's their plan at all. But the salient point here is that there's a _ridiculous_ amount of global capital up for grabs. This ain't the 1950s or 1980s. The rise of the third-world and the pace of global trade has created an almost unfathomable amount of wealth. Even if the markets crash tomorrow and it's cut in half, it's still unfathomable from the perspective of 20 or 30 years ago.
I remember reading an Economist article in the late 1990s (maybe early oughts) that showed using historical data that wealth tended to grow exponentially. (I haven't been able to track it down.) The point of the article was that wealth inequality will naturally increase dramatically because for any time span those with more wealth will accumulate even more wealth, proportionally, then someone poorer. The gap will naturally widen without forced redistribution.
Ignore issues about wealth inequality for a moment and think about what that phenomenon means for the amount of global capital available for investment. All that capital needs to be _invested_ somewhere. Even if appetite for risk never changes, it means the amount of capital available for the most risky ventures will grow dramatically. But perhaps as capital growth outpaces investment opportunities, appetite for risk will increase.
My point being, the practicality of a privately-funded Mars venture is likely to become more practical by the year. So even if it's starry-eyed today, it might not be in 5 or 10 years.
I support this plan. If we truly want to establish a colony, we should probably start by picking a suitable location on Mars and sending as many supplies there as possible. There is no such thing as too much food and water.
Am I the only one who did a double take and Googled it when Boeing was described as "Chicago-based?" Maybe it's just because my parents grew up in Seattle, but I'll always associate Boeing with the Northwest.
Yup, I remember when it was a big to-do when they moved HQ to Chicago. Apparently they have a massive production facility in North Carolina that is relatively new. A certain Presidential candidate confused a lot of North Carolina employees by asserting that without change, Boeing was going to take its jobs to China, which, with a modicum of thought, sounds absolutely ridiculous on many IP and QC levels, especially in proximity to such a new facility.
Musk started a competition. Before Space X we would not have see this type of statement from Boeing. I hope other companies get on board. LET THE RACE BEGIN! Yea!! Love it.
All competition and politics aside, isn't this what Musk was ultimately trying to achieve? Turning this into a race to be the first one to put humans on Mars ultimately means we're jumpstarting the idea of a multi planetary species, even if it's done for the sake of competition.
Exactly my thoughts. The headline "Boeing vows to beat Musk to Mars" literally translates to "Elon Musk wins". His whole goal in founding SpaceX was to foster competition in the stagnant space vehicle industry, just like the Tesla's purpose was to get other auto manufacturers to work on electric vehicles (and to convince consumers that EV doesn't mean it has to suck).
Just because one of his goals is to drive competition into the race to mars doesn't mean it's his only goal. I don't doubt he not only wants to speed up the race to mars but wants to be known as the first.
Those two sentences are contradictory. A swimming suit is not a boat, especially in "the most literal sense."
A suborbital manned spacecraft, OTOH, is a spaceship in every sense. (It's neither an orbital spaceship nor, say, an interplanetary spaceship, but it's definitely a spaceship.)
Saying they aren't is like saying a riverboat isn't a boat because it's not ocean-going.
For the moment, I suppose you can still make a case for casual use of the term "spaceship" to include suborbital flights. I doubt that will continue for very long as private orbital spacecraft and launch vehicles become less novel; the sub-orbital minor leagues probably won't be seen by most as being the "real thing".
Presumably because in this sense, the Mercury wasn't "his spaceship" as he didn't own it or the organization that produced it (like Gagarin and the Vostok, for that matter).
Are we really so naive that we're just parroting whatever Musk's PR team says? Musk isn't doing this to further the human race, he's doing it to make money.
Then he'd be doing more dotcom startups. Its obvious to most of us, that he's chosen the weird collection of industries he has, because of a bigger vision.
That's not necessarily true. Remember that Musk started with $165 million from sale of shares of PayPal when it was bought by eBay, so he could afford to wait a while for his companies to take off. When you have a large amount of money to invest and you're young, it makes sense to invest in things with a high up-front cost and long wait before you get a payoff--most companies aren't willing to take a risk on that kind of investment, and once it pays off, you own something with little competition and a long head start on your competitors.
And, incidentally, it puts Musk in the position of Silicon Valley's golden boy--which has numerous business advantages.
> 1. I would much rather Musk become rich by furthering humanity than someone making the next cat picture app
Agreed.
> 2. The companies are tackling some of the hardest problems and I think purely to make money he would have picked other easier problems to solve.
That's not necessarily true. Remember that Musk started with $165 million from sale of shares of PayPal when it was bought by eBay, so he could afford to wait a while for his companies to take off. When you have a large amount of money to invest and you're young, it makes sense to invest in things with a high up-front cost and long wait before you get a payoff--most companies aren't willing to take a risk on that kind of investment, and once it pays off, you own something with little competition and a long head start on your competitors.
And, incidentally, it puts Musk in the position of Silicon Valley's golden boy--which has numerous business advantages.
> 3. It is shortsighted to not embrace anyone pushing and striving for the important goals for humanity. Energy, transportation, space travel.
I agree, but we shouldn't do that naively. If we see Musk as being inherently good instead of as who he is, someone trying to make money, we'll be more likely to compromise our ethics because we view him as good.
Imagine a future where SpaceX sets up mines on the moon. This creates a situation where SpaceX has unprecedented control over a subset of its employees--they literally will die without the company's resources, because there aren't other options on the moon. If we naively trust Musk's intentions, we might let this happen without regulation and only add regulation after abuses for profit are discovered--which may be decades too late for the victims of the abuse. But if we realize that Musk is not ethically different from any other CEO, we will have the wisdom to preempt these kinds of problems with oversight.
I'm not a Musk fanboy but I do have to admit, the minute a real, adult, aerospace company like Boeing lets Elon Musk set its direction for the future, he does win. The larger more mature company had the infrastructure in place for this for years, yet never considered it or took action on it; that makes them look timid and unoriginal. There's an analogous situation with the mainstream auto manufacturers and autonomous cars. They jump late onto a bandwagon they should've been piloting.
I still think it's a pie-in-the-sky project though. Musk compares the Mars initiative to building the Union Pacific Railroad, but the UPRR was heading somewhere full of plunder and gold, where the natives didn't even wear clothes because the weather's so nice. This operation's headed for... Mars, where for miles around, it TOTALLY SUUUUUUCKS SOOO BAD, as Louis CK might say.
I've noticed articles I regularly submit never get traction then the same article, same link, same title hits the front page. Is this something the Mods are doing? Just wondering.
Lets hope that it is a promise for innovation and not a threat of dirty tricks. people should not be declaring it as some kind of "Musk victory". These guys do not play fair and have deep pockets.
You can beat Musk to Mars one of two ways:
1) You innovate better/faster than SpaceX and get there sooner
2) You slow down SpaceX by legal/ political/other means until your company can get a lead.
Given all the dirty tricks[1],[2] & possibly [3] that ULA (50-50 partnership Boeing & Lockheed) has played in the past, I would not put it past them to do #2.
First Mercedes decided they'll be the leader in EVs, then Boeing decides they'll be first to Mars. How will Elon Musk's companies cope with so much imaginary competition?
On that note, I've decided I'm going to be a billionaire. I don't know why more people don't choose that.
I cant help but think that rather than a race against each other, Boeing should be focused on just making this happens. A coalition of support across these companies (and others like Airbus) is surly better for the human race than pure capitalism, in this case.
And peace is boring too, so when we're not actually shooting at each other we use the economy as a weapon. This is no different, if only we could evolve to a point where we were better at working together instead of destroying each-others work, we would achieve a lot more in the short time we're on this planet. I get that this isn't reality (today), but when people make statements like that of Boeing's CEO...it just feels like we're not even trying (which i think is rather pathetic).
tl;dr; Jean Luc Picard wouldn't endorse this line of reason.
Competing to see who can build a better rocket first isn't destroying each others work (i.e., not even close to the same as war). It seems on the surface that working together instead of competing would be more productive, but have you ever tried to work on a mega huge engineering team? It's generally not more effective than a smaller team. So why not have several relatively smaller teams working on the same thing in parallel, egging (or even cheering) each other on as they go?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadSometimes it boggles the mind how much money the gov't spends to achieve fairly pedestrian ends. Solid rocket boosters for the shuttle is a good example. Just a big kickback for the ICBM business in Colorado, no real science behind using them to put people in space :(
It might not have been the best solution but it was a solution
(see past discussion of a Shuttle mission auto-shutdown, where the Shuttle main engines were shut down seconds before lift-off)
Yes, but the Shuttle was far worse than most in that regard. It's abort modes were limited at best and crazy/non-existent at worst.
The main problem was actually the weight load as the shuttle was hanging off the side.
Of course, it remains to be seen if SpaceX's scheme for engine reuse will pan out.
They can, and this may be one of those times. But that doesn't mean it isn't driven by competition, or at least the desire to be seen to compete.
> Competition is such a sham
It isn't when it works. Competition is why you can afford a car, most of the stuff in your house, an internet connection and so on. In places where there is only one vendor prices are as a rule a lot higher than when multiple parties court the same group of potential customers.
> and as per usual: nobody is arguing for why cooperation is bad
Cooperation has it's place, nobody needs to argue why cooperation would be bad. But in the case of Boeing and SpaceX it is fair to call them competitors because they are independent entities looking to serve the same customers.
And by the way, it's a false dichotomy between cooperation and competition in the case of companies one alternative to both competition and cooperation is cartel forming.
> ya'll just keep spewing that corporate bs.
I don't think that was called for.
Competition creates one sole perspective: make more money than the others. This gives companies no swinging room to be 'good' instead of profitable. Also, corporations are completely void of democracy and shouldn't be legal.
The only thing that matters is what people are cooperating and competing to accomplish.
They don't have the same goal. Musk's goal is to get to Mars. Boeing's goal is to protect itself from obsolescence.
Even in open source, there are often competing solutions to the same problem. Rather than have a joint committee decide the best approach (to the code, to the development process, etc), the decision is made by users choosing which software works for them. That's good.
The "keeping secrets" part is what's different. It would be nice for consumers if these companies shared knowledge while they compete, as open source software projects do. But 1) their secrets won't stay secret forever, 2) the ability to have secrets helps them compete, and 3) it's an acceptable short-term loss for the long-term gain of more effort spent on the problem.
We tried a "lets stop competition and just have the government run everything with everyone sharing everything." It was called Communism and was responsible for the deaths of 100m people, set up some of the worst regimes history has ever seen, had unparalleled human rights disasters, and people today are still paying the price of such mistakes in a variety of ways. If you think approaches like these work, then I suspect you have an overly-idealized view of human nature.
Trade secrets aren't that common. Most of what these companies do are taught at college. Implementation differences, marketing/advertising, finding new and different markets, etc matter. Innovation quickly spreads by its nature. Having different companies with different management styles and no company, ideally, being 'too big to fail' is a social benefit, not a liability. The tedium of reinventing the wheel is a small price to pay here, especially when you consider how quickly/cheaply this tedium is tackled in practice.
>Haven't you heard about open source?
FOSS has failed to take over many important markets. It is full of boneheaded decisions and PHB-type antics as well as teenage-level drama, forks, and angry fanboyism. Heck, a lot of open source 'successes' are only such because a proprietary commercial entity took an open codebase and layered closed and proprietary layers on top of it (OSX, Android, Safari, etc). Its not a fix-all for the human endeavor. Competitive approaches make sense and have been proved to be effective over and over to the point where this isn't even arguable. Imagine if someone told Elon that he should just get a job at NASA instead of trying to start his own company. If you heard that I imagine you'd be singing a different tune. Why the double standard with Boeing then?
I think a lot of young people are fed this kind of far-lefty politics from a young age to be anti-corporate anti-US and anti-competition without ever being exposed to the positive aspects of those things. I think if you grew up reading Chomsky/Zinn/Trotsky/Marx, you're doing yourself a disservice on how well capitalism works and the benefits of the US-led capitalistic experiment we're all part of that has been paying dividends for two hundred plus years and continues to with ex-communist nations doing nothing but copying our system as best they can. Even 'Socialist' nations are little more than capitalist democracies with token social welfare spending via taxation.
I wouldn't bury competition as outdated just yet. Those who have in history have themselves been buried.
Openness in itself is not bad but is not a requirement for unique engineering. See what Lockheed's Skunkworks did with SR-71 for example.
They boosted on decades of aeronautics research and individual talent - these provided the raw materials. They then combined these to reach the specific design intent.
In short: you can share a theory but not a chain of command or process without costs of then having a process to control this sharing.
It's also much better to have parallel vehicle designs at this early age of our space efforts than pour everything into a single megaeffort.
Oh, the conspiracies....
He knows he can't do it alone. He's elevating the bar for everybody.
But in the real world, a lot of people who don't care beans about Mars can still be motivated to invest in the effort by the prospect of investment gains. And those gains require for-profit competition.
Guys, we've got to beat the dragon masters to Mars! There's no telling how much swooping they'll do from that high!
I just don't see Boeing being able to do this. They've gotten fat on US government defense dollars, they're not going to be able to do anything outside the ordinary, because they'll risk losing those sweet, sweet defense billions. That is, if they can compete with SpaceX,the Air Force will ask why ULA can't do better while it's on the Air Force nickel. That will cause Boeing to shy away from any innovation that the Air Force doesn't overpay for.
If I recall correctly, the first stage of the "moon race" was more generalized, especially to the press. Also Musk himself has a pretty strong history of not sharing much of the meat of a plan till it happens.
So I look at the issues which made Mars 'hard' a while ago, and whether or not they're solved or if Musk is on the way to solving them. Micrometeorite shielding. Not solved Radiation shielding. Not solved Long term microgravity health effects. Not solved Sufficient understanding of the human microbiome to keep it thriving off-world. Not even addressed
If we're to believe anything Musk has been ranting about for the past 15 years, then he at least has the intention, if not the potential means.
We all know about Musk, but Muildenburg is someone worth checking out. His story is about as classic Americana as it gets. Raised in the midwest. Parents and grandparents were farmers. Trained as an engineer and then went to work for Boeing right out of school... I think he said what he said because he was just trying to share the room's enthusiasm to do big things with our future. Besides, he just might be right, so it might be worth taking a look at him.
You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts to the tune of $5b[1] and an undisclosed amount from NY state[2].
Both companies are alike and fairly dependent on the federal government, Boeing less so considering their large aircraft market. The wonderful thing about capitalism is you don't have to arbitrarily pick the "good" from the "bad." You have them compete and ideally good things come from competition. Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here.
On a more personal note, I think the CTS-100 is a beautiful spacecraft and would love to see it fly in 2018. Boeing can impress if they want to. I also love the fact that my kid is going to grow up in a world with many manned spacecraft by various organizations with various goals, not just the LEO-only shuttle I grew up with. I was just telling my wife about I'd love our son to see a manned rocket launch and realized that this 'sometime in the future' trip to Cape Canaveral is only a year or two away. Same with the first SLS test launch. 2018 is going to be an incredible year for manned space programs. It blows my mind how much grousing there is on the internet regarding the US's position in space. A few years without a manned program is such a tiny price to pay for all this change and innovation. This is an incredible time to be alive for space fans. I think we're going to look back at this period with a certain level of amazement the same way my parent's generation must have seen the initial space race.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
[2] http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/23/my-love-hate-relationshi...
He isn't though. He's just posturing for PR purposes.
I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?[1]
As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as traditional car companies "vowing" to beat Tesla: it's just PR, backed by perhaps showing off concept cars in car shows.
[1]I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.
You do know you're talking about Boeing here, right? They had somewhere around 300 launches with close to perfect success rate.
S-1C Program (Saturn V Rocket First Stage): 12 successful launches, 0 failures.
IUS Program (Booster for interplanetary probes from Space Shuttle): 24 launches, 3 failures (2 Boeing's fault, 1 the space shuttle exploded).
Delta II: 153 Launches, 2 Failures.
Delta III: 3 Launches, 2 Failures.
Delta IV: 33 Launches, 1 Failure.
No. The new ULA Vulkan launch system doesn't have it's first test flight scheduled until 2019. Boeing (or really ULA) is developing the Vulkan Rocket. Which is partially recoverable, not fully. [1] The first launch of this vehicle is 2019. The entry level offering is quoted at ~$100mil per rocket (vs ~$164mil for a Delta IV) [2]. While a Falcon9 is $62mil [3].I see why ULA lost their contract, Musk cut their knee caps off.
[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recove...
[2] https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.
Musk revealed his roadmap to Mars. Why haven't we heard about Boeing's?
SpaceX still doesn't have a launch vehicle in production capable of getting humans to Mars, unlike Boeing.
From [0]: "Senator Orrin Hatch made sure the new rocket used solid boosters, manufactured in his state. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby insisted that Marshall Space Flight Center design and test the rocket. Florida Senator Bill Nelson brought home billions of dollars to Kennedy Space Center to “modernize” its launch facilities."
Yuck.
ITS, on the other hand, is claimed to cost ~$10 billion, and begin putting people on Mars (in lots larger than half a dozen, mind you) sometime in the 2020s. Yeah, it's ambitious. They've missed other ambitious deadlines.
I personally feel, subjectively of course, that SpaceX is more ambitious and "hungry" to go to Mars than Boeing is. But that's just my gut feeling, and I have no data to back that feeling up.
[0]: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/how-i-learned-to-stop...
I can't tell if you actually want answers but boeing has a fairly successful satellite deployment piece of the company.
$7,500 on a $75,000 car is not a large enough subsidy to "run" Tesla. It's incentive for energy efficiency and all cars manufactures get it.
Moreover SpaceX does not get any "welfare" in any form. They have a contract job via the government's Commercial Space program.
He is talking about the separate $5 billion corporate subsidy.
Falcon 1 and Merlin, Kestrel and Draco engines were funded with private capital; SpaceX was a space-faring company before NASA money got involved. COTS money went into developing the Falcon 9, and amounted to $278 million.
They did get a bunch of cash from NASA for launching crew to the ISS aboard Dragon v2: $2.6 billion. NASA also gave money to Boeing for their CST-100: $4.2 billion.
> Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts
The bulk of Tesla's cash comes from sales, stocks and bond sales - incentives from the government take the form of tax credits, or state agencies offering their own incentives because they are themselves competing to hitch a ride on Elon's business ventures. And who can blame them! Boeing gets considerable subsidies and tax credits as well, as do other car manufacturers and defense contractors, let's not suggest Tesla is alone here.
Also, Tesla was saved from near death by Daimler AG in early 2009, not by a "handout". In 2010, they received a low-interest loan from the government of $465 million, which they repaid in 2013 (the first automaker to repay their portion of the $8 billion loaned out).
Boeing makes less than a third of its revenue from defense and space spending, and yet has still received far more money through federal cost-plus contracts than SpaceX has received from all its revenue sources combined.
I don't think it's fair to characterize them as apples and apples here. Boeing keeps Elon honest by putting crew on ISS, or launching something to Mars, not by lobbying congress to slow Elon down with government red tape for matters that didn't pertain to the government to begin with. That's Boeing/Lockheed (ULS) using its position as one of the largest government defense and space contractors to keep their seat at the grown-ups table.
That said, the CST-100 Starliner is quite a good looking craft that evokes memories of the Apollo program, but I personally like the sleek and swooping curves of Dragon V2 - plus the whole "lands on its legs" thing they've got going on for it. :)
Photos of both can be seen here: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=73778
There's many 10 and 15 year old fully functional geostationary telecom satellites out there in orbit (Boeing 702 bus, etc) in "production" use with the world's largest satellite telecommunications companies. That's a track record SpaceX can't lay claim to just yet.
http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/hs-702.htm
Yea? Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. And we are happy, because we can see the associated fireworks?
Don't get me wrong. I like the progress with the space stuff. But I just don't like the idea just because of that everything else is sunshine and rainbows...It is not. And it is not really a great time to be alive. It is an extremely boring time to be alive. Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. When radio waves were invented. Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? When they heard voices that came across the town? When they saw the first locomotive? When they saw the first airplane? Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
Those were incredible times to be alive...
How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Justin Beiber and Hilariy Clinton? How many great inventions of our times will they read with excitement? Elon Musks Hyper loop?
No. I really don't think so. So yea. We are living in incredibly boring times....
EDIT: This comment is not relavant anymore since the parent comment has been edited to include "time to be alive for space fans.."...
> Those were incredible times to be alive...
No such time existed. Its not like "the past" all happened at once, or even in one lifetime.
> How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning?
Probably lots, many of which we're overlooking because of either excessive familiarity (in terms of art) or insufficient perspective to appreciate impact (in terms of science and technological inventions.)
Lots of the people of the past we read about and hold up today, whether in artistic or technical fields, weren't recognized in their own time. Our time is, likely, no better at recognizing those among us who will be viewed as notable in the future.
Yes, we did. I don't know that we will have to abandon it, but we do know that human civilization is on the precipice of change, largely in part due to our relentless pace of technological process and reduction in global inequality. Setting aside income and wealth distribution on an individual level, most technology available to humans is more broadly available to humans across the globe than at any time in history. We failed to improve away from fossil fuels for largely economic reasons, and have caused irreparable damage to our ecosystem as result. That doesn't mean we haven't done incredible things along the way, and it doesn't mean that human civilization is going to come to an end, it simply means that it will change.
> Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented.
There is the rub. Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered. From the conventionally excepted discovery of electricity to the invention of devices which can be used to generate and distribute electricity, development of modern infrastructure and advances, and the most recent experimental batteries (and if you don't think batteries are experimental, take a good look at Samsung's recent failures), we have been on a 2500 year journey (the first documented history of electrical phenomen was the triboelectric effect, and documented in amber by ancient greeks) to get where we are.
We have vastly improved our understanding of how electricity works, but we haven't yet mastered it. We probably will never stop finding new and interesting ways to capture new forms of energy with the express goal of generating electricity, and it is almost certain that we haven't begun to imagine the different ways it can be used.
Along the way, we have used electricity to improve virtually every aspect of human life.
> Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema?
Yes, approximately. It suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS. It probably felt approximately the same way it did when I got my first internet connection, and decoupled my ability to learn from my (at the time) poor financial circumstances.
> When they heard voices that came across the town?
Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
> When they saw the first locomotive?
Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off, and then confusion and sadness when the Challenger accident unfolded in videos played on the news (I was 8 at the time).
> Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet. Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
> How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning?
Has it occurred to you that the reason that we don't know all of the great minds and great artists that have emerged in the last century largely because the glut of invention, ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
The great contemporary achievement is not that we have somehow failed to live up to our potential and there are no longer great people, it is that we have reduced the barrier to achievement so dramatically that almost anyone simply needs to try to have the opportunity to succeed in the way that only a select few were able to in the past.
In what era could the child of a refugee grown to build one of the greatest technology empires we have seen? Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; his story of building Apple, being pu...
Reduction in global inequality? I don't know what you mean.
>Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered.
Agreed. My mistake. I don't know what the point is with the rest of that section. I was suggesting that the invention of ways to convert electricity to other forms of energy should have looked like magic at that time. With steam engines, at least you can see what is driving the wheel. But when a motor gets driven by just a wire connected to it or a bulb lighting up should have felt like magic at the time....
>I suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS.
I doubt. Once you have electricity carrying signals, it does not seem much more exciting that signals can be used transfer different kinds of data. So all the wonder of Internet does not feel so wonderful that way. It is just a scaled up telephone exchange...nothing more.
> Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
Same thing...
>Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off...
People freaked out when they first saw an automobile. No one freaked off when they saw a rocket lifted off. If you want to evoke the same kind of wonder today, I am afraid nothing short of antigravity will do.
> Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet.
Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising. You say that we have more access to science and arts more than ever. But we also have access to any kind of sick porn, and guess what our new generation of kids are hooked up on? Internet have opened multitudes of new channels to feed never ending Ads that inject insecurities into their minds and make them feel inadequate and make them buy buy and buy more and more stuff that they don't really need.
>Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
Ha ha. From where? From bowels of your smartphone, where their heads are buried? I would be surprised if the future generations will be able to hold a proper conversation face to face without the help of their smartphones to cue them in the right time to start speaking...
> ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
You mean, there is greatness everywhere? I don't get you. Single out greatness?
> Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; > Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats.
Oh my. No comments for this one.
>Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species...
No. Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution. It is like paying one credit card bill with another credit card. The real solution is to stop/reduce spending when you are short on cash. In this case, that would be to learn to co-exist peacefully without waging the never ending fights/wars for resources, and learn to limit our extravagance so that our home does not go up in flames. And do that without turning the whole lot of human population to complete imbecils.
>do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder..
My sense of wonder is just fine. It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine something more wonderful than a rocket taking off.....
Contrast the distribution of available technology across the globe throughout history. While there are still pockets of people stuck between the neolithic and bronze age, for the most part, more people have access to more technology than ever before.
Economic disparity is enormous, but the general quality of life for those not living in societies in active war zones, or for societies that don't have despots or leaders that are deliberately withholding technology and resources ('lost tribes' that are not lost, simply xenophobic, or nations like North Korea where state inflicted poverty and restricted access to technology is a means of control).
> comments dismissive of my sense of wonder (several comments)
I disagree, but then again, my experiences are subjective ;)
> Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising.
Yes, you are correct. I don't agree with your assertion that there is a new generation of kids hooked on porn, but I could be convinced if you shared links to peer reviewed studies.
I agree with you on advertising, but then again, we only had two decades of experience with a connected culture, and we haven't even achieved 'hyper-connectivity' in the sense that everyone is connected, all the time. Time will tell if the advertisers win, but there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Humans are addicted to connection (in the human sense), and the first generation of connected adults are proving to be more discerning and aware of privacy than people expected when it comes to using technology to connect to other people.
> Dismissive comments about examples of greatness
If you don't think Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are examples of greatness, how about:
Physicists
Artists Mathematicians, Cryptographers, Computer ScientistsEach notable for their contributions on the front of research and practical application as opposed to specific technologies
The list goes on, and on, and on. We aren't just living on the shoulders of giants, we are living amongst them. And by the way, Justin Beibers music may not meet your taste, but Van Gogh, Kafka, and Bach were artists whose contributions weren't appreciated until after their deaths and in some case for generations.> Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution.
No, it's not. A short term solution would be doubling down and investing in building facilities that meet modern atmospheric expectations and attempting to survive as we burn the rest of the world down around us. A short term solution would be attempting to stifle the economic progress of undeveloped countries as they ride the fossil fuel train to something like economic equivalency instead of investing in and being the early adopters that drive down the cost of environmentally alternatives such that other countries can modernize themselves.
Another short term solution would be to trigger a set of EMPs in orbit that would knock out the last 100 years of technological development and force us to build technologies that don't rely on the ready availability of fossil fuels while we reacquire our current level of sophistication.
Going to another planet, and learning how to survive there, including how to properly manage and keep an environment pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion (a core requirement to survive in a hostile environment) is most certainly not a short term solution.
> It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine someth...
>Going to another planet, and learning how to survive there, including how to properly manage and keep an environment pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion...
We are not able to keep ourselves from completely ruining the environment here on earth. That we would be able to "learn to keep the environment on mars or what ever world pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion" is just wishful thinking.
What I think is that the short sightedness we have, as a species will be our doom. And worse, our core system of existence, require people to be more and more short sighted.
So, as much as we might not like it, unless we, as a species, learn to cultivate sustainable habits, we are going to be selected against in this race to become a space faring species. We just might end up going to Mars or a couple of other worlds. But that would buy us some time, but that is about it be it.
It is <whatever adjective> time to be alive that you choose it to be. The fact that you aren't teary eyed with joy about today's endeavors just tells me that you've got a laundry list of historical achievements you want to make before you croak it. Oh, what, you expect all that striving and effort from the rest of us?
Spend your precious time contributing (beyond tossing out criticism), try to sing the praises of good things when you get the chance, and you might not be filled with regret in your later years.
No. Any fool can sing praises. But instead, try to criticise and question every one of those supposedly good thing that gets thrown in your way. Or else you might not have a later year at all...
The reason we are in this mess in the first place, is that there were too many to sing praises and too few to look beyond the immediate future, and all those voices that did look beyond the immediate future and warned about it, were overwhelmed, and were looked down as you now look down on me and my comment...
Griping, by itself, is repulsive. Getting grumpier because others are turned off by you doesn't help. In my opinion, rather than doubling down on the grouchiness, the best thing you can do is flip the script; turn off the complaints and retort with leadership or ideas on how you'd improve things.
I doubt you're as skeptical and questioning as you think you are, though. You use lots of hyperbolic language which makes me think you've bought into a lot of hype.
There's no profit in doubling-down!
It's going to cost billions to reach Mars, and more billions to develop things to a "good enough" point to actually make the round trip feasible - and so far, at least to my knowledge, we've found nothing of enough value to make trips there economically viable for a for-profit corporation.
Sure, they'll get government contracts, but that doesn't pay for the first trip there (which appears will be entirely on their own/investors dime).
There aren't massive gold or platinum deposits we've found - and even if there were, surely it would be difficult to extract and recover due to mass.
I firmly believe Musk is totally willing to bankrupt his company (and himself) to achieve his goal of landing on Mars, but are his investors? What about Boeing and Lockheed Martin (ULA)?
At least with a government landing on Mars, you can expect science to be conducted. What does a for-profit company do there, when there's not much to make a profit from?
What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
NASA is a government scientific research entity, and has no obligation to turn a profit. SpaceX and ULA do.
If SpaceX can show they are have a very capable platform for heavy lifting before anyone else they can retain that position for a long time. Moon bases, Hubble replacements, long term space stations all need heavy launch capabilities. SpaceX wants to sell them their premier service.
Although, wouldn't building a moon base first make more sense? Walk before you can run, sort of thing? Or even Venus, since it's closer.
It would seem so, yes.
> What about Boeing and Lockheed Martin (ULA)?
Doubtful. Their motivation is to earn profit. Elon's motivation is his "pioneerism" (the doctrine behind the act of pioneering).
> At least with a government landing on Mars, you can expect science to be conducted.
It's been 44 years since humans physically conducted science on another body. Robots are great for "doing science" that's planned out in advance, humans are great for "doing science" ad-hoc.
> What does a for-profit company do there, when there's not much to make a profit from?
I just don't see SpaceX as a for-profit company when its leader unabashedly says that profiteering would ruin his vision for SpaceX. The fact that people keep throwing money at them just underscores the human (and, yes, corporate) drive to stand behind him.
> What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
That's the most wonderful thing of all. We don't know what would happen next. To quote Richard Feynman (emphasis added): "Some people say, 'How can you live without knowing?' I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know."
(Of course in the process of landing a million people on Mars, he'll need to balance the books to make it financially sustainable. I do have some questions about how he'll do that, but can envision a handful of ways to make it work. The actual value, however, is almost entirely off-book.)
Financially:
(1) It's a wonderful tech demo and brand builder to attract customers who want to buy a ride to LEO on a very reliable rocket.
(2) To get to mars without a national-sized budget, they need to make the entire project stack cheaper and more reliable than ever before, which helps them sell rides to LEO cheaper than the competition.
(3) What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
Musk says he is dead serious about a permanent colony on Mars as insurance against human extinction on Earth. There's no end game - it's the beginning of life spreading from the Earth.
Secondly, it's worth noting that "billions" isn't as big of a number as you'd think in the context of modern capital markets. PwC published a paper recently that estimated there'd be $100 trillion in so-called assets under management (AuM) by 2020. (http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2014/pwc-global-asse...) The market capitalization of Amazon _today_ is $400 billion.
Theoretically, SpaceX could easily raise all the money it needs and more. I don't know how practical that would be, or even if that's their plan at all. But the salient point here is that there's a _ridiculous_ amount of global capital up for grabs. This ain't the 1950s or 1980s. The rise of the third-world and the pace of global trade has created an almost unfathomable amount of wealth. Even if the markets crash tomorrow and it's cut in half, it's still unfathomable from the perspective of 20 or 30 years ago.
I remember reading an Economist article in the late 1990s (maybe early oughts) that showed using historical data that wealth tended to grow exponentially. (I haven't been able to track it down.) The point of the article was that wealth inequality will naturally increase dramatically because for any time span those with more wealth will accumulate even more wealth, proportionally, then someone poorer. The gap will naturally widen without forced redistribution.
Ignore issues about wealth inequality for a moment and think about what that phenomenon means for the amount of global capital available for investment. All that capital needs to be _invested_ somewhere. Even if appetite for risk never changes, it means the amount of capital available for the most risky ventures will grow dramatically. But perhaps as capital growth outpaces investment opportunities, appetite for risk will increase.
My point being, the practicality of a privately-funded Mars venture is likely to become more practical by the year. So even if it's starry-eyed today, it might not be in 5 or 10 years.
Hopefully these colonies are far enough apart on the planet that their bickering won't turn into some kind of war.
This isn't going to happen.
This is not Reddit.
That's pretty awesome.
Is Richard Branson not a human?
A suborbital manned spacecraft, OTOH, is a spaceship in every sense. (It's neither an orbital spaceship nor, say, an interplanetary spaceship, but it's definitely a spaceship.)
Saying they aren't is like saying a riverboat isn't a boat because it's not ocean-going.
It can touch space, but a ship is not defined by its ability to touch the water.
Are we really so naive that we're just parroting whatever Musk's PR team says? Musk isn't doing this to further the human race, he's doing it to make money.
That's not necessarily true. Remember that Musk started with $165 million from sale of shares of PayPal when it was bought by eBay, so he could afford to wait a while for his companies to take off. When you have a large amount of money to invest and you're young, it makes sense to invest in things with a high up-front cost and long wait before you get a payoff--most companies aren't willing to take a risk on that kind of investment, and once it pays off, you own something with little competition and a long head start on your competitors.
And, incidentally, it puts Musk in the position of Silicon Valley's golden boy--which has numerous business advantages.
1. I would much rather Musk become rich by furthering humanity than someone making the next cat picture app
2. The companies are tackling some of the hardest problems and I think purely to make money he would have picked other easier problems to solve.
3. It is shortsighted to not embrace anyone pushing and striving for the important goals for humanity. Energy, transportation, space travel.
Agreed.
> 2. The companies are tackling some of the hardest problems and I think purely to make money he would have picked other easier problems to solve.
That's not necessarily true. Remember that Musk started with $165 million from sale of shares of PayPal when it was bought by eBay, so he could afford to wait a while for his companies to take off. When you have a large amount of money to invest and you're young, it makes sense to invest in things with a high up-front cost and long wait before you get a payoff--most companies aren't willing to take a risk on that kind of investment, and once it pays off, you own something with little competition and a long head start on your competitors.
And, incidentally, it puts Musk in the position of Silicon Valley's golden boy--which has numerous business advantages.
> 3. It is shortsighted to not embrace anyone pushing and striving for the important goals for humanity. Energy, transportation, space travel.
I agree, but we shouldn't do that naively. If we see Musk as being inherently good instead of as who he is, someone trying to make money, we'll be more likely to compromise our ethics because we view him as good.
Imagine a future where SpaceX sets up mines on the moon. This creates a situation where SpaceX has unprecedented control over a subset of its employees--they literally will die without the company's resources, because there aren't other options on the moon. If we naively trust Musk's intentions, we might let this happen without regulation and only add regulation after abuses for profit are discovered--which may be decades too late for the victims of the abuse. But if we realize that Musk is not ethically different from any other CEO, we will have the wisdom to preempt these kinds of problems with oversight.
I still think it's a pie-in-the-sky project though. Musk compares the Mars initiative to building the Union Pacific Railroad, but the UPRR was heading somewhere full of plunder and gold, where the natives didn't even wear clothes because the weather's so nice. This operation's headed for... Mars, where for miles around, it TOTALLY SUUUUUUCKS SOOO BAD, as Louis CK might say.
Don't underestimate the power of competition. It's why we put a man on the moon.
Case in point I submitted this article roughly 12 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12641840
You can beat Musk to Mars one of two ways:
1) You innovate better/faster than SpaceX and get there sooner
2) You slow down SpaceX by legal/ political/other means until your company can get a lead.
Given all the dirty tricks[1],[2] & possibly [3] that ULA (50-50 partnership Boeing & Lockheed) has played in the past, I would not put it past them to do #2.
[1] https://defensesystems.com/articles/2014/04/28/spacex-protes...
[2] http://spacenews.com/ula-vp-resigns-following-remarks-on-com...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/implication-...
tl;dr; Jean Luc Picard wouldn't endorse this line of reason.