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Zurich15328 Posts
On January 05 2017 19:29 pmh wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2017 08:20 LegalLord wrote:
I'd argue that the answer would not be more efficient lifting into orbit (try finding a solution to gravity) but a need for more space-based infrastructure. The two are interrelated, yes, but if you could refuel from a space station that would make it more feasible by far. yes,but they still have to get the fuel to the space station in the first place. More efficient lifting is essential I think and the current design is at its absolute limits. Extremely inefficient (its like 90% fuel and 10% cargo?) and quiet unreliable even after 70 years of perfecting the design.
Well, if reusability can actually be made to work than at least launching will be cost-efficient, which in the end is what really counts.
That at least seems more promising right now than more unconventional launch concepts.
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On January 03 2017 21:07 LegalLord wrote:i would argue that the improvement would be best constructed from the side of creating lighter versions of heavy equipment that would be better suited for launches. "Better efficiency than rockets" is something of a hard problem. Here are some of the ideas of non-rocket space launch. They seem a damn sight less plausible than simply figuring out a way to make it work with rockets.
I've been reading a bit into the space gun thing and I don't think it's that farfetched for non-manned launches. Of course there would be severe limitations to the size/weight but it doesn't sound like total sci-fi to me, maybe i'm just too optimistic heh 
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Re-usability doesn't mean it will be cheap. One reason why the space shuttle was so absurdly expensive was exactly because it had to be reusable. (The other being that it combined being human space flight-proof while also being a heavy lifter)
After losing two shuttles, the time between two launches was about 4 to 6 months, at the minimum. It had been 2 months earlier in the project. It had been supposed to be launched every week.
In the months it took to service a landed space shuttle for a new launch, they took apart huge parts of the space shuttle, scan individual parts for damage, the reassemble it again.
In the end, it wasn't much cheaper than just rebuilding a new space shuttle every time.
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SpaceX flight delayed until January 14th
Los Angeles, USA Sat, 14 Jan 2017 at 9:54 am PST
this whole "re-usable" thing. they are claiming "re usability" but they've wasted 2 rockets that resulted in nothing. and not 1 single rocket has been "re used" yet. Right now, SpaceX rockets have not even hit the "usable" stage never mind the "reusable" stage. Furthermore, Musk's goal was "rapid re-usability" not merely "re-usability"
SpaceX has a long way to go. That said, Step One to getting back on track for SpaceX is January 14th!
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I think the problem of space x is simply money. Musk is very rich but not rich enough,and now they have to launch cheaper then nasa/esa to be competitive. Nasa/esa spend billions of dollars in development and their rockets still fail now and then. Space x could use some of their research and rocket technology but they seem to be building from the ground up. And they want to do it at a fraction of the costs that nasa did spend to get where nasa is now. I don't think it is possible tbh but I am kinda happy at least people are trying now that nasa doesn't seem to do huge projects by themselves anymore.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
I'm not even certain that SpaceX is profitable. I suspect its innards are more akin to that of Tesla than anything else. Not to mention that the investment arrangements of SpaceX are such that if SolarCity or Tesla went under, so would SpaceX. SolarCity would have gone under; the buyout allowed it to hide within the Tesla umbrella. Reality will most likely catch up eventually.
One of the big "QC" problems of SpaceX is that they don't take inspections nearly as seriously as others and they limit access to independent safety inspectors. That probably allows them to cut corners but it also contributes to a rather mediocre safety record. Their September loss may have been billed as "the most complicated error we ever had" but call it for what it is: the first loss of a rocket on the pad in decades. The mistake boils down to a failure to account for dangers involved in storage tanks, one of the most elementary concepts of chemical safety.
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Legal, you realize the amount of preorders is more than enough to keep Tesla afloat right? The trend they're on is a profitable trend, and they just had a huge influx of $10 billion worth of Tesla 3 Pre-Orders. SolarCity will now have a huge influx of solar panels to install across the country, especially with the new line of roof tiles (SolarCity also just opened in FL, huge market opportunity there).
The reality is SolarCity and Tesla will do really well together, enough that SpaceX will continue as is. Trump wouldn't invite an advisor if that advisor's companies were going under any time soon.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
I have heard "profitable trend," "economies of scale," "why would people trust him if he isn't going anywhere" and the like, plenty of times. The roof tiles, I'm not even sure if they're viable and physics suggest that they probably aren't. His companies all look like disasters if you simply sit down and read their financials. And they're so closely intertwined that if one falls the others do as well - one of his companies defaulting on their loans from the others will add some strain on already precarious financial situations.
The reason he gets so many influxes of government cheese is the same reason he gets so much attention on the internet: people, including politicians, love hype, they love being on "the next big thing," and they love "made in the USA." But hype doesn't make a business model viable - why would Obama support Solyndra if it would fail? Tesla looks very much like a trainwreck by its numbers. SolarCity folded into Tesla. SpaceX is private.
Yes, SpaceX looks great if you only see what you see. And it has indeed made some rather good progress in that it does have genuine US-made rockets that launch - albeit with a success rate that is nothing to boast about. But I'm curious what it would look like if we had some financial statements to read. If I were to ignore the financial data I actually have access to for Tesla I would probably think it's a pretty solid company, looking at the way it grows its sales base and how many cars it sells. But when you see the numbers you see a company that does not look so great. I doubt it's really great on the inside - in Musk I see more scam artist than visionary.
Link 1
Link 2
are two posts that have a brief summary of Tesla and its issues, that I mostly agree with.
Yes, it's possible that I'm wrong. On SpaceX at least, I'd be happy if it turned out that Musk genuinely made some very important and useful advances in economic spacefare - my disdain for his arrogance is second to the fact that space is a more important matter than personal sentiment. But I just don't see it and I see a lot of money being directed towards someone who looks suspicious and untrustworthy.
Losing a rocket on the pad is a really, really bad mistake. There's no getting around that, it was a big failure that was a result of someone fucking up bad.
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Thanks for all these great details LegalLord.
I just like to "pay attention to outcomes". And Musk is not delivering on his promises in any where close to the timelines he promised. First, he promised "rapid re usability" and 100% total re usability with only the propellant costing money. Now, the rockets are only partially re usable and his deadlines keep getting missed.
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On January 03 2017 07:00 micronesia wrote:
Oh my point is I want to know when the next round of applications will even be. I don't think that's known yet so I'm just trying to get a grasp for how much lead time there will be.
And no, I don't expect I will need to put anything starcraft-related on an application (not that I frown upon such a thing). My reasoning for thinking I can submit a strong application is based on educational background, work experience, military experience, and flight experience. Of course, it all comes down to what the exact needs of the agency are at that time.
What kind of flight experience?
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United States24683 Posts
On January 14 2017 08:35 Incognoto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2017 07:00 micronesia wrote:
Oh my point is I want to know when the next round of applications will even be. I don't think that's known yet so I'm just trying to get a grasp for how much lead time there will be.
And no, I don't expect I will need to put anything starcraft-related on an application (not that I frown upon such a thing). My reasoning for thinking I can submit a strong application is based on educational background, work experience, military experience, and flight experience. Of course, it all comes down to what the exact needs of the agency are at that time. What kind of flight experience?
Just recreational general aviation. Working on my private pilot license and planning to continue on with instruments etc
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Air Force pilots tend to make for very good astronauts for that matter. The environment is quite similar.
I did, at a time, consider getting a pilot's license myself. Ultimately never went for it - between not having a military service to foot the bill, not enough spare time to spend a few years on it, nor enough motivation to actually want to do it, I never went for it. Still, it's nice to have for sure if it's your thing, and I'm guessing they pay (IIRC, for everything other than the private pilot license?).
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United States24683 Posts
Yea gi bill will pay for everything after ppl, up to a monetary max.
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Great stuff, micro
Keep it up it's an amazing thing to do. I've got my private (European) already, actually moved to the USA to go commercial and fly for hire. Never thought I'd meet a fellow pilot on TLnet
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
The pay for pilots is a real bummer compared to what it costs to go through 4 years of flight school.
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On January 14 2017 14:47 LegalLord wrote:
The pay for pilots is a real bummer compared to what it costs to go through 4 years of flight school.
you don't become a pilot for the pay 
i digress ITT
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
I obviously don't know if these claims are true or not. But I am well aware that SpaceX simply doesn't take safety very seriously, that they restrict access for government safety inspectors when they feel that those asshats would be annoying, and so on. This is in contrast to a very government-friendly organization like ULA that incorporates inspector feedback into their design and practices. More bureaucratic and more expensive? Easily. But it also comes with safety issues. The "startup culture" that Musk is fond of is fine for making video games, but it doesn't work for real engineering projects. Such is the opinion I have heard from space veterans who were skeptical of working for SpaceX.
I talked about these issues even before the 2015 failure (which, to be fair, is an acceptable reality of doing business with rockets) much less the 2016 one (which is in no way excusable). Back then it was really going out on a limb to criticize an organization that I felt was problematic, but that was riding high on successes and didn't have any real faults to show for it. Now I do get criticism for taking advantage of "just a rocket failure, it happens" in the aftermath. Nevertheless, there have been worrying signs for a long time.
I will, to be fair, temper my criticism by saying this much. Losing a rocket does "just happen" because rocketry isn't an easy affair. Losing two rockets isn't particularly bad, especially in the start; they do have a pretty decent record overall. Their competitors aren't without criticism themselves; ULA for example has, until recently, been way too complacent about just toeing the status quo and making money while doing not all that much. And SpaceX is generally quite well-regarded within NASA - I've heard praise for its efficiency, but even more so for its ability to make space popular with the public. I do not think that NASA would praise them without reason.
But to be perfectly blunt I think NASA is wrong. They are an organization which is struggling to find a particularly stable place in the world after Obama cancelled Constellation (a very expensive, yet very well-considered, program) and took up space privatization. I'm sure they do genuinely see good in SpaceX and its "entrepreneurial" approach to space, but I wonder if they properly acknowledge the pitfalls there. SpaceX moves fast and isn't afraid to break things - even if "break things" means that you make a hasty design or a hasty QC choice that sabotages the entire launch. Furthermore they are sustained by the classic SV approach of young people who work more hours than is sane, for less money than they deserve, sustained on a hype train more than anything else. It's not a sustainable business model and sooner or later I expect there will be a shock to SpaceX (another bad failure, a substantial lawsuit, default on Tesla loans) and they will have a damaged reputation that becomes hard to recover from. Plus I don't even know if their internal finances look as disastrous as they do in Tesla, but my suspicion is that yes, they do.
As I said before, I'm very suspicious of the organization. It strikes me as a problematic one.
Edit: But on the bright side, it looks like their F9 launch today was successful. Let's see if they can keep it up.
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Musk is an interesting guy, which really hides his biggest faults. He's not that great of a manager. He's got the Vision, drive and ability to sell his idea to the proper people down really, really well. But who he has under him is where he runs into problems, though since it's "Elon Musk" that only ever comes up in the press, pretty much no one notices. That's the thing that took me a bit of thought to realize.
As for the ventures: SolarCity is going to die and I truly hope they've taken measures to be able to kill it smoothly.
Tesla is an impressive accomplishment, as it took Korea, India & China decades to make a decent car, though they had to license or steal most of the technology from American or German companies get there. So that's quite awesome to behold, but they badly need a completely new level of technology in Batteries for there to be any economy of scale. Or an utterly massive boom in the American economy.
Side note: Tesla is also quite stupidly lucky that GM so horrible botched the Volt line of cars and still doesn't know what to do with it. The most impressive tech in the last decade in Cars is still the Gas-Electric hybrid GM pulled off at the production car level, yet they've never figured out that they needed to make it into a pure luxury brand. They could have toasted the Merc SL & BMW 7-series with the properly focused car. But, well, GM isn't very smart, which also isn't news to anyone.
As for SpaceX, it's probably the most viable of the businesses. Even if things do get sketchy, there's going to be plenty of avenues for funding. The technology alone is very valuable, so there would probably be a bidding war for the company if it went up for sale. Add in a direct focus on American-based Manufacturing that's going to happen with the Trump Administration, and SpaceX is going to be well protected.
Losing a rocket on the ground is a significant problem and they probably need to fire a chunk of management and get some better people in there, but the ability to even reuse the engines will always provide a lifeline to the company. It could take another decade before they can reach a 50% reuse rate, which might complicate matters, but they've shown they can capture the returning rockets on a very regular basis already. That really is quite insane, if we're honest.
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EPT
