The amount of hate against CEO (or Elon in this case) is just confusing to me.
Really? It's pretty easy to figure out where it comes from. Nobody hated Elon 10 years ago when he was just the guy bringing electric cars to the masses to save the planet. There's a perfect correlation between the hate he gets and his turn to right-wing politics.
The weird thing with the world today is that people can't just dislike someone for their politics. Instead they have to dislike everything the person has done because of their politics. If flash came out tomorrow and endorsed Trump there would be a significant amount of people that will say "flash was overrated anyway, boxer/nada/iloveoov are the true terran bonjwas." The perception of reality will change post hoc to resolve the cognitive dissonance of admiring someone's ability while hating what they believe.
This is probably true for a lot of people, but I don't think that holds here in this thread. We criticize Elon solely for his SpaceX work and leave his politics out of it. We give him credit for SpaceX achievements all the time, but we also know that it isn't him per se doing all of the work. The engineers and Shotwell deserve a lot of the honor and credit. Too many times has Elon fucked around with the government because he got told no. And too many times has Shotwell had to bail SpaceX out.
As to criticizing CEOs, what do you expect? They make a lot of money and they need to be kept in check. Blue Origin is a perfect example. Bezos has that company flailing about because he can't find anyone competent enough to run that. If he could find himself a Shotwell, he'd be neck and neck. Electron has a competent CEO and they're doing pretty well. CEOs who can't find the solutions are creating more problems. I'm pulling for BO to succeed so we have backup flights when/as needed. But I'm not holding my breath.
Elon's fight with governments are not necessarily bad, it's politics, sometimes he gets it right, sometimes he gets it wrong.
Look at his massive win in China, and compare how fast Shanghai Gigafactory got the build and expansion compared to Germany one. And now look at China's success in making the industry happen (with a lot of funding and failed business along the way).
Germany on the other hand had been losing market share for standard automobile, and now they can barely keep up with the gigafactory style of extreme vertical integrated production.
There's no Elon without controversy, and there's no Tesla/space X without Elon the way he is.
If you don't believe me, then take a look at all the Chinese semi conductor chip plants that paid way above market rate to get the taiwanese top engineers, they barely made any progress. Even with top engineers, and all the backing from the Chinese government, it doesn't lead to success. It takes someone to force it happen at a higher level and doing so screaming if needed.
The amount of hate against CEO (or Elon in this case) is just confusing to me.
Really? It's pretty easy to figure out where it comes from. Nobody hated Elon 10 years ago when he was just the guy bringing electric cars to the masses to save the planet. There's a perfect correlation between the hate he gets and his turn to right-wing politics.
The weird thing with the world today is that people can't just dislike someone for their politics. Instead they have to dislike everything the person has done because of their politics. If flash came out tomorrow and endorsed Trump there would be a significant amount of people that will say "flash was overrated anyway, boxer/nada/iloveoov are the true terran bonjwas." The perception of reality will change post hoc to resolve the cognitive dissonance of admiring someone's ability while hating what they believe.
I 'hate' Elon for the neo-nazi he has shown to be.
But praising the SpaceX engineers instead of Elon isn't because of that but because he has shown not be the visionary he was believed to be. Maybe he used to be and drug abuse has destroyed his brain, maybe he never was. I don't know stuff the Cybertruck and Twitter have shattered Musk's image.The more directly involved he is, the worse the project will do.
On October 14 2024 01:50 oBlade wrote: SpaceX caught the booster from Starship 5 at the launch tower midair with a huge pair of metal chopsticks and splashed down Starship successfully after a full flight. The steel rocket pipe dream might be real.
That looked supercool but I'm not sure I get the math behind it: For that stunt move you need a shitton of fuel left in the tank to control the flight like they did. That may be lighter than the steel legs they initially had but I'm having a hard time believing that it's lighter than a damn parachute + small amount of fuel to do some directional burn?
On October 14 2024 01:50 oBlade wrote: SpaceX caught the booster from Starship 5 at the launch tower midair with a huge pair of metal chopsticks and splashed down Starship successfully after a full flight. The steel rocket pipe dream might be real.
That looked supercool but I'm not sure I get the math behind it: For that stunt move you need a shitton of fuel left in the tank to control the flight like they did. That may be lighter than the steel legs they initially had but I'm having a hard time believing that it's lighter than a damn parachute + small amount of fuel to do some directional burn?
They had a bunch of issues with landing on a pad, including damage to the pad itself from the exhaust as it lands. And it probably easier and cheaper to scale up the grabbing gantry for bigger rockets then scale up bigger legs that add weight to said rocket.
On October 14 2024 01:50 oBlade wrote: SpaceX caught the booster from Starship 5 at the launch tower midair with a huge pair of metal chopsticks and splashed down Starship successfully after a full flight. The steel rocket pipe dream might be real.
That looked supercool but I'm not sure I get the math behind it: For that stunt move you need a shitton of fuel left in the tank to control the flight like they did. That may be lighter than the steel legs they initially had but I'm having a hard time believing that it's lighter than a damn parachute + small amount of fuel to do some directional burn?
The amount of hate against CEO (or Elon in this case) is just confusing to me.
Really? It's pretty easy to figure out where it comes from. Nobody hated Elon 10 years ago when he was just the guy bringing electric cars to the masses to save the planet. There's a perfect correlation between the hate he gets and his turn to right-wing politics.
The weird thing with the world today is that people can't just dislike someone for their politics. Instead they have to dislike everything the person has done because of their politics. If flash came out tomorrow and endorsed Trump there would be a significant amount of people that will say "flash was overrated anyway, boxer/nada/iloveoov are the true terran bonjwas." The perception of reality will change post hoc to resolve the cognitive dissonance of admiring someone's ability while hating what they believe.
This is probably true for a lot of people, but I don't think that holds here in this thread. We criticize Elon solely for his SpaceX work and leave his politics out of it. We give him credit for SpaceX achievements all the time, but we also know that it isn't him per se doing all of the work. The engineers and Shotwell deserve a lot of the honor and credit. Too many times has Elon fucked around with the government because he got told no. And too many times has Shotwell had to bail SpaceX out.
As to criticizing CEOs, what do you expect? They make a lot of money and they need to be kept in check. Blue Origin is a perfect example. Bezos has that company flailing about because he can't find anyone competent enough to run that. If he could find himself a Shotwell, he'd be neck and neck. Electron has a competent CEO and they're doing pretty well. CEOs who can't find the solutions are creating more problems. I'm pulling for BO to succeed so we have backup flights when/as needed. But I'm not holding my breath.
Elon's fight with governments are not necessarily bad, it's politics, sometimes he gets it right, sometimes he gets it wrong.
Look at his massive win in China, and compare how fast Shanghai Gigafactory got the build and expansion compared to Germany one. And now look at China's success in making the industry happen (with a lot of funding and failed business along the way).
Germany on the other hand had been losing market share for standard automobile, and now they can barely keep up with the gigafactory style of extreme vertical integrated production.
There's no Elon without controversy, and there's no Tesla/space X without Elon the way he is.
If you don't believe me, then take a look at all the Chinese semi conductor chip plants that paid way above market rate to get the taiwanese top engineers, they barely made any progress. Even with top engineers, and all the backing from the Chinese government, it doesn't lead to success. It takes someone to force it happen at a higher level and doing so screaming if needed.
China wanted the Tesla money that everyone was fighting to get in China, but not a single EV maker there could figure it out. Dunno why honestly. And I'm pretty sure regulations in China is way more lax when compared to Germany and US, as they have a few agencies that they need to get through and prove that it's "safe" to operate. Sure it slows down progress some, but I'd rather have safe workers and working conditions.
China can throw money at problems and it doesn't matter if it works or not. Who's going to hold that government accountable? The German and US population have more say in how their governments are ran, supposedly.
I don't think the argument you made in favor of Elon is as strong as you'd like, as it just shows more corruption is allowed in China than any other place. I'd say Elon does a good job of getting the ball rolling, but he's not the genius or force people make him out to be. As has been stated, after he gets something up and running, the less he's involved, the better.
Look at Boring company and Hyperloop. That isn't working too hot, now is it?
On October 14 2024 01:50 oBlade wrote: SpaceX caught the booster from Starship 5 at the launch tower midair with a huge pair of metal chopsticks and splashed down Starship successfully after a full flight. The steel rocket pipe dream might be real.
That looked supercool but I'm not sure I get the math behind it: For that stunt move you need a shitton of fuel left in the tank to control the flight like they did. That may be lighter than the steel legs they initially had but I'm having a hard time believing that it's lighter than a damn parachute + small amount of fuel to do some directional burn?
Most of the fuel is in canceling a speed of 1.4 km/s, reversing, then returning to the site whether it's a pad or a tower, and slowing from an altitude of 70km. The less fuel you have, the less weight you have, when a rocket's weight is mostly fuel, then steering a mostly empty rocket takes comparatively marginal amounts of fuel. The little jink to line up with the tower is nothing extra compared to landing flat on a pad.
You'd need at least like 10 tons worth of parachutes just to pathetically fall into the water which gives you something you have to recover and maybe try your best to reuse. There have been designs for, and are, rockets that launch from the sea, but the reverse isn't as efficient if you want to reuse your thing and not go on a lengthy process of refurbishing.
Put it this way, why would you add parachutes to a Lear Jet so you can fall into the ocean and get picked up by the coastguard, saving a minute amount of fuel, rather than flying the extra way to your actual destination airport and not the ocean near it.
The amount of hate against CEO (or Elon in this case) is just confusing to me.
Really? It's pretty easy to figure out where it comes from. Nobody hated Elon 10 years ago when he was just the guy bringing electric cars to the masses to save the planet. There's a perfect correlation between the hate he gets and his turn to right-wing politics.
The weird thing with the world today is that people can't just dislike someone for their politics. Instead they have to dislike everything the person has done because of their politics. If flash came out tomorrow and endorsed Trump there would be a significant amount of people that will say "flash was overrated anyway, boxer/nada/iloveoov are the true terran bonjwas." The perception of reality will change post hoc to resolve the cognitive dissonance of admiring someone's ability while hating what they believe.
I 'hate' Elon for the neo-nazi he has shown to be.
But praising the SpaceX engineers instead of Elon isn't because of that but because he has shown not be the visionary he was believed to be.
Like I said previously, it’s a very weird take considering catching the booster was Elon’s vision and most of the engineers opposed it
He also pulled the plug on carbon fiber. Sure it wasn't his idea but people approached him on the subject, he examined the data, there were internal debates. And in the end they scrapped some really expensive equipment and changed sites.
At the time stainless steel was considered as wild as catching the rocket with a tower.
He might not do the work himself but having a CEO that is technical enough in rocket science to evaluate ideas that are completely crazy in a competent way is very impressive.
On August 12 2023 02:51 BradTheBaneling wrote: Any idea when we are supposed to see Starship orbital flights? I mean at this rate we might have SLS sending the very first women and the first men in over 50 years back to the moon prior to Elon having Starship complete a single orbit.
SLS flying again before Starship is not happening. Only thing keeping oribtal flights from happening is NASA and FAA. Once they figure out what went wrong with the last attempt, Starship will fly again and then it'll be just like Falcon9; routine.
Assuming (big assumption) nothing goes wrong with the launch; in about three weeks it’s very likely SLS will send people back to the moon before Starship successfully completes an orbit.
I guess those lowly government employees at NASA maybe know a bit more about what they’re doing than you were giving them credit for.
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If Artemis II and by extension SLS does go in the Feb 5-11th launch window and the mission achieves its objectives; it will be the first time that a non-American will visit the moon. Obviously a shame that Canada didn’t get the first non-US landing (Japan), but the first non-US visitor and orbit is a pretty solid consolation prize.
It's fascinating how EU delivered it's module on time while SpaceX blew through every deadline and won't be able to meet any of them.
The mission is supposed to also include in orbit refueling which has never been attempted or is even close to testing.
So the "slow and inefficient" government programs did exactly what they promised while Elon and his company won the contract and are at least 3 years behind, which, it seems might lead to the whole thing being scrapped.
And SpaceX was sold to us like the future of space flight, the one thing that made everything cheaper and amazing.
The saddest thing is that for this failure they'll be rewarded by the biggest IPO ever, while the actual space program and science will get defended and suffer.
SpaceX has been dominating space freight with their previous platform. It is still ahead of others years after being introduced.
Their new platform is unexpectedly failing compared to their previous projects. If that is a permanent failure due to a change in culture and loss of talent or one failed project the future will tell.
I don't have a problem with SpaceX, it has a lot of very smart people who achieved a tremendous amount and it's clearly the best thing that Musk ever decided to do, from the progression of science point of view.
Unfortunately, after he got it going, he started meddling and he started promising, and you know that this kind of culture takes hold in an organization, which kind of explains all the recent failures, trying to meet his demands, trying to cut corners to do so etc.
The problem is that people shat all over the "classical" way of space exploration and based on SpaceX previous success gave it insane amounts of money while taking it from other, also worthy projects, both public and private.
When Commercial Crew was awarded it was thought plausible SpaceX and Sierra Nevada would win, meaning Dragon and the Dream Chaser spaceplane would be ferrying crew. Like in COTS, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences had won for cargo transport. Neither of which were entrenched companies.
For whatever reason instead of Sierra Nevada the established safe choice of Boeing won out so with Starliner and Dragon, Commercial Crew was to be two capsule designs.
The same stagnation and poor management that has afflicted NASA at the shuttle -> Constellation -> Artemis / SLS also seeped into the human certification process for commercial crew apparently. The millions of extra dollars of administration, reviews, certification, and paperwork missed multiple failure points on the Starliner capsule. Boeing's contract is worth $4 billion and their maiden flight was what NASA called a Type A mishap. Which there's no higher level than.
Everything is supposed to be multi-redundant, at least doubly fault tolerant. In the design nobody noticed or spoke up that deorbit burns (mission critical) didn't have double fault tolerance. Literally just missed.
One thing they had specifically gotten a waiver for was for the command module RCS to be single fault tolerant. Then what happened? The maiden capsule (unmanned at that point) lost a single fault tolerant thruster during reentry.
The helium pressurization (which pressurizes fuel tanks to feed) also all shared the same design and therefore also the same faults which led to near system-wide leaks.
People either didn't see out of incompetence, or also were pretending not to see because that might require management to make actual decisions like telling Boeing to restart, giving more missions to SpaceX instead, or any other solution that would involve at least some rocking of the proverbial boat.
It's funny because the entire program is built with redundancy, which is why there were two major contract awards, yet there was apparently no institutional willingness to acknowledge when one of the routes is no longer viable, which Starliner might not be, at least not in its current form.
The Dream Chaser is still around but progress is lacking compared to what they may have achieved if they had gotten the original award over a decade ago instead of Boeing.
And amazingly the exact same undeserved deference Boeing seems to have gotten in this case, SpaceX seems to be getting in the case of the lunar lander contract.
EPT
