[HN Gopher] SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy ... ___________________________________________________________________ SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night Author : _Microft Score : 111 points Date : 2021-08-02 20:20 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | failuser wrote: | This is like N1 first stage coming back on a new technological | level. | petewailes wrote: | Hopefully it works better | ceejayoz wrote: | That seems highly likely. The N1 couldn't be static fired, | and they didn't have the benefits of sophisticated modern | computer control and design. | milansuk wrote: | In 2019, Elon tweeted[0] that the price of one Raptor engine is | under $1M with the goal going under 250K for the next version. | Any recent info where there are now? | | I'm still surprised they moved to this orbital fly so quickly | without doing more tests. Going from 3 engines to almost 30 is | crazy. Also, If I understand it right, both booster and starship | will end up in the ocean. I hope they will be able to reuse at | least a few engines. | | [0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1179107539352313856 | Ajedi32 wrote: | No further word on costs as far as I'm aware, other than that | <$1000/ton of thrust is still the goal long-term: | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1420826978102435845 | jhgb wrote: | Considering that cost-wise, they're already putting the RS-25 | to shame (https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will- | pay-a-stag...), this seems more like an icing on the cake. | lutorm wrote: | Given that you could probably build a Merlin out of solid | gold and it would come in cheaper than an RS-25, that's not | exactly saying much... | Diederich wrote: | I LOLd but then had to do the math. Turns out that the | dry weight of a SpaceX Merlin engine, in gold, costs | almost exactly the same as a production RS-25. | | Current spot price of gold is $1800/oz. Merlin dry weight | is 1380 pounds. 1380 pounds of gold is right at 40 | million dollars. | | Per | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25#Space_Shuttle_program | : | | "A total of 46 reusable RS-25 engines, each costing | around US$40 million, were flown during the Space Shuttle | program" | | Beautiful. | jhgb wrote: | They cost much more than $40M these days. | piercebot wrote: | Maybe not once you consider the R&D costs of figuring out | how not to melt a solid gold Merlin engine ;) | lutorm wrote: | There is that... ;-) | Ajedi32 wrote: | Wow, no kidding. The gold Merlin would be a quarter of | the price![1][2][3] (At least in terms of materials.) | | [1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will- | pay-a-stag... | | [2]: | https://www.google.com/search?q=merlin+engine+dry+mass | | [3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28630+kg+of+g | old+in+U... | 908B64B197 wrote: | Only in America things like this can happen. | | A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors | doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical | hardware to commodity; SpaceX is doing the same thing with | flight hardware. Contrast that with previous generation engines | (the RS-25 comes to mind) with a sticker price of 125 | millions... per engine! [0] | | [0] https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-defends-sls- | engine-... | throw0101a wrote: | > _Only in America things like this can happen._ | | > _A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi- | conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, | mission critical hardware to commodity;_ | | Silicon Valley did not bootstrap itself. It received untold | billions of dollars from the US government during the Cold | War (and lots of stuff happened during the WW2 economy, when | the US was the Allies' armorer). Do you think it a | coincidence that most spy satellites are launched from | Vandenberg? Or that Skunk Works, located in California, | developed so many secret aircraft? | | Do a search for "The secret history of Silicon Valley": | | * https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ | | > _SpaceX is doing the same thing with flight hardware._ | | Notwithstanding the millions that NASA gave them in their | early stages. | | * https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/COTS_selection.html | | The list of spinoff technologies just from NASA is | impressive: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies | | The fact that the US was, post-WW2, the largest economy in | the world, and the main developed nation that didn't see mass | destruction, certainly didn't hurt. | | The fact that the US government throws a lot of money around | certainly helps private industry: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State | | This also does not diminish the entrepreneurs that, once the | baton is handed to them, charge forward. My main argument is | that there's not as much "bootstrapping" as many people | believe. | sandworm101 wrote: | >> Notwithstanding the millions that NASA gave them in | their early stages. | | And the billions spent on the technologies that allow those | engines to exist. SpaceX didn't invent rocket engines. It | stands on the shoulders of many giants. | jvm wrote: | This is such an annoying argument. | | The government gave $18B to the SLS and so far has vapor: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System | | The government spent $211B on the shuttle program and got | 133 launches. SpaceX will probably surpass that number this | year at a fraction of the cost. | | NASA's record on rockets since Apollo has been abysmal. | | I don't think government is necessarily bad (the Russians | did a much better job in recent decades!) but it leans into | its failures and often has bad incentives. SpaceX fails | fast, has great incentives, and has achieved an incredible | amount on a (comparatively) shoestring budget. | paxys wrote: | Where in America are these magical semiconductors being made? | theptip wrote: | I took this to be a reference to the original Silicon | Valley semiconductor companies. Fairchild etc. | outworlder wrote: | They are referencing Moore's law. Some of them are made in | the US, some are not (not today, at least). | cblconfederate wrote: | bootstrapping itself by extending tech designed decades ago? | that doesn't sound right. Until today, the biggest rocket | design was still the soviet N1 from the 60s. It's good to | celebrate space achievement but rewriting history is annoying | mpg33 wrote: | China is going to be the exception to this me thinks.. | tablespoon wrote: | >> Only in America things like this can happen. | | > Semi-Conductor doubling every 18 months | | IIRC, the recent doublings have been happening in Taiwan. | That's why people make such a big deal about TMSC. America | (i.e. Intel) actually has some catching up to do. | piercebot wrote: | What is it about America (or other countries) that makes you | think this couldn't happen anywhere else? | asadlionpk wrote: | Talent is one. Opportunity to become super rich giant is | another? (Seeing how China is killing their tech giants). | foxyv wrote: | Personally, I think it has a lot to do with American sub- | culture, the US dollar, our crazy university system, and | immigration. This is speculation on my part so take it with | a BIG grain of salt. | | The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other | countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard | workers that will sacrifice everything to give their | children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are | some of the best in the world in my opinion. | | The US dollar being used as a reserve currency for most of | the world means that it is the center of international | investment. This means that the billions of dollars that | flowed into PayPal and Elon Musk's startups probably came | in large part from foreign investment funds. | | Our universities crank out some of the weirdest and least | conventional engineers you can imagine. Most of them are | half-crazy in the first place. The archetype of Mad | Scientist can be found in physics departments and | engineering labs all over the country. Conformity is often | seen as a kind of perversity. We idolize professors like | Feynman and read novels like Ignition! This is why you see | bridges collapsing and power grids failing while we build | some of the most advanced technology in the world. We hate | boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space. | | Finally in no small part is American sub-culture. | Specifically the science fantasy of space travel and | colonization that is in the heart of a lot of American | engineers and scientists. The same fantasy that captured | the heart of Elon Musk, a billionaire South African | immigrant who made his fortune in Silicon Valley. In | addition there is the added fact that few other countries | would allow some random small company to build ICBMs in | their metaphorical backyard. The USA is kinda loose like | that... | e40 wrote: | _> The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other | countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard | workers that will sacrifice everything to give their | children the opportunity to be Americans. These people | are some of the best in the world in my opinion._ | | Over the last 40 years I've known and worked with some of | these people, and I marvel at their tenacity and the | sheer force of will they have to succeed. It just blows | me away. Sadly, it seems to disappear from the next | generation. I'll admit that I have a small sample size. | asadlionpk wrote: | Tough times make tough people. But their next generation | is usually soft sadly. | foxyv wrote: | I've worked with a lot of people like that as well. It's | always a bit awe inspiring. | | I don't know what component is responsible for the | difference between immigrants and natives. Maybe it's the | selection, the change of environment, the adversity, or | sheer diversity of individuals. If we could manage to | build an education system that produced students as | dedicated, creative and hard working as our best | immigrants, the USA would secure a place in history that | would make the 1400 years of the Roman Empire seem like a | blip in comparison. | [deleted] | narrator wrote: | One problem with other countries is there is an industrial | oligarchy that can't get shake itself out of the "The | Innovator's Dilemma." Disruption is not considered | valuable. The Russians have two aircraft design bureaus | Sukhoi and MiG to help somewhat in preventing stagnation, | but it would be impossible for a SpaceX to come out of | nowhere in Russia like it did in the U.S. Elon even went to | Russia in the early SpaceX days to buy an old ICBM and they | told him to screw off.[1] | | One related anecdote. I read somewhere a while ago about | how Apple had a lot of internal security, even between | teams. They said the reason for that is that if someone in | the iPod department found out about the iPhone they'd | realize the threat to their career and work to undermine | it. | | [1] https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon- | musk-t... | ianai wrote: | Actually the US declared they were willing to spend money | for commercial space flight at the end of the shuttle | program. They literally said "I'm a demander for a | good/service" and entrepreneurs got to work. | api wrote: | I've come to believe that the most important quality of | capitalism isn't markets or some super-human intelligence | that markets somehow possess, but simply the ability to | bypass stagnant incumbents, entrenched interests, and | bureaucracies. | | In other words the most critical quality is permission- | free innovation. | | In all other systems from feudalism to socialism to | communism there generally is just one department or | agency responsible for each thing, and it's usually | either the state itself or some state-blessed entity with | an enforced monopoly. If that entity does it's job well, | that's great. If it doesn't, tough shit. Nobody can go | around it. | | This is also why I disagree with market purists about | anti-trust. If a private company gets so huge that it is | able to occupy an entire market niche for a prolonged | period of time, it's important to do something to either | break it up or incentivize other entrants. A private | company allowed to remain super-dominant in one sector | for too long starts to look and behave like a Soviet | bureau. | treespace88 wrote: | In almost all other countries the rich use the government | to keep competition out. All under the banner of national | pride. | | In Canada we lock out all foreign investment in lots of | areas. | 908B64B197 wrote: | I never understood why Canada would restrict | international players from disrupting sectors like | telecom (a commodity really) but didn't seem to have any | problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for | almost nothing. | throw0101a wrote: | > _disrupting sectors like telecom_ | | Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping | Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own | citizens with the cooperation of the US telcos, so what | chance would foreigners have? | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_progr | am) | project2501a wrote: | > (a commodity really) | | you mean a utility, right? | eplanit wrote: | Where else does it happen? (sincere question) | gpm wrote: | > Also, If I understand it right, both booster and starship | will end up in the ocean. | | You mean for the first test flight? Do you have a source? | | Long term plan is definitely land landing, but I haven't seen | anything about the first test flight. | | I assumed that they would try and land it from the start, | they've already landed starship a few times, and it seems like | that's where a lot of the unknowns still are (e.g. they're | apparently adjusting wing size down after the last landing)? | maccam94 wrote: | The plan for the first test flight is to aim for a controlled | water landing, but the odds of that being completely | successful aren't high enough to risk a land landing. The new | drone ships are still under construction: | https://spaceexplored.com/2021/07/07/update-on-spacexs- | gulf-... | gridspy wrote: | The test flight trajectories are posted with the FAA and | covered in numerous places, for instance | | Article: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/05/13/spacex- | outlines-plans-... | | Video (Marcus House): https://youtu.be/9-9k513UIVw?t=298 | | Basically both vechicles (the massive booster and the | starship itself (2nd stage) are going to "land" on the water, | which means a hover and then sinking into the water. | | Booster - Boost and separate, boostback burn and splashdown | off the coast. Starship - 90 min orbit at about 120km, | reentry and spashdown near Hawaii | | It's fairly quite likely that both would crater on this first | flight - for instance this is the first booster flight and | also the first reentry for the starship itself. | | The Falcon 9 booster also had similar flight plans until it | could successfully fly a controlled trajectory to the surface | of the ocean before they risked a drone ship too. | milansuk wrote: | Yep, this is what I meant, thanks for the sources. | | Although, I'm not sure about that "then sinking into the | water" part. There are big LO2 and methane tanks and If | they are empty enough and closed, both Starship and Booster | shouldn't sink. I guest, we'll see it soon. | krisoft wrote: | "sinking into the water" means that it enters the water. | A splashdown. It doesn't mean that it will sink to the | bottom. | gpm wrote: | Thanks :) | chasd00 wrote: | With a Democrat in the whitehouse and many establishment players | (with politicians in their pocket) unhappy, I can see the FAA | dragging things out. There are many powers that be who would love | to see the FAA force SpaceX to tear down their launch tower and | move it a few feet over because of baby turtles or some other | ridiculous excuse. | Scene_Cast2 wrote: | What's the scaling like for rocket engines? How much more | efficiency (in various forms) could you get if you made 1 giant | engine instead? (Disregarding reliability) | sfblah wrote: | I genuinely don't understand what the point of all this is. Is | this all about sending people to Mars? Is it basic research? What | is the end goal here? I don't follow this too much, so I'm hoping | someone can paste me a link to something I can read to explain | the justification for building this thing. | grammarprofess wrote: | one objective is to have affordable and perfomant global | connectivity | mlyle wrote: | Starship/Super Heavy have the prospect of dramatically reducing | the cost of launch to orbit, the moon, and beyond. | | NASA has selected the platform for supply to the Lunar Gateway. | | SpaceX wants to use it to take humans to Mars. | | But it's also a decent platform for just getting lots and lots | of mass into LEO. | sebzim4500 wrote: | Elon Musk claims this is all to establish a civilisation on | Mars in order to decrease the chance of humanity destroying | itself. He might not have an entirely faithful relationship | with the truth, but there is really no other rational reason to | be so aggressive with the Starship program. SpaceX already does | the vast majority of commercial launches using its Falcon 9 | rocket, so they don't need to do anything this drastic. | perrylaj wrote: | My assumption has always been that the first to Mars will | have a huge edge in gaining access to any natural resources | (ore, salts, etc) that might have commercial value. I imagine | the first organization to establish mining and refining | capabilities on Mars would stand to make trillions in the | production of things like steel and aluminum, as would be | needed to build out any sizeable settlements on the planet. | BobbyJo wrote: | Do you have any idea how much raw material and energy would be | available to humanity if we were able to successfully colonize | the solar system? The scale of what we could build and learn | would be absolutely shaking. Seriously. That's enough 'why' for | me. | ravel-bar-foo wrote: | The initial technical goal is "more mass to orbit". Due to the | rocket equation, the amount of fuel needed is ~20x the amount | of payload to low earth orbit. Any fuel needed to get from low | earth orbit to higher orbits needs to get to low orbit first, | and so counts as mass. So the more mass and the greater a | distance one wants to fly, the larger the required rocket. This | rocket is very large. | | People and the necessary life support for people are quite | massive compared to robots. Once one can get lots of mass to | orbit, one can think about things like sending people past low | earth orbit (around the moon, to the moon, or to Mars). So far, | NASA has committed to sending people to the Moon, but no | farther. Elon Musk says that the goal is Mars, but any craft | which could be used to start a Mars colony also has the ability | to start a much larger moon colony, or perhaps to land on the | moon and take off again without leaving (expensive) parts of | the rocket behind. | hirundo wrote: | Elon appears to be building a large ground-locked monument to | demonstrate his argument in this tweet: Unlike | its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has | a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their | rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year | from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity | will never get to Mars. -- | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1354862567680847876 | | The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs | into more than one basket. The FAA is standing athwart the most | effective effort to move in that direction, yelling Stop. The | more fragile our environment is, the more protection it needs, | the more important it is for them to get out of the way of | projects like this. | hef19898 wrote: | Strong statement after the 737 MAX debacle. | 908B64B197 wrote: | Can someone explain why the MAX was allowed to re-use the 737 | type certificate? | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | There's a swath of people who have adopted the position | that it's best to let industry be the primary agent of | regulation, largely for ideological political reasons. As | we saw with the MAX debacle, such a position is foolish, as | companies will always be cravenly willing to cut corners in | the interest of short term profits. | | This is one of the biggest political changes I've gone | through. In my early 20s I was much more sympathetic to | what I'd now call naive libertarianism. Today I realize | there's no magic bullet, and you need healthy leadership in | both the private and public spheres. Ideally the two | buttress each other against their individual flaws. However | in the US the process of regulatory capture has hijacked | this ideal. | | We won't be able to fix it unless we vote in politicians | who see this as a top priority. We get the quality of | government we ask for. | matmatmatmat wrote: | It is unclear to me why anyone would vote this down. It's | spot on. | [deleted] | kristianp wrote: | Clickable tweet (links don't work in preformatted text): | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1354862567680847876 | Diederich wrote: | > The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs | into more than one basket. | | This is a defensible opinion, as are the others saying that the | most important job of humanity is to fix our current basket. | | While neither agreeing or disagreeing, I will note another very | important thing SpaceX is doing: | | "The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, | no question. But I want to be clear: I'm not trying to be | anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and | not be sad." | | A lot of what SpaceX is doing is extremely inspirational, and I | think the world could use more things to look forward to in the | future. | shakezula wrote: | > This is a defensible opinion, as are the others saying that | the most important job of humanity is to fix our current | basket. | | It's always presented as a false dichotomy, though. We can | have both. | | People insist we should be spending our money fixing the | planet, but we already are, including Musk who just sponsored | the largest XPrize in history for a carbon sequestration | method. | | First we must overcome the political hurdles to get people to | even recognize that climate change is a problem. Obviously | money is only barely starting to trickle in to carbon | sequestration tech. | gridspy wrote: | There are a couple of major reasons the FAA is involved: | | 1. Fuel-air explosions at ground level can injure people or | destroy property (even kilometers away) | | 2. Rockets on unplanned trajectories can ruin people's day | | 3. Lots of fuel is toxic, we need to mitigate this. | | Basically someone has to walk through all the worst case | scenarios and ensure that everyone (and nature) remains safe or | as safe as it is possible to be. | onion2k wrote: | _The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs | into more than one basket._ | | Perhaps that's true, but space launches are important enough | that going "slowly"[1] is a good idea. One catastrophic | accident with the destruction of a spacecraft leaving a large | amount of orbital debris would make space launches much, much | harder until we clean up. Rushing to space could slow us down | _a lot._ | | [1] The space race has only been going for 70 years, and less | than 25 years commercially. The idea that anything is happening | "too slowly" is quite baffling really. | lapetitejort wrote: | Humans went ~11,900 years without flight, then ~60 years | later we landed on the moon. | sebzim4500 wrote: | From Musk's perspective, any timeline which does not | establish a permanent presence on Mars within his lifetime is | too slow. It looked like that would be impossible before the | Starship program, now it merely looks unlikely. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | > The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs | into more than one basket. | | We are _very_ far from a self sustaining society and economy on | Mars. Easily a century or more. I 'm cheering on SpaceX, but | find this talking point of Elon's very tiresome. It's little | more than sci-fi fantacism. As just a simple example: no one | knows what childhood development is going to be like at 40% of | earth's gravity. And that's just one issue among millions. | | For better or worse we need to fix the planet we have. And we | don't need to invent new technology to do it, though we | certainly should pursue new technologies that might help or | accelerate the process. What we lack fundamentally right now is | political will/unity. | | We can arrest climate change. We can end famine. We can extend | modern medical care to the entire world. All of these are | directly possible, today, with no new invention. | | But we have to, to paraphrase Sagan, become a species more | prudent than we are today. | nickik wrote: | Musk always gets unreasonable angry if he feels something slows | him down. | | They have really not been slowed down that much FAA. | | So everybody should just chill out. | | Btw, for people interest, this interview with Ken Davidian | FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation is interesting: | | https://www.interplanetary.org.uk/podcast/episode/90af4411/2... | Crunsher wrote: | How is this project going to protect the environment? | mulmen wrote: | By making it cheaper to do things in space instead of in the | atmosphere we breathe. | midasuni wrote: | Off site backup might not save your machine if it burns in a | house fire, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't have it | BitwiseFool wrote: | To be honest, I can't tell you what kind of future innovation | is going to result from cheaper spaceflight. But there is | serious scientific and engineering potential to be unlocked. | What SpaceX is doing seems environmentally unfriendly, and I | know no-one wants to hear "but xyz is worse". But we really | do need to keep such things in mind, because SpaceX's | footprint here is completely dwarfed by domestic carbon | creation. The Apollo Project lead to all sorts of spinoff | technologies that we use today. It wouldn't be _unreasonable_ | to expect some of the future technological advancements to | reduce pollution or carbon emissions. | CydeWeys wrote: | Well it's moving human life _outside_ the environment, so | that even if something catastrophic happens to this one 's | there's backup humans. | freeopinion wrote: | If you have ever lived next to the incarnation of this | philosophy, you might be able to see through its holes. | It's the plot of any number of bad scifi movies. Evil | aliens travel from solar system to solar system, using up a | planet, then moving on. They've now reached Earth. | | There are plenty of industrial/mining sites that argue they | need to be able to create huge hazard dumps for the sake of | the future of the human race. It tends to be a very poor | argument for those left holding the bag when the owners | have taken their money and skipped town. | | If the danger is so great that we have to get off this | planet in the next five years or we all die, well, then we | might justify more urgency. If we've got 10 or 20 years to | do it, let's take the time to protect the environment while | we do it. | | If you want to argue that none of this bureaucracy is | protecting the environment, that's a different argument. | paxys wrote: | The single most important job for humanity right now is to save | this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time | to think about colonizing the stars after that. I'm as much | into spaceships as the next nerd, but people need to get real. | The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month | late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This | effort is going to play out over many generations and | centuries. Meanwhile our entire species stands no chance | against one slight more deadly virus released tomorrow. | | Criticizing regulators is Elon's MO, whether it is the SEC for | his Tweets, various transportation departments for self driving | software safety, labor departments for covid restrictions for | worker safety, FAA for rocket launches... You'd think there is | some national conspiracy against him at this point. | colordrops wrote: | Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about | doing a bit of critical thinking on this. What about all the | resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, | amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, | travel and vacations, etc? They dwarf everything put into | space exploration, and are arguably less useful. Do you make | the same tired comments when those industries are brought up? | | And that's not even getting into the fact that multiple | things can be done by humanity at once. | | edit: apologies for the first sentence here which was | unnecessary to make my point. | ncallaway wrote: | > Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how | about doing a bit of critical thinking on this | | Totally unnecessary. That gratuitous dig doesn't advance | your argument at all. | | > What about all the resources going into video games, | sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, | weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc? | | That doesn't seem like it's u/paxys issue to address. The | person they responded to made a _very_ strong claim: "The | single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs | into more than one basket". | | It seems entirely consistent with both the original | argument and the reply that humans could have two very | important jobs to address (climate change, and becoming | multi-planetary) and _still_ have resources to dedicate to | all those other things you describe. | | > Do you make the same tired comments when those industries | are brought up? | | I would make a similar argument that u/paxys made if the | amusement park industry claimed that building amusement | parks was the single most important job that humanity had. | Similarly, for sports, video games movies, or most other | industries. Claiming the mantle of "the most important job | humanity has" is a _very_ big claim. | | > And that's not even getting into the fact that multiple | things can be done by humanity at once. | | u/paxys didn't say that we could only address one thing at | a time. They were disagreeing with the claim that becoming | multiplanetary is the single most important job humanity | has. Disagreeing with which singular job we have is the | "most important" one makes absolutely no claim as to how we | should be dividing our time. | | Ultimately, I actually agree with the original poster that | becoming multiplanetary and multistellar is an important | feat we should be aggressively perusing. But I also think | surviving any extinction-event filters that may come along | the way is _equally important_. | colordrops wrote: | > Totally unnecessary | | Good point, I should have restrained myself here. | | The rest of your comments would be fair, except that | u/paxys said the following: | | > There is enough time to think about colonizing the | stars after that. | | Which clearly indicates that we should not be working on | space travel until AFTER we've solved humanity's | problems. | s5300 wrote: | The nation with the largest amount of military force and | nuclear weapons, as well as control of the globally used | & prized currency ($ USD), and even the universal | language of the skies (well, maybe you could say it's | England's language, but the central power of the U.S. is | the reason it's the language of the skies), has around | 1/3rd of it's nation that actively would like to see at | least an other 1/3 of it's nation die, and said other 1/3 | really only wants to get things like nationwide | enforcement of basic human rights (like in all other, I | think, 32 of 33 highly developed nations do), and to | actually embody the meaning of "welfare state" that the | U.S. has been defined as for... idk how long tbh, but for | quite some time - Along with a want for the | aforementioned 1/3rd not wanting to literally kill them. | | And they're simply unable to come to any understanding, | after decades of botched discourse. | | I don't see how some group of people focusing on space | travel as a way to potentially divert the end of humanity | as something _that_ bad | ncallaway wrote: | > There is enough time to think about colonizing the | stars after that. | | I didn't read it as indicating that we should fully | postpone humanity's problems. For example, the next few | sentences read: | | > The world isn't going to end because his next launch is | a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever | else. This effort is going to play out over many | generations and centuries. | | That indicates to me that the delay the person is | considering is on the order of the delay imposed by FCC | regulations (i.e. months or years), not "start working on | it after we've solved humanity's problems". | | But that's just how it reads to me | colordrops wrote: | Those comments were added after I responded. In fact it's | still being edited. This was the entirety of the comment | I responded to: | | > The single most important job for humanity right now is | to save this one planet we have from destruction. There | is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after | that. | mulmen wrote: | This whole "whatever I don't like and/or understand isn't | worth doing" philosophy is just not interesting. Humanity | is not a hivemind. We can do more than one thing. History | has countless examples of innovation in one area leading to | breakthroughs in another. Just make your own contribution | to humanity where you can, we will be fine. | lucideer wrote: | That's true most of the time. Where it falls down is in | cases where it's not "we". | | There's plenty of orgs doing worthwhile and important | space exploration. | | There's a bunch of individuals destroying this planet who | want to go to space and are selling a nice colonists | fantasy to get backing. | | You're right that it's not either or: let's continue | supporting viable space efforts. But let's not be naive | about it. | meepmorp wrote: | GP: >> The single most important job humanity has is to get | our eggs into more than one basket. | | OP: > The single most important job for humanity right now | is to save this one planet we have from destruction. | | You're arguing with nobody's point. | colordrops wrote: | I'm arguing with this: | | > There is enough time to think about colonizing the | stars after that. | | Which directly states that problems should be worked on | serially - that space travel should be worked on AFTER we | solve other problems. | paxys wrote: | Yes we can do multiple things at once. In the thread you | joined we are discussing the _single most important_ thing. | So what really is your point here? | colordrops wrote: | Your comment clearly indicates that we should hold on on | space travel until after other problems are solved. | Talanes wrote: | "Clearly" is a bit too much, given that you've had to | comment multiple times to people who didn't read it that | way. | colordrops wrote: | Can you explain what you meant by that comment then? | lucideer wrote: | > _They dwarf everything put into space exploration_ | | If you want to make it into a discussion about comparing & | contrasting impacts, you're going to have to take the | collective impacts of those pushing the space-colony | agenda: everything from perpetuating individual road | transport & UK airline companies to the largest "bookstore" | in the world and lots in between. | | Space exploration is an extremely important and worthy | scientific endeavour & orgs like NASA have been criminally | underfunded for decades. | | What is absolutely not worthwhile and shouldn't even | uttered in the same breath as the history of efforts on ISS | and similar, is a bunch of budding space cowboys sending | phallic representations of themselves into orbit on PR | missions and hiding their own destructive impact on our | planet behind a colinist fantasy so thin only a complete | scientific illeterate would fall for it. | | SpaceX has contributed positively to benign public missions | by being a contractor, but all the marketing bullshit | outside of that around Mars is demonstrably nonsense. | | > _a bit of critical thinking_ | | Indeed. | merpnderp wrote: | Who looks at a rocket and thinks "Hmm, I bet the | engineers could have gone with a more efficient design, | but they decided to go with a dick?" | | Like do people really think that there's better shapes to | go with? And if people really believe this, what part of | our public education system failed them most? Because my | money is on critical thinking. | s5300 wrote: | Consider the fact, that the publicly richest citizen on | Earth, as well as one of the people behind one of the largest | financial transaction sites, may have genuinely already | concluded that, as the history of politics among other things | have shown, that the Earth/humanity may simply be unsavable, | for whatever reasons they find. | | He has a _lot_ of talent at his disposable, and presumably | information to a decent bit of otherwise locked away studies | /reports. Do I think he is correct? Perhaps not, but my nor | your opinion really matters. | | If he's made the decision shits truly FUBAR, ala Foundation, | then leave him alone while he works on what he may genuinely | believe to be a shot at surviving the FUBAR long-term. | what-the-grump wrote: | Or you know it's vaporware again like FSD and he is just | making bank in an industry that is new? Now that technology | allowed capital to keep up with government cheese enough to | take on space freight. | shakezula wrote: | I'm getting bored of watching rockets land like they do | in the movies. | | Soooooo. It's probably not vaporware homie. | gridspy wrote: | I think the best way to save the planet is to move heavy | industry into space. Move our power generation into space and | beam it down. Make advanced technologies in space which | benefit those on Earth. Move people into real orbital | habitats. | | Make Earth proper a gigantic park / nature reserve. | | We can't "wait" for anything, or the window during which we | can develop space travel will close. 10 or 100 years from now | we might no longer have the motivation or the means to fund | and build new vechicles like these. | tablespoon wrote: | > I think the best way to save the planet is to move heavy | industry into space. Move our power generation into space | and beam it down. | | Wasn't one of the disasters in Simcity 2000 having your | power-beaming space laser miss your power station instead | light your city on fire? It seems like such a thing would | cause massive hazards. | | > Move people into real orbital habitats. | | > Make Earth proper a gigantic park / nature reserve. | | Or force people to live deep underground. Then when they | save up enough money to buy a ticket, they can be | transported there much more economically. | | As for me, I like living on the surface. | sebzim4500 wrote: | I don't know anything about the physical feasibility of | any of this but honestly I don't think 'argument by video | game' is terribly convincing. | pyrale wrote: | > I think the best way to save the planet is to move heavy | industry into space. | | Good luck dealing with the absence of cheap oxydizer and | the lack of convection which makes heat dispersion a | nightmare. | bpodgursky wrote: | > I'm as much into spaceships as the next nerd, | | I think you lack some self-awareness here. Space is clearly a | mild curiosity to you at most. | ncallaway wrote: | > Space is clearly a mild curiosity to you at most. | | I think it's _extremely_ unhelpful to tell people what | their interests are, or what they believe. How much could | you possibly know about this person 's interests from that | one post? | bpodgursky wrote: | How could the OP possibly know how interested _other | people_ are in spaceflight? They did exactly as much, by | claiming they were as interested as the average nerd. | midasuni wrote: | Why are you posting on HN then? Get out there and save the | planet. | shakezula wrote: | This isn't helpful or insightful input for anyone, | including the people literally trying to get out and save | the planet. | sebzim4500 wrote: | He's not claiming there is a national conspiracy against him. | He is claiming that between regulatory capture and regulators | trying to justify their existence, government agencies are | not acting in humanity's interest. | radu_floricica wrote: | There are a couple of points where I disagree with you, but one | in particular I hear very often and should be debunked. | | A colony on mars, even of significant size and population, is | 100% condemned to certain death if separated from Earth. It | would be, for all intents and purposes, in the same "basket". | | Google "how to make a pen from scratch" for a quick primer into | why, but the tl;dr version is that it takes having a huge | industrial base already existing in order to keep, let alone | advance, our current technological level. And Mars is not | friendly enough to support us with lower tech. | | Our intuitions go the way of "we can put 1000 smart people | there, that's enough to survive and thrive". Well, we as a | species can't move our microprocessor factories from Taiwan in | less than a decade, and you expect them to be rebuilt on Mars | from scratch? | boardwaalk wrote: | Should be debunked if it's not true (that a colony could be | self-sustaining), but you haven't debunked it here. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I'm probably not going to debunk it either, not by any real | standards. But... | | It seems to me that our level of technology has increased, | partly through new discoveries, partly through new ways of | applying those discoveries, but also at least partly | through increased specialization. You've got a farmer | growing huge amounts of food. But that's because there's a | tractor factory, and the tractors are smart because of the | chips in them, and the chips connect to the GPS satellites | in orbit. To make that work, you need more than the farmer. | You need the workers in the tractor factory, but also the | workers in the chip plant in Taiwan, and the chip factory | needs the equipment manufacturer in the Netherlands. And | you need the rocket manufacturers so you can put GPS | satellites in orbit. And the rocket _fuel_ manufacturers. | And so on. It basically has taken a globally integrated | material culture to achieve that level of productivity on | the part of the individual farmer. Which we can do, because | the farmers are so productive that we don 't have to spend | very many people on farming. | | A fair chunk of the progress of the last 200 years has been | made possible by increasing scales of integration. But I | worry, because we're running out of globe to integrate. | (Africa, maybe?) | | So, back to Mars. Yeah, none of this proves that 1000 | people couldn't be self-sustaining. But for them to do | that, they'd need a fair amount of tools. And that means | that they'd need someone who knows how to repair and/or | replace every one of those tools ( _and_ any tools they use | in the process). And there 's a hard cutoff below which | they cannot fall, due to the need for oxygen. They can't | just fall back to being hunter-gatherers. | | So, yeah, I didn't debunk it. But, seriously, what's the | maximum number of sophisticated kinds of machines that 1000 | people can run and maintain? 100? 500? Can you build a | self-sustaining colony on Mars with only 500 kinds of | machines? | nickik wrote: | Watch 'Mars Industrialization Roadmap' by Casey Handmer. That | is exactly what he is addressing. He literally mentions the | 'I, Pencil'. And btw a million people is the goal, not 1000. | | See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11hYo9UTSRM | | And the corresponding book: | | How To Industrialize Mars: A Strategy For Self-Sufficiency: | How To Settle A Lethal Vacuum In 400 Easy Steps | | Part of the whole project of Mars is making this very thing | possible in the first place. It requires rethinking a lot of | how we do things. | ncallaway wrote: | > A colony on mars, even of significant size and population, | is 100% condemned to certain death if separated from Earth | | It would be in the near future, true. In fact, the key | milestone for humanity being truly multi-planetary is that | each planet must be independently self-sufficient. | | There's no laws of physics that would prevent human life on | Mars or Venus from eventually becoming self-sufficient. | | The time-frames to get to that point are large (mid-hundreds | to low-thousands of years by my random guess). A thousand | years isn't that long in terms of the evolution of the | species, though, and are the time scales we should be | thinking of multiplanetary life on. | BitwiseFool wrote: | It should be remembered that the unspoken rule of any agency or | institution is to justify its own continued existence. For be | bureaucracy that is the FAA, all the onerous requirements they | place on spaceflight is a feature, not a bug. | lapetitejort wrote: | The bureaucracy at the FAA has protected millions of airline | passengers over the course of decades. Just look at how one | minor discrepancy in an aircraft can lead to a total loss of | the jet and hundreds of lives lost. Now combine that with a | rocket loaded with a hundred thousand gallons of fuel and | it's understandable that we should be careful. I don't want | our space-faring expeditions to look like China's, where | they're okay dumping hydrazine on local villages [1]. | | 1: https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/04/photos-long-march- | rock... | BitwiseFool wrote: | To be clear, I'm not saying regulatory agencies are bad. | What I am saying, though, is that these agencies don't have | an incentive to trim down red-tape in the interest of | efficiency. On one level, it would be bad for their | employees and budget. On another level, something _might_ | slip through the cracks so it makes sense for a safety | agency to be far more risk averse than what it watches. | freeopinion wrote: | Better efficiencies with significantly more launches per | year and eventually interplanetary travel would be _bad_ | for the agencies that regulate it? How do you figure? | | The FAA has no inherent incentive to slow things down. It | seems to me that they do have incentive to encourage | growth. Without this base for your arguments, they all | seem unstable to me. | | When there are mountains of red tape it is easy to over- | simplify the reasons. But that usually isn't helpful in | correcting the problem. | BitwiseFool wrote: | Over the long run, more volume would provide more work | for the FAA and its employees. For now, though, loosening | the rules in hopes of getting more launches would serve | to reduce work for the agency and diminish it's purpose. | I could see a business making the short term tradeoff in | the name of long term gains but not a government | bureaucracy. Does that make where I am coming from a | little more understandable? | chasd00 wrote: | If only the launch site was near, and launch trajectory | over, a huge body of water where a crash would not endanger | anyone or anything. | Taniwha wrote: | It's likely not just the FAA .... especially because they | are launching within 5km of the Mexican border | BitwiseFool wrote: | And they aren't sending passengers on these autonomous | test flights. Nor are they risking multi-billion dollar | taxpayer funded payloads. It makes total sense to me to | allow SpaceX a faster launch cadence for their | prototypes. | lttlrck wrote: | How is the FAA blocking environmental protection programs? It's | important that we explore, but exploring won't fix the mess | we've made. | mulmen wrote: | It could. That's pretty much the entire argument in favor of | exploration actually. | | We are going to need far more advanced technology than we | have today if we are going to reverse the effects of climate | change. If we move heavy industry to space that can | dramatically reduce our carbon emissions here on Earth. The | technology to do that may also lead to breakthroughs in other | areas like energy generation or storage. | | I run thousands of hours of batch data processing jobs a day. | They aren't particularly time sensitive, as long as they | finish in a day I am happy. There's no reason the computers | doing that need to be on Earth consuming precious water and | electricity resources. | ortusdux wrote: | Musk tweeted an amazing photo of the fuel lines being welded in. | This was taken 3 days ago. | | https://www.space.com/starship-super-heavy-engine-section-ph... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-02 23:01 UTC)