I wonder why it's not Elon himself? He can obviously afford it, and it is clearly his passion, so why not take a once in a lifetime opportunity and head into space?
Can he? He definitely has the potential to be massively wealthy. If Tesla/SpaceX/BoringCo/etc exit at some point he'll walk away with '*&^@ you money', but until then he doesn't seem to have that much. According to Bloomberg he's in debt with personal loans to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars[1].
To be honest though, I don't really understand how normal money-you-buy-stuff-with works for people who are billionaires when most of their wealth is in stock and options.
> To be honest though, I don't really understand how normal money-you-buy-stuff-with works for people who are billionaires when most of their wealth is in stock and options.
He takes out loans with his shares as collateral to get spending money.
Why not just sell? Because he expects the shares to appreciate more than what he'd pay in interest and/or to retain the shareholder vote.
Why would you think it'd be a once in a lifetime opportunity? The whole point of this is stepping into a new domain of technology and humanity where what this man is doing will one day become as accessible as flying around the world is today.
And more importantly, the risk:reward of failure involving Elon is bad. Right now he's managed to spark a number of competitors such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but these companies have yet to achieve much of anything and it's not out of the question to consider that if Elon died tomorrow, we might enter into another 50 years of space stagnation. Contrast that against the pleasure gained from a space voyage and it's just a bad risk:reward ratio, even when the risk is mostly negligible.
During the live event this was one of the question on Q&A. Yusaku told that he'll probably invite Musk on a ride with him. He smiled and told something on-par "why not".
A trans-lunar flight might be very useful as a test flight before the first Mars mission anyway. Going to Mars will be an extremely risky venture to start with and the first few vehicles probably won't be coming back even if they make it, so it also makes sense to extract a bit of economic value out of the vehicle beforehand.
Why, when Elon is mentioned in a bad light is his birthplace always mentioned by the British media. As if the reader is too stupid to grasp that an individual can become disagreeable all by themselves.
Why bring South Africa into this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45551895
and not this one about space and the future. It hurts tourism which is very important for GDP there.
I'm no defender of the British press but I think its reasonable to mention his place of birth. Have a look at the reporting around this article, "Japanese billionaire..." is mentioned by almost every news source, Richard Branson is referred to as British Billionaire by overseas press, so perhaps you want Musk to be described as South African billionaire but that would t be accurate and calling him a US billionaire, while correct is not the most accurate way to describe his nationality. So they mention that he was born in South Africa and most people can then work out the rest, I will US based but is an immigrant from South Africa.
A positive interpretation is that the original piece wasn’t very substantive, and tossing it off the front page was a way to make room for the more-substantive articles (which we’re now commenting on).
A less positive interpretation is that voters have very little say over what goes on the front page — or more specifically, what stays.
It is strange because this is a big announcement, that is concrete with real money and people (more soon to be announced). By Elon Musk. But there doesn't seem to be much love for him by the press.
Is it because Elon offended the press few weeks ago? I don't understand why press thinks it is above some criticism?
Is HN supposed to be for people interested in tech startups or not?
Is SpaceX a massively successful startup or not?
Is the focus on Elon perhaps a stark reminder that success is often a matter of chance, and that not all startups are lucky enough to have their Gwynne Shotwells and Robert Muellers?
I have zero issues with this. The rich tend to adopt or do what the rest cannot very early and a good many things do trickle down. Just look at all the safety features on entry level cars these days, most used to be pure luxury items. Even the idea of an affordable EV. the go into your home and see every day items and just look at the price changes on big ticket items.
I remember the days in the 70s when flying was too expensive for families to consider. Even making a long distance call was reserved for special events.
I don't suspect travel in space will be that way in my life time being that I am in my fifties but I can hope.
> The rich tend to adopt or do what the rest cannot very early and a good many things do trickle down... I remember the days in the 70s when flying was too expensive for families to consider.
Electricity as well. The very first few installations of electricity in homes by Edison were in Pierpont Morgan's home and soon followed by Morgan's friends' homes.
It makes logical sense too that it should be this way because early on, tech is usually very expensive and highly experimental such that if it fails, only the rich can afford the losses and upkeep.
Like everything to start with? Consider that whatever device you're writing your posts through is millions of times more powerful than devices that, in the living memory of some today, was something so exclusive that literally the only people capable of owning one were national governments. Then it became national governments and massive companies. Then it became national governments and massive companies and very wealthy individuals. Then it became .... anybody who can work for a few days at minimum wage.
With an important difference that while over time it cost less and less effort to build a powerful CPU, a moon loop still costs about 3000 km/s of Delta-V. Since the first space flight, CPUs have changed in terms of cost and capacity worth several orders of magnitude, while spaceflight, despite the investments made, is still basically the same. I don't think spaceflight will be revolutionized in our lifetimes, making it affordable as much as computing power has.
It has already been revolutionized. After all was said and done each Space Shuttle launch came out to about half a billion dollars. In modern times Air Force figures showed Boeing/Lockheed costs averaging out at $404million per flight, and that's just on the flights. We pay them to develop rockets and even pay them just to exist. Literally, known as the 'launch capability contract', we throw $800 million of taxpayer money to Boeing/Lockheed for absolutely nothing except agreeing to stay in business. Isn't lobbying and corruption fun! Factor all the real costs into their launches, and we're paying more for launches than we did during the Space Shuttle era. Now enter SpaceX. Today you can go buy a rocket contract and send whatever you want up into space for about $62 million.
That has already been an enormous revolution in space access, and it's just the beginning. They haven't been landing rockets for shits and giggles. Relative to the cost of a rocket, fuel is practically free. The real cost is in the actual materials for the rocket and engines. And previously companies have just thrown those away. Even the Space Shuttle had 'reuse' only on paper rather than any significant reusability. But the Falcon rockets are genuinely reusable, and them autonomously landing rockets is now, amazingly, starting to become business as usual. Go for a flight proven rocket and the costs drop even further.
This is only what has already happened. None of this is future or speculative. This is happening at this very moment. If you want to see what the plants are then look into the goals for the BFR and Mars. This is the thing that's so disappointing. We're currently going through one of the biggest revolutions in technology today, that will likely be a keystone moment for our species' entire existence, and most people have absolutely no idea the relevance or scale of what's happening - instead distracted by irrelevancies that nobody will even remember in 10 years, and in many cases - 10 months if not 10 weeks.
The eventual plan is for a ticket to mars to be 'affordable', thats what hes referring to. He sketched out how it _might_ be possible in that Interplanatary speech a few years ago
I'm sure people thought the same way back when personal automotive transport was owned by very few people. Even trains were for the wealthy for a time.
Half of Elon is apparently a treasure of humanity, and the other half is some giant unstable douche. How do we arrange an intervention such that the guy getting high on Joe Rogan and harassing expats doesn't bring down the guy doing the good stuff?
A fair observation, though you could equally argue that Apple's market value and revenue is almost entirely the result of evolutionary progression of ideas already in play during Jobs' lifetime.
But for all their present economic success there has been a subtle yet distinct erosion of product clarity and software quality since his passing. Take 3D touch as an example: a great idea in theory but from a UX perspective it's just a bunch of hidden easter eggs. Or the iOS flat UI which sometimes gives zero affordance to the tapability of many elements.
Another one: Watch was released with a whole pile of bad assumptions[1] and basically hoping that a market would darwinistically emerge. Luckily one did—fitness and heart health. It could just have easily been an epic flop.
[1] Wrapping the equivalent of an iPhone 2G or Macintosh 128k in 18-karat gold. With zero upgrade path. Seriously? Did they really think a first generation wrist gadget was going to be purchased as an heirloom? (And it gets magnificently worse with their rose gold, where the same expensive raw material is chemically molested to look nothing like what anyone would interpret as expensive.)
It's not the smoking a joint part that is troublesome (and let's face it, he didn't really 'smoke'), but the how and when and why part and what it say about his judgement (or lack of it).
Unless you buy the theory that he did it to cleverly deflect attention away from something else.
Agreed that weed itself is irrelevant (though I literally don’t believe that $420 wasn’t a drugs reference even though it’s been explicitly denied), unlike violating the rules about manipulating share prices and the defamation on Twitter.
Looks to me like chronic overwork. How do we convince him to take a holiday?
A bit ironic that Yusaku Maezawa wants the mission to be about "World Peace" when the $200+ million he most likely spent could be better served on Earth. Just call it what it is, a wish to be part of something bigger.
Weather satellites, communications satellites, ground resource survey satellites, improved weather and climate models based on lessons learned by analysing the atmospheres of other planets. These have all boosted agricultural productivity on earth, putting more food into more mouths more cheaply.
In a matter of few days? Cause as far as I know human can survive without food for maximum of 10 days.
You argument make sense if we take human out of equation. Then we shouldn't be feeding poor AT ALL, given 1,000 years of founding tech with 100% budget would definitely save more lives.. eventually.
Edit: put it in other words: somebody is dying of hunger today so we can fund better technology for tomorrow, sure. Let's just hope its not me or you starving, if that kind of argument helps you sleep at night.
Nobody can grow a crop of rice from scratch in 10 days either. Agriculture intrinsically is a long term process requiring multi-year or multi-decade long investments. It's not a case of feeding people now OR investing in being able to feed them in the future. You have to balance both.
It's is entirely possible to fund agricultural development and space technology, and balance the two to complement each other. Space technology has a proven track record of massive technological and humanitarian benefits. Why are you complaining about it, instead of say people wasting hundreds of billions each year on Hollywood movies and TV shows, or many other unproductive activities which we spend more on than space.
Did you read the whole letter? It specifically answers how spending money on ambitious scientific and extploretory ventures leads to a lot of us inventing different stuff. The device you’re posting this comment was made with tech that was developed specifically for this exact space race :)
Obviously it's being spent on developing the rocket. My issue is that he specifically states that the mission is about "inspiring world peace". There are clearly better ways to inspire world peace than taking a lap around the moon.
For $200 million? I can’t think of any. Remember the world economy is approximately half a million times bigger than the amount of money being spent on this. Even the most recent summer Olympics (which are, I think, supposed to be world peace promoting) was 655 times more expensive.
There are numerous ways to address world peace such as through education, technology, medicine etc. According to this paper by the WHO and UNICEF there was a shortage of about $11 billion for immunization. How many hundreds of thousands could be saved from a $200 million donation?
Or it could be spent on mosquito nets. I’m told those are very cost-effective.
Or it could be spent on testing African-Americans for sickle-cell anaemia as children. I’ve been told that’s so cost-effective that it’s actually a negative cost per person once your account for necessary medical treatment as adults, as it’s much cheaper to provide effective treatment for those same people as children.
Or it could be spent replacing fossil fuels with solar power and electric cars so people don’t die from air pollution oh wait hang on…
Or we can make self driving cars so that distracted drivers don’t crash and kill so many people… hang on a minute, there’s a pattern here isn’t there?
So you don't think the headline, "Maezawa spends a quarter of a billion to save hundreds of thousands" would have a larger impact on world peace than the current one? Let me get this straight, I don't mind how he's spending his money. My entire issue is that he doesn't need to bring in world peace as a reasoning to go to the moon. He's helping advance technology which is a noble cause.
Elon Musk and his companies are master in unveiling and announcing visions but not in delivering. I wonder if there is a special word for that in marketing... let's see if they will make it till 2023... wish them luck though.
SpaceX is a cutting edge pioneer of the modern space race. Their Falcon 9 rocket represented more than 50% of all US rocket launches in 2017.
When they announced their vertical landing program, critics across the industry laughed at them. Only a couple years later, their landings are so routine they don't even warrant press anymore.
Vertical landing is a parlor trick that isn't that hard and has been done before (McDonnell Douglas DC-X). It is a huge waste of fuel. You loose half of the payload capacity in order to land these things. In the long run it is not economically sustainable.
Vertical landing a post-orbit rocket onto a floating barge is not a parlor trick. The DC-X never did that. And vertical landing for real commercial orbital flights—then reusing those rockets for more real commercial orbital flights—is orders of magnitude more impressive again.
Fuel cost is less than half a percent of launch cost. Wasting fuel isn't really a problem.
If you want to land you need a bigger rocket for the same payload. But with how expensive rockets are, building them bigger and reusing them seems cheaper than letting them burn up. (And after a splashdown in saltwater refurbishment is way too expensive, so parachutes don't work well for reusability)
That actually adds more mass than the extra fuel required for propulsive landing. And significant refurbishment of engines is needed after they've contacted salt water.
We were using parachutes for the Space Shuttle SRBs, but there are certain important distinctions - the SRBs were, to a first approximation, "big dumb pipes", and had much less of a problem with saltwater damage due to water landing needed to cushion the impact. There were 3 parachutes, for a total of 3x 990kg [1] for the SRB's empty mass of 91'000kg. While Falcon Heavy's first stage is lighter (25'600 kg empty, each [2]), you would need disproportionately larger parachute size to achieve soft landing on the ground as opposed to SRB's water landing, to avoid salt water damage. And to possibly handle passenger flights.
Off of the top of my head, with parachute landing you add mass because both:
- the large parachutes are quite heavy themselves as above (add some overhead for covers and support installation; I can't find any numbers)
- needs increased structural integrity to handle the tug during deployment and the much faster touch-down on landing; with propulsive landing you can essentially touchdown at 0/0/0 vertical/horizontal/angular velocities, as soon as you nail down the math of flight characteristics and engine control
- possibly some sort of reaction control, to achieve proper deployment attitude
- probably a smaller drogue chute(s) to handle supersonic flight, with all the complexity it adds
Moreover, using chutes:
- completely prevents RTL flights
- complicates abort modes; you'd need to dump fuel and oxidizer quick (without mixing and igniting, good luck) to be able to rely on the chutes alone.
However I guess the overriding concern for Musk was quick turn-around. With a parachute landing you have less control over the touchdown point [3]; the logistics of recovery, refurbishment and relaunch become much more involved, possibly spanning an ocean [4]. And with longer turn-around you need more flight hardware, and more ground support, to handle given amount of orbital or surface-to-surface traffic. Call it reducing the capex by going for somewhat costlier option that ensures much higher flight hardware utilization.
Lastly, using parachutes would create an image of low reliability; it's not something we would consider as to be routinely performed by commercial passenger flights. You don't want to ship passengers to "somewhere near your destination"; you want to deliver them to the airport, right next to the jet bridge (call it rocket bridge?) and promptly usher them to the passenger terminal.
Yes, yes, the routine BFR passenger travel is coming.
[4] you could bulk up the 1st stage enough to let it coast suborbitally all the way around globe to RTL, but that's another matter - and again uses up valuable fuel, and you run up against the rocket equation pretty quickly.
If you knew history, you'd know this has been tried before. The shuttle boosters did this; they barely saved any money after refurbishing.
SpaceX tried it too, but had significant problems even re-entering without the rocket ripping apart, not even getting to the problems of recovering and refurbishing salt-water damaged hardware.
This kind of attitude might have made more sense before SpaceX had demonstrated it was possible. After showing how the technology can be further refined for full and rapid reuse, and landing on Mars, it just reads as ignorant or intentionally misleading.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that SpaceX is regularly delivering and returning cargo to and from the ISS and is the major launch provider for commercial sattelites. Also, the F9Heavy had its maiden flight this year.
Tesla is not only selling the Model S and X for many years, and has with the Model 3 in the meantime the best-selling electrical car in the US.
So how are they not delivering?
As rocket science is.. rocket science, I do expect delays on the schedule. Especially safety concerns can easily make a development schedule slip. Yet, the SpaceX schedule slips seem to be small compared to other space ventures. The production of the first BFS prototype is under way, we are going to see the first test hops next year.
(If you wanted something that was a bit more polished, you could say "Promise the stars, deliver the moon." or as a complete sentence, "They promised the stars, then delivered the moon.")
> In the computer industry, vaporware (alt. vapourware) is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Use of the word has broadened to include products such as automobiles
They have been developing the BFR for more than two years and won't launch one in the next two years /s
Maybe people have wrong expectations from working in software. SLS has a longer development time with a more tried-and-true design, and yet their deadlines slip as bad as those of SpaceX
This doesn’t feel like what the OP is really trying to convey. At least not with the strict definition provided at the link. My interpretation of OP is something akin to “selling the sizzle”, I.e. being able to get any project bought into, unveiled, etc. with little/nothing, but it’s not quite at the level of vapor ware. Just my take.
