
SpaceX's rise can be traced to a critical launch from a Pacific isle - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/inside-the-eight-desperate-weeks-that-saved-spacex-from-ruin/
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jaggederest
I have to say, it's surprising to me that none of the megacompanies is taking
on true moon shots with their billions in spare cash sitting around.

Google's "Moonshot" department is mostly ironic, at this point. Literal
moonshots have been demonstrated by SpaceX to cost somewhere in the 2-20
billion dollar range with current technology.

Makes me wonder why they're not funding more large scale research - throw a
few billion at carbon sequestration, maybe?

~~~
joering2
Megacorps are usually publicly traded. They have to be careful how they spend
their stacked up billions. If Monsato starts building Moon elevator, soon
enough you will have high caliber lawyers fishing for Monsato stockholders to
sue the corp based on suspicious that they waste their money by going away
from their main objectives.

~~~
jacobsheehy
This is what gets me though and it's so confusing. If I were a stockholder of
a big megacorp and they _weren 't_ spending their money on looking climate
change solutions - especially the corps causing the most damage (due to future
lawsuit concerns I would expect these companies to be _most_ on board; if they
don't get on board then the future will consider them mass-murders and their
money-making opportunities will shrink further than I outline in this post) -
then I would be _leading the charge to sue for poor use of money_.

The companies are leaving trillions on the table right now by not spending
their money wisely. The future economy is going to be based around climate
change cleanup at the rate we're going right now and most companies are trying
to _lose customers_ by accelerating global climate change to make their
customers pay more money to relocate, fix environmental issues, instead of
buying their products.

Our society is going to be so financially strained in the future and it is a
_Direct_ result of the megacorps not spending their money in _sustainable,
responsible_ ways.

They should all be facing constant lawsuits from their stockholders for not
doing better to protect the environment. Since their high-payed lawyers are
presumably the ones that lobbied congress in the first place to make sure
environmental care was not going to be part of taxes, and in fact that they
should pay nearly no taxes at all, suggests to me that they think that the
public good is best taken care of by corporations. It seems the only logical
conclusion of this line of thinking: if the corps don't want to pay big taxes
because they think it is a waste of money, then they have to be in charge of
clean air for us, bu they don't actually care about that and so we're all
going to suffer and pay less for their products because we have to pay more to
fix the air.

I just don't get it.

Edit: For example, how many people in North Carolina will be buying new
consumer electronics this Christmas? Will it be fewer than normal, because
they have to spend a lot of their own money cleaning up from a storm that was
exasperating via climate change _and_ had to deal with a government that made
_planning for climate change illegal_? I think so. I think fewer people there
will buy iPhones this winter and fewer people there will buy TVs are even new
fancy cars too. But really why are these corporations losing these sales
already? It's because an area hit by a climate-change-fueled storm was
unprepared by not taxing companies correctly and by the corporations
themselves trying not to be taxed; so we end up with the population themselves
trying to fix the errors of their government and this process takes expected
money out of the corporation's hands.

But the storms will come, and come, and come, and there will be fewer
opportunities to make money from people affected by climate change.

I. just. don't. get. it.

~~~
WalterBright
There is an economically efficient solution. Instead of taxing things we want,
like job creation, tax things we don't want, like pollution.

~~~
adwn
In which states exists a tax on "job creation"? Genuine question. I know of,
e.g., taxes on a company's profits (where wages are subtracted from profit
before it is taxed), and I know of income taxes, which is basically a tax on
personal profit. None of those would qualify as a tax on "job creation".

~~~
WalterBright
There are a number of taxes levied on jobs that the employer pays. Workers
comp, social security, some municipalities impose a head tax, etc.

Example of head tax:
[http://www.astoria.or.us/Assets/dept_1/pm/pdf/occupational%2...](http://www.astoria.or.us/Assets/dept_1/pm/pdf/occupational%20tax%20form%20revised%202014.pdf)

There was recently a big fight over a head tax Seattle tried to impose.

~~~
mrep
Seattle head tax link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_head_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_head_tax)

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CydeWeys
I'm so thankful that, thanks to SpaceX, I may finally get a taste of what
living through the first Moon landing would've been like.

~~~
pm90
Its certainly pretty amazing. But the moon landing was likely to be something
just totally different: I can't even imagine just how many things could have
gone wrong with the technology then, how precise everything had to be in order
to take people to the moon and bring them back. The kind of expertise, testing
etc. required for such an absolutely critical task.... blows my mind. e.g.
they only had one shot at it; they had to get it right the first time; they
only had the primitive computing and communication technologies of their era
etc.

Having stayed up nights to fix some critical production outages, I've felt the
stress of having a company's fate hang in your hands. Cant even imagine what
it would've been like to be in the Control center for the moon landing; having
the entire world watching ...

~~~
vvanders
They dug up some of the speechwriter's letters a while back for if things went
wrong, some pretty sobering stuff.

[https://www.space.com/7011-president-nixon-prepared-
apollo-d...](https://www.space.com/7011-president-nixon-prepared-apollo-
disaster.html)

~~~
jpatokal
Those were written by William Safire, who's to speech writing what Mozart was
to composing music. Previous HN discussion of what's been called the greatest
speech never given here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064103)

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aunty_helen
>The internal NASA attempts to derail the program were the most difficult to
overcome

As much as SpaceX owes to NASA, from talking to someone directly working on
SLS, it seems apparent that this is still the case and there is a dismissive
mindset towards SpaceX and their potential.

A moon orbiting space station in 2028 still seems to some, the obvious next
step

~~~
Klathmon
I can see their point though.

If you ignore cost, SpaceX still has a lot to prove. They are doing amazing
things and I personally wouldn't bet against them, but the people they are
fighting against have a lot higher success rate at this point, and a LOT more
experience.

SpaceX is changing the game, and reducing the cost of getting to space might
be what causes the next great age in humanity, but at the same time I have to
say that I'm relieved that the James Webb telescope is going up on Ariane 5.

And if you worked at NASA and really want the absolute best, I can see why
you'd want to avoid the "cheap" option, even if you agree that they might one
day be better.

~~~
aplummer
I think you said it yourself in the middle, it will never be worth sending me
to space on an Ariane X, but maybe I can afford a spot on the falcon 25.
That’s what I find so exciting about the cheap version.

~~~
Klathmon
I agree, but at the same time, I don't know if I'd want to go up on a Falcon
9...

~~~
greglindahl
NASA is about to human-rate Falcon 9/Dragon 2.

Perhaps you'd rather have flown on the Shuttle?

~~~
marvin
It certainly had a bigger, well-paid crowd standing behind it an telling
everyone that it was safe.

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AlphaWeaver
If you liked this, there's a lot more about this story in Elon Musk's
biography. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

~~~
icefo
It's a tangent but I hope he will be able to slow down a little. If he burns
out I wonder what will spaceX and his other companies become

~~~
adventured
SpaceX would probably be fine with Gwynne Shotwell running it, absent Musk, at
this point. Perhaps they'd lose some of their media/PR attention and the
daring to take chances that Musk is known for. I'd expect SpaceX would become
a bit more conservative in its ambitions, and would probably continue to
operate well and be very successful as a business.

It's the Apple model without Steve Jobs. Cook is a tremendous operator, he's
just not a visionary or new product guy. Apple won't have to worry until the
next big inflection point. SpaceX could probably ride - with modest
incremental improvement - on its technology lead for the next 10-15 years.

In the case of Tesla, the best thing they could do is hire a talented
operations heavy CEO and have Musk be the product lead. He has never shown
himself to be a particularly talented CEO, it'd be better if he focused on
what he's the best at.

~~~
Robotbeat
I'm hugely impressed by Gwynne Shotwell, and I agree SpaceX is in good hands
with her at the wheel.

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jacquesm
What a great story. Thank you Tomte for posting this.

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avelis
While most details of the crucial launch were mostly hidden, Elon has shares
numerous times that fate was kind to them on that day. I wish SpaceX godspeed
into the future. Spacex has put sci-fi authors on notice.

