
Statement from Elon Musk - rglovejoy
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20100415
======
CWuestefeld
I really am glad that SpaceX exists, and I _want_ them to be successful. To
me, it represents a grand intersection of my technical interests, the dream of
space travel that was instilled in me since I was a child, and my moral belief
that government has no place in this (nor in many other things).

SpaceX is making progress toward _real_ commercial access to orbit. But is
there any work being done by business farther out than that?

~~~
JulianMorrison
I think government space flight is a dead end, but for economic reasons
foremost.

NASA can only take a politically-bounded slice of a fixed size tax pie. It
spends the money it was allocated and comes back with empty hands. Unless the
USA is in a military-driven space race with a superpower rival, it's going to
get the crumbs and it has no way of getting more than that. Success does not
breed success, only photo-ops. If the photo-ops get stale, success can breed
apathy and abandonment.

A commercial space company comes back from each successful flight _with more
money than it set out_. It causes the economy to grow, actually increasing the
size of the pie, and the slice it gets is investment-bounded. Success will
bring more investment. There is no political upper limit on how high it can
scale.

An interplanetary culture is going to require utterly enormous amounts of
wealth by modern standards - only commerce has the potential to create that
much wealth.

~~~
khafra
I just hope we can get started with the asteroid mining for rare earth metals
before we run out of the rare earth metals to build computers that will get us
there.

~~~
JulianMorrison
I wonder how much delta-V it would take to push a metallic asteroid onto the
Interplanetary Transport Network? The mountain could come to Mohammed.

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Networ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network))

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physcab
I have a slightly more pessimistic outlook on SpaceX, but I'll admit that I'm
slightly biased.

My dad has worked on the Delta, Atlas, and Titan rockets close to 30 years.
These rockets are expensive (an order of magnitude more than SpaceX), but they
can do one thing that SpaceX can't: guarantee success. If you had to put up
sensitive cargo (commercial or military) that costs on the order of $100
million (and sometimes much much more), would you entrust a fledgling company
with its sparse mission success record or the more established company with
proven success? And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one
that had a severe failure within the past few years, or one that has been
operating as engineered for the past 20-30 years?

Rocket launching doesn't go by the typical startup mantra. Mistakes are very
real, very expensive, and have much more human impact.

SpaceX seems more to me like fast food: their efficiency is awe-inspiring, but
I worry at what significant cost?

~~~
anamax
There are more than 10x as many people who can pay $1M for a launch than there
are who can pay $10M.

We've seen this before many times before.

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-
complex...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-
business-models/) Auspex vs Network Appliance, (early) Ford vs all the luxury
car makers, and so on.

> And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe
> failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as
> engineered for the past 20-30 years?

Except that that's not the choice that I have. My choice is between going up
on a rocket with a 5% chance of failure or not going at all.

Yes, there are folks who won't take that 5% chance, but there are a lot that
will.

~~~
physcab
Well, I think the failure rate is somewhere around 60% not 5% (I think out of
the 5 Falcon 1 launches, only 2 succeeded). But over time, that figure will go
down dramatically as they perfect their model (hopefully). Anyways, if you
really wanted to catch a flight to space there are other options. It's
reported that you can buy a seat on the Russian Soyuz which is very reliable.
If you want to go for lower earth orbit, then those distances are easier and
cheaper to reach, and I believe there are other commercial craft right now.

One thing that is often overlooked is that I think current aerospace companies
have regulated profit margins if they do business with the government. So they
don't have the incentive to make cheaper space craft even if they thought it
would be a good idea. I'm not sure if SpaceX are subject to those same laws
and regulations. But it would be a tragedy if they were able to operate with
lower standards.

~~~
natep
On SpaceX's failure rate, I think I should point out that it was the first 3
that failed, and have learned from each failure. There are too few launches to
do statistics on, but it doesn't seem to me that we can infer from past events
that the 6th launch has a 60% failure rate.

Cost plus doesn't seem to be helping the situation, but the fact that so much
of American space technology is ITAR-controlled seems to be far more
detrimental. For those that don't know, ITAR[1] effectively prevents critical
spacecraft components from being exported to non-US persons, and even the
technical details must be kept secret. All this means is that other countries
design and build their own components (including software) from scratch, and
American companies can't even compete with them in non-US markets.

ITAR is a major hassle, but the consequences are too severe for any company or
individual to try to take matters into their own hands (i.e. release ITAR
stuff anyways). There needs to be legislation to fix this.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITAR>

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jamesshamenski
The operational efficiency and profitability of SpaceX is extraordinary.
Listen to Elon and you'll see where the trends are heading.

~~~
FreeRadical
Do you have any more detail on the operational efficiency or profitability of
Spacex? I read your comment before the article; which didn't provide much
detail on this.

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tjmc
Despite Musk's obvious vested interest, he's spot on here. The achievements of
Musk at SpaceX, John Carmack at Armadillo and Burt Rutan at Scaled are
impressive enough on their own merits. Consider that all 3 companies combined
are spending a tiny fraction of what was being thrown at Orion and there's no
contest.

The big aerospace companies seem to have lost their way - look at the Joint
Strike Fighter or 787 debacles for example. Massive delays and cost overruns
made sense under NASA's "cost plus" funding model. They need to get back to
the "internal startup" philosophy exemplified by Skunkworks. Competitive
commercial funding is the best way to get there.

------
ehsanul
I was slightly hopeful as I looked into their careers section. There are 99
open jobs apparently, which is great! And I'm just graduating with a BS in
mechanical engineering, and they need interns doing tedious tasks as much as
any other company right?

But of course, due to government regulations, they only hire US citizens and
permanent residents. Unfortunately, that rules me out of even the slightest
chance. Oh well..

------
msmith
This is from today (Apr 15). The linked article doesn't have a date but the
list of press releases does.

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sielskr
The U.S. space program is a source of tremendous prestige to the U.S.
government. People whose plans depend on the U.S. government's voluntarily
letting private companies take over leadership of parts of the space
enterprise should be aware of the strength of the government's need for
prestige. (Prestige helps maintain moral legitimacy, which is necessary in the
long term for the continued ability of exercise power.)

~~~
berntb
Wow, 50 _more_ billions was needed to develop Ares?!

If USA is in dire need of prestige that doesn't come from its industry, why
not put more money(+) into research to eradicate diseases of the world's poor,
like malaria? Oh wait, an industrialist is already doing that...

Why not e.g. give a few billions to DARPA for energy and health research? The
USA should get both prestige and real jobs from that.

(+) Say, a tenth of the money earned from the cost difference between Ares and
the private alternatives being built now?

------
dpifke
While I don't disagree with canceling the current tactical plan ("let's build
Ares/Orion"), I wish he hadn't canceled the current vision ("let's return to
the Moon/go to Mars"). Maybe the two were inextricably linked, but seems like
whatever efficiency we gain through privatization could just as easily be
squandered by a NASA stumbling around without a purpose or motivation.

The counterpoint to this seems to be this:

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand-
challenges-2...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand-
challenges-21st-century-your-ideas-welcome)

...which is a call for the next "Moon landing" scale project for the US to
back. So at least at some level they're aware that these sorts of visions are
needed, and (possibly quite correctly) the Moon return and Mars landing wasn't
it.

------
pmichaud
Summary: Orion wasn't going to work, so it's good Obama canceled it. He's
looking forward to private industry solving all the problems while NASA works
on interplanetary stuff. He thinks the president's upcoming speech about space
is going to be important, so to stay tuned for it.

~~~
physcab
It's interesting that after so many years they are actually going back to the
old capsule design. I guess people are starting to realize that the Space
Shuttle program may not have been actually worth it when you consider Saturn
V's near 100% mission success and the fact that the Space Shuttle had two
catastrophic failures.

~~~
AngryParsley
The Space Shuttle program has had 130 launches. The crew died twice. That's a
failure rate of around 1.5%. The Apollo program had 11 launches and no loss of
life... as long as you don't count the three astronauts who died on the ground
in the Apollo 1 fire.

Assuming the same failure rate of 1.5%: (1 - 0.015)^11 = 0.84. That means that
if the Apollo program was just as (un)safe as the Space Shuttle program, we
would have an 83% chance of seeing no loss of life in the Apollo missions.

The Apollo program had the advantage of using big dumb boosters with no
reusable parts, but the Space Shuttle program got to use newer materials and
better engineering techniques. I'd estimate both were about equally unsafe. A
1% chance of death is way too high for any sort of civilian transportation. A
simpler design (capsule + big dumb booster) with modern engineering and
materials would be much safer than both.

~~~
physcab
You make some interesting points. I'm not sure what the failure rate would
have been if the Apollo program were allowed to continue with the same design
(albeit better materials and engineering), but its probably incorrect to
assume it would be the same for the two craft because they are fairly
different designs and have different physics (i.e Shuttle rocking back and
forth before launch is due to its "piggybacking").

However the two most significant design changes that would have reflected far
different failure rates are: 1) Change in fuel type and 2) Presence of an
abort sequence.

1) In the Apollo design, the rocket was liquid propelled, thus it could have
been shut off (theoretically) at any point in the launch sequence. The Space
Shuttle by contrast has Solid Rocket Boosters, which once lit, do not turn
off.

2) The Apollo rocket had an escape rocket mounted to the capsule that could
have been fired and brought the crew to safety in the event that 1) did not
occur. The Space Shuttle by contrast cannot enter into an abort sequence until
those SRB's are done firing.

------
abstractbill
Obama's speech sounds very interesting - I don't suppose it's being streamed
anywhere?

EDIT: Found it - <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36569092#36569092>

~~~
barmstrong
Did anything important come out of the talk - can anyone summarize who watched
it?

~~~
natep
I watched it, and you should, too. It was a great speech.

The best summary I can come up with: * Pres. Obama is really passionate about
the space program (or at least talks like he is) * His earliest memory is
waving a flag as astronauts visited Hawaii * He has a picture of Jupiter taken
by the Hubble hanging in his private office * He's increasing NASA's budget *
He's cutting Constellation and re-purposing Orion (2 failing programs, IMO) *
He wants to see NASA to put humans farther into deep space * He wants to
extend the life of the ISS by >5 years * He wants to send humans to an
asteroid * He wants to send a human into a Mars orbit and back by 2030 * Next
up, landing on Mars. * He's going to have a plan to give current (aka soon-to-
be-former) shuttle engineers jobs by August 15. * He (or his speech writers)
really like random space trivia

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stretchwithme
I don't agree with Obama very much, but this was a good decision. Bush clearly
created this program in a quest to have his Kennedy-to-the-moon-the-cost-be-
damned moment and it needed to be killed.

