
The Rocket Man Who Wants To Beat the Billionaires - cwal37
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a17574/masten-space-systems/
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6stringmerc
Love this, very inspirational and pragmatic. I like how down to Earth Masten
comes across in the article (pun intended). Reminds me of the lesson learned
in the restaurant business - over-estimate the wait time, deliver early, and
let people enjoy!

I think it's something about the inherent risks and rewards of flight that are
a great challenge and temptation for advancement - space being a dream for so
many from childhood. Maybe it makes us feel a little more important in such a
grand universe.

The Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics. They beat out the entire world
into manned, powered flight. Creativity, some resources, and tenacity can do
wonderful things.

~~~
InclinedPlane
There's an important insight in there that I think a lot of people miss. It
reminds me of the old, probably apocryphal, story about the maintenance guy
who comes out to visit some machine that's malfunctioning, hears about what's
wrong, then goes and hits it with a hammer, causing it to start working again.
The business owner complains about the bill, since anyone can hit something
with a hammer, so the technician creates an itemized receipt, wherein "knowing
the right spot to hit" is the majority of the cost.

So much of anything is knowing the right thing to build and the right way to
build it. Everything else tends to be much easier problems to solve. The same
thing is true in rocketry. And that's what's so exciting about these startups,
they're not just trying to fill the shoes of past generations, they're
innovating, they're doing research. They're developing the knowledge base and
experience base that will serve as the foundation of a tremendous amount of
future work. Once you've developed the fundamental technology components and
figured out an optimum vehicle design then you just have scaling up and
iterating (as SpaceX has done, for example), which is a lot more
straightforward.

~~~
jwcooper
The crafty engineer was Charles Steinmetz, and the business owner balking at
the invoice was Henry Ford [1]. EDIT: Maybe not so true after all [2].

I had never heard of Maston Space Systems. It's amazing they were able to
compete with such massive names in Boeing, and Lockheed.

[1] [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-
steinm...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-
the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/?no-ist)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10389203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10389203)

~~~
femto
There are real life examples though, my father being one. On one job he did,
he flew from Australia to Malaysia, walked into the factory, turned a single
valve on to get a major machine working, then walked out job done.

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DarkTree
Great. First Musk, now Masten. I'm incredibly hopeful that entrepreneurs will
keep challenging the massive, monolithic companies/contractors. Their ability
to compete with these companies show that increased size often leads to a lot
of waste both within the company and in the bureaucratic decision structure.
Large isn't inherently bad, until the only competitors are also large. It then
becomes the bigger the better. Now that smaller guys are able to successfully
enter the field, it make them reevaluate their structure. In the end, not
size, but efficiency is key. Funding still remains the medium to get there.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Musk, Masten, Blue Origin, Firefly, XCOR. There's really quite a lot of
innovative rocket companies out there now. A lot of them are working on
similar or complementary problems, and innovating while they do it. I'm
excited to see not only what they produce but what fruits are born from
follow-on innovators.

~~~
kelvin0
Yeah, remember when Armadillo used to be a cool kid on the block?

~~~
6stringmerc
Not sure if you caught the interview but John Carmack recently said he'd still
love to re-visit it, but he held firm to his "10 years, that's it" plan. He
said it was "binary" \- didn't make it, close it down. If you did catch that,
then sorry for being redunant!

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hoorayimhelping
I've heard of other small rocket companies using alcohol and lox as the
fuel/oxidizer. Does anyone know if that is a stand-in for "real" fuels (e.g.
RP-1 or H2) that they'll switch to after getting contracts or if they plan on
using an alcohol-fueled engine as part of their strategy?

~~~
avmich
I've heard of planning to use alcohol - ethyl alcohol - as fuel for Kliper
spacecraft in RKK Energiya. Reminding that Soyuz capsule still uses hydrogen
peroxide as its RCS fuel.

So alcohol isn't that much of "non-real" fuel.

