
Is Elon Musk trying to do too much too fast? - endswapper
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-tesla-musk-20160902-snap-story.html
======
manicdee
“This raises serious questions about the reliability of the SpaceX launch
vehicle,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute,
which receives money from Boeing Co., a SpaceX competitor. “They are taking
this technology to the limits.”

Key quote on which the rest of the article appears to be constructed.

SpaceX is pushing the technology to the limits on purpose. This is not because
they are doing "too much" but because they are doing everything they can to
completely change the way rocketry is done.

When a Formula 1 car catches fire in the pits, do we call a halt to
pressurised fuelling, or find ways to improve the safety of fuelling?

When a NASCAR crashes and burns, do we call a halt to car racing, or do we
find ways to improve the safety and reliability of racing cars?

The simple answer to the "too much too fast" question is "no". Too much, too
fast would be where SpaceX is unable to maintain their progress and makes
mistakes they can not learn from.

Right now the focus of SpaceX is getting to the point where they can launch,
land, relaunch. They will find more ways that quickly fuelling a rocket with
supercooled fuel doesn't work.

Their competitors might simply say, "supercooled propellants are too hard,"
and stick to existing performance figures and trusted designs. SpaceX is
choosing to do the hard thing because doing the hard thing is how you advance
the state of the art.

"We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and
do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies
and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one
we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others,
too." — President John F Kennedy, Rice University address.

Did NASA try doing too much, too fast? They went from the "four inch flight"
of Mercury-Redstone 1 in 1960 to the disaster of Apollo 1 (crew killed in a
cabin fire due to high oxygen atmosphere) in February 1967 to success with
Apollo 11 in July 1969, with many lessons being learned in the meantime.

~~~
thelambentonion
I disagree strongly. SpaceX has always felt, especially to those in the
industry, to have a blatant disregard for even basic elements of safety in
their design and operation.

They _did_ supercool their propellants, and pushing that envelope was indeed
worthwhile to see what they could gain from it. Unfortunately they _also_
decided to stage the payload to shave a day off of integration time.

SpaceX is a very interesting company, and I wish them the best because there
are a lot of smart people working there on difficult problems. But I
personally can't stand seeing them take unnecessary risks and treating it as a
necessary cost of business. It terrifies me that they want to strap three of
these Falcon 9 cores together, or that they want to put people on top of this
thing.

~~~
kiba
_I disagree strongly. SpaceX has always felt, especially to those in the
industry, to have a blatant disregard for even basic elements of safety in
their design and operation._

Do you realize that this company does more testing and more rigorous tests
than other launch service provider?

~~~
thelambentonion
Source? I've heard that they have more sensors and telemetry on individual
tests, but I hadn't heard that they're more rigorous than other providers.

~~~
manicdee
One recent example is SpaceX doing the pad abort test, and a planned in-flight
abort test for their Dragon 2 capsule, while Boeing is doing their testing on
paper.

~~~
thelambentonion
I don't think that's completely accurate. While Boeing is not going to do an
in-flight abort test, they will be doing a pad abort test in October 2017. A
technical demonstration of the abort system was one of the requirements of the
requirements of the Commercial Crew Transport program.

------
Animats
A Space-X booster failure isn't a disaster. Fortunately, Space-X fuels
remotely. The USSR had booster explosions during fueling in 1960 and in 1980,
each with tens of casualties. If Space-X can find out what's wrong and fix it,
it's not a huge setback. If the craft had been manned, the pad abort system
would have saved the crew; the payload module was unharmed for the first few
seconds, enough time for the capsule to launch. The Falcon launch failure rate
is about 4%, which is on a par with everybody else.[1]. But that's not
counting this as a launch failure.

Tesla's "autopilot" was too much, too fast. It's not very good and was
promoted as being more capable than it is. Tesla really needs to enforce
hands-on-wheel strictly.

The Tesla Model 3 at $35K with big production volume is a big risk. It will
probably come out late, at $50K+, and in lower initial volume. But it should
make it out the plant door at some point. That's the biggest risk item in all
this. Remember that when Musk announced the proposed Model 3 production
schedule, the two top people in production quit. They clearly knew the goal
wasn't realistic.

Tesla buying Solar City looks more like a bailout. The big Solar City risk is
that they're building their own solar panels. They could be undercut by
competition from China, as Applied Materials was. Solar City has the advantage
that their plant sells to themselves, so they can resist competition to some
extent. Solar City's big vulnerability is that they're heavily dependent on
Government subsidies. Those are gradually going away as solar becomes able to
stand on its own.

The big risks are financial, not technical. Hence the pressure at Tesla to cut
costs, and probably use creative accounting, to get a profitable quarter.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/ei3h1B7.png](http://i.imgur.com/ei3h1B7.png)

~~~
skafjvhs
Maybe they should include a pad abort module on cargo missioms, so they can
find out its performance next time a Falcon explodes during fueling.

~~~
Animats
Huge weight penalty. They'd never get to geosync orbit.

------
pjscott
If rocket failures were a Poisson process with a low rate, you'd expect to see
some clustering by random chance. And if they're being watched by the media,
you should expect to see people making much of it, whether or not there's a
systemic problem.

As with most news, I recommend waiting a decade and buying a history book.

~~~
dkbrk
Your assertion that there would be "some clustering by random chance" is
correct, however rocket failures are most definitely not described well by a
Poisson distribution. The simplest reasonable model would be to assume each
launch campaign has a fixed probability of failure, and that the probability
of any given failure event is independent of the others. In other words, a
binomial distribution. And this is a commonly applied model, I've seen a
number of people doing such calculations in the last few days.

However, these assumptions do not accurately reflect reality. When a failure
occurs launches are stopped, the problem is identified, and the problem is
fixed. A failure event should cause reliability to increase for subsequent
launches; failures are _not_ conditionally independent.

------
chickenbane
Yes, of course he is. Most people are not talented enough to run one company,
let alone have the time. The primary thing that concerns me is I understand
his rush.

As Tesla is rushing towards the Model 3, they remain largely without
competition from other electric cars. From Musk's point of view, it's
completely logical to press your lead. Very soon it will be extremely hard for
gasoline-powered vehicles to compete - the relentless engineering of
electronics has made its way to automobiles. Has any other vendor seriously
evaluated a charging solution aside from Supercharger?

I wish I lived in a world where Elon had better pick one damn company to run,
because the market to build electric cars was so overwhelmingly competitive.
Or where the utilities were so ahead in renewal energy creation and storage
that Tesla would be silly to also have to go through the insane trouble of
building a battery factory. Or acquire a solar company, lol.

Musk's achievements impress me especially in comparison to his peers. Who's
bothering to challenge the dealership lobby? Who's ready to start pushing
software updates over the air to their entire fleet? Hopefully Apple, Google,
Amazon, Uber, etc get into the game and also contribute to pushing things
forward. Because honestly the old guard hasn't made me as excited. I hope Elon
inspires millions to be as disruptive.

~~~
elmar
In the words of Peter Thiel "Elon Musk the man who knows no risk"

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxrxpW2ckQ&feature=youtu.be&t...](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxrxpW2ckQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2484)

~~~
kornish
A friend at Stanford had a lecture taught by one of Musk's old friends who's
now a partner at Greylock. The friend said they all used to fly to Vegas 10-15
years ago and that Elon used to just double down after doubling down at
blackjack – that it was very indicative of his perception of risk.

Apparently he and Peter Thiel also used to debate about who was going to get
to Mars first. In the lecturer's words: "Yeah, looks like Elon is probably
gonna win that one now."

~~~
elmar
that's a great story it just reaffirms the "Know no Risks" personality.

------
secfirstmd
Frankly I don't care...

I wake up some mornings and occasionally when I have those crappy
"entrepreneury/startyupy" days when everything is going to shit and I wonder
if it's worth all the effort - I think about what Elon Musk is doing and then
STFU and get out of bed and get on with it.

Having read the recent biography about the guy, the only thing I worry about
is that he is physically on a aircraft too much while flying between SpaceX
and Tesla (along with other places). He's too important to the future of the
human race to lose because of some crappy accident. Ditto his work schedule -
for the love of god, please someone make sure he doesn't die of a heart
attack/stress or something else!

~~~
leesalminen
I find myself doing the same from time to time! It really does help me push
through.

I've tried the same line of reasoning with my girlfriend as well; not much
success.

YMMV.

------
diafygi
So I work in cleantech, and here's my favorite climate change joke:

They say humans won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late.

To me, Musk is acting like your typical super-smart engineer under a fire
drill. Perhaps Musk thinks that we aren't adapting fast enough to the changes
in our environment, so he's basically putting every drop of effort he has into
trying to engineer solutions.

Engineers are a weird bunch. They love fixing problems more than they love
money. Also, they recognize the tools available and use them to their
advantage. Remember social engineering is still engineering. Perhaps Musk sees
capitalism and markets as a tool and is using it to his advantage (having rich
people on your side adds to your toolkit).

What would you do if we had to switch 87% of our energy sources from fossil
fuel[1] to something else in the next 30 years[2]? No really, what would you
actually try to engineer to pull it off? Now you're in Musk's mindset.
Luckily, that's double-digit trillion dollar opportunity if you can actually
pull it off[3], so you can use the markets as a tool (and everyone wins[4]).
Musk knows the next Googe will be an energy company[5].

Also, he wants to die on Mars. Everyone's got to have a hobby.

[1]:
[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951)

[2]:
[http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figu...](http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_2.3.png)

[3]: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-
consensus-97...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-
consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/31/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would-
save-tens-of-trillions-of-dollars)

[4]: [http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/S/5/6/3/What-If-Its-A-
Ho...](http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/S/5/6/3/What-If-Its-A-Hoax.jpg)

[5]: [http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-
internet/](http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/)

------
elmar
I loved this part.

Greg Autry, a space industry expert who teaches at USC’s Marshall School of
Business, said that Musk’s aggressive cuts to the cost of launching rockets
“even scares the Chinese.”

~~~
yborg
I doubt that the Chinese are actually that "scared". They have clearly been
taking the very long view with their exploration program.

------
themgt
Everyone can have their own opinion regarding how many rockets and African
internet satellites and Tesla drivers and astronauts are worth risking to push
technology as far as fast as Musk can. What's harder to argue, I think, is
that Musk has pushed right up near the line where one or two more lost SpaceX
rockets or dead Tesla drivers could send many of his plans into a tailspin.

There's almost a feel like Steve Jobs in 1985, sword of damocles hanging
overhead. History may prove Musk "right" as it did Jobs, but he nonetheless
similarly risks losing quite a lot, as do we all in a sense.

~~~
jonathankoren
The rocket is the rocket. These things happen. However, a static fire test is
pretty rare these days, and usually doesn't take place with the payload
loaded, but SpaceX wanted to shave a day off the schedule[0]. Bonus points,
for insurance not paying for the loss.[1] So they do run their rocket launches
in an odd way.

What's more troubling is the Tesla autopilot product release. That is
indefensible. Let's be honest here people, if it's outside the lab, it's a
release. Sure you can call it a "beta", you can throw up a "Hey don't use
this, it's beta," click through warning, but it's still a release. If you
didn't think that people were going to hear "autopilot" and think autopilot,
then you're too naive to be in the consumer industry.

No, it's not a level 4 autonomous vehicle, and yet that's how people are going
to treat it, because that's what you demo. That's what _you 're calling it_.
That's what "autopilot" means. Level 3 is the worst level, because it lulls
the driver into complacency, and then into a completely preventable accident.

[0] [http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-pad-explosion-highlights-
uniqu...](http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-pad-explosion-highlights-unique-
aspect-of-spacex-launch-campaigns/)

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/01/spacex_bl...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/01/spacex_blew_up_facebook_s_first_internet_satellite.html)

------
gaelow
Don't even bother reading it: whenever there is a question on the headline of
an article from a serious major news outlet, the answer is NO. Seriously it's
like that EVERY time. 100%. Literally. Early ages of click-bait when it wasn't
even clicking but buying read-bait. Sensationalism and controversy always sell
but they have to keep some kind of integrity to be taken seriously, right?
Anyway: Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 1. Those were actual disasters. That was
actually taking it too far. And the industry learned from those failures and
put in place the necessary failsafes to avoid them. Doesn't mean there aren't
more to come. Blowing up stuff to get into space is still blowing up stuff.
Nevermind driving thousands of cars in actual traffic millions of miles. But
what SpaceX is doing, testing on production non manned vehicles, doesn't even
compare to what both USA and Russia were doing during the space race. The only
problem is it upsets shareholders, and I'm pretty sure the amount of people
trying to short this stock is reaching critical mass, so they better be more
careful because the real shitstorm of defamation and FUD is yet to come...

------
SubiculumCode
a rocket explodes and suddenly everyone turns on the golden boy.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, because a rocket exploding is not important when you run a rocket
company...

I mean, couldn't they focus on all those rockets that did not explode?

~~~
enneff
Are you being sarcastic? Because one of the failure modes of a rocket is to
explode. It is unfortunate, but not unexpected. It's basically unavoidable for
any rocket manufacturer, and certainly not a cause to condemn SpaceX.

------
unusximmortalis
Isn't it obvious? Look at him, look at what kind of people he is looking to
hire. He is not looking at people that are mature, balanced and harmonious. He
is looking for people to burn with passion and work enormous efforts. Well
when you conduct your life like this you can't have too many outcomes but most
likely one of those worthy of drama awards :) For who is wise enough these
simple priciples are everywhre around us to observe and learn.

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samfisher83
I hope he doesn't up like the real Tesla who ended up broke. Tesla was trying
to do some really advanced things like wireless energy transmission.

~~~
dogma1138
Most of the popularized Tesla stuff is fantasy and pseudo science.

~~~
samfisher83
He invented a lot of stuff. He way ahead of his time. You have to put yourself
in the context of the 1900's.

~~~
Retric
Mostly because few people where messing with electricity at the time. He
showed up right after steam engines took off and you could cheaply generate a
lot of power.

------
jondubois
I think Elon Musk is extremely smart and talented but I also think he's been
extremely lucky so far (but his luck seems to be running out lately).

Since Paypal, he's been on a winning streak and this has just boosted his
confidence to stratospheric heights - As a result, he probably bit off more
than he could chew.

