
Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight - nkoren
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/spacex-the-apple-of-spacefligh.html
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Gravityloss
It is very good to finally see the newspace ethos being distributed in the
media. The loose newspace community has been saying these things for decades.

To summarize, it goes something like that:

The aim is spacefaring.

1\. We need reusable rockets 2\. We should lower cost for space 3\.
Reliability follows automatically from above

4\. We must iterate reasonable size projects to progress 5\. We must tolerate
failures 6\. We must build many parallel and consecutive prototypes 7\.
Competition is good

Until now it's either been hobbyists or then NASA building something with
billions of dollars and taking decades.

It is unlikely that a reliable, cheap and well working operational reusable
rocket system will be built right on the first try, even with billions spent.
Rather, you have to try different things at a reasonable scale, and then go
back to design things differently. You can't know or analyze everything
beforehand, what works and what doesn't. You must also be able to take risks
in design. That has the potential of radical cost reductions.

All this is possible if you keep the projects small enough so that the
failures don't destroy everything. With small enough steps, you enable
progress.

I don't know if I write understandably. This is a perfectly sound concept but
I find it very hard to make people understand that spacefaring progress is not
reached by giving NASA more money and building the next big moon rocket. In
fact, that would stagnate it.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I don't think commercial spaceflight will easily "tolerate" manned failures.
Maybe with lots of competitors in lots of different countries.

But I did not realise the reusability cost structure quite so well as Elon's
explanation - 200k on fuel, 60m on a one shot rocket.

Before that I truly thought we had no hope before a space elevator.

Call me a reluctant convert.

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droithomme
I always enjoy reading what Musk has to say.

Insufferable nitwit interviewers at New Scientist, not so much.

I am really sick of interviewers using language as a weapon and having hostile
confrontational interviews with scientists and entrepreneurs, when the same
interviewers and periodicals don't have the balls to even ask questions of the
various criminals in society who are actually worthy of such contempt in an
interview.

In particular, the interview starts with the phrase "You claim to be...". This
phrasing establishes that the subject is suspected of lying. A respectful
neutral question is "You have said that..." Such language use is not
unintentional. It is designed to impeach the credibility of the subject in the
reader's view by painting him as someone who is dishonest and can not be
trusted.

~~~
jlgreco
That question in particular was definitely shit. I absolutely love how Musk
handled it though: pointed accusatory question? Spam them with a big
vocabulary and technical stuff!

Textbook response, if you know that you can put the other person out of their
depth.

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mbenjaminsmith
"Our engine has the highest thrust to weight ratio of any engine in the world,
our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the world - and our
electronics are the lightest and have have the most computing power over that
of any other rocket."

"The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the
solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's pretty cool.
These motors can even fire supersonically which is important for Mars: in the
higher altitudes of Mars the atmosphere is so thin that parachutes are
completely pointless. So retro thrusters have to be able to fire when you are
supersonic so they have to be very high thrust."

I've always understood SpaceX's main goal is lowered cost, followed closely by
safety. It's pretty awesome that they're also cutting edge in terms of
performance.

~~~
Smerity
I was born on the edges of the 80s and 90s. I missed the entirety of the space
race. I never even knew the enthusiasm towards space flight. Suddenly SpaceX
appears and in only 10 years looks in place to eclipse NASA. They're poised to
achieve far greater things than merely following NASA's footsteps. I knew they
were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far
in advance.

I'm genuinely excited by space flight now. I have the new space race (fought
between SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace and all these other
companies) to thank for it :)

~~~
saraid216
I trust you've heard of Planetary Resources and their asteroid mining plans?
(Just surprised they didn't make your list.)

~~~
pyre
I imagine that Planetary Resources may just be using someone else's launch
tech, though the asteroid mining tech might be developed in-house (vs. out-
sourced).

~~~
saraid216
I actually expect that they'll partner with SpaceX and other launchers: one of
the key things they're planning to do is to build fueling stations, which is
not something I've heard that SpaceX is planning on yet.

Build the robots, ask SpaceX to put them in space, construct a station, permit
SpaceX to use it to push further to Mars. It makes a lot of sense to me.

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jamesflorentino
The way mr. Musk voices his mind reminds me heavily of Steve jobs. Both
wanting to change the world for the better. The only difference is that Elon
is an engineer as well as an entrepreneur which makes him hard to dislike.

On a side note, I'm quite glad that this is getting a lot of press. Hopefully
this buzz will create a demand for jobs related to space technology. I'm 27
but I wouldn't mind working for something related to that field once there is
of high demand.

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yaix
"""The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the
solar system ..."""

Must. Not. Become. a Fanboi.

~~~
tybris
Yes you must. Everyone should want to be like Elon Musk.

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iwwr
Musk says Merlin-1C has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any (liquid
fuel) rocket today. Well:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine)>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33>

Merlin 1C is 96:1, while NK-33 is 133:1

Obviously Musk knows what he's talking about, so where's the discrepancy?

~~~
tjmc
There's a documentary about the NK-33 called "The engine that came in from the
cold". Pretty amazing story - the Russians had these engines hidden in a
warehouse for over 20 years before the Americans found out about them and they
were better than anything that had been developed in the meantime.

It's on Google video here:
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5787437371570928>

~~~
bane
Good find.

"In 2010 stockpiled NK-33 engines were successfully tested for use by the
Orbital Sciences Antares light-to-medium-lift launcher."

If I'm not mistaken, isn't the Antares lifter the other lifter by Orbital
that's currently in parallel production to SpaceX's (but not almost never
talked about in the media)?

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dsrguru
After Elon Musk explained that it would be too dangerous to outsource the
production to China because "rocket technology is [...] considered an advanced
weapons technology," I'm surprised the interviewer didn't ask about potential
dangers in the privatization of advanced weapons.

~~~
johntb86
I doubt that Mr. Musk considers it to be advanced weapons technology
(particularly given that China already has ICBMs), but the US government sure
does: <http://www.fas.org/news/ukraine/p5s1.htm> .

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Cost vs impact of ballistic missiles shapes current military strategy. A good
example is how China's demonstration of a high maneuverability re-entry
vehicle has shifted the navy back into building more destroyers to raise the
odds of interception.

From this perspective, technology that reduces the cost to lob a warhead
reliably _is_ still advanced weapons technology.

But I also don't think fear should hold back progress.

