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Comment by 1457389 | Hacker News Reader

I am so glad /r/spacex had the chance to host the AMA. Even this thread shows a pretty depressing lack of understanding (so far) of what Elon has claimed and what SpaceX has actually demonstrated. A bunch of tilting at windmills, virtue signalling and strawman construction efforts while the people who have a clue have a real discussion elsewhere.

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As anonymous internet message boards go, /r/spacex is really impressive. They have a lot of highly informed space enthusiasts, both amateur and professional.

Here's one time Reddit was actually able to help SpaceX (!) by reconstructing a corrupt video stream:

https://reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/25xsyt/progress_report_...

I personally don't think that I have a lack of understanding of what Musk has claimed or SpaceX has demonstrated, and I'm incredibly skeptical of their ability to safely deliver on their promises within his proposed timeline.

I'd quite like to be proven wrong, spaceflight is an area very near and dear to my heart, but from my point of view Musk's reach appears to vastly exceed his grasp.

EDIT: I did enjoy the AMA though, as it provided some interesting insight into their plans for all of this.

Totally fair to be skeptical; not very impressive though unless you have detailed cause. Not quite as fair, or impressive to make comments like these with no effort or backing:

>Glass domes and underground Martian tunnels make for some very interesting science fiction, but I'm concerned about the engineering challenges that he seems to be ignoring in favor of his grand statements of intent.

The AMA, and even that specific question was all about the engineering challenges...

>but the amount of press and attention that they get just by saying "we are going to mars" are crazy! Nothing practical to show, i would be more interested in a mission to build up a base at moon first. But hey! This is show business, what we losers can possible know!?

He literally showed images and video of fuel tank and rocket tech that represent novel advances. He has also spilled gallons of ink justifying why Mars is the place to go next.

EDIT: To be clear, I don't think I am quoting lambentonion here, just giving examples of the stuff that made me comment initially

> The AMA, and even that specific question was all about the engineering challenges...

Re: that specific question, I may just have a different view of what constitutes a question on engineering challenges.

That AMA is of exceptional caliber, however, and there are definitely some gems to be found (see [0] and [1], in particular).

The fuel tank and rocket tech represent novel advances in rocket tech that are as-yet untested, afaik. A scaled-down test stand prototype and a prototype of a composite tank are certainly worthy of praise, but they still require an enormous amount of work to turn into a functioning product.

I'd also like to qualify some of my statements here: I don't think _any_ of these challenges are insurmountable. However I think that it would be impossible for all of them to be addressed on the time scale that Musk proposes, for the amount of money he has stated, with the manpower that SpaceX possesses.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_mu...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_mu...

Which has been the case in all of Elons endeavours. They usually take twice the time at double the cost, and probably cost some marriages along the way. But he does get publicity and funds it out of his own pocket as far as he can.

A valid point. It's the case with most human endeavors that involve trying something new, I don't think it is unique to Elon's companies.

thelambentonion, I can't help but notice your numerous posts expressing skepticism regarding SpaceX in this thread. I see a post in your comment history where you included a disclaimer, saying that you worked for a competitor to SpaceX.

Does the fact that you aren't including any disclaimers in your posts now mean you no longer work for a competitor to SpaceX?

Ah yes; I sold out not-too-long-ago to go work in commercial software :)

I suppose it might be worth it to keep including the disclaimer, as it'a possible I may be biased in some way that I'm not consciously aware of. Although it bears mentioning that if my former employer made half of SpaceX's promises, I'd be twice as skeptical! So a point in their favor.

I hope I'm not coming off as too much of an asshole in these threads; I really do want to see commercial space flight grow and succeed going forward. It's just that my experience and the conversations I've had with current and former SpaceX employees gives me an unhealthy dose of skepticism regarding a lot of their claims.

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