Elon Musk on Why His Rockets Are Faster, Cheaper and Lighter | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk on Why His Rockets Are Faster, Cheaper and Lighter

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118 pointscwan22 comments

It's fascinating to watch his life play out in real-time in the limelight. His success and failures with SpaceX launches and Tesla production struggles along with other more unfortunate personal issues.

I know we all feel similar ups and downs with our own products and services.

I watched this Charlie Rose interview with him a few months ago and it turned me on to his ideas of wanting to focus his efforts in three distinct areas - internet technology, space exploration and green technology.

I recommend watching it if you're interested in his career.

Here's the link: http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/6716

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYD_-A_X5E

All chuckles aside, it's the imagination that SpaceX is bringing to the launch industry that is able to let them break free from the current status quo. He specifically mentions running the operation more like a Silicon Valley startup then the traditional fare. I hope we all get to ride a SpaceX into the final frontier in the next 50 years. Good luck and Godspeed.

Although he doesn't mention the Kelly Johnson Skunk Works at Lockheed, where the SR-71 and other famous aircraft were created, the SpaceX approach is at least as similar to that as it is to a classical Silicon Valley startup.

For those who doesn't think entrepreneurs are risk takers, Elon is a good case study--he appears to have invested every penny of his personal wealth in starting a space company and an automobile company, simultaneously.

For those that don't know about it, this book on skunk works is a wonderful read:

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d...

That book is by Johnson's protege and successor, this one is by Kelly himself:

http://www.amazon.com/Kelly-More-Than-Share-All/dp/087474491...

Both are amazing stories.

Not to minimise their accomplishments but, once again, the table has been set pretty well by decades of publicly funded research and development. It is actually possible to be vertically integrated again with all the shared know-how.

The largest breakthrough by spaceX is the realization that fuel not the largest cost of getting to space. They do several things which dramatically reduce cost at the cost of using more fuel but it's a net win.

This is exactly the strategy outlined in the real-engineering fiction book The Rocket Company. The vehicles in that book also use friction-stir welding, though they are all aluminum. In that book, some billionaires get together to fund a fully reusable TSTO rocket operable from the field.

Agreed. I just got back from the National Air & Space Museum where I saw a few rocket engines, and it occurs to me that somebody had to figure out how to build such an amazing piece of machinery once upon a time, and that somebody was NASA. SpaceX is doing an amazing job, but there's no way in hell they could go from a twinkle in Elon Musk's eye to orbit in 7 years without Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, etc. Even SpaceX's location (El Segundo) was specifically chosen because of its proximity to all the SoCal aerospace contractors.

Great example of government priming the pump.

>>somebody had to figure out how to build [rocket engines] and that somebody was NASA

Exactly what are you talking about that was totally new and not done/planned 1945 by von Braun et al?

(Or, for that matter, by Goddard.)

I've seen interviews where Elon specifically points this out. The explosion of innovation on the internet was largely made possible by the work of DARPA, and he compares this to the decades of experimentation and research that is enabling this nascent space revolution. (SpaceX, BlueOrigin, SpaceShipOne, etc.)

The real difference isn't the technology, but the mindset with you how you apply it. Big aerospace contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) do everything from a "one off" perspective - they are effectively the world's largest contracting firms. Their business model isn't making something repeatable and cheaper, it's about building custom things from the ground up over and over again. And they are REALLY expensive.

Elon is simply taking all that collective knowledge and converting it into a repeatable process that can be incrementally improved and drive down cost over time. Making the Honda Civic of Rockets, as opposed to the Lamborghini. :)

Seems like a big part of it is actually caring about cost - taking it into account during design, manufacturing, launch preparation, etc. Doesn't look like NASA did that until recent years, and even then only superficially.

SpaceX had their big contract with NASA structured as a fixed price contracts. Most other contracts are cost plus, where the contractor gets paid for their costs plus an additional percent for profit.

It shouldn't be surprising that traditional program costs have not come down, since the more you spend the more you make.

> SpaceX has launched just two rockets successfully in its history

Their three most recent launches were all successful.

I haven't followed Mr Musk's career at all and I kind of assume he's an insane ego-maniac. Having said that, this guy's my new hero.

He sounds like he's more Burt Rutan than Richard Branson and the fact that he's seen through an end-to-end design for launch vehicles is pretty mind blowing.

If you look through the photos on his site it kind of has the feel of a boutique bike factory - say Cannondale in the early days - but then you see pictures of them 'spin forming titanium' or something equally exotic. Pretty cool stuff.

Can't wait for Telsa's IPO is June 28th

For some reason, this title reminds me incredibly of an (approximate) quote of:

Hank Rearden on why his metal is stronger, cheaper, lighter...

Musk strikes me a bit as the Howard Hughes of our age. Except without the urine collection. (I think.)

Elon Musk is a ZOG agent who bilked his investors. Don't trust him.

He should get his car working first

The Roadster model has shipped. I saw one parked in downtown Boulder last week.

Indeed. There are a fair number of these out there, and they've been out there for several years now. I've encountered four different ones in just Boston's Back Bay. I'm sure if you hunted around you'd find plenty more in just the Boston metro. Though like most exotic and semi-exotic cars, my guess is about 30-60% of all production ends up in Southern California.

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