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Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. This is not the tech industry where you can change direction anytime and do something totally new. Manufacturing physical goods is very hard especially something as complex as a car. I have worked at a German manufacturer for a while (chainsaws) and it's amazing how many people are working on optimizing processes. This is not something you can pick up in a few years.

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While I agree with the sentiment, I think we can be empathetic about where Musk comes from. The same arguments have been raised about making rockets, how non-states cannot make them, or how they cannot be reused. They probably even had good reasons for them. But still Musk and his team upended the status quo and showed it’s possible. His teams push the envelope forward all the time. Sure they are bound to have some failures - but hey we need people like him to understand what’s not possible(now)

The same arguments have been raised about making rockets, how non-states cannot make them, or how they cannot be reused.

Non-state entities have made all of the USA's rockets.

They weren't reusable because at the time they weren't cost effective. It's only recently that material sciences has reached the point where reusable rockets are potentially cheaper than single-use rockets (and even then, only after 5-6 launches).

Really depends on what you mean, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure all, or nearly all funding for every orbital+ rocket launched in the world came from governments before SpaceX. Yes, the work was often done by private companies. But all of the money came from governments. SpaceX was the first company to successfully launch an orbital rocket without government backing. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

That is belittling SpaceX accomplishments. They were told by all the "big boys" in the rocket industry that what they were doing could not be done.

Nobody had landed a rocket that way before SpaceX and Blue Origin did it.

There is nothing fancy about Falcon 9 rockets materially wise as far as I know. The key innovation was in the control software and using software industry style rapid iterations to try again and again until they nailed it.

SpaceX developed rockets at much faster pace and lower cost than the competition thanks to this iterative approach vs the water fall method used by the competition which cost 10x as much and is significantly slower.

Your talk of material science would be more relevant to the space shuttle I think. That was an attempt at reuse using sophisticated technology and materials. The spaceX innovation is reusing a cheap rocket. NASA developed a reuse system based on a very expensive and advance design.

> Nobody had landed a rocket that way before SpaceX and Blue Origin did it.

Let's not give SpaceX accomplishments that weren't actually theirs - it makes it easier to dismiss everything else they're doing. The DC-X did this (as a sub-scale SSTO demonstrator) in the 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

A crucial difference, IMHO, is that rockets were a largely non-competitive industry, whereas the car business has been a cut-throat competition for near a century.

There’s always a new reason why he’ll surely fail this time around.

Musk had to have his arm twisted to make them reusable, sorry, re-landable. All the innovative ideas are already out there, they just have to be found and pursued.

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