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Comment by mLuby | Hacker News Reader

"It’s years since Silicon Valley gave us a game-changer. Instead, from curing disease to colonies on Mars, we’re fed overblown promises" Come on. "We don't have a colony on Mars yet" doesn't mean there isn't crazy innovation going on with extremely tangible benefits. Any of the following is a game-changer.

1. Dec'15 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on land.

2. Apr'16 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on a ship.

3. Mar'17 SpaceX reuses first orbital-class rocket.

4. Feb'18 SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, the highest payload capacity of any currently operational launch vehicle.

5. May'18 SpaceX launches Falcon 9 Block 5, set to give USA direct human access to space (in late 2018) for the first time since Mar'11.

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SpaceX is a Los Angeles based company, and Elon Musk also lives in Los Angeles. I’m not sure if that counts as Silicon Valley.

Agreed, but TFA targets SpaceX directly from the subtitle on.

Sounds like a list of things pulled from a SpaceX brochure, not sure how exactly they are game changers.

Well sure, any company that makes game changing advances is going to list them in its brochure.

Assuming positive intent rather than sarcasm, so here's why they're game changers:

1.2.3. landing and reusing orbital rockets will deliver a huge increase in launch frequency and a huge reduction in cost, both acting to increase humanity's practical access to space. It's the difference between building a plane that flies once and building a plane that files a hundred times.

4. Falcon Heavy allows us to launch higher payload missions that was possible before. Especially since nobody assembles spacecraft in orbit, this raises the cap on how massive a spacecraft humanity can operate.

5. Giving America the ability to put humans in space without relying on the Russian Soyuz is a political and strategic victory for the US.

Sure, there will not be another social network or another smartphone, but innovation is still taking place in many other areas. It's often hard to see what game-changers look like ahead-of-time before they are actually recognized as such (otherwise, we'd all be successful VCs).

"Why is Elon Musk wasting his time getting us to Mars when there are problems on Earth that need fixing?!?"

Same thing can be said about lunar exploration project which in hindsight brought the personal computing revolution.

I hear that a lot, but I confess I don't understand.

With Apollo, the government (NASA and DOD) had specific hard requirements, and went to private contractors to build them. Those private contractors created such things as the integrated circuit, and then later sold them to other markets. Everybody wins.

With SpaceX, they're using (AFAICT) mostly standard parts, like computers running Linux. They're not developing any new computer technology, and they're one private company so they're not marketing it beyond space flight.

(They are doing great new things with systems integration, but it's not clear how that would benefit anyone outside that space program, and they're not publishing much information, anyway.)

I always thought the major benefit of Project Apollo was that it was public spending on R&D. How will private spaceflight companies like SpaceX benefit non-spaceflight-related endeavors?

SpaceX still has suppliers and employees who will diffuse the knowledge into the rest of the industry eventually.

SpaceX is definitely doing less R&D than the Apollo program, but it's also not eating 1.6% of the federal budget (~$60bn/yr), so I don't think it's fair to expect the same level of R&D.

I think it's also clear that SpaceX is going to drive cost of access to space down for other industries, e.g. telecommunications, surveying, etc, which will against have knock on effects for other industries.

You jest, but it's worth referencing the "Why explore space?"[1] letter. Penned back during the Space Race, as a response to a nun concerned with apparently wasteful spending, contrasted to poverty suffered by the people she was working with.

On a lighter note: we've put people on the Moon before we've put wheels on the luggage[2]. Exploration before comforts.

[1] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

[2] https://betafactory.com/what-came-first-wheeled-luggage-or-a...

I'm joking, but only because people are still writing these articles, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/02/elon-mu...

The pessimistic response to articles like that is that making Mars habitable is a more realistic goal than preventing humans from making earth uninhabitable.

If Mars eventually becomes habitable, how long do you think it will take before we make it uninhabitable?

Elon Musk should probably focus his immediate efforts on saving Tesla from bankruptcy.

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