SpaceX makes history with successful first human space launch | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX makes history with successful first human space launch

techcrunch.com

304 pointsdsavant73 comments

Much discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23361987

Yes. We've merged most of this thread thither.

The first man in space was launched by the russians almost _60_ years ago. That was history.

Then the americans sent men to the moon, that was history too, and _50_ years ago.

We realized sending human into space was not really useful, so that more or less stopped. The ISS was an international endeavor with questionable scientific goals, but still it was fun and an unprecedented global collaboration. The Mars rovers and some other space probes (Viking, Venera) were true scientific achievements too.

What we see here is a private company re-learning how to send men in space and calling this "history". No doubt it will be used to send highest paying customer in space. It will also be used to send a large, low orbit satellite constellation without the slightest amount of collaboration or concerting with other space users. Other companies will compete to send their own constellations, some of them will certainly fail in a few years and leave their junk in space for tens of years. It has even been used to send a car into space, although many scientists would have loved to send a useful payload even in a test flight.

All this is financed by investors lured by the "dream" of sending men die on Mars, and by a government that has lost the sense of reality. How great.

Mods, any chance you can give a boost to the launch coverage that is NOT from TC, but from a bit more relevant and notable source?

Here's one from Ars, which had an excellent space coverage for ages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23364529

I don't see anything wrong with people posting TechCrunch articles to HN. All these sites have their downsides and different users have different preferences. But this is a duplicate of an earlier thread, so we'll move the comments thither.

It's always worth changing the URL to a better source, though, so maybe we'll use your URL on that one. Edit: it doesn't seem particularly substantive to me either. So far I haven't seen an article that seems good enough to swap out the main URL at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23361987, even though that livestream is past its best-before date.

For what it's worth and from where I'm sitting TC pretty much lost all of its edge post-Arrington. It's now a mediocre source of regurgitated news on ridiculously formatted pages with one of the longest list of 3rd party trackers across all news sites. It's just... junk.

The live stream video should indeed be THE main thread for the event, no argument there. It was just jarring to see it mid-page and the TC thread sitting at the first spot.

Yeah, that's an artifact of the livestream spanning many hours while the lifespan of HN submissions being measured in hours, so by the time the big moment happened the thread was already halfway down the page. I've rolled back the clock on the submission now to accommodate that.

I hear you about TC and will pay a bit more attention to that in the future, but really we judge this by article quality rather than site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), so your best bet is always to propose a significantly better, specific article. I'd have been happy to use the AT one instead, but it has other problems: its first half is a photo collection, which is ok in principle but raises other issues which I can explain if anyone cares; and its second half swerves sharply into a political direction that would likely act as flamebait here.

Howabout this

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-astronauts-launch-fr...

Ok, we'll give it a try. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23364765. Thanks!

Great, but would prefer to read this from pretty much any source other than TC

Yes, the company, including Crunchbase, has little integrity. Trust me.

Please elaborate.

I once pleaded with Crunchbase to remove a person from my former company’s public-facing page, due to a legal and personal obligation I had.

They refused, pronouncing the integrity of their data. I lost a very valuable friendship over that insignificant datum.

In addition to my loss, the person I requested to remove must now have this page at the top of their google search results, which is a shame, especially given that I added them to the page without their consent, which at the time did not have such apparent consequences.

For what it’s worth, it was a small, two-person company. In my opinion, they should have respected my humble request.

After this experience and others, I do often question the integrity of the data-centric, journalistic community in NYC.

Also curious what all this is getting at.

"This has little integrity" isn't useful for the conversation, but it has the potential to be an interesting topic if you just back up the assertion. I hope you will do so.

Elon Musk is the greatest American alive.

he is not american though.... he is from South Africa...

So, yea +1 for 'smart immigration' in the US.

Edit: Elon has South African, Canadian and US citizenship... so, what he calls/considers himself, it is up to him.

Non-natural born American is still American. This is what immigration is.

Immigrant myself, came in this country when I was 17 from Albania, and have lived most of my life here (on my late 30s now).

While feeling 'american' is a subjective thing (I consider myself Albanian), There are still limitations. A naturalized citizen, can't be a US president, and in rare circumstances you can be stripped of your citizenship (it is called 'denaturalization').

So, yeah.... lets live it up to him to call himself whatever he wants, but calling him American is like calling Einstein/Tesla/Von Brown american. Sure, they got US citizenship at some point... but that's not how Ethnicity works.

That is perhaps literally the only limitation and even that isn’t absolute since the law could be changed for a candidate with the right support.

'American' is not an ethnicity. That is a big reason it is so great. If America is such an awful place why are you here and not in albania? Why did Einstein et al. come here? The American system enables things that are impossible in other countries.

Wat... americans born here have no 'ethnicity'?

eth·nic·i·ty /eTHˈnisədē/ noun "the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition."

Also, I love this country... where did I say this place is awful? I live in NYC and I love it. That doesn't mean that I don't love my original country as well, (Albania).

IMHO, this kind of thinking setups an us vs. them mentality. The best part of America is that anyone who lives here can call themselves an American. It is maximally inclusive. Segregating us into 'immigrants' vs. 'ethnic Americans' is antithetical to the ideals of this imperfect society.

@ardit33 I am glad you are here and like it here!!! IMHO all immigrants are great and the US government should never restrict immigration.

Regarding 'American' as an ethnicity check this out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_pot

America is the most diverse place on earth. Ethnicities from all over the world call it home.

Despite the current political climate, it think this is, at it's core, what /America/ is.

You are able to be an immigrant simultaneously while being a citizen of another country.

He was born elsewhere, but he became a US citizen around 20 years ago. He's an American.

Holds South African, Canadian, and American citizenship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

He's an African American, but still American.

Edit: why the downvote? Is he not?

African American != South African immigrant.

What if the South African immigrant was black and had lived in the US for 40 years?

Honestly... it's complicated. As I understand it, African-American is one of the more recent ways of saying (with the intent of being polite) that someone is a black skinned and ethnically African and is American.

The term was not meant to extend to corner cases like mine - I'm white, but one of my ancestors grew up on the African continent in an island in the Atlantic and spoke Portuguese.

I suspect that this term will fall out of favor soon and be replaced by another.

By that logic, does American Asian only refer to people with certain facial characteristics? And are American Europeans only those with a white skin color?

I mean here in Europe we have plenty of Europeans that are not white. So, if a black skinned German went to the US, people would suddenly label him "African" American, just based on his skin color?

That seems quite a racist use of those terms tbh.

Americans of European descent tend to refer to themselves by nation of immigrant origin (eg: Italian American, Irish American, etc.)

However, because African slaves brought to the New World were denied the ability to culturally identify with, or even know (after generations) which African nation or tribe they descended from, the only common cultural identity they could form, apart from that which slavery had forced upon them, was as a diaspora from "Africa" as a whole.

"African American" is a term with a specific cultural and historical context behind it linked to the identity of the descendants of slaves and to black immigrants from Africa, and there is controversy about its use even within the black community, but it isn't going to correctly refer to the descendant of white Dutch colonizers in South Africa even if it does technically fit. Or at least not without coming across as racist itself.

Consider that racist if you like, but race and culture are messy and complicated everywhere, not just in the US.

I will consider it racist, yes, I prefer a "colorblind" world. Btw, every person in South Africa is the descendent of a "colonizer", black or white.

"Colorblind" often means pretending racism no longer exists and ignoring it, or worse, considering it racist to do otherwise.

While it might be nice to live in a "post-racial" world, it should be obvious that we don't, yet.

Racism will exist as long as people look at the skin color or other generic markers to judge others. If you think it's okay to do so, that's sad.

Fighting racism with even more racism, will world three opposite result. It's not the first time in human history, that people mean well and create hell. It's just a different topic this time.

Yes the confusion of nationality and geographic labeling of your birthing coordinates are often confused. Kinda why I stick with human a label as that transcends geopolitical baggage of all forms.

In space, nobody checks your nationality.

Elon is an absolutely flawed character and is definitely not the 'greatest' American, but let's focus on the grander achievements of SpaceX and NASA both technically and business-wise, rather than the hero worship that Elon often gets.

The list of living Americans who've done more to rewrite our future -- electronic payments, cheap spaceflight, electric cars, cheap solar power -- is pretty short. Everyone's flawed, great people more than most, and I think Musk legitimately deserves a spot on the top 30 or so greatest living Americans list.

I agree with this. Even if he’s an asshole sometimes, he’s an asshole with a vision and the capability to get it done.

I guess I prefer that over not having one at all :)

Winning cures all.

Really? I mean, every person has some flaws, sure. But most the things he does are just pretty awesome, and usually very good for humanity's future.

I'm not a fanboi trying to defend him. I just happen to like most of his projects, both for the technology and for their positive view of the future.

He's probably in the top 0.001% of greatest Americans ever.

We may overemphasize a person's character. I would not trade Musk's achievements for a perfect character, whatever that means.

Humans have been launched into space for 60 years.

Exactly and no passport has ever been checked in space.

The astronauts that returned from the moon had to fill out customs & immigration cards on landing.

https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.ht...

This achievement likely would not have been possible in the other two nations in which Musk holds citizenship. And I say this as a fellow expat of one of those nations.

For all of its faults, the United States is still home to innovation that is unrivaled in the rest of the world.

From South Africa.

And your point is?

American opportunities and education are an important part of what his achievements. That is true.

But, he was born and raised in South Africa and moved to the US as an [almost] adult (age 17).

If he was born and raised in America, maybe his priorities would have been different to the person we know today.

Many of the greatest Americans were immigrants. Like John Von Neumann, or Alexander Graham Bell, or Andrew Carnegie, or Alexander Hamilton.

Usually in the English language citizenship and nationality are conflated and people use them interchangeably.

You can have multiple citizenships. Musk has 3 (South African, Canadian, American) but his nationality is South African.

Also, culturally, he was born and raised in South Africa. Moved to the US for college. If South Africa had the opportunities the US has he would now be likely in Praetoria.

> If South Africa had the opportunities the US has he would now be likely in Praetoria.

And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. In terms of nationality or whatever, Elon Musk is as American as anyone else. Probably more American than most. The American nationality isn't fundamentally based on the circumstances of your birth.

> Elon Musk is as American as anyone else. Probably more American than most

He spent the first 17 years of his life in South Africa. We could say his personality and character are the product of South African culture.

If he was born in the US, he would probably not be interested in manufacturing. Culturally, the US has moved away from manufacturing, and most of it is being offshored.

> The American nationality isn't fundamentally based on the circumstances of your birth.

Tell that to people pursuing the American citizenship that were born in American territories like American Samoa or Puerto Rico, where, unlike US states, they get drafted, they cannot vote and they're not considered US citizens.

> Tell that to people pursuing the American citizenship that were born in American territories like American Samoa or Puerto Rico, where, unlike US states, they get drafted, they cannot vote and they're not considered US citizens.

People born in Puerto Rico are US citizens. American Samoa is the exception to how most territories work.

But they're not a state. And because they're not a state, they have no congress representation, and because they have no congress representation and they are not a state, they do not have electors in the electoral college.

So, yes... they are citizens, but they're in complete neglect and have no real representation.

If they want to vote, they have to move to a US state.

> Tell that to people pursuing the American citizenship that were born in American territories like American Samoa or Puerto Rico

Now you’re doubling back on yourself. You’re the one who drew the distinction between the legal technicalities of citizenship and the more nebulous concept of “nationality”, and yet here you are pontificating about how the legal technicalities of citizenship apply to residents of US territories. What does American Samoa have to do with your implication that immigrants aren’t real Americans?

He's still an American.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. There's literally no content to this sort of discussion other than yay-celeb vs. boo-celeb. Just look at how dumb this subthread is.

> There's literally no content to this sort of discussion other than yay-celeb vs. boo-celeb

Being proud of Elon Musk and my country is not 'ubsubstantive'. It points out the greatness of immigrants, capitalism, technology, entrepreneurship, and everything else that makes America GREAT.

> Just look at how vacuous this subthread is.

So it is my fault what other's choose to post on HN? Got it!

Actually yes, there is a sense in which a comment is partly responsible for the subthread it leads to, because reactions to certain things are so predictable on the internet. That's why concepts like 'flamebait' and 'trolling' exist. Your comment wasn't flamebait, exactly, and definitely not trolling, but it did have the property of being much more likely to lead to a vacuous subthread than a curious one. (Btw, I rotated between 'dumb', 'vacuous', 'lame', and a few other adjectives in the GP before returning to 'dumb'. You saw it in an intermediate state.)

Edit: one way of putting this is that the value of an HN comment is the expected value of its future subthread: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... That includes the original comment since a root node is part of its tree.

I realize you're just being enthusiastic and am sorry to pee on the party.

I promise I'm not saying this to troll or hate on you: I honestly see Elon falling into the genre of "trolling" that's really just the same kind of shitposting, mockery, and thinly veiled hatred that, in my opinion, is destroying western society. So, while his achievements are huge, when people lavish isolated unqualified worship on the person, Elon Musk, nowadays it's genuinely hard to give them the benefit of the doubt in regards to what they know they are communicating by doing that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com