SpaceX Crew-1 [video]
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So in my mind they're as "private" as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, or Boeing; meaning sure, the government doesn't own the company shares, but they are de-facto extensions of the US government and would die if the government wanted them to cease to exist.
The truly amazing things for me with SpaceX are: Elon Musk is somehow allowed to have a role despite ties to China and a behavioural history that would make anyone else ineligible, and the fact that they are intentionally staying privately-owned in order to keep financials out of the public realm.
I truly believe this is how we will have to solve the anthropological climate change problem. It will have to be the government that grants, finances, and provides contracts for the private sector to build various carbon sequestering tech. Why I think the government should provide contracts to the private sector is because it seems like that allows for the private sector to maintain its efficiency and ensure the bureaucracy doesn't sink the whole thing.
For example NASA is running low on mission ready space suits. This delayed the first all female spacewalk[1] because there weren't enough medium sized suits available although a SpaceX ISS supply mission failure did contribute to the delay[2].
It's extremely expensive to refurbish these suits and a new design has been in R&D for a long time. Russia has kicked the USA's ass in this regard[3].
NASA has done a lot of good for humanity but I can't help but feel it's overburdened with politics and featherbedding.
I didn't know anything about NASA and space suits until I read this: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-nasa-spacesuits-so-expen...
NASA report: https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-17-018.pdf
[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/26/706779637/nasa-scraps-first-a...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/29bf226917954d6e9358b01e83d3a6f5
But more broadly, suppose I accept your characterisation. What does that say about SpaceX that is interesting. Why is that particular approach to organisational taxonomy useful?
First of all, its factually wrong. SpaceX would exist without the government. It got started without government money. It is equally false that SpaceX would not exist without government money.
SpaceX might have gone bankrupt without COTS contract, but at that time they had already proven the technology and in some form would have come back in some form.
During all of SpaceX existence government flights were never the majority of flights and SpaceX didn't fly for the DoD for a very long time. They had a huge backlog of commercial buissness.
> The truly amazing things for me with SpaceX are: Elon Musk is somehow allowed to have a role despite ties to China and a behavioural history that would make anyone else ineligible, and the fact that they are intentionally staying privately-owned in order to keep financials out of the public realm.
This points me towards the real reason for your arguments. You dislike Musk and thus if SpaceX is doing well and is private he is both responsible and has a lot of control and he gets credit.
What is truly shocking is that some people believe any of this would have happened without Musk, or that it would simply continue at the same rate without him. Great now we have SpaceX, so we can kick away Musk and continue to milk the golden goose.
You claim that anybody else would not ineligible is just nonsense, nothing he has done would disqualify any other buissness owner from working for the government. The same goes for his relationship with China.
The reality is that SpaceX and their ability to innovate is what saved NASA, all of NASA internal development have been major shit-shows for the last couple of decades and it was SpaceX that made space popular again.
Even within NASA the type of contracting they are now doing with SpaceX was very controversial, but once COTS started happening slowly most of NASA was converted to this being a better way to do buissness that has now been adopted for a huge amount of new programs and has foster in the US the most innovative private space industry in the world by far.
SpaceX has profited from government money, but the government has profited 10x as much from SpaceX ability to actually get shit done. Non of that would have happened if SpaceX was 'just' part of the government or if it made sense to think think of them like that. They are different organizations with different culture working on different things and sometimes work together.
Equating SpaceX to LM, Raytheon, Boeing just shows how much the parent doesn't understand that SpaceX is disrupting the industry. And it is definitely due to Musk whether you like him or not.
Ridiculous, as numerous industries depend from investment in Space anyway to launch satellites - private companies would survive even if there was no government involvment.
You also would do well to read up on the details of SpaceX's financing. Private capital has contributed several billions to its funding - just earlier this year, they raised $1.9 billion. Several projects were entirely privately funded, including Falcon 1 and its engines, Falcon Heavy and until recently, Starship. Government funding is of a similar magnitude of course, but it is disingenuous to say it comprises the entirety of SpaceX's finances.
As another poster said, just NASA's choice of using commercial operators (including Boeing) was hugely controversial, drawing skepticism even from Neil Armstrong and other astronauts. It's a massive departure from the previous approach where NASA would design the overall vehicle and subcontract portions of it to different subcontractors; instead, they're paying for a complete package that is owned by a private corporation that designed everything on their own down to the spacesuits.
And shortly after I could see that, yes, they had good reason for these detailed precautions.
IIRC during the DEMO-1 launch, the two astronauts mentioned that their suit zippers were not fully fastened and there were minor suit pressure leaks.
Flight rules say they can't approach the ISS unless they have 2/4 propellant heaters working, and right now they only have 1/4.
EDIT: On the livestream they just said they fixed it.
In contrast a flight with no engineering issues through heavy weather and turbulence would have many in the cabin stressed.
> "And Apollo was a victim of its own success. For laymen, one moon landing after another was a little boring." Ref. https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/ch22-8.ht...
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/10/soyuz-ms17-ultrafast...
Including a break for sleep is also a large factor in this profile given the time of day of today's launch.
* It was not a flawless launch, there were (minor) issues.
* NASA's inability to deliver humans into orbit was a temporary one
* Technological advances are not a given, as both the past shows and Elon Musk is saying all the time.
Regarding the flaws, well I woke up, checked twitter (the launch was a few hours earlier) and the first 20 tweets or so were about two flaws that had since been fixed. Clearly it wasn't flawless. It was a great launch for sure but calling it flawless is just wrong.
Its literally the point of commercial crew
P.S. Crew-1 Live discussion thread on r/SpaceXLounge.[2]
[0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1328132147014721537
[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/raceintospace/files/
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/juuthn/crew1_...
Giant ring-shaped space stations like the orbitals in the Culture series seem like the way to go. You can build enough of them for a population of trillions simply by disassembling the moon, and build them with climate, gravity and aesthetics that are pleasing to humans.
Mars is probably a necessary first step, but it's small fry.
that's what Blue Origin is working-on but their timeline is unsure to me :-)
Remember how people on Mayflower were not going for more daily comfort.
You see, in the '80s the US had a missile defense idea called Brilliant Pebbles [1]. Basically they would put about 10k to 100k small missiles in orbit and these missiles would detect ICMB launches and go and destroy them. The problem was the economics of the system. It was simply too expensive. And because of that it was very easy to counter it: it was cheaper to build a few additional ICMBs than to add the necessary "pebbles" to neutralize them.
But SpaceX changed this calculus. It's now much easier to put things in LEO. And it will become cheaper still. It is very likely that in 10 years the Brilliant Pebbles will become economical. And if they do, they become obligatory. Because it will be only a matter of time until Russia (or maybe China) builds the capability of cheap space launches that will match SpaceX. And if they do, and build the Brilliant Pebbles first, then the US will find itself in a very unenviable position.
So in a very near future someone from the Pentagon will approach Elon Musk with an offer he won't be able to refuse. And why would he? Being part of the thing that ends the MAD will be certain to net him a Nobel Prize for Peace. And he will definitely be worth it.
There is a huge difference between using an ICBM as a SLV platform and using your nuclear triad.
MAD has allowed for peace in our time. Yes, the world has problems but its significantly better now than before. Maybe its best to remain in this condition.
Where did you get the impression that arms races ever stop?
That said I think people overestimate how much the US and Russia actually strive to destroy each other militarily.
And in general arms races aren’t a good thing, you build a missile shield your enemy builds a better missile.
But you might as well have land based anti-aircraft nukes, I guess. (Shooting nukes with nukes.)
1. Hypersonic weapons. They don't have enough range. The Russian officials claim the Kh-101 missile has a range of 4500km, but it's more likely it's about 1500 km. That's quite bad, but defenses can be set up 2. 100 MT TNT autonomous submersible drones. To have their purported devastating effect, they need to blow up close to the shore, otherwise they don't create a huge tsunami. It's not a slam dunk that the Russians are able to sneak in such a drone close to the US shores. 3. Nuclear powered cruise missiles. They do have the range, and they appear quite scary. If Russia makes advances in this, it would be a benefit for humankind, as this technology could be used in space exploration. The MAD doctrine could be alive and well, but we'd end up with a powerful new tool in our toolbox for exploring the Solar system. Elon Musk would not be very upset.