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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> SpaceX's value add is eventually providing economies of scale

This has become a popular line of contrarian bunk as of late.

I am an aerospace engineer. I am also a Tesla valuation sceptic. The work SpaceX has done is revolutionary.

In materials, numerical methods, logistics and technology, they have pioneered. Common knowledge in 2001 was reusable launch could not compete with expendable vehicles. SpaceX overturned that paradigm with a fraction of the competition’s cash. Ignoring that is to reduce the problem to a simplistically technical level that detaches entirely from reality.

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> Common knowledge in 2001 was reusable launch could not compete with expendable vehicles.

It was well argued by alt.space community, the kinds of XCOR, Beal Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites etc. that it's not the case. SpaceX is a more successful of this line of groups - and better equipped than many, though not all.

> The work SpaceX has done is revolutionary.

Yes, but mostly not in technology, but execution and optimization in an unusual market area. Success over space dinosaurs tells more about sad state of the competition - though Elon is correct in identifying the deficiency and improving on that.

> It was well argued by alt.space community, the kinds of XCOR, Beal Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites etc. that it's not the case.

They had a hypothesis. It was untested and, by any reasonable definition of common expert knowledge, a far bet.

Saying this list’s existence disproves SpaceX’s technological work is arguing home brewers as evidence that Apple did nothing groundbreaking. Or Alberto Santos-Dumont as evidence the Wright Brothers were just incremental inventors.

Yes, they weren’t the only ones on the bleeding edge. But they were right there on it, and doing the lion’s share of the pushing of it.

> better equipped than many, though not all

SpaceX is miles ahead of all of them. Literally, hundreds of thousands of miles of flight time ahead. Ahead in vehicle manufacturing. Number of engineers working on number of problem domains. Hell, out of your list, only Scaled Composites still builds anything.

If we say SpaceX does no science, we must argue that the Japanese and Indian space programs do no science. Which nobody claims because it’s baseless. Designing new motors and engines and control systems and crew capsules and space suits and ultrasonic reëntry systems requires new science, technology and production expertise.

> They had a hypothesis. It was untested

We can say Newton had a hypothesis regarding Earth artificial satellite, which took centuries to experimentally observe. But regarding powered descent, Delta Cliper flew years ago by the time SpaceX Grasshopper tests, and Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge showed that again. The untested part was to actually land the stage of an orbital rocket - difference in usage, not principal technology. Wouldn't say it was a far bet.

> But they were right there on it, and doing the lion’s share of the pushing of it.

They were practically alone in the commercial space, but technologically their achievements, I think, more incremental that Wright Brothers.

I'm not saying SpaceX did nothing worthy mentioning. It's the case, IMO, of staying on the shoulders of giants when other commercial giants became to lazy to look forward - indeed, the status quo was rather beneficial to Boeing-Lockheed, while Musk was interested in more long range projects. But Musk wasn't operating in vacuum by a long shot. Andrew Beal could probably reach similar results in a slightly different scenario.

> SpaceX is miles ahead of all of them.

"Better equipped" in this context is mostly "had almost a hundred millions to spare on first project development". That kind of money was't available to XCOR, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space - but probably was available to Beal Aerospace and certainly to Blue Origin (which is somewhat to the side of this list), maybe to Kistler Rocket... It's not about ideas and achievements, it's about starting conditions.

> Hell, out of your list, only Scaled Composites still builds anything.

It's almost two decades since founding of SpaceX, and this is capital-heavy area, surely only commercially successful survive. Blue Origin is practically only exception. Doesn't tell about technological advantage.

> If we say SpaceX does no science, we must argue that the Japanese and Indian space programs do no science.

SpaceX does applied science, targeted towards rather immediate applications in commercial systems, be that Raptor of Starlink. Here at least we can agree that a degree of science work is required for projects of that kind.

SpaceX has done critical work on GPU accelerated computational fluid dynamics for modeling rocket engine combustion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txk-VO1hzBY

And saying this is about money and resources, and not focus and management, ignores the fact that SpaceX spent less than ULA and Blue Origin to develop 2 rocket engines, 3 rockets, three different recovery systems, and 2 different capsules. Blue Origin has been spending $1 billion a year of Jeff Bezos's money, and despite starting before SpaceX, still hasn't reached orbit or beaten the Falcon 1.

Rocket Lab's Electron made it to orbit with $210m of total funding, and they built their own engine with an electric pump. Far smaller than many other companies.

The reason why SpaceX is so successful is because Elon Musk isn't in it a vanity project, or to make money taking a slice of the LEO sat launch market. He has a vision, call it lunacy, of getting huge numbers of people to Mars. Working backwards from that goal, informs everything they do, which is why they won't settle for an incremental improvement on what ULA or Arianne is doing.

It's like saying if you gave equal money in 2001-2006 to someone to build better mobile phones, they would have produced an iPhone, because most of the components were there. I worked in the mobile market at that point, and I can tell you most people were chasing Blackberry, or imagining slightly better versions of say, an Nokia Communicator 9000, iPAQPhone, or OQO. The iPhone took a vision, and someone willing to tell the naysayers and corner cutters that he doesn't care about their objections, this is what they're doing.

For TEN YEARS on USENET, I read sci.space as people like Henry Spencer and other luminaries decried reusability. They rightly said that anything wings, or landing legs, or extra strengthening and margin you add to have repeated flights comes out of your payload. The major consensus of the time would be to tell Musk his ideas won't work and the physics say disposable rockets are the most efficient.

But marginal cost matters more than Isp or payload fraction, and if you have a system where the majority of your costs are amortized over many launches, lower payload is less relevent, you just do more launches.

Ultimately, SpaceX will prove the naysayers wrong, as surely as he proved the establishment and ULA's allies wrong.

> SpaceX overturned that paradigm with a fraction of the competition’s cash.

How can we say anything about SpaceX's efficiency with cash if there are no public statements available and even investors have trouble getting any financial data at all?

We know how much they've raised, how much they charge for launches, and how many launches they've done.

And we know the VAST amounts of cash devoured by SLS and the traditional folks who critiqued SpaceX approach.

> And we know the VAST amounts of cash devoured by SLS and the traditional folks who critiqued SpaceX approach.

I was going to say to look exactly at its endless money pit counter-part: SLS from ULA. Nothing will ever compare to that monstrosity that will never work: $7.2 Billion and growing [0].

Also, not an Engineer, but went to interview at both Tesla and SpaceX and SpaceX's internal facilities are jaw-dropping. People love to go on about Tesla's Fremont factory, which is awesome, but I've been to Fremont and Boca Chica. And Boca is by far more impressive; I lived and worked in Emilia Romanga in Italy, and also lived in the town nearest to Stuttgart in Germany so I've have seen my share of amazing engineer and logistical/distribution feats.

I saw them starting to stack what was to become SN3 (RIP) in real time in the hangar as I saw SN2 vertical on the launchpad which that still remains one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my Life. I was basically leaning up against one of the Raptor Engine prototypes they have pretty much just around.

I've also got a few glimpses of the Hawthorne factory from (the outside) when I was charging the Model 3, lots of cool stuff comes out there (namely Falcon 9 and Merlin and Raptor engines) they have so much cool stuff just lying on the side of the building which I took pictures of but was asked to delete by security, which I complied.

0: https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-20-012.pdf

> SLS from ULA

Just one note on that: Boeing is the company building the SLS core stage, not ULA. While ULA is partially owned by Boeing (joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin), they operate independently.

ULA can't quite match SpaceX for style or cost these days, but they are consistently much better at what they do than Boeing is. Their launch success record is extraordinary, and their rockets provide certain capabilities that Falcon 9 and Heavy can't match without adding a kick stage to the payload.

Yeah, having taken a tour of their Hawthorne factory, it is awesome. I didn't really grok how large the Falcon 9 was until I stood next to it. It gives you a visceral appreciation of the feat that is landing these pencils on their erasers, when the pencil is as tall as some smaller highrise buildings.

> Yeah, having taken a tour of their Hawthorne factory, it is awesome.

How long ago? Did you get to hang out and eat at the mezzanine?

As for how daunting, maybe it's just because I've been into Motorsports for most of my Life and Aerospace is the most often transitioned to Industry from Automotive I knew (as much as anyone not hands-on with the project could be I suppose) what an immense feat that was. Also I was at the Mars Desert Research Station and got to ask as many questions as I wanted about it, and I'm also a member of The Mars Society.

BUT I still get giddy and have goosebumps going back and watching highlights of the first successful landing as I saw it on the streamcast with a friend who is doing his now doing his Masters in Iceland and wants to be the first wave of Martian colonizers because of that event.

I also saw the first re-landing mission at Vandenburg in 2018, the one that lit up the sky and made people think it was 'aliens' all over SoCal. We saw it from the Eagle's Nest where a bunch of NASA and SpaceX guys watch it from and met one of the non-crew Dragon capsule pilots and you could still get an idea of the scale of it from up there as I've seen the F9, too.

But SN2 at Boca was breathtakingly massive when it stood in its full glory on the launchpad, and to think this too will be reusable but will take Humans to Mars makes feel think the World still makes some sense.

The tour was a few years ago now, and sadly, didn’t get to eat there.

I’d love to see one of the SNs at some point, they look like they dwarf the F9.

So how do we know it's not an Uber style, use huge amounts of funds to lower prices, undercut the market, and become an unaccountable monopoly?

Their system is inherently more economical, because they're not throwing away the rocket, engines, or even the fairings. They're not undercutting in an unsustainable way by using outside funding.

We know that Falcon-1 took 90 millions for the whole program. We know that Air Force evaluation model predicts about 4 times as much expenses than what Elon shown with receipts to NASA. The model was wrong, but it took SpaceX to demonstrate that.

Similarly we have good estimates for how much it took to develop Falcon-9, up until first launches. I think we have rough data to make some comparisons.

> even investors have trouble getting any financial data at all

SpaceX provides audited financials to its (preferred stock) investors. They also highlight them every funding round.

It reminds me of the leap made by Oculus. Easy to overlook.

>In...numerical methods they have? this is news to me.

The relevant paper is Lars Blackmore's Lossless Convexification ( http://www.larsblackmore.com/losslessconvexification.htm ), which (to my understanding) he basically went to SpaceX to put into practice/scale, and which drives the rocket's realtime control adjustment for landing.

It should be said that the methods were developed before he joined SpaceX and were used at NASA / JPL for at least on Mars mission.

GPU acceleration of dynamically scaling cell-based fluid dynamics simulation. Video lecture / demo from 2015; 45 minutes.

I don't know if it was state-of-the-art but it looked impressive to me as a layperson.

https://youtu.be/txk-VO1hzBY

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