Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

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> The author's claim that the potential benefits of Starship are not understood by NASA is cringeworthy naive.

> Makes me wonder how old the author is.

The author works for JPL.

> Starship is still extremely unproven. If you look at the history of rockets, mayyyybe 1 in 5 that make it to an orbital launch debut (which is like 1 in 50 paper rockets) in turn make it to commercial rollout.

How many of these had 10+ prototypes fly and had a dedicate launch site near to complete?

How many had a working next generation engine for there first and second stage?

How many were designed by companies that had already developed the largest rocket in the world?

> burned many times by the promises of the next shiny rocket: DC-X, VentureStar, NASP, Ares, SLS,

Non of those were even remotely close. DC-X was a sub-orbital technology demonstrator. Even had it been successful it would have been nothing more. NASP is another technology demonstrator.

VentureStar was far, far away. Comparing it to Starship is just not accurate. It was basically almost delusional to think it would ever happen. And many people even back then were very skeptical of a SSTO Spaceplane. And beyond that politically it getting the needed funding was also not gone happen.

Ares, SLS are basically just warmed up shuttle concepts. These are designed to keep contractors employed, not to solve the problem. They no potential to solve anything.

Jeez dude, these were just random programs off the top of my head to illustrate industry distrust of launch vehicle promises. My comment wasn't meant to initiate a debate but offer the perspective of someone who is quite literally writing proposals about launch vehicle selection for NASA missions. But hey, you can read Wikipedia, so...

In any case to those reasonable out there, don't worry. If SpaceX can prove reliable launch to orbit and deliver on their promises, change will come. It's kind of silly to write articles about how everyone should change the way they operate NOW because change is coming. Of course it's coming, everyone accepts it's likely, and things will move quickly once it does and is proven. What more do the fanboys want!?

> Jeez dude, these were just random programs off the top of my head to illustrate industry distrust of launch vehicle promises.

What you are insinuating is that people are unable to difference between a suborbital technology demonstrator and powerpoint vehicles and multi-billion $ projects that are deep in development.

And non of the projects you mentioned would have a comparable impact to Starship. Maybe VentureStar but that was at best decades away.

You can just throw out some random projects and use them to justify non-action.

If VentureStar had actually seriously gone forward the same kind of almost the rethinking would have been necessary. And even if it in the end didn't happen, it would have been valuable to do.

> perspective of someone who is quite literally writing proposals about launch vehicle selection for NASA missions. But hey, you can read Wikipedia, so...

So making bad arguments can be justified from authority. Good to know.

> It's kind of silly to write articles about how everyone should change the way they operate NOW because change is coming.

There are many years of lead time, choices are only gone go into actual products and missions year from now.

Now is exactly the right time to start planning and rethinking approaches.

When Commercial Cargo was made, much of the need private industry didn't exist. And yet they did it, because they were locking forward and adjusted their operations.

Back then there was massive critic of NASA even from win NASA itself that this was a bad idea and it was never gone work. And that is what kick started the New Space movement.

That kind of thinking is what is needed. Plan projects now and get them rolling that could take advantage of the capabilities in a few years.

> What more do the fanboys want!?

Putting yourself as the reasonable authority and then ranting about 'fanboys' makes you look silly.

The auther of the article works for JPL, but I guess he is a 'fanboy'.

Man, there you go again, trying to turn this into a debate where we pick apart everything the opponent says line by line. What a waste of time. Take care, good luck with your mental health.

There you go again, responding with insults rather then arguments. A debating in a forum that is about debating articles about technology shocking.

Apologies, my last sentence was unprofessional and unhelpful. I was not at my best in that comment.

My other points stand, though. Everyone in the industry that's paying attention knows that Starship, IF it delivers on its promises, will change the game. It's a strawman to say those in industry are ignorant of this. Yet we've heard Starship-esque promises many times before, spoken with just as much fervor and certainty as displayed by your friend the JPL blogger.

I don't perceive this as a forum for ruthless debate but rather sharing ideas in an atmosphere of cooperation. Debate closes off context and undermines trust, which in turn limits communication bandwidth severely and often destroys it entirely.

The act of debate can most certainly be productive, but in an open and unbounded forum where the ruleset of "debate" - and thus its goals - are undefined, competitive framing has a consistent tendency to devolve into semantics and entrenchment of positions rather than productive insight.

Of course, you're free to pick my statements apart further, if you find that productive. But I will spend my time elsewhere.

>The author works for JPL.

As a software person. JPL employs over 5000 people. The vast majority of them don't have knowledge of the sort of systems and business dynamics relevant to the matter of NASA using Starship.

> The vast majority of them don't have knowledge of the sort of systems and business dynamics relevant to ...

If experience from private sector is any indication, that's usually question of caring. It's not hard to gain such insight from the inside - but you need to walk around a bit, talk to people outside of your team, and most importantly, pay attention.

> Ares, SLS are basically just warmed up shuttle concepts

Not really. They were started before SpaceX proved the idea of reusable boosters. They are a safe Plan-B, using engines and concepts that were already available. It’s a shame they decided to improve upon the existing hardware and took much longer than initially expected, but that’s what life with rockets used to be before SpaceX showed rapid iteration is a better path.

Also, Congress would be very upset with a bunch of failed launches, but that’s also how iterative development works.

> They are a safe Plan-B

I was the Plan-A back then during Constellation. And SLS was also Plan-A.

> Not really.

I would argue the forced existing hardware into those project to continue to employ the same contractors.

Using a single stick solid rocket booster for your human launcher might be one of the worst ideas in the last 2 decades of rocket history.

Not surprisingly the congress person from that state was heavily involved funding Constellation.

> It’s a shame they decided to improve upon the existing hardware and took much longer than initially expected, but that’s what life with rockets used to be before SpaceX showed rapid iteration is a better path.

There were other viable paths even back then. Not to the level of SpaceX but there were others.

NASA did a whole bunch of studies and these studies pretty much universally showed that the current SLS designs was flawed and a booster that looked like a modern Saturn V was the far better solution.

There were even considerations of having it be privately developed.

Turns out NASA can make as many studies as they want, congress basically over-ruled them and forced them to use all the existing contractors and facilities and thus they were forced into current SLS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...

> I was the Plan-A back then during Constellation. And SLS was also Plan-A.

It makes sense for it to use the well known approach as Plan-A when the options don’t exist.

> NASA did a whole bunch of studies and these studies pretty much universally showed that the current SLS designs was flawed and a booster that looked like a modern Saturn V was the far better solution.

New developments based on new components, however Saturn V-like, are a risk. I have read a couple studies back then and, while I am not overly enthusiastic about the approach adopted, it offered minimal development risk.

The only novel idea of Ares was putting people on top of an SRB, which was cheap, but abandoned when they realised the vibrations would kill the crew.

Back then, SpaceX was science fiction.

> It makes sense for it to use the well known approach as Plan-A when the options don’t exist.

Not when Plan A has well known well document problems.

> New developments based on new components, however Saturn V-like, are a risk.

Restarting production for RS-25 has risk. Using solids boosters for human space flight has risk.

The idea that magically the picked design has no are significantly less risk is questionable.

In terms of risk to human on the rockets the other designs out-performed the current design and they were cheaper.

> The only novel idea of Ares was putting people on top of an SRB, which was cheap,

I recommend you go back and check out how much Ares 1 cost. It was literally the opposite of cheap. It was a gigantic money pit for a non-commercially competitive rocket that was incredibly risky for human.

> but abandoned when they realised the vibrations would kill the crew.

Maybe the single worst rocket design ever. Despite the issues there were others metnioned.

However the whole Constellation program got canceled because it was horrifyingly badly executed and a bad plan in the first place.

> Back then, SpaceX was science fiction.

By the time SLS was designed they were not. And just because SpaceX doesn't exist, doesn't mean you couldn't do much better then Ares or SLS.

> It’s a shame they decided to improve upon the existing hardware and took much longer than initially expected, but that’s what life with rockets used to be before SpaceX showed rapid iteration is a better path.

Uhm, I think you're simultaneously doing a discredit to past rocket development and giving an easy pass to the mess that is SLS with this statement.

It's just shoddy project management and prioritizing collaboration with as many big donar aerospace companies as possible as opposed to what works. There is playing it safe and then there is just being complacent. The SLS is complacency personified.

> Uhm, I think you're simultaneously doing a discredit to past rocket development and giving an easy pass to the mess that is SLS with this statement.

Not at all what I intended. Congress is to blame for some of the mess, NASA for the rest. They had shuttle parts and tools and the SLS is certainly not the best that could be done with those.

But, remember, NASA can’t really do much unless Congress gives them the money.

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