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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

> In this respect, advocates of fusion technology say it has many parallels with the space industry. That, too, was once confined to government agencies but is now benefiting from the drive and imagination of nimble (albeit often state-assisted) private enterprise. This is “the SpaceX moment for fusion”, says Mowry ...

I don't think that's a good comparison. SpaceX didn't develop ground-breaking firsts like Sputnik and the moon landings; they took something we've done for 50 years and do it more efficiently. Government agencies are the ones with helicopters flying on Mars, who visited Pluto, developed and operate the space telescopes, etc. Fusion energy generation is like the Manhatten Project.

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I dont understand this notion that the literal Government is building and flying all of these things and that private companies achievements mean nothing.

Ingenuity was build with multiple non Government contractors.

The Lunar Module was developed and built by Grumman under Government contract. Rocketdyne developed the J2

Boeing/North American/Douglas designed and built the Saturn 5. Why do people attribute all of these vehicles to the Government when they are were contracted to private companies to be built?

Its very strange that people deny that SpaceX created modern reusable boosters and they fall back on the damn DC-X project when a) McDonnel Douglas was the manufacturer of it b) it was a prototype that never made it to orbit, c) is widely considered a failure

Meanwhile SpaceX is absolutely trouncing every other company with Launching ability while Beoing, given every single possible kickback from the Government can't launch their Starliner for another year after already a year of delays.

They have developed the only full flow staged combustion cycle rocket that has ever gotten off the ground, something even the Soviets couldn't manage.

Only governments (used to?) have the financial muscle to bankroll literal moonshots. From that standpoint it didn't matter so much if all the genius engineers are employed by the government or by a subcontractor.

> Why do people attribute all of these vehicles to the Government when they are were contracted to private companies to be built?

Because the alternative doesn't fit their ideological world view.

Modern rocketry was essentially invented by a loner that few took notice until WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard

might want to actually read the wiki before downvoting

I think you are taking that point too literally. Yes, of course anything a government undertakes on will be built by private enterprise at some level. However, the heart of these talking points were about how governments bankrolled the financing necessary to make the developments, whereas now it has shifted a little toward private enterprise. If it weren't for the funding, private companies of the past would rarely have embarked on making such things.

> didn't develop ground-breaking firsts

- First full flow staged combustion engine that actually flies

- horizontal flight, vertical landing (belly flop)

- booster reuse on an orbital class rocket

Yeah that was so funny to read that about the company that was the first to demonstrate reusuable boosters!

I know this is included in booster reuse, but it demands being emphasized:

SpaceX is landing rockets at sea on comically small platforms.

> First full flow staged combustion engine that actually flies

Indeed, and I'll observe that the significance of this one is often lost on more casual observers.

Yeah, and besides, beyond the fact that the claim of "no groundbreaking firsts" was easily falsifiable, I found this one funny:

> took something we've done for 50 years and do it more efficiently.

One can argue that this is "all" that happened in AI in recent years. We took something that was arguably done before, in some similar way or shape, and made it practical. But this is HUGE. It's not a minor accomplishment! It may very well be harder than doing some prototype for the first time.

> SpaceX didn't develop ground-breaking firsts like Sputnik and the moon landings; they took something we've done for 50 years and do it more efficiently.

Efficiency gains and ground-breaking firsts aren't mutually exclusive. For example, I've personally invested in several aerospace startups, and the general public is not remotely aware — even now — of the extent to which SpaceX's efficiency gains have utterly revolutionized space access. It's no exaggeration to say they've driven a step function change in the sorts of companies it's possible to build in this industry.

Very often, ground-breaking firsts are only achieved once efficiency along some axis passes a critical threshold; I'd argue it's fair to compare fusion to SpaceX in this regard.

And also consider that most of SpaceX funding comes from contracts from NASA, rather then investors or profits.

Although they do seem to be shifting to more commercial flights now that launch costs are lower and the results are more predictable.

And I'm not sure if you consider launching starlink to be "commercial", if you considered it to be an internal customer of the launch service then it seems like it should count.

SpaceX has done 130 launches from Falcon 9 demo onward.

This includes 25 Dragon cargo launches (24 successful, and include two COTS demo launches) and 5 crew dragon launches, (two demo, one in-flight abort test, and 2 operational launches). There have been a few unmanned NASA launches.

So, it's not really correct to say NASA is what's holding them up. They have launched a lot of comsats for other companies, defense payloads, smallsats, foreign government launches, and 29 Starlink launches.

>SpaceX didn't develop ground-breaking firsts like Sputnik and the moon landings

I would say the ground breaking things were done by amateurs like Mr Von Braun as children playing with rockets.

What governments(Hitler first, then US and Russia) did was escalating something that was already proven and worked, and that was proven my amateurs.

The flights of Otto Lilienthal or the Wright brothers were extremely short, but they were the groundbreaking things that governments later escalated very fast.

I certainly believe that break even will be proven by private companies, not by Governments bureaucracies that continuously say that fusion in 30 years is reasonable.

After breakeven is proven, there will be a tsunami of investments from Governments just like with aviation or rockets.

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