60 Minutes: Elon Musk and SpaceX [video]
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Elon, if you are reading this, know that you have something pulling for you that Aldrin and Armstrong will never have: The next generation. My kids want to be like their mother and father (who are scientists) and we make it a point to highlight people such as yourself as role models. They want to be just like you. And so will countless others.
SpaceX is doing orbital missions with around 1000 people. This means cheaper flights which means more flights. It's going to lead to the same democratization of access that the computing and network revolutions brought, pulling these technologies out of enormous institutions and dramatically dropping costs.
Armstrong and Cernan are just the Spam in the can. They're glorified pilots. As such, they are extensions of the PR arm of NASA and the entrenched aerospace industries. I've phrased that a little harshly, but not by much. Certainly, as trained monkeys go, they are marvelously trained. And not just any monkey could be trained to perform as they did in their, and I emphasize, highly specialized and limited roles within the space program. But, when we see a well-trained dog, the credit goes to the master.
If Armstrong and Cernan were rocket designers, if they had captained a startup that created a new launch vehicle, then I could take their statements seriously. If they were systems integrators, if they were manufacturing engineers, if they were anything other than good pilots, then they might have something useful to add to the discussion on a national level. Until then, all I want to hear from them is how beautiful the Earth looks from space, how fun it is to play golf on the Moon, and various other fun facts about events that took place 40+ years ago.
I feel awful trying to cut these men down, trying to knock them back into place. However, the truly shameful thing is that they've used their legacy to usurp beyond their areas of expertise. I console myself that the bounds over which they've stepped are generous bounds, the bounds of heroes, and it takes a truly cataclysmic level of folly to behave as they have done. It would take nothing less than the legendary ego of a pilot.
Cernan and Armstrong, rest on your laurels, and get out of the way of people who are doing.
We could take a clip without context, or we could read what Armstrong and Cernan actually said:
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov...
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov...
Their main thesis seems to be that it's unwise to take a program that's currently functioning, took an enormous amount of time to get to where it is, and shutter it before its replacement is viable. To say nothing of the fact that NASA is laying off perhaps the world's best bucket of space-related institutional knowledge. Sure, many are finding employment at private space firms, but many aren't.
Yes, Cernan has been outspokenly pessimistic on the chances of private industry to get there in time, sure, but he's a guy who knows first hand what it takes to get a man into space when starting from scratch. And it's not an unreasonable perspective to say that we are gambling a known-quantity for an unknown, which, given the time it takes to get there, is unwise. Yes, let them develop, and let's help them all we can. But until they have the demonstrated capabilities that we're giving up, why don't we keep what we've got until we know what the transition will look like?
He's been quoted as saying:
"It has been the commercial space industry, under NASA’s leadership and guidance, that has allowed us to get to the moon and build a shuttle and everything that has happened in the last 50 years. To entirely turn it over without any oversight to the commercial sector, which is a word I question anyway, is going to take a long time. Some of these guys are highly qualified, but some are young entrepreneurs with a lot of money, and for them it’s kind of like a hobby. Not all of them. But some of them are making claims to get into space in five years for $10 billion, and even the Russians say it’s going to take twice as long if we put our eggs into that basket. I don’t have a lot of confidence in that end of the commercial space spectrum getting us back into orbit any time soon. I’d like to hear all these folks who call themselves commercial space tell me who their investors are. Tell me where their marketplace is. A commercial venture is supposed to use private money. And who are their users? Suppose we, NASA, have no need for their services. There’s no other marketplace for them. So is it really a commercial venture, or is it not? Is it a group of guys who have stars in their eyes and want to be a big space developer? I don’t know."
Those are not unfair questions.
"I don’t think they’ll come anywhere near accomplishing what they’ve said they can do. I said before Congress, and it’s still true today, they don’t yet know what they don’t know. We, if you’ll allow me to include myself with NASA, have been doing this for half a century. We have made mistakes. We’ve lost colleagues. Don’t you think we’ve learned from some of those mistakes? You bet your life we have. They have yet to learn from those mistakes."
Armstrong, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any problem with it. In fact, he actually supported the idea of giving serious consideration to the commercial proposals NASA received to keep the Shuttle running.
If we considered any other system of infrastructure--roads, water, the grid--and said, "let's shut it down before the private industry creates its replacement," we'd be laughed off the stage.
I'm all for doing things the most efficient way possible, but given the relatively low cost (remember that the Shuttle program costs the same as the UK bank bailout) of maintaining the Shuttle program for another 5-10 years while other options came online, I don't see how this rush to privatize is viewed with anything but complete skepticism of the current administration's strategy. They know full well they'll be out of office before any of these issues come up, and, like the one before it, seem content to kick the can far enough down the road to defer current issues to future administrations.
We've got a space station orbiting that we can continue to use for at least another 8 years, if we can get there. Our ability to do so is entirely dependent on a re-emerging power with interests contrary to ours. Or, some very brilliant, ambitious guys who are still a ways off from launching people.
The fact that their most recent launch mishap allegedly almost ended the program should be a massive wake-up call to anyone who thinks Cernan's completely wrong. What will happen when a mistake kills a few of our (dwindling) astronaut cadre?
Again -- I hope Musk knocks this one out of the park and goes down in history for it. But that's no reason to end a well-functioning program to score some political points and free up money to pour into voting blocs and bailouts.
They cannot conceive of a way to do it otherwise. And they are comparatively blind to the problems of government run spaceflight and the potential advantages of commercial spaceflight. But perhaps after some of those advantages are more readily apparent and after a bit of history has been laid down establishing another way to do it that really is a perfectly fine way o do it then maybe even they will come around.
I can only agree. I haven't had the opportunity to socialize with a lot of folks who've lived their entire adult lives under the umbrella of government jobs or highly unionized jobs.
As things have it, I recently did have that chance. I had dinner with a married couple, both of whom have worked government jobs since, well, forever.
I have to say that it was a real jolting experience. It was truly like talking with people from another country, if not another planet.
My take was that the framework (union and/or government) creates such a layer of isolation from what I'll call real life that it creates a highly distorted view of reality (in my opinion) for those within it.
A recent example I heard about was that of a librarian that, after working for some 15 or 20 years earning $100K to $120K per annum (with insane benefits) will retire at a very young age with a pension paying her nearly $250K per year for the rest of her life (and retain such bennies as amazing health-care coverage). This is due to a rule in the contract of many unions that causes pension pay to be calculated on a salary that can be "spiked", as they put it, during the last couple of years by taking courses and doing things that, again, by union rules, count towards the salary calculation.
You can fully expect someone like that to have a completely skewed view of reality. Few private citizens, entrepreneurs and small business people have the opportunity to earn $250K a year with such good benefits, much less retain that for the rest of their lives while doing no work whatsoever. And, for good reason: In the real world that is almost always mathematically not sustainable. There are very few circumstances that allow a business to provide 90% pay --forever-- to retiring employees while having to hire a replacement. It's a case of simply arithmetic.
I firmly believe that this kind of thing, this kind of sub-culture, if you will, is really bad for this country (and any country that supports it). I don't know the internals of Greece, yet from outside it seems that it may very well be an extreme example of this effect. This is a case where millions of people live in a state that is so incomprehensibly shielded from reality that it, effectively, causes a devolving of potentially valuable human capital. In some cases this effect crosses generational gaps ("union towns" or "government towns"). By "devolving" I mean that the removal of the need to fight for survival devolves a human being into an automaton of sorts that will spend decades working within a system that does not compensate or require excellence. Mere participation is all that is needed and the rest of your life is covered. One has to wonder what some of these folks may have been capable of had they been challenged to be better than that. Hence my use of the term "devolve".
I didn't want to inject politics into the SpaceX discussion, but I think Aldrin, et al. have done this themselves. As highly accomplished and intelligent as they are (I don't see them as "trained monkeys" as someone said earlier) it is true that they lived their entire lives within this altered-reality that government and union frameworks can and do create. That, I've concluded, perhaps unfairly, isn't good for the human condition.
When he said his response to their criticism is to prove to them that it can be done and done well made me admire him.
It goes to show you that even our heros don't know everything, and even if they let us down we have to follow our own path. Elon Musk is a hero of mine, and I'm sure to many others. Not to mention he was Robert Downey Jr's inspiration for Tony Stark.
They say it would be less safe than a NASA program and that "To be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature..." Note though that some of their argument was directed at the cancellation of NASA's planned moon missions.
With that in mind, let's consider the shuttle program. In 135 missions, it had an abysmal safety record that claimed the lives of 14 astronauts, making it the deadliest spaceflight program in history. It's budget cost $196 billion dollars over the craft's lifetime instead of the estimated $43 billion (adjusted for inflation), while making around half of the promised flights. The shuttle was an important (for both good and bad) craft that helped accomplish great things, like build the ISS and Hubble space telescope. But nationalist pride shouldn't make us blind to the fact that NASA's last program probably set progress in spaceflight backwards, or at least slowed it, and never attempted to leave low-Earth orbit. Those astronauts may not like it, but Elon Musk has a clearer vision and more ambition than NASA (or the politicians) have had for a very long time.
Lack of funding??? NASA gets 17 Billion a year and typically around 10 billion is for manned space flight - 2011 has 9 billion.
How much more does NASA need?
> NASA gets 17 Billion a year
I say give them what they say they need, not what internet armchair economists say they need. None of the alternative uses for that money that the US government is finding are as important.
And now we have the so-called Space Launch System. Another boondoggle jobs program that is so ridiculous that fundamentals of its design have been specified by the Senate itself. The Planetary Society, Space Access Society, and the Space Frontier Foundation have all called for the SLS to be cancelled. It's a poorly designed rocket, a huge waste of money, and overall a project that is not likely to succeed.
I love space exploration. I love rocket engineers. But I cannot abide either being abused to serve as pawns in congressional pork-barrel spending games.
This is not a question about what NASA manned spaceflight "needs", it's a question about where the Senate wants to funnel money.
NASA manned spaceflight has spent a quarter of a trillion dollars over the last 4 decades.
A quarter of a trillion dollars.
That is the cost of the Shuttle legacy and the ISS. Does anyone think that we, the American taxpayers, actually got a pretty good return on that money? Before you answer keep in mind that we could have easily paid for 150+ Saturn V rockets as well as the appropriate payloads and spacecraft for them for less money.
Meanwhile, companies like SpaceX have managed to build entire orbital launchers from scratch for less than the cost of a single Shuttle flight.
None of the alternative uses for that money are as important? How about using that $10 billion a year to buy commercial flights on Boeing, LockMart, or SpaceX rockets? Right now only a fraction of NASA's funding is actually serving the purpose of advancing the state of the art or improving access to space.
There is an argument about whether the amount of money governments spend on various activities could be better spent on spaceflight.
This is not that argument and has no bearing here. This is an argument about whether NASA is a good conduit for spending money on manned spaceflight activities. And there is overwhelming evidence that despite a handful of successes it has not been. Over time it has gotten less efficient, less safety conscious, and less capable. There is every indication that with Apollo era budgets in place the NASA of today would not be able to get back to the Moon in 10 years or even 20 years.
The unmanned spaceflight portion of NASA still does some pretty good work, but the manned spaceflight portion has become a bureaucratic infused pork-barrel shell of its former glory. There are lots of reasons for that, a lot of them due to consistent political meddling from without, but it's still the truth.
And indeed, other arms of the space industry need much more funding. They will ultimately do all the common varieties of manned spaceflight better, that is inevitable.
The question is, will problems be solved by reducing NASA's budget? I think that is incredibly fucking unlikely. Instead as far as I am concerned we should be shoveling money at all of them like coal into a locomotive. Don't reduce NASAs budget so you can give more to Boeing and SpaceX.. give more to Boeing and SpaceX in spite of NASA's budget.
One half of a penny of every dollar you pay in (federal) taxes goes to science^. That is appalling. For as shitty and expensive as those shuttles were though, that money got us more return than pretty much the rest of that dollar.
If you look at how we budget for science and think "NASA is getting too much" instead of "Science is not getting enough", then you are missing the bigger picture.
^(ie, NASA. the money spent on the NSF isn't even worth bothering to include...)
If the government shit canned NASA tomorrow, and took that money and pumped it into the project Google is doing on self-driving cars wouldn't the world be a better place? Space is great, but how many lives could be saved by implementing self-driving cars nationwide?
Or took all that money and pumped it into computer science R&D. Or biotech R&D. Or nanotech R&D.
The argument for NASA often boils down to an argument for R&D, and there are a lot of more efficient ways to fund R&D than spending a bunch of it on non-R&D type stuff.
Furthermore, shitcanning all the non-manned stuff NASA does is a fucking terrible idea. Science without study of the universe is crazy.
Other points are good, but I'd just comment that as with all government spending, where is the justification for the spending. You can be a space loving person, who wants to see more people reach for the stars, but still think that the entire space program should be eliminated. I cannot in good faith justify (legally or morally) any government spending on space exploration, yet I am rooting for Space X and others 100%!
If you believe in the value of science and the importance of humanity becoming a multi-planetary species, I think you have to support government funded spaceflight. No private company would have had the incentive to make the Hubble or Spitzer telescopes a reality, and they have given us unparalleled insight into the nature of the universe. Because companies have to operate with budgets that demand profit or death within a small amount of time, they will never send probes to investigate other planets, the outer reaches of space, and invest in experiments that may not prove their value for decades. The exploration of space is going to be a long journey, and it requires organizations that can handle long-term goals.
It's also naive to think that SpaceX and other private space companies would even exist without NASA. Their largest contracts are with NASA right now because there is no profit in spaceflight outside of government contracts, space tourism, and satellite launches. And SpaceX engineers say themselves that they owe their success to the designs and knowledge of the early NASA programs which they copy (Very well designed spacecraft with lessons NASA has forgotten). Many designs on Falcon 9 are taken directly from the old Apollo missions, with improvements [1]. In most technical revolutions, large-scale accessibility comes only after a path is paved by a central power. Computers and the internet came to the masses after decades of investment by the military. The only reason jets became the new standard so quickly after WWII was because of development in the war. And when SpaceX goes to Mars, it will be thanks to the wealth of knowledge NASA exploration missions created over decades.
[1] http://www.gizmag.com/date-set-for-spacex-dragon-launch/208
Elon Musk is probably the most amazing entrepreneur of the modern day. Electronic payments. Electric cars (which might prevent the next middle eastern war), and solar power. Space.
Add to that oil is used for more than just fuel for vehicles so electric power and oil both in the Middle East, but I'm sure other sunny countries will generate their own.
Go have a closer look. A Death Cult rules the US.
Honestly, I think it's pretty obvious that Islam is religious, genocidal, and anti-life (i.e., flourishing human life on this earth).
who says they are governed by them
Iran, Egypt, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia. All closely tied into Islam. And that's just a short list.
Religious yes, the other parts you are wrong. You are mistaking what some people do in the name of religion to rally support. Islam's goal isn't to kill people, in fact the basic tenants of the religion are to live a life of peace & spirituality and live in harmony with one's neighbours. Of course this doesn't apply if your neighbours are attacking you, but you should note that what you see is the actions of a few form a religious base of well over 1 billion people.
You also have to understand that the terrorism that you see didn't just arise from a vacuum, people don't just decide to kill other people for no reason, a major part of it has to do with revenge and retribution for past acts committed against them. Not that I am condoning their actions, I just think that you should understand there is more to the media portrayal that goes on, almost every action committed is put in the spotlight of religion even if many of the people involved (such as governments) are not religious, yet no one would think the same of the United States.
Note, I am not going to pursue this further since I don't feel the need to start a religious war in HN. On the other hand if you have something interesting to say about SpaceX, I am all ears.
I don't enjoy making these arguments, but people have to start speaking up about this kind of thing if it's ever going to change - again, analogous to the slavery case.
How do you get the power from there to where it can be used?
What always fascinates me about Elon's story is his ability to self-teach himself the subjects he needs to effectively compete in an industry. He literally taught himself rocket science. I can barely finish a book on business.
Keep in mind the man wants see Mars in his lifetime, taken in that perspective learning rocket science is a pretty small feat. Creating SpaceX is the first step to that goal, and leaving anything on the table - ie. just being a CEO/leader, and not being able to work hand-in-hand with the engineers/scientists he has under employ is a risk.
To me, the key takeaway is if you want something bad enough the seemingly difficult becomes doable.
It shouldn't diminish the respect they have for their heroes, but it is the sign that they should now move out from behind them and chart their own course...except now they are on their own...there is nobody to guide them.
Being human is something we have washed away with dedicated PR staff. I feel 'numb' to public figures now, especially political and that takes something intangible away.
Elon is leading us into space by setting incredible goals and asking for the best from the best. He is a leader in more than one sense. Showing emotion and character is important in leadership and I thought it was appropriate and touching.
Great logic.
How many people build 1 company that does that? He is on track to do it three times over (don't know much about the solar power endeavor, but I imagine it should be similar).
It's also why I love Bezos with his 10,000 year clock. Nothing he does is small.
It is people like that, that inspire me to stop trying to be 'good enough', but be great.
The humanity in the hurt makes the goals seem even more 'doable'.
It's good to draw inspiration from the inspirational, but ultimately you have to be your own man regardless.
Lies. How could you? :(
As I said, take inspiration, as much as you like. But in the end you need to be your own person and stand on your own.
The Dr Aldrin is a legend, and so is Neil Armstrong. It was Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan who did the criticizing of SpaceX, not Dr Aldrin.
$5b incremental cost to do a moon mission, probably, for SpaceX in a few years. $10-20b to do Mars Direct. That's not incredibly far off from a major video game or movie franchise.
I mostly just made up the moon number, based on it being a whole lot easier than Mars. I think you could probably do a recreation of Apollo pretty cheaply (a quick flight to the moon, simple landing, etc.). Certainly a trip to the moon without landing wouldn't be THAT hard once you had a rocket able to escape from earth gravity (maybe 2x as hard as launching to GEO?). You could maybe do it with a Falcon 9 in a single launch, so that's about $2b. It's less fun if you don't land, though.
pretty cheap when you put it next to a bank bailout
Another inspiring TED talk.
I could see it working. "SpaceX: Mission to the Moon". Then reedit it into a film when done, sell that with merchandise and begin the "SpaceX: Mission to Mars" series.
It should be called "James Cameron Goes to the Moon."
The movie is about James Cameron trying to go to the moon, but he is constantly sabotaged by the bad guy from Aliens. Ultimately, he succeeds and gets to the Moon. The last 30 minutes are just sweet, sweet HD shots of the moon, directed by James Cameron.
BTW - 60 Minutes should be retitled "40 Minutes" - from the time codes on my DVR I find that the Musk story was 15 minutes, and the face blindness story was 25 minutes. Is it any wonder people would rather consume video online (rather than watch 20 minutes of Cialis ads).
"Here's to the Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who DO!"
First, there will start to be a lot more people going into space.
Second, there will start to be significant off-Earth infrastructure. Not just satellites, the GPS system, that sort of thing, but meta-infrastructure. Space stations where people do actual work (instead of just research). Systems of transportation. Fuel depots. Repair facilities. Etc. Instead of mounting expeditions to the Moon or Mars or asteroids we will undertake commuter trips. A regularly scheduled vehicle will ferry crew up to an Earth orbit station. There they will travel in a craft that never touches the surface of a planet from that station to another station in orbit of the Moon and they'll take yet another ferry ride down to a lunar colony.
Third, as a consequence of all of this there will start to be a significant effectively permanent off-Earth population and off-Earth economy.
Fourth, as an additional side effect of so much activity significant effort will be spent tackling the medical and other problems of living in space for long periods of time.
And then all of this snowballs until sooner than you realize it there are kids going to college who never knew a time when mankind didn't have cities in orbit, on the Moon, on Mars, etc.
Here's an episode of Risk Takers on Bloomberg for Elon Musk: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/
Great episode as well.
Truly inspiring.
Instead he's killing himself running multiple ground breaking companies, directly challenging near government monopolies in GM / Ford / Boeing / Lockheed (protected by massive lobbying, deep political ties going back decades, and regulation designed to protect them from competition).
If America could get a few more Elon Musks, we might start to get our mojo back. Hey there immigration policy.
I just seemed so elegant and efficient, the kind of thing that could only have come from the mind of private industry that is so mindful of cost and efficiency, unlike the government which only build monstrosities at ridiculous expense (to the taxpayer).
Similarly, if you ask anyone at SpaceX they would tell you it's difficult to underestimate how much they owe to the old grey-beards from NASA who are still around and who helped them get up to speed quickly, avoiding many hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of dollars of blind alleys and reinventing the wheel.
SpaceX is a wonderful example of good engineers - old nasa ones and fresh graduates, united by a common mindset, with enlightened (for which private is often but not strictly a prerequisite) management. That's where they succeed, I think. They look at where they are now, where they want to be, and keep the string taught between the two. But don't think SpaceX could have done this in a vacuum (hohoho). Of the several SpaceXers I've met, including Elon Musk himself back when he had time to give talks at SEDS conferences, none would make such a claim, certainly.
Ah yes... but what did the second stage have?
Not more F-1's, but J-2's, which did not even use the same fuel! Compare this with the route SpaceX is taking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine)#Revision...
Again I think this is where the strength of SpaceX lies (modulo the obvious like hiring smart and/or very experienced people) - they are quite free of all this nonsense, their PMs and designers and fabricators are all under once roof and can close the loop on design and manufacturing feedback and iteration. It's very much like skunkworks back in the day.
Having said all that, they're not immune to interference. Dealing with NASA and the ISS means you have to renormalise what constitutes 'exciting' and 'newsworthy' so where in the early days we had things about engines tests and re-entry tests, now we get releases beginning with sentences like 'Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announced it has successfully completed the preliminary design review...'[1]. I've worked on projects with which NASA or ESA have suddenly got involved and I've seen first hand how the innocence get lost, you go from running to wading through treacle, and you have a bizarre out of body experience where you sit in on one of the meetings and wonder how it has taken three hours for them to agree that a decision should be made about something (but not actually make a decision).
If you've not read skunkworks, I'd highly recommend it. A lot of it details how one of Kelly Johnson's key strengths was being rather brutal to his 'customers' (DoD usually) to prevent their incompetence, expense and geological timescales leaking into his outfit. I can quite understand this offensive form of defence, having seen what government tentacles can do to an otherwise good project.
So basically the Saturn V used LOX/RP-1 in the first stage but LOX/LH2 in the second and third because that was the best configuration, but SpaceX is using LOX/RP-1 in all of them because it's simpler but it gets the job done. (note that SpaceX is apparently considering developing LOX/LH2 upper stage engine for heavier loads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_stage) )
Fortunately I doubt the taxpayer will lose billions on the Tesla loan, unlike the GM bailout fiasco.
I suspect we'd have been in the hole for a lot more than $10-15 billion.
Only if you assess the value to your business of peace, educated citizens, roads, safe food, etc. at zero.
Respectfully, can you please cite a source for this assertion?
Emphasis in italics is mine:
"The loans are part of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which provides incentives to new and established automakers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles. Created in 2007 and appropriated in September 2008, the $25 billion ATVM aims to reduce America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil and create "green collar" jobs. The program is entirely unrelated to the stimulus package or the so-called "bailout" funds that General Motors and Chrysler have received." [1]
[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-gets-l...
Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout
I disagree with this, because the funds available under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program are not related to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). They are entirely different programs, under different government departments: ATVM is under the Department of Energy, while TARP is under the Department of the Treasury.
"You could argue that Tesla was more deserving of government funds than Detroit auto [...]"
One "Detroit auto" company did participate in the ATVM loan program: Ford Motor Company [1].