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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

I am complete outsider and know nothing about this so I am sorry to ask but in my view this is a shocking proposition. Can anyone corroborate this?

EDIT: Specifically the claim that "SpaceX is so far behind on its bills that dozens and dozens of companies in Texas have had to place liens against the company"

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Corroborating complaints about twitter severance [0]. The lawsuit was dismissed because of jurisdiction, not merit.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-beats-500-million-se...

They churn through employees fast and they usually exit through burnout (no offloading) and the people wanting to work there skew towards young people who don't know what they're doing. A lot of work gets delayed, dropped, etc and some bad suppliers even take advantage of that ("the last person said they'd do X").

I know it's en-vogue to hate on Elon companies, and a lot of people would love to hear that the World's Richest Man is having financial issues, but in reality it's a bunch of starry-eyed newgrads trying to make the world better but taking on more than they can handle.

It's remarkable that, for a bunch of young people who don't know what they're doing, they've completely decimated any competitors - both public and private.

These guys are idiots, fucking morons, and can’t get anything right. Somehow they’re also outcompeting us on everything. It isn’t clear why, but it must be because we are smarter.

China very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing despite this being deliberately made difficult by ITAR, suggests there's a lot of room for the American (and ESA) competitors to be structurally inept without needing Musk's staff to be demonstrating an unusual (as opposed to industry standard) degree of genius.

They have copied the external look of the rockets (which is, for obvious reasons, not protected by ITAR), but to my knowledge no one, China or otherwise, has managed to match the internal engineering prowess nearly a decade later.

To say that China is "very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing" is quite the stretch.

Blue Origin has finally turned it around and is getting close to matching SpaceX.

I sure hope so, but also caution (admittedly as an outsider, your posts suggest greater familiarity than I have) that there's not enough evidence yet to be confident of that — finally getting to launch is really impressive, but their first orbital capable rocket is still a sample size of 1.

(Counter point is that New Glenn's one orbital launch is more impressive than all of the Starship launches combined, as SpaceX is willing to burn hardware during tests and they have many more Starship tests to go).

I know people at SpaceX, but I don't know anyone at Blue Origin. We're all very curious to know what has changed, as they very clearly have made changes. There was a large shakeup in company management there in late 2023, and the turnaround on timeline was stunning. They are certainly moving very, very fast now.

China is the world's largest economy by large (in terms of their internal costs - PPP), have 1.4 billion people meaning a proportionally larger share of extremely capable outliers, a highly capable technocratic orientated leadership with defacto authoritarian powers to get things done, and they are highly motivated to demonstrate successes in space. And a lot of SpaceX's 'secret sauce' isn't really secretive. For instance that Starship is made out of stainless steel is a big deal, but now provably correct. And rapid reuse/landing is again now obviously viable and a very good idea, which was not at all apparent for many years.

In spite of all of this they are still a very distant 2nd place behind SpaceX. If anything ITAR hurts more than helps SpaceX since it means their talent pool is strictly limited to strictly domestic talent. They seriously have something "special" going on.

Are they behind? China has a space station and they have done a sample return from the Moon. They've landed on Mars as well. If you stick to a narrow definition of rockets, there's a case to put SpaceX ahead. But overall, they are closing the gap with the US very quickly. I would not be surprised if they put humans on the Moon before Artemis or SpaceX.

Yeah I'm definitely only speaking in terms of rockets. In terms of achievements I think China is probably #1 overall, but it's close -- SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission puts them well ahead in terms of human spaceflight. That said if we just dropped the whole SLS nonsense and started dedicating NASA's $20 billion+ per year to actually doing stuff, our achievements would rapidly surpass given the edge in rocketry.

Artemis definitely isn't going to be putting anybody on the Moon. It again relies on the SLS which is just an endless money pit. But I do think it'll be interesting to see if SpaceX gets there before China. But I think the big picture is on Mars. I expect whoever gets their first will probably foretell who dominates space for the next century. Because once you can put men on Mars, the entire Solar System starts to viably become your playground.

Damn, all these fucking morons and idiots are not structurally inept and everyone else somehow is. It must be because we are very intelligent that these morons are successful.

I'm not entirely clear who you're mocking here; Boeing, trying to understand why SpaceX and China are doing well? If so, we're on the same page.

all the other competitors are unserious and/or treating it as a money siphoning scheme. in particular, the public contractors siphoning money from the government and blue origin siphoning money from bezos.

It would be surprising if spacex wasn't just awful at paying things on time, as there's no reason they should have actual financial difficulties.

I don't know what the person you are replying to is talking about. They clearly don't know anyone who works at SpaceX. The age there does trend young, but think 24-year-old flight controller for Apollo, not intern that doesn't know anything. I have friends who work at SpaceX and gripe about how difficult it is to hire people. But not for lack of applicants--their standards are just so high. Nearly everyone working at SpaceX is cracked.

> 24-year-old flight controller for Apollo

E.g. intern that knows nothing

From the perspective of a crusty old man anyway.

The average age of everyone in the room at Mission Control during Apollo 11 was 28. The managers in the room were outliers (e.g. Gene Kranz was 36), which drew the average up. The median age was younger.

The Manhattan Project was made possible by similarly young grad students.

You can be as crusty as you like, but the reality is that young smart people can be extraordinarily effective under the right conditions.

Flight controllers execute the mission, but they also rely on the engineers who built the things and wrote the procedures. Flight controllers often are young, even today and even in control centres outside SpaceX. The engineers designing and building the systems tend to be a bit older.

Not in the Apollo days they weren't. They were almost all straight out of engineering school.

I know a few people working at SpaceX. Most are good. But a few I wonder how they ever got hired there.

As a customer of SpaceX, though, I have to say their customer service is barebones. It is almost a relief when I work with another launch provider since they provide a much better service and support. I always compare it to a low cost airline in my head, like flying Spirit instead of Emirates kind of thing.

They've outcompeted by improving their designs faster, by being willing to take risks and do stuff that might work, rather than requiring 9000 levels of process for everything. To my mind that's completely consistent with the kind of company that might lose track of some invoices and not pay until a supplier kicks up enough of a fuss.

Yeah, I've always been trying to be objective as possible when it comes to the hate sent towards Tesla, SpaceX, etc from the heat Elon is getting but having lived near Hawthorne, I've met a couple of people who worked at SpaceX and it is insane. I had a really good friend who moved from the midwest with his wife to spacex and she became a favorite at spacex which meant she lived at spacex. He would see her like once a week and eventually they went to shit. I had applied there before but after seeing that I was no longer interested

The only thing surprising to me is how people don't know this.

The propaganda machine must be real good.

I think people in the industry know? I went to a SpaceX recruitment event back in 2010, and even then they were very upfront about it. People give their heart and soul to the company, and their turnover from burnout is shockingly high. The recruiter had some nicer way of phrasing it, but it was completely transparent what they meant.

Why was this guys wife so important to have around the office at SpaceX if she wasn’t an employee?

I think he is saying she is a SpaceX employee, and was doing well at her job but working a lot.

It is confusingly worded, but I think the wife is the SpaceX employee.

To be a neutral as possible. The claim is very much a hit piece that makes a good soundbite or headline. Most large construction projects have single digit liens that get placed against it and in this case we don't know what % of the liens are because of contractors not paying and which are SpaceX themself.

Hadn't heard of it either until up-thread so I looked. The two primary articles that were found on a search were from Reuters and the San Antonio Express News. Most other seem to just be referencing the Reuters article and using the same quotes. Tend to think the opinion up-thread is probably close, and SpaceX is basically not paying because they can, because people want the work, and because they can make more holding the money and delaying as long as possible, while eating relatively small fees.

Reuters, May 2024: "Quick to Build, Slow to Pay" https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-qui...

SAEN, Feb, 2025: "Contractors say they're owed more than $5.5 million" https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/spacex-unpaid-c...

There's also a "somewhat" unique one from MySanAntonio that goes over the general range of lawsuits that are being filed against Musk in Texas over a range of issues. It happens to include the Reuters article lawsuits and liens as one of the many listed.

MySanAntonio, Sept, 2024: "lawsuits in Texas" https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/austin/article/elon-musk-t...

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