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Comment by rqtwteye | Hacker News Reader

They could stop with the Mars nonsense and cancel SLS.

The SLS being a government funded competitor to SpaceX has little hope...

That said I am unsure if that is that much of a blow. The government is very good at some things, it looks to me (I am a casual observer) that SpaceX has eaten their lunch in terms of a space programme.

But the James Webb was exactly the sort of incredibly difficult, high risk project that NASA (and Government labs generally) excel at. No private company would ever do something like that. It is a huge achievement and is changing our view, again, of the Universe.

So I guess it will be doomed now too. Noting so dangerous as a good example.

The SLS being a government funded competitor to SpaceX has little hope

SLS was never about being the most practical and/or efficient launcher. It is a pork barrel project, but one with an important role. In particular, it is maintaining vital aerospace industrial capacity. If the US wants things like ICBMs then programs like SLS are a necessary evil.

Oh man, Elon is going to propose a Falcon-9 based ICBM isn't he? Might as well go full Bond villain at this point.

ICBMs have usually been solid fuelled as they can be stored ready to launch.

Typically when you have a situation warranting nukes you won't have time to fuel a falcon 9.

There's lots of bad ideas currently becoming government policy, and that's not even a unique flaw of the USA or Trump or Musk.

So, just because idea of using Falcon 9s as a delivery solution for a strategic nuclear deterrent may be as bad as ordering your chief designer to throw a big steel ball at the window of the new model of car you're currently in the middle of announcing even despite the guy's obvious reticence, doesn't mean it won't happen.

This is a stretch.

Someone makes an uneducated point but it must be defended because Musk bad...

Do you think you're making a good point here?

I don't think it's a stretch at all. GP is pointing out a specific instance that illustrates that Musk doesn't truly understand the capabilities of the things he builds. He talks a good game, but he's not actually a rocket scientist/engineer. But he'll push for whatever he wants to push for, and people like Trump will eat it up and let him do what he wants.

If Musk wants to push for "Falcon 9-based liquid-fueled ICBMs", he'll do so, even if he actually does know they're not the best/right tech for the job. And someone like Trump will listen to him.

It's also a bit in bad faith of you to play the "you only disagree because Musk bad" card, when GP explicitly acknowledges that these sorts of bad government decisions are not unique to the US/Trump/Musk.

US-based ICBMs, yes. Russia and China have actively fielded liquid-fueled ICBMs.

The USA also fielded liquid-fueled ICBMs, but I believe they have all been decommissioned in favor of solid-fueled missiles, which are more reliable and easier to store.

No one is seriously going to propose a liquid fueled rocket for the nuclear deterrence mission. It simply doesn't work.

However, there are potential military applications for a vehicle like Falcon 9. For example, imagine being able to insert a Special Operations team almost anywhere in the world on a few hours notice. In a potential near-peer conflict there will also be a need to quickly launch replacement military satellites to make up attrition losses.

If the US wants ICBMs they'll leverage existing designs. The SLS has nothing to do with them, not in the slightest, aside from the fact that they're all cylindrical in shape.

Maybe they are also orange?

Not the designs, the people and supply chains that build them…

I can't imagine there's much overlap. The early SLS uses space shuttle solid rocket booster casings (because the people involved are only the dumbest people on the entire planet Earth) which don't have parts commonality with anything else. The later SLS, bleh who cares what they'll do, with any luck cancellation.

I can't imagine there's much overlap.

Just look at the suppliers working on the SLS SRBs and those working on the LGM-35 program, perhaps then you'll see the extent of the overlap. Furthermore, you might want to look into why the space shuttle had the architecture it did, and why space shuttle SRBs were being shipped out of Utah. Large scale SRB manufacturing has been, and continues to be, an enormous problem for the DoD. Hence why wasteful programs like SLS exist.

> Just look at the suppliers

I suspect the facilities working on SLS solid rocket boosters are owned by Northrop Grumman, just like the companies that were left over from making Peacekeeper missiles, now making Sentinel missiles, are probably now owned by Northrop Grumman. This doesn't show that Sentinel - or any other program - is benefitting from SLS's supply chains in a meaningful way. It's hard to see how that's possible, given SLS's low-volume nature. But I guess I'll try to keep an open mind...

> Furthermore, you might want to look into why the space shuttle had the architecture it did

I have lots of opinions about that, but if you have some reference material you'd like to recommend, please do! (and if they support the notion that SLS SRB production is somehow a boon to SRB makers everywhere, I guess I'd be intrigued by that as well)

"there's less missile business, and the missile people are making moon rockets now, but I don't see how that could possibly help them make missiles again if they were asked to"

This conversation is painful because people don't seem to understand that, okay, military boosters and civilian boosters are both related businesses, but the SLS SRB business is something separate and is as similar to the others as a fish is to a turnip.

lol the Mars project is a prestige project for Musk now, no way that gets defunded.

It's a distraction and likely a way to fund money to his companies.

I find people like you fascinating. Like it's so obvious that the guy is actually legitimately obsessed with going to Mars. You can question whether that's a good idea and everything else about him, but it's so obvious that this is legitimate.

So I'm seriously so, so curious, because you are far from the only person to think this, why do you think Mars is actually a facade to funnel money to his companies?

Well, at one time he was obsessed with going to Mars... Now he seems more obsessed with being the most based twitter user and wrecking people's lives for upboats from his cronies.

This might surprise you but you can’t always take what people say at face value. You also have to think about why they say they want something and what else they might want. Mars is a great example of something he could fund himself, and something he presumably has funded in the past. So if he’s going to take government funding now when he’s holding the strings, it stands to reason that he’s taking advantage of his position. And you can see that play out with the $400 million dollar purchase of Cybertrucks for example where there are tons of more cost-effective tools for the job. So it seems like whatever he says his real goal is to strip-mine certain agencies for profit while he does it. Why would we trust him?

This might surprise you, but you have no idea what you are talking about.

You don't have to believe anything Elon says, just look at what he has done for the past 22 years. SpaceX was founded on the singular purpose of getting to Mars. Elon originally tried to buy ICBMs from Russia to launch to Mars, when that fell through he started his own rocket company. The entire tech stack and rockets being built are to reduce the cost of mass to orbit by the orders of magnitude needed to colonize mars. There is no other reason to build something as huge as Starship. Elon IS funding getting to mars by himself, the Starship program is mostly self funded, with the Artemis HLS contract coming well after the program was started.

He said his Tesla comp package was 100% to get to Mars for mankind then immediately bought Twitter when it hit the perf targets and he first got the package.

I'm really not just looking at what he says, but his actions over the last 20+ years, combined with the fact that starting a rocket company is not a particularly great way to become richer. It certainly hasn't made Jeff Bezos more rich.

I think what you're saying is that he is obsessed with Mars and is simply taking advantage of his position to fund this goal more and also massively profit. This I can understand and I think is a very real concern. I don't think it's what the poster I originally replied to is saying though.

If he is "obsessed" with that, why is he so disinterested in making progress towards it?

Can you elaborate on that? What do you think SpaceX is and what do you think Starship is? Legitimately curious to hear your reply

A way for him to suckle the udder of the tax payer and claim the glory of other people's labour and ability.

He has no interest in being able to control himself for years at a time, nor is he interested in solving the difficult problems of such a long deep space endeavour. If he were, then he'd be cooperative and disciplined, and try to make progress in this area.

So you're saying that SpaceX is all a government handout scheme, but that it also has produced glory?

Furthermore you're saying that since SpaceX isn't working on problems of habitation and deep space survival that he's not serious about Mars?

Is that right?

Is he? Obsessed people are generally hyper-focused on their obsession by definition, Musk has pivoted to electric cars, "free speech" and now re-shaping government since announcing his Mars ambitions.

He's definitely obsessed with being seen by others as the guy who's going to be the first to Mars, but I'd put it in the same camp as his obsession with being seen as an elite Path of Exile 2 player.

Consider it this way: it is absolutely a way to funnel money to his companies because he is (probably genuinely) obsessed with getting to Mars. More money for his companies means faster development of his technology, and the ability to do more in parallel. He knows this, of course. It doesn't matter if the reason for his greed is Mars, or just plain old greed.

Musk's position as CEO of SpaceX and head of DOGE is the most conflict-y of conflicts of interest when it comes to deciding what happens to NASA. It 100% doesn't matter if he is the truest of true believers in the need to make a settlement on Mars. We should not be giving him the power to dismantle other space-related efforts to fuel his personal project. Even if he is right at how critical Mars is, it is incredibly dangerous to allow people with conflicts of interest to be responsible for decisions on this scale.

See that position makes more sense to me, but I don't think that's what the post I originally replied to was saying. Maybe it is, but it didn't sound like it to me.

I think it’s the other way around. He is obsessed with Mars and now he has the influence to make it happen with the help of taxpayer money.

See this I can understand and I also think is true. I'm curious about folks who think Elon is hyping Mars as some money-making strategy. It seems like a really ineffective way to make money.

SLS has been to the moon and back. Starship hasn't yet made it to orbit.

SLS has been around the moon and back; that mission was equivalent to an unmanned Apollo VIII. Going around the moon is much easier than landing on it and coming back.

Sure. And not-quite-getting-into-orbit is easier -- significantly easier -- than going around the moon.

What's your point, really, aside from nitpicking, when "orbiting the moon" is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the statement "been to the moon and back"?

I think the difference between the US lunar exploration program and the Soviet one qualifies as more than mere nitpicking.

Starship has made orbit several times.

No it has not. Cite a source please.

Kinda. They demonstrated orbital delta-v, but the perigee was always low enough to guarantee re-enter atmosphere after just half an orbit from launch, because of SpaceX's unreadiness to confidently perform a controlled de-orbit otherwise.

To be pedantic, Starship has made orbital velocity several times. It didn't circularize enough to be a full orbit. A full orbit would have been irresponsible. Blue Origin has left a massive trail of space junk from their last test mission because they went for an ambitious orbit rather than one that would passively deorbit immediately.

https://x.com/shell_jim/status/1891842756500222212

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