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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I'm a contrarian, a-social person. if everybody were running left, I'd run right. I completely despise hero-worship. It ruins people's critical-thinking skills. But if I were to have a living hero, it'd be Elon Musk. The man rocks. Seriously. The guy has nailed every interview I've ever seen of him.

Having said that, I'm concerned that we focus a little too much on Space-X. As much as what Elon is doing is awesome, I'd feel better for the species if we had 3 or 4 competitors very close on his heels. I know that he has competitors, but as far as I know none of them seem to have the long term vision and dedication to reusable, scaleable architectures that he has.

I don't want to trade having all of our eggs in a basket labeled "NASA" with having all of our eggs in a basket labeled "Space-X"

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Nah, it's fine this way. Right now SpaceX has found a way to massively lower costs and streamline operations, which is a huge win. They've figured out how to make a profit in aerospace beyond just padding big government procurement contracts. Which is great for them, their business is going to grow by leaps and bounds as more and more people use them for launches. And it's great for us too because it means those launches will be cheaper than they would have been otherwise.

But it's also great for the market. Nothing attracts imitation like runaway success, and profits. There are already companies gearing up to compete head to head with SpaceX (Blue Origin, XCOR, Virgin Galactic, etc.) And there are the traditional companies (Boeing, LockMart, etc.) who may be able to renovate their operations enough to build rockets efficiently. And as the market grows (which is inevitable given the lowering costs) there will be new competitors in orbital launch that are not even on the horizon today.

> But if I were to have a living hero, it'd be Elon Musk.

I do have a living hero, and he is Elon Musk.

Has anyone noticed the parallels with Schwarzenegger, and the differences?

When Arnold was a young athlete, someone asked him "so what do you want to do with your life?" He said: "I'd like to be a bodybuilding world champion. Then I'd like to become an actor. Then I'd like to do politics."

He nailed every single one of those goals. But please notice those are the ultimate goals of the individual ego (more precisely, of the male ego): physical power, fame, money, and political power. He's basically Conan in real life.

Now, Elon Musk also made a list of the most important issues to solve - the ones most important for the planet, for humanity as a whole, not for the little individual ego. We need a clean environment, we need energy, and we need to put some of our eggs in another basket.

And then he went on knocking them off the list one by one. First PayPal, to achieve financial independence. Then Tesla Motors (good for the environment), Solar City (energy), and SpaceX (Mars colonization). And he's willing to risk his own life to achieve those goals.

I've no doubt, Elon Musk is up there among the greatest. If he makes it to Mars, one day kids will learn his name from the history books.

I submit that it is Elon's individual ego that drives him to strive for and achieve these goals. Its just that his goals seem broader to you than Arnie's. And to a large extent they are. But the goals are driven by his ego, and not some mumbo jumbo altruistic feeling.

Uh... it's complicated. And that ("it's complicated") is something one needs to repeat often when talking about psychology with computer folks. ;)

Yes, it's his ego driving him. No, I did not imply he's a saint. Yes, his goals are more broad.

Careful with judgements like this, since they are often projections of your own self. In other words, you saw in my statements things that irritate you, and responded to those projections.

And finally, joining and equating mumbo-jumbo with altruism is already very revealing in terms of your own attitude. ;)

And, with that, the armchair psychologist is signing off.

I am not afraid of revealing my values. And what do I have to be careful about?

Cockroaches hide in dark places.

I don't believe that is a driving factor. Is it that hard to believe someone would want to do something soo ambitious just because they want the future to be better? I would say that's the default desire of a human being until it's beaten out of them by society.

> they want

That want is driven by ego.

It does seem all very noble except when you remember that SpaceX sees itself as a military weapons company. In almost every interview, amongst the background hype, he makes a mention of defence.

Name me one weapon SpaceX has had a hand in developing.

Name me one.

On the contrary, I seem to recall him saying something to the effect of "it's unfortunate than the U.S. government classifies spacecraft as weapons, so we have to do everything in house."

Found it: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/spacex-... (although his assessment of rockets being classified as weapons seems more neutral than I remembered it)

"rocket technology is ... considered an advanced weapons technology so you can't really [outsource] - so in our case manufacturing is necessary."

Rocketry is a dual-use technology; it can be used for good (satellites, exploration, science) or for launching explosives around the world. Paints are also a dual-use technology; it can be used for good (art) or evil (it can get you high).

Do we label every paint manufacturer a drug dealer because they have a product that can be misused?

evil (it can get you high)

-_-. You could have come up with a less politically charged example than that (perhaps any arbitrary blunt, heavy, or sharp object?).

He could have chose graffiti, but regardless his still had a very valid point.

Space-X has plenty of competition. After all NASA doesn't make it's rockets itself - Boeing, Lokheed-Martin, Orbital Sciences, etc do. The difference is the funding model, but there's nothing to stop these other companies adapting to the competition Space-X is providing.

The risk of wishing for a competitor is that one will turn up that doesn't compete on innovation and efficiency, but competes on some other axis such as financial or political muscle. That might provide benefits in the short term, but long term it would be terrible if Space-X were pushed aside that way.

Actually, all things considered, we're still pretty much "the little guy" of aerospace (even if social media trends would convince one otherwise).

It is fun to imagine SpaceX as some megalith of the private aerospace industry, poised to usurp NASA and colonise the galaxy in the name of the free market (which is almost the narrative you'd get reading all the press), but this kind of thinking has led to some really unfortunate misconceptions in the past (such as that of Gene Cernan, who did later apologise to Elon once he learned more about the company). The reality is that in some ways we're still basically a mid-level startup (as startuppy as a defence contractor can be, in any case), and without the successes of COTS 1 (December 2010) and COTS 2 (May 2012), most people here would never have heard of SpaceX.

We're definitely not in competition with or on track to replace NASA (they're our biggest customer!), and we're not even the most prominent name in government space launch at present (media/popularity aside). ULA, in fact, is the current "evil empire" of the public launch market (United Launch Alliance; Lockheed/Boeing joint venture founded in 2006). Aside from ULA, there are a bunch of small companies with similar visions (e.g. Orbital), as well as some pretty fierce competition both in the US and abroad gearing up to seriously attack commercial launch / space exploration (e.g. China). Keep in mind that this isn't necessarily solely related to pressure from SpaceX, but also the natural result of a recovery in the global launch market as a whole since the crash in the 90's.

Don't get me wrong: SpaceX is 100% on track to kick everyone else's ass and get us to Mars next decade. However, it's pretty far from a given, and there is still a ton of resistance against new entrants (entrenched deals and interests, competing lobbyists, FUD/propaganda floating around Washington, etc.).

Right now is way too early for you to start worrying about what could potentially happen in a hypothetical SpaceX-dominated launch / space travel market (especially if it's for the sake of being contrarian). Let's at least approach that point in time before seriously discussing it's potential merits and drawbacks.

---

Edit / Full Disclosure: I work here, but I don't speak on behalf of SpaceX or anything of the sort.

There are competitors, but none of them have delivered yet. Then again, SpaceX didn't really deliver until this year when it docked with ISS.

Blue Origin is doing things, but I'm not sure it's not just a vanity project for Bezos. XCOR is working on some subsystems that are probably transplantable across different vendors. Bigelow seems to be working on payloads. Scaled Composites is trying something quite different from SpaceX and it remains to be seen which way is better (if there's even such a single answer to that).

There are even smaller places like Armadillo, but it may be not meant to compete. I'm reading a lot in here, but I think Carmack sees it as an incubator for new space talent.

> I'm reading a lot in here, but I think Carmack sees it as an incubator for new space talent.

I may be reading a lot in here, but are you saying that incubators are mostly just talent farms?

You are applying your YC bias to the word 'incubator'.

in·cu·ba·tor/ˈinkyəˌbātər/

Noun:

1. An enclosed apparatus providing a controlled environment for the care of premature babies. 2. An apparatus used to hatch eggs or grow microorganisms under controlled conditions.

I am with you on the first paragraph. BS on the rest - we focus too much on FB.

HN is like a real time ticker for FB stock and stories while Elon should be valued at 100 times zuck.

We should focus MORE on spaceX and Tesla and zero on FB.

"I'm concerned that we focus a little too much on Space-X."

That is an unusual point of view. A common behavior for people exposed to a 'success' is to focus intensely on it and try to learn from it so that they can duplicate it. It is also common for people who feel threatened in some way by a success to try to diminish it or explain it away as a fluke. From the perspective of someone who feels more access to space is critical to the future of the US economy, if not the worlds economy, I dig into everything I can about Space-X to see how they changed the formula.

They are certainly not the first company to attempt developing an orbital launch capability. For those to young to remember Ronald Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) it was going to require literally hundreds, if not thousands, of satellite launches. That potential market drew a lot of smart people in to try to figure out how to build a commercial launch capability.

My personal favorite of that time, the DC-X [1], was considered a leading contender. (From what I've seen of Blue Origin, and that Wikipedia reference, it looks like B-O has picked up that line of research). But none of these efforts came anywhere close to being as successful as Space-X. So I really really want to know how they avoided the traps these other companies landed in.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/07/virgin-galactic-satelli...

The air-launch system has a lot of flexibility and convenience. It's also a proven concept. (Scaled Composites actually built an aircraft launch system for small orbital payloads years in advance of Space Ship One. It's hard to find with all of the Virgin and Stratolaunch links, though.)

Orbital Systems Corp. has an air-launched booster, Pegasus, in regular service (launched off a converted L-1011 airliner). I'm not sure Rutan or Scaled Composites had much to do with it, though.

(OSC is also the "other" commercial cargo provider for the space station, though they haven't started with demo flights yet; they're using their own booster for this, though the first-stage engines are refurbs from the old Soviet lunar program. Literally --- another American aerospace company bought thirty-odd engines that had been built for the Soviet N1 booster out of a warehouse in Kazakhstan...)

So what are some of the interviews of him that you have enjoyed? I've seen the one at [Pandodaily](http://pandodaily.com/2012/07/12/pandomonthly-presents-a-fir...).

The guy is remarkable. A Jobs-like visionary. But Space X is fantasy at this point driven by a titan of a personality. Having worked in the space business, I'm far more impressed by Tesla, and even Paypal.

Fantasy? How so?

They've launched orbital rockets and demonstrated they can do so far more cost effectively than anyone else in history. They've done the same for delivering pressurized cargo to ISS. And their work on manned spaceflight, heavy lift launchers, and reusable launch vehicles is enormously credible given their current track record and history of unabashed transparency.

If you've worked in the industry (I'm assuming not at SpaceX), I can see how you'd assume that SpaceX would be similar. It isn't.

It really feels like a startup here; everything moves incredibly quickly, major advances in launch technology are being engineered and tested all the time at a fairly breakneck pace, and the whole show is run by some pretty brilliant minds (a good mix of younger engineers and veterans from NASA and the private auto and aerospace industries). Regardless of how closely reality ends up aligning with Elon's goals, the progress made here is pretty far from fantastic.

By fantastic, I'm talking about this "Mars for half a million dollars in 15 years" talk. It's crazy ambitious. Space X is doing lots of great stuff in new ways, but it's all stuff that has been done before. There will be a wall of difficulty, both technical and financial, that will prove extremely difficult to overcome. I will even go as far as to say it's a pipe dream (although I hope I am wrong!).

But I've always thought part of Musk's brilliance is that he has a way fo aiming for the stars and landing on the moon. The moon is still pretty cool, but it isn't the stars.

Ah, fair enough; that's pretty different from "SpaceX [as a whole] is fantasy" (much more reasonable).

As far as financial issues, SpaceX is pretty hugely successful with commercial launch as it is (even more so with the new NASA deal announced this morning); but, worst case financial scenario (as the inside joke goes), "Hey Congress, we're about to send a manned spacecraft to Mars, and some country's flag is going in with them...".

As far as technical issues, I can't really subscribe to the idea that the team hasn't accounted for or will inevitably fail to account for some massive unknown/unforeseen/insurmountable blocker on the road to Mars. It's certainly possible, but there really isn't any fundamentally unique problem (that I can see) in a manned mission to Mars which hasn't already been solved in some form in the past.

Agreed. I should have been more specific. I'm talking only in the context of making a business of sending people to Mars as described vaguely by Musk in various interviews.

I am still very skeptical that there is a non-government way to keep someone alive for a round trip. That's a very tough problem to fix with limited finances and time.

Could we consider Armadillo Aerospace a competitor? John Carmak et. al. http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/

No. But you might consider Sierra Nevada Corp, Boeing, or ATK as competitors.

I had forgotten that Armadillo Aerospace existed. Do they consider themselves to be a serious competitor? In other words do they actually employ engineers and design rockets, or are they just talking about it?

"Armadillo Aerospace has been officially granted a full commercial launch license by the FAA. Paying payloads launching next month. "

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/228858210327609344

Hero? Is he really doing anything special or is he just doing cool things with the government's money, and would they have survived without the cash injection? Surely its harder to bootstrap a business, those guys should be called heros.

People have done far worse things with the government's money.

SpaceX was always primarily funded by Elon personally while starting up. It is a business. No, most businesses are not more difficult to bootstrap than commercial space launch services.

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