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Actually I was just listening to this song, when OP recommended the SpaceX video and I did not want to pause the song. A happy accident.

And in 2002 a neuroscientist hooked a camera to a blind man's brain and he could see well enough to drive a car around an empty parking lot without running into things. And yet there are still many blind people.

Doing something cool once doesn't impact civilization. Doing it affordably at scale does. If Space X can do the chopstick landing reliably and integrate it into their operations, then that will be impactful - and change civilization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Dobelle

Is the whole point of this thing to land the first stage on the moon, or just the Starship? My understanding is that it's just Starship, and the first stage will always return to Earth. I think one of us has a very confused understanding of the whole point of the thing.

They did? I've not heard of that, and a cursory search isn't finding anything. Got any more info on this, which rocket, etc? I'd love to learn about that.

Just makes it more humiliating for SpaceX competitors. ESA, China, ULA all playing catchup to NASA tech from decades ago. Why didn't they commercialize it?

Did Apple invent the touchscreen or the cell phone or high dpi displays?

So if we're moving the goalposts from hundreds of successful booster landings and reuses back to a simple technology demonstrator executing a hop in the 1990s, then I propose we go all the way back to propulsively landing a manned capsule on the Moon in 1969. SpaceX is 60 years obsolete!

NASA Landed on the moon in the 60s with an abacus. SpaceX can’t get out of low Earth orbit.

> go again the same day.

That seems like a stretch. What is the actual turnaround time for Starship? fwiw the Shuttle had a lot of lofty promises of reusability that were technically true as long as you didn't consider how long the turnaround time was.

Is there such a need for a heavy launch rocket to launch routinely?

He's already spent the $3bn funding that was supposed to deliver the rocket to the moon and back.

I think the economics of space are are much more likely to be transformed by something like https://www.longshotspace.com/. Rockets are complex, still costly, and polluting.

Literally anything but the metric system, huh? ;)

Also, as mass to orbit gets cheaper you can build your payload more cheaply. Many compromises in complexity and material cost are made to minimize payload mass - we'll be able to launch cheap and heavy satellites and probes into orbit instead.

>(depending on your accounting).

some of the best weasel words ever laid to print. Enron accounting vs PWC vs your mom using Quickbooks for her side hustle type of depending?

> Starship is designed to be able to launch bulk cargo into LEO in >100 T chunks for <$10m per launch,

So, for the cost of a single SLS launch ($4B), Starship would be able to put the mass of the battleship USS Texas into orbit.

If the cost is reduced to $1M/launch, it could put the mass of four Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers into orbit.

That's very good. And it's from 2021. Since then:

- Starship is actually launching now

- Boeing's reputation and credibility are in tatters

- Trump won with heavy support from Musk.

Expect a new head of NASA who is pro-Musk, and a cancellation of the Senate Launch System.

On the other hand, it's not clear what a Moon base is good for. The ISS isn't very useful.

> We need a team of economists to rederive the relative elasticities of various design choices and boil them down to a new set of design heuristics for space system production oriented towards maximizing volume of production.

Great article, but that's not what economists do. It's more what cost accountants do.

Brilliant article, and I neglected to bookmark it earlier, thank you.

No. The ports were just expanding on an existing idea. I live in a port city, a thousand years ago middle ages people with much smaller boats used this same area to travel much shorter distances with fewer goods, today it has those cranes and a railway and moves inter-modal containers which have travelled from across the world, but it's just the same idea.

Why is there a port here? Because of the unusual tidal pattern? Deep water? No. People. The other reasons are reasons to put the port here maybe in particular rather than a few miles in either direction, but the people are why there's a port. In 1024 there were thousands of people, today perhaps closer to half a million depending on how you count.

There are no people on Luna, and no people on Mars. Visiting these barren rocks is like going up Everest.

This damp rock is where our species was born and it's where it will die. It's not much, but its ours, and there's nothing like it within any plausible travel distance.

See this is the kind of thing that's not helpful.

It's just an outlandish overly optimistic mishmash of different concepts.

Let's start with your analogy:

> Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe didn’t cost $500, but only $5, unbelievable, right?

If you mean to use this to explain that what today costs X will in the future cost 0.01X, you're probably right.

But a more accurate analogy is "Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe didn't cost $50,000,000, but only $500,000, unbelievable, right?"

Same ratios, but deeply different implications.

Today, the idea of setting up a continuously settled Mars colony - hell even a Moon colony - is unfeasibly expensive. It's ACHIEVABLE - we have the technology and the money - but it would cost an intolerable percentage of the GDP of the world to accomplish.

A 100x reduction in costs means that it becomes a fundable endeavour that countries like the US could still justify.

We're still talking about generations - maybe a century - away from someone being able to just pop over to Mars for a summer vacation, the way that a college student could to do today with an intercontinental flight.

> Many things we see in sci-fi, like lunar and Martian cities or orbital cruise ships, could soon become reality.

For a very generous definition of soon and for a highly implausible definition of what a "cruise ship" is - it'll never be as accessible to the average person as earth cruise ships. Not as long as you keep using rockets.

Regardless of reusability, there are realities of fixed FOSSIL FUEL costs associated with getting into gravity. They're not cheap, and they're not frivolous. If you want to be able get things into orbit as cheap as you're suggesting, you need to start investing in a space elevator, which noone is right now.

> Personally, I can’t wait to see a massive, kilometer-wide telescope in space

Cool, yeah, that's true, that becomes more available.

> or nestled in a crater on the Moon.

..why?

> We might finally figure out dark matter, dark energy, anti-gravity.

And the final cherry on the cake. Humanity becoming inter-planetary is important on a macro scale. And trying to go further and further into space will INCENTIVISE research into these concepts.

But in no way does getting to orbit cheaper make it easier to figure out any of these concepts. There's nothing we can do from Mars or on the way to Mars in terms of this science that we can't do from Earth.

Your posts reminds me of the building of the first transcontinental railroad. It had many fits and starts, and people thought it would take decades to pay off.

But just as soon as it was completed, it changed everything overnight.

This is what Musk is doing.

Hence the plan to have ten or so launches to refuel the top stage while it's still in orbit, a place that notably _is_ halfway to the moon's surface + the return trip to the earth.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Solar_sy...

this just reads as very strange. "meet it on the way"? it's not like they can place these in an orbit that they can just pull up and stop to refuel like a highway gas station. the refueling "pod" would need to be moving at the same speed as the ship.

The news is about SpaceX sharing the launch date for the 6th Starship test flight. Musk is not even mentioned in the announcement.

Democracy?

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/a-chinese-rocket-narro...

I agree with this, especially when you consider that it is us, the taxpayer that is largely subsidizing musk to build out this toll booth.

It is not crazy to believe that in the medium term that SpaceX will be one of the only viable ways for America to access space. In that position SpaceX will have a lot of leverage and ability to extract concessions from anyone wanting to go to space.

Why my tax dollars should go to help the worlds richest man build a toll booth between earth and space is beyond me.

I think they will want to deal with heatshield first. As of now, it hasn't survived deorbiting.

SpaceX can launch satellites using Falcon9 and do it routinely. Starship needs to be developed and reach milestones, so they can get paid by NASA. Having a payload is a complication (unless it's a fun payload, remember the roadster car :D)

That and flap sturdiness, if they want to be able to re-enter over land so they can catch the ship.

They've addressed that in Block 2. Test 6 still flies block 1, so we won't see any substantive improvements on that until test 7.

Remote termination is something they can do in the early boost phase, when there is a defined hazard zone over a depopulated patch of ocean. It doesn't cause the rocket to disappear; its effect is to disable the engines, end uncontrolled acceleration, and break the booster apart into small pieces—all of which will still fall to the ground (ocean) as debris.

If you did this to a Starship in orbit, you'd likely have large chunks of steel reentering and reaching the ground intact.

If the object is already in orbit, the debris from an FTS activation would also mostly be left in orbit, which isn't great. They really need to demonstrate the ability to de-orbit the vehicle before putting into orbit.

Generally that isn't done for a vehicle in orbit, since the distribution of debris in orbits used by other spacecraft would be significant.

A Starship second stage stranded in orbit would be a problem because detonation would cause a bunch of orbital debris, but simply waiting for natural re-entry would result in an unpredictable landing location that could result in large debris reaching populated areas.

Reliable, controlled re-entry to a targeted location is very important for Starship to be an operational launch system.

It would work, all too well. Especially if the speed was just slightly suborbital. Rain of steel over a random spot (or, rather, a trace) on the Earth's surface. You may be lucky and that trace might cross a desolate ocean; or you may not be lucky, and some Asian megalopolis with 25 million people may be below.

Detonation in orbit would cause garbage in orbit that could destroy many satellites. It is absolutely not permitted.

Detonating something in orbit could trigger Kessler's Syndrome.

I'll often spend a little time while watching the flight-tests (usually with Tim Dodd / EverydayAstronaut) just doing a search on YouTube for 'spacex live' and usually report 15-20 each time. They are very easy to spot when you've seen a few of them. I'll usually get a report of a few being shut down later in the day, and more over the next couple of days.

But, yes, they should be easy for YT to detect & block automatically - it's frustrating they (and other scams) get to stay online so long.

How about RICO act? Youtube is clearly and knowingly profiting from a criminal activity.

EA and NSF have their own cameras so they aren't just republishing SpaceX's Twitter stream. But things definitely get out of sync when there are multiple layers of streaming.

Thank you for the clarification. It's delays all the way down. :)

I was cycling between the "official" stream and EA to try and catch the most-live and I found EA was a couple seconds ahead.

Nah, they are just ignoring the damaging effects on individuals and cashing in the ad money.

They're already the best and cheapest launch provider with Falcon 9.

> super heavy launch market doesn’t yet exist.

Ye of little imagination!

Just imagine how differently you can do space exploration when launch costs are not in the multi billion (SLS) or hundred million (Falcon Heavy) dollar range, but more like a million dollars.

You can send much bigger, heavier and cheaply constructed probes. And you can give them lots and lots more fuel, especially if you refuel them in-orbit, so less travel time.

Have a heavily shielded/armored Starship that launches small nuclear propulsion units into orbit that are then connected to the probes.

When launching a super heavy ($1 million for 100-150t to LEO) costs a small fraction of what a Falcon 9 launch costs today ($90 million), you can take over that entire segment as well, even without ride sharing.

Or consider CubeSats. They currently weigh around 2kg and ride share with a primary launch.

At $1 million per launch and 100 tons, you could launch 1000 CubeSats at 100 kg each, for $1000 per CubeSat. Though I am not sure if that would work out logistically.

Maybe 200 CubeSats at 500 kg each would be easier, $5000 a pop. Still very doable.

An obvious use case is just ridesharing. Multiple companies want to launch midsize satellites? Rather than paying for multiple Falcon 9 launches group up a few into one Starship launch and save a lot of money.

Musk expressed outrage that the Russians are massively overcharging the US so he went on to massively overcharge the US.

> the LM was definitely not one of the easiest parts of Apollo

It had to deal with a lot of uncertainties which were unresolvable from a distance. But conceptually and developmentally it was one of the simpler elements. Certainly simpler than keeping humans alive in space or a launch vehicle programme.

Better analogy might be Gemini. One could similarly criticise Gemini (or any of the early Apollos) as being breathtakingly behind the task of landing humans on the Moon and then getting them back alive.

Were it not for Steve Jobs’ return to Apple, the brilliant engineers who made the iPod would not have made the iPod. Their talent would have been directed towards yet another Apple inkjet printer PCB, or yet another iteration of the Newton, or something.

Great talent and bold leadership are a uniquely powerful combination.

> Do people selectively credit the engineers when a musk company has a success, then blame musk when there's a failure?

Yes

SpaceX's contracts were absolutely subsidies - the contracted Falcon 1 tests and the resulting Falcon 9 contracts were an expensive moonshot for the USG at first - but even if you discount them, Tesla absolutely hoovered up subsidies like the EV tax credits.

They even have a page about them: https://www.tesla.com/support/incentives

In fairness the wording is “His”, not “their”. I interpret that as a claim about how Musk achieves success, not about how SpaceX makes money.

To his credit he didn’t kill Artemis, as everyone had expected.

Can you expand on that? Biden's space policy was remarkably and suprisingly similar to Trump's. A little bit more money for planetary science, and that's about it AFAICT.

No, absolutely not! Almost exactly the opposite meaning was intended, and I didn't think for a second that it could be interpreted as you say there. I wrote the comment quickly, thinking the sarcasm was obvious, I apologise for not being more explicit.

The comment I responded to (which has now been removed, I think?) referred to how proud the commenter was that Musk is "American". I found this to be totally preposterous, as his cultural background is so immediately and obviously mixed.

Claiming him as "American" is a strange thing to do, is what I was thinking. Anyway, again, I sincerely apologise, and shouldn't have thrown out the comment when I was in a rush.

Well exactly. It's not exactly as if there aren't enough well defined archetypes, methodologies and historical outcomes that fit this.

There are plenty of engineers that won't work there because of Musk. Being divisive and unpredictable is not a good characteristic and not how you run a business.

Basically there are better ways without making the sacrifices that have been and will be made.

I think to me it's the combination of the "voter turnout stuff" and his personality cult.

> cash giveaway gimmick

you mean fraud

> providing a social media platform that doesn’t suppress conservative viewpoints

Now amplifies ONLY them, which if you were claiming to be an impartial champion of free speech (as Musk repeatedly said) is equally as bullshit as what was happening on the platform before.

Instead, this bastion of free speech now considers "cisgender" a slur.

Musk in 2022: "Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic"

In 2024:

He has a social media platform now that actively suppresses liberal viewpoints, so he’s a complete hypocrite.

He’s happy to censor some things, but complains about free speech when things he likes, you know, like racist hate speech, is censored.

Honestly? I'd first prefer he hadn't gone off the deep end. I feel the same sort of sad that I did when Notch (of minecraft) turned out the way he did.

I obviously don't have any person relation to him, but Elon seems to be deeply disturbed. He went from a pretty normal somewhat eccentric millionaire 5 or 6 years ago to his evil villain arc. Maybe he was like this all along, but I feel like he's been too stressed and too us vs them for too long that he no longer has a grounded view of reality.

My South African colleague tells me he is happy that you have adopted him.

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Can you even deprive people of citizenship? I though Universal Declaration of Human Rights (mostly written by US no less) forbid that

> Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality

From 2018

Denaturalization, explained: how Trump can strip immigrants of their citizenship - A new “denaturalization task force” raises questions about who really counts as American.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17561538/denaturalization-citi...

Yes, working on a startup without pay under a student visa (such as F-1) can be legally problematic. While student visas allow some employment (like CPT or OPT for F-1 students), “self-employment” is generally restricted, especially if it involves day-to-day work or responsibilities without proper authorization. Founders may violate visa terms if their role in the startup constitutes “unauthorized employment,” even if unpaid.

For H-1B or O-1 visa applicants, founders need to prove an employer-employee relationship with their startup and show funding or sufficient structure, which complicates the path from student visas.

Sources: • USCIS Policy Manual on Employment for F-1 Students • 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f)

Yes. That's illegal.

Maybe. I don't see Elon saying that much. Mostly it's politically charged crap.

I’m not American, but for me it would matter a lot. Not aligning with the country’s best interests is a yuge dealbreaker.

Of course, I don't want super powerful people in the US to not have the country's best interests in mind.

> e.g. The Selfish Gene?

The main thesis of The Selfish Gene is that evolution is best explained by a gene-centered model, rather than an organism or species model. I'm confused what that has to do with not being a perfectionist about Musk.

Since when does he care about freedom? He was shadow banning content that he disliked on X, all the while boosting takes he approved of. Sure, he owns X and can do whatever he wants with it, but he doesn’t care about freedom.

Without looking it up (honor system), please describe what you think The Selfish Gene is about.

Maybe it's time for you to turn off your screen, go outside and touch some grass.

Musk is an egotistical megalomaniac. To even think of his ego in any positive light makes the problem with you.

Calling someone a pedophile because they wouldn't use his submarine is just an example.

Starship is an enabling technology. We can easily imagine the things it will make possible.