Team SpaceX or team NASA?

[ComradeWolfe]

So far every time anyone's said Elon is barking down an empty road he's proven them wrong. Just look at the cars -- he's got the most successful electric ever and the brand is growing. Home battery packs were considered to be not worthwhile, but here we are a week after he said he's making them and he's already got over a year worth of pre-orders. SpaceX didn't dream up the reusable rocket, but they were the first to say "hey, we can do that!" and now everyone else is playing catchup because Musk has proven it possible.

Elon Musk may be a nut, but if he says he's going to make a Mars colony with thousands of people then he probably will.

[PakledHostage]

Elon Musk may be a nut, but if he says he's going to make a Mars colony with thousands of people then he probably will.

I don't think anyone here is saying that Elon Musk is a nut. I certainly am not. But he is human. Like all of us, he might sometimes blather on about stuff that doesn't make sense in the light of day.

Antarctica is warmer and wetter than Mars. You can breath the air when you go outside and you don't need to wear a pressure suit to do so. That and we've had the ability to travel there for all of the roughly 150 years since it was discovered. Still, the only people who currently live there for extended periods are researchers and support staff. Some tourists visit from time to time (most of them on cruise ships) but there are no colonies of 80 000 people and no plans to build them either. Things might be different if resource extraction wasn't banned by international treaty, but we also don't see large colonies of people living in equally harsh environments in the high arctic where resource extraction is allowed.

While scientific outposts, space mining colonies and even tourist destinations may come to exist some day, it won't be any time soon. To suggest otherwise severely underestimates the technical challenges, distances and costs involved. It probably also overestimates the near term (i.e. 50 to 100 plus years) financial benefits of going to those places.

Elon Musk has done some amazing things in his career. He deserves his reputation as someone who makes the impossible possible. That said, don't make the mistake of deifying him.

[Albert VDS]

Sure Mars is colder and it doesn't have oxygen in it's atmosphere.

Any colonist wouldn't be able to go outside without a spacesuit.

But on Mars you can do what you don't want to happen on Antarctica; make it warmer.

Of course this will happen eventually to Antarctica too if we continue to warm up the Earth and if that happens we might go live there.

I'm not saying that SpaceX is going to terraform Mars, just humanity as a whole could do it.

We'll see. Some facts to ponder:

- 80,000 people at 100kg each is 8000 metric tons of human flesh, or about 5x the mass of the ISS.

- To date, in over five decades of human spaceflight, a total of 536 people have ever been to space (above 100km), counting sub-orbital flights.

- You're not going to send people to Mars in a spacecraft as big as the ISS.

- And only 12 people set foot on the Moon, what's your point? Is it cost

[Reddragon]

I'm not saying that SpaceX is going to terraform Mars, just humanity as a whole could do it.

In about 200 years or more, probably.

[Fel]

Why is there so much faith thrown onto SpaceX and so much cynicism at NASA? Has SpaceX really demonstrated that it is so much more competent that it can get to Mars before NASA? As for other nations, there's not a chance.

OMG that Elon Musk is so DREAMY, or whatever man-love people have for the guy. He's just another Steve Jobs, selling laced koolaid for people who are willing to drink it. NASA, being a serious company, doesn't have a hot model directing public relations; hence we don't care about them.

*Doesn't get why people worship business men*

Yeah, people are really missing the point. The entire reason he makes money is to go to Mars and colonize it.

But it isn't his money! If he starts driving SpaceX to the ground to make his "dream" come true, some way or another his investors will see to it that he is removed from SpaceX. You can push however much you like about what HE wants, but even all the luxury items that normal rich CEOs buy don't amount to the utter bankrupting of a successful company he would have to do to get HIS dream to come true.

No one is denying he can send some 100 people to mars to die a month later. In truth, that's pretty bloody cheap. We're denying that he can afford to colonize mars or even get enough investors excited about the project to help mitigate the costs to have 100 people die... 1 year later. Too many people are utterly ignorant of what colonization means; to them it is like a vacation in an exotic land; but colonization is extreme and pushes people to the breaking point. Computers WILL be a luxury, not a necessity and power WILL be rationed. There will be more manual labor than any "mentally stimulating" jobs for quite a while; and we WILL have to leave most of our technology behind. Relying on robots whose parts are made in china is not sound advice, no matter what the stress testing was, WHEN it breaks and cannot be fixed, problems will occur.

Really, don't underestimate just how major a change this will be for the normal street walker, it will be the smallest of things that begin to drive you insane; things you thought you never cared about become utterly important because it is no longer there. Colonization will be hell, and economically crippling. If you think you're ready, you aren't ready.

[ComradeWolfe]

I don't think anyone here is saying that Elon Musk is a nut. I certainly am not. But he is human. Like all of us, he might sometimes blather on about stuff that doesn't make sense in the light of day.

I'm saying he's a nut. One of my regular customers where I work used to be with Space X and met Musk a couple of times. I know that's pretty second-hand, but "nut" was specifically the wording he used.

Plus... He's totally a nut. :-P

Elon Musk has done some amazing things in his career. He deserves his reputation as someone who makes the impossible possible. That said, don't make the mistake of deifying him.

I do admit to being a bit of a SpaceX fanboy, but please don't mistake my confidence for deification. I simply place a degree of trust in his track record and regard him holding greater ambition than most of his competition. If someone more capable were to come along I would be more than willing to acknowledge them as superior.

[Camacha]

I vote for Team Earth, I think that is a pretty safe bet. Looking at Earth from Mars, it is all the same anyway, and even looking at things from Earth a 1000 years before or after the fact the different factions and parties mean little to nothing, just like the victors or losers of Egyptian battles mean little to us now other than being interesting history. If countries, people and politicians could get over themselves, we could do great things.

[fredinno]

I vote for a sort of international cooperation to result in Mars landings; it's the most plausible way that they could happen with current space budgets. (Even SpaceX is limited by how much govn't spends on space exploration)

[KSK]

OMG that Elon Musk is so DREAMY, or whatever man-love people have for the guy. He's just another Steve Jobs, selling laced koolaid for people who are willing to drink it. NASA, being a serious company, doesn't have a hot model directing public relations; hence we don't care about them.

*Doesn't get why people worship business men*

Heh - normally I'd agree with that sentiment but I'm not that surprised to find a lot of affection for the founder of a real rocket company on this particular forum.

[AngelLestat]

with all my respect to the topic, but I can't believe it have reached to the ninth page !

Well this show only one thing.. people lost his faith in NASA or any other agency, because they did almost nothing new in the last 45 years, the only one who is trying to change the thing around here is spacex.

[Camacha]

He's just another Steve Jobs

You really cannot throw such a statement around without explaining yourself a little better. As far as I know, all three of Musk's companies have actually developed technology in fairly major ways, with SpaceX re-use attempts probably taking the cake.

[AngelLestat]

ah let me clarify my last words a little bit with this example.

James Webb Space Telescope.... I am waiting for this since centuries... the project planning begin in 1996!! It will be finish in 2018!! 22 years!!! with a final cost close to 11 billions!!!

I know that some will jump saying "ahh.. but is not something easy to do... it requires many scientist and tests and bla bla bla.."

Ok, but lets compare it, for the same cost we can have:

Now somebody will said that the tallest building in the world it does not require new technology or techniques? That it was done before?

In fact, if the Burj Khalifa has a fail.. it may kill thousands of people.

The james space telescope is not even so big.. it can be launched with the Ariane5, the mass is just 6.4 tonnes.

So yeah, if you ask me, all the money that big agencies receive, I would give it to private companies, so they fight between them to see who accomplish the objectives with the lower cost.

Nasa and all other agencies, are just a way to drop money and spent time, without even big breakthroughs.

[Camacha]

James Webb Space Telescope.... I am waiting for this since centuries... the project planning begin in 1996!! It will be finish in 2018!! 22 years!!! with a final cost close to 11 billions!!!

Even if you stack seven Burj Khalifas on top of each other you are not even close to getting to space. I know that is not quite what you meant, but it is about as accurate as what you said

[Bill Phil]

ah let me clarify my last words a little bit with this example.

James Webb Space Telescope.... I am waiting for this since centuries... the project planning begin in 1996!! It will be finish in 2018!! 22 years!!! with a final cost close to 11 billions!!!

I know that some will jump saying "ahh.. but is not something easy to do... it requires many scientist and tests and bla bla bla.."

Ok, but lets compare it, for the same cost we can have:

http://s20.postimg.org/ujg5dn9j1/james_webb_cost.jpg

Now somebody will said that the tallest building in the world it does not require new technology or techniques? That it was done before?

In fact, if the Burj Khalifa has a fail.. it may kill thousands of people.

The james space telescope is not even so big.. it can be launched with the Ariane5, the mass is just 6.4 tonnes.

So yeah, if you ask me, all the money that big agencies receive, I would give it to private companies, so they fight between them to see who accomplish the objectives with the lower cost.

Nasa and all other agencies, are just a way to drop money and spent time, without even big breakthroughs.

Wow. Just wow. Nasa isn't there to drop money.

This project cost so much because of how long it took. Time is money. Hubble was started in the 70s. The 1970s. Hubble wasn't even as complex as JWST, which uses unfolding mirrors, and even a sun-shade. You think it can be done with less? Well, then, go and build something equal to it in only a few years.

This is big. Bigger than the tallest building. This thing is going to space. Space is guaranteed to be expense. Add on to that the many years of planning, the tender-loving-care of the telescope, the design, and just about everything else.

Comparing this to a building it not that great of a comparison.

This costs about as much as a single manned Apollo mission in today's money. Were they worth it?

[Camacha]

This thing is going to space.

Let us not forget you are not only developing and sending incredibly sensitive equipment to space, but that it also has to live through a couple of bad earthquakes worth of abuse while getting there and face other forms of manhandling while being out there in one of the most hostile environments we can access, with the understanding that once it is up there you can either never ever touch it again (like the James Webb, as it is simply too far away to reasonably service), or it will (again) cost you massive amounts of money and time to touch it (like in the case of Hubble).

Edited May 9, 2015 by Camacha

[cpast]

ah let me clarify my last words a little bit with this example.

James Webb Space Telescope.... I am waiting for this since centuries... the project planning begin in 1996!! It will be finish in 2018!! 22 years!!! with a final cost close to 11 billions!!!

I know that some will jump saying "ahh.. but is not something easy to do... it requires many scientist and tests and bla bla bla.."

Ok, but lets compare it, for the same cost we can have:

http://s20.postimg.org/ujg5dn9j1/james_webb_cost.jpg

Now somebody will said that the tallest building in the world it does not require new technology or techniques? That it was done before?

In fact, if the Burj Khalifa has a fail.. it may kill thousands of people.

There's a lot you can do cheaply if you're paying your workers five dollars a day. JWST workers are largely highly skilled scientists and engineers who command fairly high salaries compared to most people in the US; Burj Khalifa *skilled* workers (skilled meaning "carpenters," not "engineers") still made less than $7/day. A tall building is not a precision structure; a huge amount of the work is driven by the costs of mass unskilled labor, and if you're paying a worker dollars per day, you're paying multiple orders of magnitude less than the work on JWST. The Burj Khalifa had much less need to consult with the top engineers and scientists who command high salaries wherever they go; most of the work was unskilled work done for less a day than a US fast-food worker makes in an hour. In your focus on size, you are seriously underestimating the cost of labor: that is by far the highest cost of any technically advanced project.

So yeah, if you ask me, all the money that big agencies receive, I would give it to private companies, so they fight between them to see who accomplish the objectives with the lower cost.

Nasa and all other agencies, are just a way to drop money and spent time, without even big breakthroughs.

That's how NASA already works. Much of their money goes to pay contractors. Contractors designed and built Apollo and the Shuttle. Atlas and Delta are built by contractors. Much of the work on Curiosity and JWST is contractor work. It's not clear contractors are ultimately cheaper than in-house. Incidentally: SpaceX gets most of its funding from the US government.

[Bill Phil]

Atlas and Delta were USAF developments...

[cpast]

Atlas and Delta were USAF developments...

Nope. Atlas was a General Dynamics development before it was sold to Lockheed. Delta came from Thor, which had multiple contractors (Douglas did airframe and integration, Rocketdyne did engines, other companies did other aspects); although the USAF did take a bigger role there, by the time NASA was involved it (turning it into a pure space launch vehicle) it was a Douglas, then McDonnell Douglas, then Boeing project.

[AngelLestat]

damm, you have all the brain wash with that thing called "space must be expensive".. is expensive.. but 11000 millions just few mirrors?

come on... that thing has not excuse.

All enginners (all categories with higher salary than those involve in the telescope) and arquitects and thousands of other high pay workers involve in the Burj does not count?

Always the same story, "if nasa didn´t do it, must be impossible :P", "if cost so much for nasa should not cost less". Here is spacex doing all the things that nasa did not do in 45 years. Those impossible things at lower cost.

I know that I will not persuade nobody, but evidence will keep comming, and this kind of projects will be taken by private companies more often.

[Rakaydos]

This is the answer to the fermi paradox, by the way. Any species that is capable of travel to the stars has better things to spend their local currency on than to try.

[Camacha]

damm, you have all the brain wash with that thing called "space must be expensive".. is expensive.. but 11000 millions just few mirrors?

come on... that thing has not excuse.

You are either doing an excellent job trolling everyone, or you are seriously misunderstanding what goes into building a scientific device with this kind of accuracy. It is not like John or Achmed from down the street can make or fit those mirrors in the telescope, as opposed to the windows in the Burj. The Burj is a wooden cart is the desert where the James Webb telescope is a Veryon in space.

I know that I will not persuade nobody, but evidence will keep comming, and this kind of projects will be taken by private companies more often.

You are comparing it to the wrong thing. The Burj is not a scientific device, it is incredibly crude compared to things that are. Did you check out what the LHC cost? It is almost exactly as expensive as the James Webb telescope. You know why it is that expensive? Partly because of its size, but mostly because it had to be build to incredibly demanding and exact standards.

Stop turning your own misunderstanding into arguments, please. While it might be called a fact that government agencies are less efficient than commercial parties, efficiency generally still is around 60 to 80 percent. That it still the same ballpark, no matter how you look at it.

[cpast]

damm, you have all the brain wash with that thing called "space must be expensive".. is expensive.. but 11000 millions just few mirrors?

come on... that thing has not excuse.

If you think the JWST is "just a few mirrors," there is no helping you. It's incredibly precise, as are all scientific telescopes. It's also sensors, power, monitoring, communications, reliability (you can't repair it, you can easily do repairs to a tower). Frankly, I think you have no clue what's involved in a scientific project.

All enginners (all categories with higher salary than those involve in the telescope) and arquitects and thousands of other high pay workers involve in the Burj does not count?

There weren't that many engineers on the Burj Khalifa. That's because almost no aspects of it are new in any way; after the design is down, it's just construction. And the engineers that were there command a much lower salary than those in aerospace, because there's plenty of supply. By and large, construction work is something people know how to do; in contrast, just about everyone involved with JWST is someone who commands a fairly high salary.

Always the same story, "if nasa didn´t do it, must be impossible :P", "if cost so much for nasa should not cost less". Here is spacex doing all the things that nasa did not do in 45 years. Those impossible things at lower cost.

Name one thing that NASA tried and failed to do and SpaceX succeeded at, which is *not* "do X for cheap" (NASA contracts stuff out once it gets to the "we know how to do this and want to do it cheap" point). SpaceX doesn't compete with NASA; they do not do the same thing at all. NASA is a scientific research agency focusing on aeronautics and space; they also have a mandate to help advance knowledge about aeronautics and spaceflight. SpaceX is the beneficiary of NASA research projects to learn fundamental concepts in spaceflight. SpaceX, on the other hand, does not launch their own missions. They aren't a mission generator. All they do is take money and launch payloads to LEO, which is something that NASA does not do (because they contract that out). SpaceX in fact gets a huge fraction (I think it's the majority, but am not sure) of its money from US federal contracts.

As for cost: Since SpaceX does not compete with NASA, there is no valid cost comparison between the two. Instead, you compare them with the people who do things similar to them; in the US, that's companies like ULA. Anecdotally, SpaceX runs itself like a startup -- long hours, short terms employed there, low-ish salaries, but with the advantage of employees who believe in their work (it's not just a normal job). They also have low bureaucracy. Their competitors like Boeing and Lockheed run themselves like big companies, which often provides better working environments but costs more money (as companies grow, running them as a startup starts to work less and less well). SpaceX also has low overhead, partly because of size, partly because they do everything in-house.

Incidentally, part of the reason I simply don't buy SpaceX as running a Mars mission at all is that SpaceX has done absolutely nothing to make me think they're interested in that sort of thing. They're a commercial launch provider. They put payloads in LEO. They do not launch things on their own dime unless it's a test that they can't get a payload for (if you notice, they try to combine tests with real missions whenever possible to save money). NASA, on the other hand, has an actual budget to fund missions without regard to how much profit it will make them. If SpaceX flies a manned mission to Mars, it'll be after coming up with someone to pay for it; the most likely bet is honestly NASA, which would make this a NASA mission at least as much as a SpaceX one (since NASA paid for it).

[Bill Phil]

Nope. Atlas was a General Dynamics development before it was sold to Lockheed. Delta came from Thor, which had multiple contractors (Douglas did airframe and integration, Rocketdyne did engines, other companies did other aspects); although the USAF did take a bigger role there, by the time NASA was involved it (turning it into a pure space launch vehicle) it was a Douglas, then McDonnell Douglas, then Boeing project.

Thor was USAF, as was Atlas. An IRBM and an ICBM respectively.

Atlas V and Delta IV are EELVs. Made for a USAF contract.

[FishInferno]

Name one thing that NASA tried and failed to do and SpaceX succeeded at, which is *not* "do X for cheap" (NASA contracts stuff out once it gets to the "we know how to do this and want to do it cheap" point). SpaceX doesn't compete with NASA; they do not do the same thing at all. NASA is a scientific research agency focusing on aeronautics and space; they also have a mandate to help advance knowledge about aeronautics and spaceflight. SpaceX is the beneficiary of NASA research projects to learn fundamental concepts in spaceflight. SpaceX, on the other hand, does not launch their own missions. They aren't a mission generator. All they do is take money and launch payloads to LEO, which is something that NASA does not do (because they contract that out). SpaceX in fact gets a huge fraction (I think it's the majority, but am not sure) of its money from US federal contracts.

NASA has not tried landing a first stage for reuse. Even though spaceX has not recovered a stage they have proved they can control one in flight.

Incidentally, part of the reason I simply don't buy SpaceX as running a Mars mission at all is that SpaceX has done absolutely nothing to make me think they're interested in that sort of thing. They're a commercial launch provider. They put payloads in LEO. They do not launch things on their own dime unless it's a test that they can't get a payload for (if you notice, they try to combine tests with real missions whenever possible to save money). NASA, on the other hand, has an actual budget to fund missions without regard to how much profit it will make them. If SpaceX flies a manned mission to Mars, it'll be after coming up with someone to pay for it; the most likely bet is honestly NASA, which would make this a NASA mission at least as much as a SpaceX one (since NASA paid for it).

http://www.spacex.com/about

[PakledHostage]

http://www.spacex.com/about

I have written this so many times now that my phone's keyboard correctly anticipates the words already: Rome wasn't built in a day... Lots over very talented people contributed to the endeavor over the course of centuries.

The day will almost certainly come when people will live in colonies and outposts throughout the solar system. That doesnt mean it will happen soon though. SpaceX may have a noble mission statement to improve access to space so that living in space becomes a possibility, but there are many many other pieces to the puzzle. To use another cliche, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.