Hubble has been accomplished completely without SpaceX, as is James Webb and almost all other amazing advances in space. What do you think about the organizations and people that actually accomplished these things?
Not the OP but are you talking about Lockheed, Rockwell, etc.? I think they're criminal arms traffickers and war profiteers who did achieve some amazing things, but only as a means to extract vast amounts of the nation's wealth. In other words, they did as little constructive work as they could with each tax dollar given to them.
SpaceX at least doesn't appear to be building a business model based on being a barrel for pork with a board that functions as a pension fund for military generals.
SpaceX has been doing a number of NRO secret launches and wouldn't exist without NASA contracts like CRS and Crew Dragon. They may not be boarded by ex military but they're part of the same industry surviving the same way.
Great, they're destroying the pork barrel industry's monopoly in space and providing a service at competitive prices that's exactly what we want.
From my comment, you didn't suppose I believed government space capabilities and projects should be entirely shut down, or that they should be left to old space companies to continue extorting taxpayers, did you?
Providing a service to the government is not a problem. This is not some kind of libertarian purity test I'm concerned about. It is about ripping off tax payers with lobbyists and the military industrial political revolving doors.
Because they are the first company to significantly decrease launch costs in decades. In addition, they are the first company working on massively increasing payload sizes in decades.
I mean it really is a pretty bad question because you've not taken even 60 seconds to learn the first thing about SpaceX
Have you done any research of your own on this? I'm trying to get an idea of where to start. If yes, then in what way do you believe they are similar contrary to what my comment said or implied?
> There isn't enough history yet to compare them fairly.
I compare them on what they provide for what cost right now, and the kind of company that they appear to be building as of now. Hopefully it was clear that I wasn't making predictions about the future.
If you think Spacex isn't in bed with the US military, and won't be increasingly so in future for the usual reasons, you're living in cloud cuckoo land.
I haven't seen much indication that their business model relies on lobbying for war or pushing for gargantuan "aid" into unstable regions which may only be used for buying weapons, or buying politicians and generals so they can sell sub standard and over priced projects.
Maybe SpaceX does, maybe it will. But providing launch services to the military and undercutting the companies that definitely do those things is not a problem to me. This wasn't a military = bad rant.
Yes, that is how they fund their operations. No one else is giving out billions of dollars to build rockets.
At the same time they are using that money to
1. Create full reusabilty.
2. Drop launch costs 10 to 100 fold.
3. Massively increase payload and launch capability.
Which is the point of this particular thread. The other launch groups have pocketed (hundreds of) billions of dollars and changed almost nothing over the past few decades.
I think what GP is mostly referring to is that since the shuttle retired, we have no way to return payloads to the ground without "lithobraking". Starship may potentially have enough return capacity to place the Hubble telescope inside a payload bay and safely land it. No other vehicle being developed right now has that capability (that I'm aware of); it has nothing to do with the politics of NASA and Spacex.
So what? Lots of organizations deliver lots of unique capabilities. Hubble is actually up there, real things are happening, people have accomplished amazing things, yet again we hear SpaceX promoted - a hypothetical capability about a hypothetical need of dubious value.
Sure lots of organizations have unique capabilities, and SpaceX is one of those! Better to bring home Hubble than let it burn up once it's no longer operational. I definitely rate inspiration much higher than 'dubious' :)
Maybe the comment would have been better off just saying "Wouldn't it be great if at the end of it's life we could bring Hubble back to earth to put it in a museum". Because that's how I read it, it's something I completely support (just like putting ISS into a parking orbit instead of letting it burn up when that decision comes). Hubble is an important part of history and deserves to be preserved; to inspire current and future generations.
Dragging a specific method of accomplishing that into it was kind of unnecessary from GP.
You're frustrated that the limelight is stolen from other deserving organizations, which is fair. I think what you're bumping in to is the unusual overlap between a commercial venture and a religious feeling. People who "believe in SpaceX" do so because it gives them more than just a "capability". When they believe in the future & far-future ideas seeded by Musk, they get a feeling of excitement, significance, purpose, etc. which bleeds over into all sorts of unrelated things. I don't know of many companies that succeed at this level. Disney, maybe?
> You're frustrated that the limelight is stolen from other deserving organizations
Keep your fantasies about my emotional state to yourself. I meant precisely what I wrote.
> religious feeling
I'm well aware of it, but it's not the basis of posts to HN. Such religions - cults of personality - inevitably do a lot of harm to society and the followers. Musk, of course, will make out very well.
Zealousness never has paid off; its purpose is to override reason and good judgement. How can that turn out well? Why would Musk want to encourage that, unless there is something to hide?
> I don't know of many companies that succeed at this level.
It's success to manipulate people? Apple and Steve Jobs succeeded in having an enthusiastic following without narcissim, setting a good example, without manipulating the followers, without undermining and harming others, and without undermining, apparently intentionally, the rule of law. Disney I think is the same.
Who cares that Starship is a SpaceX property. Focus on the capability - which no one else has - and the ends - Hubble sitting in a museum instead of burning up in the lithosphere. You want to dislike SpaceX then go ahead, I don’t think anyone here would strongly discourage you from exploring that. But I truly challenge you to find another more economical solution to bring Hubble home.
Because inspiring people fucking matters. Bringing Hubble back and having it in a museum would (like it or not) do a lot more inspiring up and coming scientists/engineers than some random recent picture Hubble took.
Look at the number of views the falcon heavy double booster landing got. It’s entirely irrelevant to science but it’s still inspiring nonetheless.
Why does that matter? People without a 4 year+ degree in physics need to be inspired as well because statistically they are the ones who make the decisions.
I am fully aware that both you and I are in the minority on this website, but I agree. The promotion of SpaceX at the expense of other organizations that have been doing work besides LV development for decades is very disappointing, and it's moreso disappointing that SpaceX keeps getting injected into conversations about NASA's scientific work, something SpaceX is not interested in besides advancing rocketry.
I think it's warranted when we're, say, comparing the costs of SLS vis-a-vis something like Starship but it's really silly to constantly suggest SpaceX and other commercial space entities are some sort of savior figure for space exploration. I think it's actually a cautionary tale of again sacrificing a commons (space) for the sake of profit.
tbh you're all missing the point. It's about bringing Hubble back on terra firma at the end of it's useful life, I doubt GP cares too much who does it. _However_ the reality is that SpaceX is the only organisation that appears to have the capability to do that.
it's moreso disappointing that SpaceX keeps getting injected into conversations about NASA's scientific work
Why are you getting hung up on Starship being the current best choice for a return mission at Hubble's EOL? If I was making the comment in 2010 I'd've said returning Hubble is worth the cost of a shuttle launch. If Hubble miraculously lasts another decade I'll make the argument returning it is worth the cost of whatever vehicle is best suited at that time, possibly if unlikely a vehicle coming from the France 2030 development drive.
>really silly to constantly suggest SpaceX and other commercial space entities are some sort of savior figure for space exploration.
Why?
"It will cost you 1 billion to launch 100 tons to orbit"
or
"It will cost you 100 million to launch 100 tons to orbit"
or
"It will cost you 10 million to launch 100 tons to orbit"
Guess which one of those is going to 'save' space exploration? Not only that, cheap launches will massively increase the size of the market giving all those good little boys and girls that are interested in space a chance of getting a job in the market. NASA is the market too. If they can drop launch costs 10x, they can launch that much more science.
The space market has been dead for years, it's time to bring it back to life.
I can only speak for myself, but as someone who worked at NASA, my question is, how does working together with SpaceX in any way detract from the amazing things humanity has accomplished by working together? NASA doesn't have exclusive bragging rights on accomplishing things in space, and I for one am happy to celebrate and cooperate with others. In fact, one of the most inspiring things about NASA's accomplishments is how people from all over the world have come together and cooperated for the betterment of humanity.
> how does working together with SpaceX in any way detract from the amazing things humanity has accomplished by working together?
Who said it did? I'm not sure what you are responding to.
However, working with an entity that perverts merit-based decision-making with public pressure could certainly be harmful, and Musk acts by manipulationg the public. Other NASA partners don't do that. The Europa Clipper, for example, will take years longer to reach its destination - a critical milestone that will delay the exploration of life on Europa for years (if I understand correctly)- due to being switched to a SpaceX launch. It was switched for technical problems later determined to be meritless.
Officially, it was switched because SLS is unavailable. The program had been trying to get away from it due to its enormous cost, but was only able to get this change through Congress when the inability of SLS to fly more than once a year became obvious.
Lots of other capabilities are unique to lots of other systems (especially NASA - most of what they do is a unique capability!). What do you think of those?
I can't figure out what your point is. I'm saying Hubble is such an incredible achievement and pillar of the spirit of space exploration it's worth spending the money to bring it home even if doing so doesn't generate any scientific data in and of itself.
The parent comment was just that it would be cool to bring Hubble back eventually, and that Starship seems promising towards that end. It's not a diminishment of all other space-focused organizations.
Sure, SpaceX doesn't have a Hubble Space Telescope in space and NASA doesn't have the capability to return it to Earth. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
Don't want to speak for OP but I think you have misinterpreted the meaning of his comment. I'm pretty sure he meant it has too much meaning and one day bringing Hubble back instead of abandoning an old friend to the abyss.
But why? Just take one of the extra satellites provided to NASA by NRO to hang in musuems. Slap a NASA and Hubble sticker on it, and the tourists will flock to it. Let the actual one burn up on re-entry and save everyone billions of dollars.
That's a great argument if it required a shuttle launch at 1.5 billion a pop. But modern rockets like Starship are a lot cheaper. Musk's $2 million number is probably horseshit but according to David Todd, the Seradata satellite market analyst, Starship launch cost could come in at $10 million. I'd say $10 million to bring Hubble home is worth it.
>What do you think about the organizations and people that actually accomplished these things?
Presumably the OP thinks of them what they wrote about them in the comment - that they explore and inspire.
To address your later comments as well, there was no specific promotion of SpaceX in the OPs comment, no implied criticism of any other space tech company or reason to believe the OP thinks anything but good things about them. Just a space enthusiast enthusing about space. But no, you have to turn it into an argument.
Why are you mentioning the (still not through launch and subsequent zillion step unfolding sequence btw) catastrophically late and utterly pork-barrelled JSWT?
I read his point to be something along the lines of 'Hubble is great, I'd love to see it one day.' I guess some people are offended because he suggested spacex might be used to retrieve Hubble instead of letting it become derelict in orbit.
To add more, Spacex's Starship is the only viable option actually, no other company in the world can offer (or even has in plans) a vehicle capable of bringing back tons of payload (Hubble space telescope weights 11 tons). Space Shuttle, which was used to lunch Hubble (and in principle Buran) was the only options capable of doing that in the past.
I assume anything remotely still classified would be ripped out, so probably only the big (outer) shell would end up in a museum, maybe some of the outdated computer boards.
It's still inspiring, but would it be more fair to go to Florida? Texas? Some state where it was built (if it weren't those)? The Smithsonian?
Of course it would go to the Smithsonian. They sometimes loan stuff out temporarily, so it could be displayed in all those places (with difficulty).
Nothing on it is modern enough to be classified, if it ever was classified. It is really old. DoD had better optics flying in space… by the time Hubble launched, maybe?
Not sure there's anything left in Hubble that would be classified. Maybe the control software but the spy sat it was based off of is decades out of use by now.
If they could carry a larger payload, we could have a Hubble with a larger primary mirror. Some of the risks/costs of the JWST is all the folding mechanisms to fit the Ariane 5 payload enclosure.
It's kind of limping along. It could gather images for a lot longer but it's hardware like gyroscopes are starting to fail. IMO the money to refurbish it would be better spent making a new instrument and cheaper too since you'd just need to build and launch not launch, capture, land, refurb, and relaunch.
That's a fun idea! I don't see how you would execute that unfortunately though. Hubble wasn't meant to be re-mounted after deployment. Starship wouldn't be able to just gobble Hubble up and have it rattle around in its fairing during re-entry
In the mean time you can visit the Kennedy Space Center, which has a full scale replica on display. (Haven't been there myself, but interested in going one day.)