[somenameforme]

The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them. They even managed to get through COVID unscathed. The main danger of relying on a single provider is them taking advantage of that position and charging unreasonable rates, exactly like Boeing/Lockheed have been doing for decades (two companies, exact same issues - go figure). But SpaceX is ideologically motivated and minimizing the costs of spaceflight, as they have now been doing for decades, is a fundamental part of their goal. To use an obvious example, we didn't build out two identical Apollo programs.

Space is orders of magnitude more complex than air flight, and Boeing is now left struggling even with the latter. China has a highly advanced space program and have successfully launched/manned their own space station, and much more. Yet even they are technologically far behind SpaceX - the same is true of Russia. I don't actually understand why this is, as it's not like SpaceX is relying on any sort of just extremely well guarded secrets, but whatever the reason, it is what it is. And so with this context, I don't think there's any realistic chance of Boeing "getting its act together" anytime in the foreseeable future. So it turns these gestures into little more than lighting tens of billions of dollars on fire. And that's a pretty big fire.

[quartesixte]

SpaceX’s key insight was that the hardest part about building rockets was components manufacturing and attacked that problem aggressively, bringing in as much in-house as possible vs. outsourcing to a nationwide supply chain.

And there is no real secret to a lot of their manufacturing methods either. They just attacked hard problems aggressively with really smart people and clear leadership.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

I think it's because SpaceX is more influenced by engineering/design/cost than their competitors.

Other companies, like Toyota, have intermittently focused mostly on engineering/design/cost, but they went back to their old habits after gaining market dominance instead of using their position to push the market forward in some other way.

https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28...

[tim333]

I'm not sure I get the 'intermittently' thing? They always seem to have been much the same, maybe with more emphasis on reliability and customer satisfaction rather than flashiness than some of their competitors. They also seem to stick to making good cars rather than doing mergers and acquisitions unlike say GM or VW.

[throwawaymaths]

Even still having Toyota around is great because they are absolutely killing it (Americans want hybrids because you can't plug in a car so easily if you live in the big city, live in an apartment, etc).

[travisporter]

While I agree with almost everything, I disagree with the "zero". Musk's perceived pettiness can easily handicap spaceX. The goal to colonize Mars is noble but not profitable. Gwynne Shotwell could one day say to to his ideas, she and her top level management team could get canned, and I would say that would be an irrecoverable error.

Second, redundancy is good, although I wish the other provider was not Boeing. even Dragon at one point exploded, and at that time starliner and dragon had very different perceived trajectories. Of course, with Eric Berger's new article on ars technica on Boeing, it's a wonder Starliner even exists.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

Don’t say the chance is zero unless you have a mathematical proof or something. Would the odds be zero if they lose of a crew of astronauts?

[somenameforme]

Definitely. I'd actually go one step further and say that they will eventually lose a crew of astronauts. Perhaps to the ISS, but most definitely to Mars. The Falcon is the most reliable rocket ever made with some 335 successes for 2 failures contrasted against e.g. 133 and 2 for the Space Shuttle, but that failure rate is still extremely high relative to something like an airplane. And the overwhelming majority of all space flights are for "simple" repetitive tasks. As we increase the number of manned missions, as well as their complexity - the eventual loss of crewed missions is an absolute certainty. Something like 3% of all astronauts have died 'on the job' making it likely the single most dangerous profession in existence. Space remains extremely complex and dangerous, and it's likely to only become even more so in the decades to come as we increase the complexity of tasks carried out.

The reason NASA's failures were such a huge deal is because they shouldn't have happened. In both cases you had issues with the managerial layer ignoring the engineering layer, and moving ahead in high risk scenarios - that was particularly stupid in Challenger, where they also had a high profile civilian aboard. In SpaceX the managerial layer and the technical layer are largely the same thing, and they also have a system where any flight engineer can independently cancel a flight, for any reason, at his own discretion. So the chances of a flight moving forward with a predictable risk is quite low. So what will most likely happen when they lose a crewed flight is an investigation to ensure it was not caused by systemic errors, some effort to ensure that whatever did happen does not happen again, and then a return to flight.

[foobarbecue]

The point of "redundancy" here is so you can don't have to evacuate the space station while Dragon is grounded during the investigation you describe.

Nobody is saying a failure would result in the end of Dragon or SpaceX.

[Beldin]

> Something like 3% of all astronauts have died 'on the job' making it likely the single most dangerous profession in existence.

Wait till you hear about a truly deadly job: president of the USA. 8 of the 46 presidents have died while in office, i.e., over 17%.

[Ringz]

This will certainly happen, just as it has already happened to the Russians and the Americans (several times). If the Chinese fly often enough, it will also happen to them. The only difference, of course, is that SpaceX is not a state institution, but a private one. This would certainly have fatal consequences for a share. But I believe that the social consequences can be managed. Which in turn means that if this happens quickly enough, the financial damage would be reversible.

[golol]

> I don't actually understand why this is, as it's not like SpaceX is relying on any sort of just extremely well guarded secrets

It's good management.

[newsclues]

I think it’s incentives.

Boeing is not incentivized, nor has it been for a long, to do a good job.

[sdwr]

From a macro view, competence requires growth, right?

Look at the 60s - there's tremendous excitement about space, astronauts are heroes, everyone is putting in 10x effort to get over the finish line.

What Boeing is being asked to do now is replicate this every few years, except all the attention, all the excitement, all the growth is gone. They have to recreate the miracle, but nobody cares!

SpaceX comes in and says - we have a new heroic mission. Do the same thing, but make it repeatable and efficient and stupid easy.

[throwawaymaths]

Have you ever worked with ex-spacex middle management? It's not good management.

[thenaturalist]

Most likely the same reason as for industry espionage by said countries: Conceptually designing a spacecraft and assuming certain physics properties is a long stretch away from actually manufacturing components with materials that stand up to the stress of a launch.

The “secret” to reliable components which can be produced at scale is very much not generally out there.

[quartesixte]

I will say, some of the techniques that live in the brains of machinists/welders/technicians is borderline alchemy, and sometimes highly specific to the worker themselves.

Can’t really scale that. And good luck doing corporate espionage outside of physically kidnapping them.

[mschuster91]

> The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them.

Financially, there is almost zero chance for SpaceX to go under at the point they're at - every launch is profitable for them and the margin goes up with each time they can re-use any component, for boosters their record holder was at 19 launches until it was taken out by bad weather during transport [1].

The real danger for SpaceX is Elon Musk, plain and simple. Either he does something really stupid, something even more dumb than playing personal CSR for neo-Nazis, and the US government says "okay, that's f...ing enough now" as a result, or he goes completely against the US government: push for Mars because he finds out he has some sort of cancer or whatnot and wants to die there while the US government wants to first focus on the moon, or turn off services to Ukraine and instead provide services to Russia... or sell critical information to Russia, China or whatever just to stick the finger to the US government (aka, follow the Trumpian way of "I do what I want, what do they wanna do lol").

Yes, the US government can always go and nationalize SpaceX if need be, so it's not too high of a risk for SpaceX to go completely belly-up, but it would mean years upon years of nasty judicial fights.

[1] https://interestingengineering.com/culture/falcon-9-spacexs-...

[philistine]

Their most reused rocket is now 20 launches, and was used in a Galileo launch in an expendable configuration.

https://www.space.com/spacex-galileo-l12-falcon-9-launch

[somenameforme]

The only thing that's particularly unique about Elon is that he voices his actual opinions on topics instead of what he thinks will be most well received. It's a throw back to times long since past, where you will find highly visible individuals often had views starkly different than those of the government. It's not that that's changed - if anything I expect there's far less support for government decisions than in the past.

But what has changed is that the government has grown absolutely massive. This growth has created a dependency relationship from many major companies, as falling out of favor with an oft retaliatory government could be ruinous to their margins. Vice versa, the government is not only excessively generous with companies that play ball, but also often turns a blind eye to their offenses. This has driven a culture of widespread self censorship and feigned never-ending approval.

If anything I think Elon voicing his genuine opinions on matters, right or wrong, is one of the most patriotic things he could be doing, because loyalty to a country does not mean loyalty to a government - and often it's the exact opposite. Even in military oaths, for instance, this reality is observed. Officers swear oaths of loyalty not to the government, the President, or even their chain of command, but to the US Constitution. [1] There's endless great quotes from the Founding Fathers on this topic. A few random ones:

--------

- "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison

- "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all." - Thomas Jefferson

- "If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

--------

I think the world, and especially our democracy, would work vastly better if everybody just spoke honestly. Right or wrong, smart or stupid. People freely and openly expressing themselves is the only way a democracy can really function. There is a reason that the 1st Amendment is at the top of the Bill of Rights. And right now we live in a time where this is probably more true than ever. Opposing never-ending wars, rapidly trending towards WW3, and the grossly out of touch and seemingly delusional politicians driving us there, does not demonstrate disloyalty. If anything, the path we're currently on could very well lead to ruin, yet so few are willing to observe that the Emperor has no clothes.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Uniformed_Servic...

[fch42]

I think it's fine for Elon to voice his opinion, even if direct or hurtful.

He should though have a mirror held in front of him in public occasionally. It works for you alright, but have you considered the consequences of everyone else acting the same way ? What actions do you think will derive from creating an agenda of "do as I do or f** you" ?

It's the categorical imperative of ethics. In the sense that a good (ethical) agenda doesn't derive from "eff all others".

Commentary on, and the questioning of other's opinions is as much a necessary part of free speech as is the right to voice your opinions.

I think we need more commentary, and more questions.

[pjc50]

> grossly out of touch and seemingly delusional politicians

This has completely taken over the GOP, and yet you can't see that reflected in Elon's tweets.

[mschuster91]

> People freely and openly expressing themselves is the only way a democracy can really function. There is a reason that the 1st Amendment is at the top of the Bill of Rights.

The problem is, if you don't make sure that there is at least a common baseline of decency, eventually the one willing to fight the dirtiest will win out. "Anything goes, no repercussions" will always lead to a destructive death spiral as politicians and candidates will appeal to lower and lower emotions to score votes, and the ones who feel it most are usually those in a lower position of society: LGBT, migrants, even pregnant women.

We've seen that in Germany in the events running up to 1933, we're seeing it across Europe now with the rise of the far-right willing to do literally anything including running on complete and utter lies (worst example: Brexit and the infamous NHS bus), we're seeing it in the US with the transformation of the GOP into MAGA and the unholy crusade of Evangelicals/White Christian Nationalists ("Project 2025") against everyone who is not like them. And on top of that you got the threat of "stochastic terrorism" - basically, speech that is legal in most jurisdictions, but powerful enough in its message to convince deranged people to act and kill [1].

The US and the UK are the only developed countries in the world which still run on their original constitutions and their principles from centuries ago: a time in which it was completely infeasible to even think about a technology that would allow literally all the village idiots from all over the world to communicate with - and radicalize! - each other, and it was generally assumed that institutions of a government could reasonably rely on other institutions of the government to follow the written and unwritten rules. Everyone else has updated their constitutions in the meantime, mostly due to acts of war, and used the chance to update their systems to learn from the past and its deficiencies.

> - "If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Well, we'll see how that one works out in November this year. The people behind "Project 2025" [2] have made it very, very clear on where they want to take the US - first, purge everyone they deem to be a threat to them from the bureaucracy, and then transition the US into a Christian theocratic dictatorship.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/stochastic-terrorism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

[fch42]

I disagree with you on the UK running according to a "constitution". It definitely has none.

It runs ancient law / legal precedence; As example, the current government has used "Henry VIIIth powers" (basically ... sovereign edicts) more than once in the last decade. But the UK body of law doesn't denote anything specifically as "constitutional".

That said, it has a strong (legal) history on somewhat-free speech, more recent libel laws notwithstanding, more recent "hate speech" laws notwithstanding.

Free speech alone though only helps public discourse if there is no attempt to "balance" differing views. Trying that has the opposite effect; instead of pointing out flaws and lies in any argument, the mediator simply "gives equal airtime" to conflicting views. That's the perfect way to polarize - choose whom you're with, and whom you're against. Political commentary is rather important, if it's missing, people miss out.

Don't _think_ about what they say. Don't look for common ground. Don't look for lunacies in any side. Just ... pick, ok ? We've shown you both, so ...

[mschuster91]

> I disagree with you on the UK running according to a "constitution". It definitely has none.

Germany doesn't have a "constitution" either, and so doesn't Israel, we run on "basic laws" instead which are functionally equivalent. And the UK instead runs on the entire body of its truly ancient laws, court decisions and international treaties. But no one would argue that either of the three nations is not a democracy or a constitutional state (i.e. a state where individuals and legal entities enjoy a reasonably common set of protections).

> Free speech alone though only helps public discourse if there is no attempt to "balance" differing views. Trying that has the opposite effect; instead of pointing out flaws and lies in any argument, the mediator simply "gives equal airtime" to conflicting views. That's the perfect way to polarize - choose whom you're with, and whom you're against.

There is another bad aspect in "balancing" itself, perfectly illustrated by "flat earth" believers. We don't go and give people who believe that the earth is flat equal airtime to those believing we're on a globe, in fact we don't give them any airtime (except when we need to fill some airtime by laughing about ridiculously dumb people) - but there are enough reckless / profit-addicted media that give airtime to COVID deniers, antivaxxers, "great replacement" and other conspiracy spreaders.

Democracy itself can only work on a common set of core beliefs and truths. Once lies are allowed to be part of democratic discourse, the defenders of democracy will have to spend way more of their share of airtime to refute the lies instead of presenting their point of view - a phenomenon/rhetoric tactic known as "firehose of falsehoods", basically flooding the argument with lies (which stick with your followers thanks to repetition as an additional bonus) and making it impossible for the opponent to present their ideas. And sadly, there are more than enough media, politicians and people accepting this tactic.

[_heimdall]

We can't have free speech if anyone has the authority and power to identify and silence what they consider lies.

Flat earthers are an easy example as a vast majority of people understand that the earth is in fact not flat. You seem to take that as an example of why we can't allow people to share such ideas, of given air time you worry that more would believe it. There's an easier answer though, people know the earth is a sphere despite the flat earth idea being out there. The idea gets little air time because so few people think its possible or true.

Silencing an idea gives a certain air of feasibility to it, one in charge does need to bother silencing something that is obviously false and easily disproven.

Moving your argument to anything more widely considered than flat earth and the line between lies and truths is much less clear, and therefore the line of where speech should be silenced is much trickier. Covid should have made this clear, health officials and governments have walked back on almost all of the ideas that they claimed to be dangerous lies during the pandemic response. Something unclear can easily be branded as a lie by one with power and a microphone, that doesn't mean it is a lie though and definitely doesn't mean that we all still have free speech rights if the people in charge can silence us.

[somenameforme]

It's Norway, not the UK (which doesn't even have a formal constitution), with the 2nd oldest active constitution. [1] And they also have ingrained and well supported freedom of speech dating back to 1814. In fact many regular parts of Norwegian discourse would never be allowed in the US, and would be framed as some sort of ultra radical far whatever blah blah end of the world type stuff.

For instance Hjernevask [2] was an extremely popular series aired on the primary state owned broadcasting channel. It was a documentary that was highly critical of gender studies and a variety of other topics related to identity politics. The title translates to "brainwashing." And in 2011, after the documentary aired, Norway did choose to cease funding Nordic Gender Institute, leading to its closure - though they stated that the documentary was not directly why. Yet, lo and behold, Norway remains one the single most egalitarian and gender equal societies in the world.

Open dialogue is not a threat to anything except bad ideas and bad actors. And it's critical to help ensure everybody has a voice in society, even if what's coming out of their mouth is not what you might want to hear. That said I do agree with you the the US constitution could use some updates, but that would be largely to further these aims. So, for instance, I think proportional representation (as Norway swapped to in 1919) is just objectively better than this district based first past the post nonsense.

But the reason for that change is again precisely to make sure everybody has some representation. For instance, rolling with the Norway theme, here is a list of their political parties currently with representation in Parliament. [3] You've got your religious types, your socialists, your right wing populists, an agrarian party, liberal conservatives, and more. In the US we get to choose between pack of idiots #1, pack of idiots #2, and throwing away your vote.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Norway

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_N...

[pjc50]

> But the reason for that change is again precisely to make sure everybody has some representation. For instance, rolling with the Norway theme, here is a list of their political parties currently with representation in Parliament.

I put it to you that the different voting system of PR for the Storting is far more important in ensuring that outcome rather than speech.

As do a few other things; the state broadcaster rather than a set of increasingly weird private clickbait conspiracy broadcasters as in the US; the monarchy; and having Vikrund Quisling taken out and shot.

[namirez]

“ Space is orders of magnitude more complex than air flight”

Not true! The challenges are different but space is in a sense simpler since the reliability requirements for space are not as stringent.

[resolutebat]

That's an odd assertion. Sure, we have a somewhat higher tolerance for risk for unmanned spaceflights, but we don't have particularly high requirements for unmanned drones either. But the reliability requirements for something like Starliner are ridiculously high and that's why it's taken a decade for the first manned flight.

[namirez]

A starliner is not nearly as reliable as a Boeing 777. Just look at what happened to the space shuttle. That’s also why Russians had reliable launch vehicles but not so reliable jetliners.

[resolutebat]

Those "unreliable" jetliners still complete orders of magnitude more flights between crashes than "reliable" launch vehicles. Angara A5, Russia's latest and greatest, had 1 failure out of 4 launches so far.

[somenameforme]

You're completely correct, but I think using the Angara A5 is a bit misleading. That's still in testing, and the one failure was because the exact part they were testing (the upper stage system) failed - it's more akin to something like the Starship, even if nowhere near as ambitious. It'd be more reasonable to compare something like the Soyuz-U, which has successfully sent hundreds of people to the ISS. Yet its overall failure rate is still dramatically higher than an airplane with 765 successful launches and 22 failures.

If airplanes had the same failure rates as even the most reliable rockets in existence, we'd be seeing tens to hundreds of crashes per day. Of course it's not because rockets are "allowed" to fail more regularly, but because this is the best we can currently manage.

[quartesixte]

The lifetime requirements for a lot of components even with crewed capsules and human-rated launch vehicles is an order of magnitude lower than aircraft.

“An airliner has to survive 13 hours in the air. A rocket only has to survive 13 minutes.”

[sdwr]

The only real issue is that rocket launches are 100x (1000x? 1MMx?) more expensive than plane takeoffs, so the feedback loop is more difficult.

[ijustlovemath]

COVID was a single DARPA grant cycle in length. These companies move at glacial paces compared to the SaaS plays that the typical HN dev is familiar with. I'm guessing COVID never really threatened big programs like Starliner.

[somenameforme]

Your guess would be incorrect. Boeing felt they were in risk of collapse during COVID and immediately went to the government asking for a $60 billion bailout. The government wanted equity in exchange for this bailout, which Boeing didn't want to offer. So they ended up offering Federal Reserve facilitated 'Boeing bonds', and took in about $25 billion to stay afloat. [1] Amusingly a big part of the reason they ended up in such catastrophic danger is that they'd been dumping all their cash reserves into buying their own stock, to try to bring its flagging price up. [2]

[1] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/2020/05/04/how-boeing-was-res...

[2] - https://archive.is/eO3FJ (WaPo archive)

[jajko]

If musk will have another of his egomaniacal bouts and takes reigns, very bad stuff can happen. He is totally unpredictable at this point in any direction, does outright stupid childish decisions, being bipolar/borderline or whatever is exactly his diagnosis can be a disaster in right conditions for everybody and everything around him.

But yes as long as he keeps actually skilled and stable people managing his stuff it should be fine, more than fine.

[whoitwas]

It's all lighting money on fire. All the funding is our tax dollars given to private industry.

[yellow_postit]

While I’d like to see the alternative NASA get more funding — for low orbit work I don’t see why we shouldn’t be boot strapping private industry.

Eventually though those subsidies will need to wind down but there’s too few competitors at this point.