[throw5959]

What other person started a rocket company from scratch and got them landing? Of course I want to hear everything he says. Yes, he's crazy - seems to be a requirement if you want to do such stuff. Doesn't mean I will ignore it. I can think for myself, it's not like I take everything at face value.

All that to say, perhaps other people don't prioritize values like you do. The technical excellence that companies repeatedly achieved under Musk is incredible.

[wormlord]

> What other person started a rocket company from scratch and got them landing?

I'd rather listen to Lars Blackmore (the engineer who is largely responsible for SpaceX powered descent). Or Gwynne Shotwell who actually oversees the business day-to-day. I'm really not interested in what the money guy has to say, especially since he is primarily interested in cultivating his public image-- how can you trust anything he says? The dude pays people to play a videogame for him 24/7 so he can pretend he is the best player in the world. That's not a metaphor -- he actually does that.

https://www.vulture.com/article/fake-gamer-was-elon-musk-che...

[throw5959]

Sure, I'm not saying Musk is the only person who has interesting things to say about it. You're absolutely correct about these other people and I listen to them too.

But you're not giving Musk enough credit. All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit, and what is interesting here is that he went and made it happen anyways.

I'm not talking just about the engineering, everything is interesting here - the project management, the hiring, the investments, the business side... Musk has a lot of input and influence in all of these, he was the one who decided and paid for it.

[lamontcg]

> All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit

You literally responded to a guy citing Lars Blackmore, who is the engineer that designed their landing algorithm--which was developed at NASA's JPL lab (before SpaceX existed).

Musk bet on landing rockets _because_ engineers told him that it was possible.

[inemesitaffia]

The landing was completely developed at SpaceX without NASA tech, assistance or money. By Lars. After figuring out parachutes were infeasible.

In fact it was one of the reasons red dragon was cancelled.

The group studying hypersonic retro propulsion of boosters at NASA was let go because that's what SpaceX did to land

[lamontcg]

The Air Force was studying RTLS as part of the ARES (Affordable REsponsive Spacelift) program in 2005 (Which was the result of 1992/1994-era discussions on "spacecast 2020"):

https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2005-6682

Lars and Beschet wrote their groundbreaking paper on lossless convexification of the powered descent problem at JPL before Lars went to SpaceX:

http://www.larsblackmore.com/CarsonAcikmeseBlackmoreACC11.pd...

[inemesitaffia]

Blue Origin landed first, where was that from?

And I don't see any rocket actually coming back with an orbital payload? Where's the demonstrator? Like that quiet supersonic thing Lockheed is demonstrating.

Even Lars didn't deliver at the first attempt. So it's not like it was something available off the shelf. Like some cryptography library you include in your code.

[throw5959]

Oh no, Musk convinced the engineers it's possible. One of the interesting things about him.

[wormlord]

> All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit

Every company has some kind of mythology where someone says "you'll never make it in this town!". The reality is that uncrewed propulsive landing was technologically feasible since the soviets landed a rover on the moon. NASA propulsively landed a rover on Mars back in 2011.

Like I said, listening to billionaires is probably interesting if your goal is "acquire boatloads of money". But we already know how to do that. 1. Appear confident 2. Lie 3. Have no morals or ethics 4. Prioritize the pursuit of power above all else

[throw5959]

Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened. I am watching it closely ever since SpaceX was founded in 2002. There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup.

Mars is completely off topic, as they didn't land the booster there. We had Space Shuttle before and it didn't say much about landing rocket boosters.

[michaelt]

> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about,

Didn't Apollo 11 land on the moon using a rocket, then take off from the moon again, back in the 1960s?

Not exactly a tech demo. And the Apollo missions had the additional challenges of being crewed, and targeting an atmosphere and gravity they couldn't reproduce on earth for test purposes.

The SpaceX stuff is neat though, compared to the defence industry clowns they're competing with.

[throw5959]

Apollo 11 had a three stage rocket and every stage was discarded. SpaceX is obviously not the first company to land something - but landing a rocket booster that just performed an orbital lift is the interesting and extremely hard thing to do. The payload can be entirely designed to land - but the booster has many other constraints (payload weight and its desired velocity and trajectory being some of them).

To do what Apollo 11 did without discarding the boosters you also need orbital refueling and probably rapid turnaround (or a huge inventory of boosters), which SpaceX plans to develop next. Awesome stuff.

[AnimalMuppet]

Apollo 11 was crewed, though.

[ImPostingOnHN]

I think it is? Like, this sounds like a pretty silly claim:

> All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit

Where did you hear that?

[Yizahi]

Arianespace director literally laughed in public over that idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W676Kk9LSYw

[throw5959]

Well I heard it myself from practically anybody up until 2015. I even attended quite a lot of conference talks on this topic... I'm sure it's not hard to find it online, famously a NASA director (I think?) did so.

[wormlord]

> Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened

What didn't happen? I didn't provide you a narrative, I gave 2 examples of uncrewed propulsive landing which literally happened.

> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup.

I agree. Now please point to me which part of the self-landing booster Elon built.

[throw5959]

I told you what didn't happen - the situation wasn't as clear as you say. Everybody in the space industry was absolutely sure he is totally crazy and it's impossible to do with an entire first/second stage rocket booster.

He built the company that built the booster, which to me is at least as interesting as building the booster itself.

It's not just about money - Bezos has much more money available than SpaceX had in 2002-2015, and yet his rockets still don't land.

[whamlastxmas]

He doesn’t do that. People who don’t like him claim that he does without any basis to it, and you’re perpetuating this hyperbole by claiming it as fact when the very thing you linked doesn’t even go that far.

Musk sucks, attack him for valid reasons like racism instead of some made up bullshit about cheating at video games.

[wormlord]

He literally does do that. Top-level players of the game have called him out for it. They have tracked his time with an API. It is actually mathematically impossible to be at his level in POE-- you would have to be a top-tier player and play nonstop for 20+ hrs a day.

People who like Musk aren't going to care that he is racist, they will argue about what actually constitutes as racism (erm pushes up glasses --actually have u read the bell curve???).

Having definitive proof of him paying others to play videogames for him is an example of how he just lies about everything. If he lies about videogames what else does he lie about?

[throw5959]

Where does he lie about a video game? Maybe he has someone boost his level. Did he say it's not true? Just doing that can have many reasons - maybe he likes a shiny number there, wants a bigger challenge, more fun because of higher level and more items or whatever.

Just playing on an account that I didn't level up myself is not lying. I know that some competitive amateur players think it's the end of the world but no, nobody cares.

[rybosworld]

> Where does he lie about a video game?

He stated on Joe Rogan he was one of the best Diablo players in the world (top 20 or thereabouts). The only way to do that is to grind the game with long hours, because it gets exponentially more difficult to level up. I don't remember exactly how many hours of playtime he'd need to achieve the level he was at, but it was excessive. Something like 14+ hours a day.

Then he recently live streamed his Path of Exile 2 account. It was one of the highest leveled accounts in the world. Similar to Diablo, that's not possible without grinding the game for many hours. However, it was clear from the stream that Musk barely understood how to play the game. He was having trouble just finding things in the UI.

The point is: he paid someone (or multiple people) for a leveled up account. Then he publicly claimed to be one of the top players in the world.

It's both shocking and revealing that he's willing to put forth such a blatant lie, for something that matters so little (a video game).

[throw5959]

Thank you, if he really said that he is one of the best players, that would be a lie. I don't think just streaming a leveled up account is a lie, though.

Why do you talk about hours per day? Does it matter if you play less hours per day, but more days?

[ImPostingOnHN]

Maybe, maybe not. Importantly, the parent didn't call him "crazy", they simply pointed out that he is hostile to workers.

It's sad that people can see a good thing and think it cancels out all bad things.

[throw5959]

I called him crazy myself (and I do think it's true), to illustrate that I am aware of his antics and it's not a reason to stop listening.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Right, but you replied to the parent, not yourself, and the parent didn't call him "crazy", they simply pointed out that he is hostile to workers (he is).

It's sad that people can see a good thing and think it cancels out all bad things

[throw5959]

I'm trying to say that it doesn't cancel but that doesn't mean I won't listen.

[_shantaram]

McDonnell Douglas seems to have gotten it done, from a quick skim of [1]. It appears they ran out of funding and the program was cancelled. According to the same article,

> Elon Musk stated that the SpaceX Falcon 9 development was "... continuing the great work of the DC-X project."

So...

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

[boxed]

It's so sad that the current culture wants to judge peoples life based on the worst they've ever done. Yea, Musk is a troll online, but his success as a business/tech leader is something you can only doubt by donning the proverbial tin foil hat.

[wormlord]

I care less about his "troll" posts online (implying there is a conspiracy of jews importing people to destroy America is just a troll and not an actual Nazi conspiracy guys) than his manipulation of the US government, mistreatment of workers, and maybe the most egregious of all, being a fake nerd and pretending to like Evangelion.

[whamlastxmas]

Are you as militant about dunking on the million other people who also manipulate the government and mistreat workers to an even greater extent?

[wormlord]

Yes.

[boxed]

Ah yes, the rocket guy must be a fake nerd, and that's much worse than mistreating human beings. No flaw in that logic at all.

[wormlord]

It was a joke.