True. At more than an order of magnitude higher cost.
You're applying generalizations to specifics. It is true that other industries have seen order-of-magnitude cost reductions. The companies that bring those innovations are frequently (and correctly) celebrated (see Henry Ford, et al.). SpaceX is that company in this industry, which has otherwise been stagnant for generations. Add to this the fact that space exploration has been aspirational and charismatic as a industry, and you have your justification.
Maybe they view their payoff date in a longer term fashion, maybe the way they will make their money is 'cool' but Space X isn't more charitable than any other company.
They contractually had the option to build their own derivative but punted and then found themselves with a Senate banning future imports. Now they want $5B to design a new rocket, or maybe use Bezos' design.
The SLS is nothing more than a patched up space shuttle launch system with a capsule on top. Except that it will cost a lot more to launch. Not much new ground there.
This is exactly the problem Space X is meant to solve.
Costs need to come down radically, and State money is too fickle to be relied on for reaching long term goals.
Contractors are not some naturally occurring mineral, a side effect of some budget. They are companies, people. At present, they are companies comfortably using their existing operations to keep doing what they've been doing since the 70s. I think that it matters who that company is, what their future strategy is. It matters that they care about reusability, creating technology that scales to larger missions... basically, people matter.
In any case, I don't think you can compare Nissan to Tesla. You can always reduce things to parity along some metric, but in this case I just don't think 2018 sales volume is most of the story.
Thanks for the answer though.
Look at your own post for why Tesla/SpaceX engender negativity. GM revolutionized the landscape of America. Douglas Aerospace helped design the most powerful rocket ever. And you denigrate those companies and their actual achievements by pointing to the things Musk says he’s going to do. And that’s exactly how Musk has positioned himself. So is it any surprise when people react negatively to him when information is revealed that suggests a gap between promises and reality?
On cars, no that's not what I thunk. I don't think this divides into 2018 sales volume and bullshitting hype. There is also impact on the industry, consumer perception and the active effect on the price performance of batteries. There's important proofs (to the public) of concept, that electric cars can stand on their own in every respect.
Nissan... they fulfilled a demand for low spec cars with short ranges, a relatively nonscalable source of demand too. I don't think that Nissan's sales are as relevant as Tesla's in the overall scheme of changing most cars from ice's to electric. That's not to hate on nissan. I have a nissan.
I think we understand eachother, but disagree. You think of Tesla and spacex as similar to their competition, but with lots of underserved hype. I see them as different, mostly because of risk tolerance.
I guess this is also a matter of worldview. I think we have a serious problem of too little risk & failure, and the ability (of very large companies) to avoid risk almost entirely.
SpaceX set a goal of reusable rocket or bust, fairly literally and explicitly. I don't think other contractors would have. I don't think we get to mars unless someone does.
If mars is just hype and bullshit to you, then meaningfully reduced cost per orbital kg.. I dunno thoug. I *do" believe the claim that he's after a mars service. Why else risk the house?
Another way to look at it is that what matters is the pioneering work that SpaceX has actually accomplished (and stands to accomplish) that none of their competitors has (primarily, drastically lowering the cost of reaching space while achieving high and increasing launch rates).
> What matters is that Tesla plans to bring EVs to every household in the future, not that it’s shipped about the same number of EVs as Nissan to date?
Without any intended sarcasm, I would answer this question with 'yes'.
The latter is a revolution. The former is just an incremental evolution. Laudable, but nowhere close to the same level of accomplishment.
Not at all. I am just pointing out that the popularity of SpaceX stems from much more than just ‘wishful thinking’. In a short time and against all odds, they’ve established themselves as the leading space launch provider, and they have a realistic chance to vastly increase that lead in the years to come. Speaking of pioneering technology, they are the first and so far only entity to launch, land, and reuse production orbital rockets on a regular basis. This may well prove to be a revolution, especially considering how many experts said it was impossible.
Handwaving their accomplishments away because too many people cheer them too loudly strikes me as unfair and disingenuous.
For example, here's the CNES (French space agency) Director of Launchers discussing SpaceX's achievements, and his desire to design Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9:
https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of...
> For Falcon 9 for instance, they use a toss-back trajectory. An engine is relit while going against the aerodynamic flow, which is actually quite complicated to achieve. We worked on that with ONERA, the French national aerospace lab, and realized it’s pretty complicated.
and, right after talking about how SpaceX's design stages lower, has a common engine between stages, and allows experimentation in landings:
> Prometheus can be used in a new architecture which we call Ariane Next. It will have 7 such engines on the first stage and 1 on the second stage, and can be used in expendable or reusable mode, allowing to experiment reuse easily. The objective is to learn by testing, which is not a European speciality.
There's no greater endorsement than by a competitor.
Watching those boosters land literally gave me goosebumps. I just thought, holy shit, this guy is the real deal.
There are a lot of smart people in the world who, with the same backing that Musk received, could lead a company to achieve those goals. Without spreading themselves so thin that they make mistakes affecting thousands of people. Our tendency to elevate and idolize people who are aggressive and self-promoting leaves little room for those blessed by the absence of those traits.
It's ridiculous that on a day when thousands face unemployment that there are excited stories about flamethrowers being shipped.
Space-X have done great work in making landed-recovery practical and reliable but they're again building on top of work originally done by the DoD-contractor model.
As to SpaceX--it's an extremely interesting attempt to tread a well-worn path. Commercial exploitation of space travel is a really neat concept. But again your comparison is completely unmoored from reality. SpaceX disappearing will "hurt our changes of landing people on other worlds anytime soon?" Who exactly do you think got us into space, then to the moon? Who is responsible for almost all the progress in space exploration to date, including developing the RP-1 based rocket designs that SpaceX is refining half a century later? It was U.S. defense contractors! It's worth keeping in mind that the Saturn V developed by Boeing/NAA/Douglas in the 1960s could hurl three times as much weight to the moon as the Falcon Heavy. To date, the only proven model for treading new ground in space is large defense contractors spending gobs of State money.
The real question is: why does Tesla/SpaceX generate so much sophomoric positivity?