Twitter is better than ever, Tesla is doing great, spacex is amazing. Where the hell am I?? isnt this hacker friggin news, not Soviet socialist republic.
Do you have more information on this? My quick googling turned up nothing.
> In addition to the siting and sizing of the pad, SpaceX does not have a flame trench, nor do they have a water deluge system used to suppress heat and sound energy from any launches, as the Army Corps of Engineering permitting required to add these civil engineering systems is itself a multi-year process.
> No large rocket complex on the planet: not in Russia, nor China, and certainly not in the US, exists that doesn’t contain one or both of these energy suppression systems.
https://blog.esghound.com/p/spacexs-texas-rocket-is-going-to
Name one other company, person, or even a country that can and is willing to do that. There are none. As long as SpaceX can and no one else can, the future of SpaceX is on a pretty sound footing in my opinion.
I'm sad about the interference that Starlink causes to ground based astronomy, this doesn't mean Musk is ignoring those issues.
And I value government agencies making sure that business interests are balanced against democratic will of the people, that doesn't mean they're funded at the right level for a rapidly growing industry.
SpaceX knew that the concrete wasn't the final solution, it was always temporary, they had already started building the steel water cooled plate before the first test flight. Based on the data they had available from the series of static fire tests leading up to the test they thought the concrete would ablate and survive one test flight before they took the downtime to replace it. Do you have any evidence to support your assertion that Elon overruled all the SpaceX engineers on the timing of when to install the steel water cooled plate or are you Literally making things up?
Learning more by moving quickly and taking calculated risks is clearly the better approach, as evidenced by the current dominance of the Falcon 9 and SN 25 and booster 9 sitting on a repaired OLM and being scheduled to make another orbital attempt in less than 2 weeks.
I think most people agree that it's better for SpaceX business, but some don't agree that it's worthwhile for our society with what happens if failed. It's like Tesla's "FSD Beta" situation.
Unfortunately, #LiterallyMakingThingsUp seems to be a trend these days.
Wouldn't that be called working from first principles? Proving it doesn't work can be quicker in the long run than over-designing something based on what you think won't work.
The upside was they got lots of data to improve the next rocket, which they already did. It's ready to go again, just waiting for FAA approval.
Or they could have done that the first time with a flame trench and a water deluge system that prevented the energy of the rockets from damaging the rockets dooming the first stage and making concrete rain on the neighboring wildlife reserve.
Elon could have verified that hypothesis with a full static fire test AND be able to see the damage to both rockets and pad from an actual launch without destroying a rocket.
This is why SpaceX grew from the start with an immune system to prevent Elon from ruining too much stuff.
I believe he’s better observed in Twitter, which is a company that didn’t develop an immune system to deal with him.
It seems that while the explosion would have been avoided with a deluge or flame trench, it could have also likely just been mitigated with a thicker concrete pad or a vent system.
Iterative implementation works very well for many kinds of software development projects. When an iteration involves 200 tanker trucks carrying fuel and oxidizer and dozens of rocket engines and results in destroying launch infrastructure and dumping debris into wetlands and inhabited areas, one might conclude "iteration" has made the jump from sound engineering principle to management fad dogma.
Even Elon said this. It was a gamble, it didn’t pay off.
Not in the least. SpaceX hires a lot of rocket scientists who are industry experts. They're more agile than the entrenched players since Boeing/Lockheed legacy space programs weren't efficient but SpaceX has relied upon expert consultation and expert advice from folks in the industry to build their rockets. I don't see them as building from first principles at all, they're building on what's come before standing on the shoulders of the rocket engineers who've come before.
> Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea
They expected it to break but be ok for one launch. Its a reasonable risk to launch sooner.
> Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk.
And yet the he has lead the business for 20+ years and the company has been getting more and more and more successful. I guess that just happens by magic.
> At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions
When SpaceX does good its because Musk wasn't there, when it does bad its because of Musk. Classic.
Product is way more interesting in this case than BD, considering it's the most badass rockets ever made. But feel free to praise Shotwell too, that's great too.
If 4 of those data points don’t convince you, you obviously don’t want to be convinced even in the slightest
Of course as soon one says this, someone else will misconstrue this as some ridiculous claim that Musk is a singular genius responsible for inventing everything. This is of course silly. He's only one human with a limited schedule. There are surely thousands of things happening every day at SpaceX which he has zero involvement in.
As we often say in computing: ideas are easy, execution is everything. But the biggest successes of SpaceX weren't just about having ideas, they were about having the gumption to fund them, and an ability to recruit the best people so that execution is possible. In fields like rocketry, one might instead say ideas are easy, identifying when an idea should have a billion dollars thrown at it is hard, and execution is damn fucking hard.
Of course everybody who leaves SpaceX tells a different story. Journalists and others who observe SpaceX tell a different story.
Musk has literally been the leader since the company had 5 people, and he always had control of the companies direction. Shotwell is one important part of the team. But she was recruited by Musk and promoted by Musk into the position she now has.
People also used to say 'Musk has nothing to do with engines its all Tom Mueller' of course then Tom Mueller responded saying that was false. And of course once Mueller left, SpaceX is still doing great things with engines.
So the reason why 'Musk is always throwing into the ring with SpaceX' is simply because its the truth and all Anti-Musk Twitter warriors are not actually informed about the topic they simply have to discredited Musk whenever they can. Often they don't even care about spaceflight, they care about being against Musk.
Sometimes you do something against conventional wisdom, and people call you a genius. Sometimes it doesn’t pay off.
I am assuming that you are employed, rather than an employer.
Or because he constantly stomps on experienced engineers with stupid ideas and puts the whole thing at risk. Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea and yet Elon had to trump his own experts.
Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk. At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions without having to cater to his ego and make him think the idea was his.