SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week
nypost.com
nypost.com
> a three-day journey around the Earth that will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
I might be too cynical but I actually get turned down by the tentative of diversion. When I read that, I struggled to see how the St Jude hospital is in fact benefiting from that flight. They benefit from the donation that is artificially coupled to. I read this as - that person is trying to divert the impact on his image away from burning Ms of $ in fossile fuel.
The one redeeming factor I see from that claim are these 12M raised from sweepstake, but even then I don't think it covers the costs of launch.
St Jude Hospital is benefiting from the flight because they are receiving a $100 million donation that they otherwise would not have received if the flight was not scheduled to take place.
Does this make sense to you?
I haven't found a public financial or integrated report about it though, so I can't vouch how these funds are spent and if this is a charity as in what most of us consider a charity.
[1]: https://www.blueorigin.com/news/club-for-the-future-selects-...
I guess not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NASA_civilian_astrona...
It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it.
It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable.
Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to give the guy credit for SpaceX and Tesla for that matter - I suspect history will look back on SpaceX and Tesla as being quite significant inflection points. It feels like we are at the Model-T or early commercial jet flight stage here but for spaceflight and EVs. What was once only for the super rich and gov/mil is now becoming available to more people, with rapid iteration/improvements and lower prices. More of it please!
But clearly there is a difference between a suborbital flight with a few minutes of weightlessness and a flight that orbits for three days.
Blue Origin's New Shepard did reach 100km though, so was a "space trip". It was sub orbital though, so more Freedom 7 than Vostok 1 (Freedom 7 reached a far higher apogee and speed than New Shepard)
SpaceX has the civilian equivalent of Vostok 1, albeit larger and far more advanced. It's an order of magnitude more impressive.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+sound+at+100+...
This flight is purely for paying customers, organized and conducted by a private company. If there were enough paying customers, SpaceX probably would be happy to have such a flight every month. With this mission, space travel has become something you can commercially book, though at a very steep price - that might come down with the Starship.
There you go.
The hard work from brilliant engineers of any giant tech company to make all of this actually work and become a reality is always overlooked and the spotlight is focused on the individual who gives out unrealistic deadlines for the engineers to meet.
If they meet the deadline, no one cares and it's business as usual. If they miss it; angry meetings, delays, reshuffles and layoffs happen.
I learned through that attempt at going back through his tweets that, as you pointed out, Twitter is really not built for that. I guess I hadn’t really put much thought it in at the time, was just on my phone, curious about SpaceX, and thought it might be an OK way to get some updates.
Hopefully that makes at least a bit of sense…
No it's not at all. It's something he's done since the very beginning. You can go back to the 2000s with the first few public interviews he's given since starting Tesla and SpaceX after accomplishments (first few years of both had no accomplishments to redirect praise) and he's constantly redirecting to the team. It's always driven me nuts how many people misquote him and consistently ignore all these redirections of praise.
It's as though some smart people said "Hmm, what if we realize the ability to launch payload into space more cheaply than anyone else? What's the most durable moat we could build with that advantage?"
Vision is how you get the best out of people - colleagues, customers, suppliers, investors. Like Steve Jobs, he loves the best part of his engineers more than they do themselves - how can you not respond to that?
When you follow the process, you realize this is an accomplishment of humanity.
In a way it is a progress. Wars had thousands or even millions of causalities, but history says mostly about generals. No one interested enough in a fate of a private John Smith. Now education came to a point when privates of army of brilliant engineers is not interesting enough, because there are too many of them for a cognitive abilities of a regular consumer of a history.
Maybe some day in a future, we'll come to a history ignoring individuals from an army of Elons, and focusing instead on some superhuman who led them.
What is bothersome is that some people that do not like Musk have come out of the woodwork with the 'but he is not responsible' argument. Its is such a tiered line of argument by now.
Everybody knows a company is not one person but equally everybody knows that Musk is most responsible for SpaceX by literally any definition. I hope at some point we can evolve past this endlessly repeating line of argument.
as much as it pains me to say it, but those "really really good engineers" are just cogs in the machine, providing services for money; the management running the machine, ultimately decide which direction the machines runs.
it's a cynical take, but cogs are replaceable, and would (often with not that major of an adjustment) easily fit other machines, ones that perhaps run in directions we don't like or care about.
(like seriously, tech companies like SpaceX etc burn through engineers like crazy, they literally take this metaphor to heart, iirc most fresh engineers last barely the vesting period, much cheaper to replace them with the fresh batch from the next semester)
Therefore the people running the machine are the ones that matter, since they are responsible for the good and the bad.
That ship has sailed a few years ago: Volkswagen e-Up, Seat Mii, Renault Twingo, several models from BYD, Dacia Spring, Smart EQ, Fiat 500e, and even Renault Zoe or MG ZS in some markets. All under 25k€, including value added tax
The only way Tesla can make a dent in this market is by offering autopilot and much greater range at 20k or so. Or by making a bloody fast car for young people (which will cannibalize their own sales probably).
[0] Especially when "design" really just means an electric drivetrain and bits of custom trim for a Lotus skateboard.
During those times, that car is the only thing that made combustion engine people even note Tesla — because of its blinding performance.
10 years ago many people thought it would happen well before 2021. The "first operational Dragon spacecraft was launched in December 2010" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX) and commercial flights to the ISS were right around the corner (cargo first happened May 2012).
If you told me as a kid that I will go my whole life without owning a robot and that the main difference is we will replace a rotary phone with a hand held phone I would want my money back.
I guess poor Christa McAuliffe has been totally forgot about also.
Wasn't that a government flight aboard a government spacecraft that notably didn't make it to space? Not sure how that's related to a civilian flight aboard a civilian spacecraft.
In this case it's in the sense of meaning 2b.
Hayley Arceneaux will become the first individual with a prosthesis to go to space. In the 60 year history of crewed spaceflight, we have never put a human with titanium bones in orbit. Nor, have we sent anyone up who has met any of the requirements to be otherwise classified as "disabled". Until now.
It is the indicator of a profound tipping point.
The very first astronauts were required to be "perfect physical specimens" (cis-male specimens at that) that had no abnormal readings in all of their medical tests. Jim Lovell was eliminated from consideration during the Mercury program because of his elevated bilirubin levels, which turned out to be a fairly normal variation of human physiology.
The requirements loosened to the point where Jim Lovell could go to the moon. But most people, including women, were still excluded by NASA's and the Air Force's Flight Surgeons.
Then came the Shuttle program that opened the field wider to more bright minds who wouldn't have met the "perfect male physical specimen" standard, including Eileen Collins and Sally Ride. By the end of the program, the shuttle had launched multiple cancer survivors into space.
However, so far, people who are considered "disabled" or "unfit" by the Flight Surgeon's office are still excluded. These terms cut a wide swath and include treatable conditions such as, Type-I diabetes, dysmenorrhea, endometriosis and - yes- prosthetics. Other than a call by ESA for the first disabled state-sponsored astronauts, no other astronaut corps has admitted someone like Hayley into their ranks. Yet.
With this flight, Hayley will set a new milestone in space medicine. A big one. She will become a test case that can be used to demonstrate that people with disabilities can function and operate in the spaceflight environment. It will break the cycle of disabled people being "flight proven", from a flight surgeon's perspective.
We're now at the dawn of a new age, where anyone physically fit can go to space, provided they have the mental aptitude. It's incredible.
This flight means that I can be an astronaut. And so can you.
Hayley represents a huge milestone. And we owe it to commercial spaceflight. Thank you, Elon and Jared Isaacman (and Axiom Space).
edit: This comment is one of my more downvoted comments. I'm not sure why.
For clarification. This flight is not operated by Axiom Space. The commander, Jason Isaacman, purchased the flight directly from SpaceX.
Axiom Space's first mission will be in January 2022.
Civilians were being already sent in 1986 (unsuccessfully...) and in 1990 (successfully). What's a difference between a civilian that has or has not a prosthesis? It is not like they are going to be doing some kind of superhuman feats.
They could have sent a disabled person just as well in 1986 if they decided so. If I remember there were even discussions to choose who to send to space to show how routine and safe it is and disabled person was discussed. But in the end they decided to choose woman teacher as better publicity stunt.
The real important differences here are:
1. Falling costs of sending anything to orbit.
2. A business model and a technical plan to keep the costs falling for the foreseeable future.
3. Competition supported by free market.
4. A leader with power, means, plan, drive and ability to execute to achieve great things.
"Today, the phrase crossing the Rubicon is a metaphor that means to pass a point of no return."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Rubicon
Overhyped or not; that's a perfectly valid metaphor to use to phrase it.
I'd go with "milestone" which is less hype, but is also a metaphor, as no actual stone marking out a mile will be involved.
In 1998, John Glenn went to space when he was 77 years old. Don't tell me that he was physically fit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn
There is also a big difference between commercial flights and the ISS where astronauts have to perform spacewalks.
EDIT: NASA may have been messed up but the Soviet Union sent a woman into space way before in 1963.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova
EDIT2: There is also a history of space tourism that preceded this era by about 20 years. There was a woman in there as well.
Seems to me that orbital spaceflight as a proposition is an order of magnitude more enticing than scratching the Kármán line. And for the people who could afford it, they'd surely pay an order of magnitude more.
You can't just show up in the morning an hour before launch, get some final instructions, strap in and be back home in time for lunch.
It's much more of an investment in terms of time and effort, too besides just the money. The stress on both body and mind is also significantly higher - if you do panic, you can just close your eyes for a hot minute and be safely back on the ground (in the case of Blue Origin), whereas with an orbital flight you're stuck in space for at least an hour no matter what with the worst (e.g. re-entry) yet to come.
Going to orbit on a rocket isn't the quite the carnival ride that suborbital hops are.
I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.
Our usage of fuel for regular jet travel is already becoming A Problem. Making it easier to burn more fuel for fewer people to travel faster is emphatically not what we need right now.
my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?
Regulations around rocket launches have been hashed out over decades of practice. We do not yet have this kind of practical experience with space tourism.
As for the tech produced by commercial space programs: I do not know how open it is going to be, but the know-how established during development will move around as people leave their employees and join others or create their own space startups. I think this might be the most important effect: massive expansion of the pool of experienced engineers.
A historical analogy: contemporary Silicon Valley was basically founded by engineers (called the Traitorous Eight) who left a mismanaged semiconductor startup owned by William Shockley.
Carbon capture is attractive because it can be used in places where energy density is a critical factor.
what is critical? for instance is food production (that will sharply decrease due to climate change) more critical than individual cars, for instance?
you also still don't answer the primary question i have as an engineer and physicist: which CC tech is gonna work/can be scaled?
I don't know how that compares with a typical airliner in terms of miles per gallon (probably not much better than Dragon). However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources.
In any case, I don't think many people took the idea of using Starship as a terrestrial passenger transport seriously.
SpaceX intends to develop direct atmospheric methane generation from CO2, which they have to do anyway for their Mars plans because that's the only way to do in-situ refueling there (plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere, not exactly a lot of natural gas fields). Taking into account any methane leaks and correcting for its few decades of enhance greenhouse effect before it decomposes to CO2, they certainly could make Starship carbon neutral and if they do it doesn't matter how much "energy" in the abstract it uses beyond price. Solar and wind power have plenty positive power factors.
Worth noting that in principle nothing is special about Starship here, carbon neutral RP1 could be made as well (at a further hit to conversion efficiency and thus price). In practice though green methane is more practical and will amortize better given its use elsewhere in the solar system.
It's hard to argue that a method of transport so incredibly energy inefficient will be a good thing until we're swimming in so much excess energy that we've got nothing better to do with it. Even with the massive improvements in renewables over the last few decades, we're a long, long way from that point.
putting tourists in space doesn't seems like a priority.
Absolutely wrong. It is not a zero sum game. In terms of raw money and capability, we could have gone carbon neutral in the developed world at least decades ago. We could be aiming for that universally right now, the US alone has dumped trillions and trillions into war and pandemic response over just the last 10 years. It hasn't happened because "we" collectively have not chosen to make it happen. SpaceX, or anyone else, making themselves carbon neutral when they are under no external compulsion too is pure gain. They don't need to solve all the problems on the fucking planet first. That has always been one of the most irritating fallacies in the whole AGW discussion.
>It's hard to argue that a method of transport so incredibly energy inefficient will be a good thing until we're swimming in so much excess energy that we've got nothing better to do with it.
No, it isn't. It's trivial to argue: if it's greenhouse neutral and all the externalities are built-in then if anyone wants to pay for it by definition it is a good thing. In fact at that point it'd be a BETTER thing than traditional "more efficient" methods of transport which aren't greenhouse neutral!
You're coming up with this silly subjective morality things when the only morality involved is externalized harm. If that is eliminated and people still consider the service worth it when they can see the true price then that's all that matters.
i agree they had plans to develop solar panels, but AFAIK, the company just collapsed and musk is being presently trialed for bailing out solarcity in an illegal way.
silly morality? can you further explain the morality of sending rich tourists in orbit when people are dying now out of climate change?
This is dishonest goalpost shifting. The original post by avian was engaging in forward looking discussion about future plans (which is necessary in any discussion about Starship since it isn't actually even in full operation yet, and even once it is there will be a host of Mars-related further systems to develop over the rest of the 2020s at least). The post said:
>avian: However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources.
You then responded with a nonsensical post on thermodynamics (and also incidentally were completely wrong about the rocket engine bit, the FFSC Raptor engines Starship uses have much better ISP then Merlin, but that isn't relevant either) which can only be read to imply that because of thermodynamic losses making methane somehow can't be green? But thermodynamics have absolutely nothing to do with it. We have non-greenhouse energy sources with highly positive power factors, and indeed there isn't any thermodynamic difference in harvesting incoming solar gain to useful ends before converting it back into heat vs... just letting it all become heat. In either case the net energy is the same and what determines the balance on Earth is how much is trapped vs how much is radiated.
>i agree they had plans to develop solar panels, but AFAIK, the company just collapsed and musk is being presently trialed for bailing out solarcity in an illegal way.
????? Are you somehow implying that it's impossible for SpaceX to just, you know, buy solar panels from one of the bajillion providers on the market? WTF does SolarCity/Tesla Energy have to do with any of this? They're entirely separate companies. And the trial is essentially a nothingburger at this point anyway. The absolute worst case for Tesla (not SpaceX) would be having to pay the couple of billion back in damages which with their stock and now income would be annoying but also trivial. But I doubt they get remotely 100% because it's very hard to argue a negative in shareholder suits. The civil court system in America operates primarily on the concept of damages, that you can be shown to have lost something. But Tesla stock is at an all time high, none of them can directly show any harm. Instead they have to argue that the lack of information was material (~85% of shareholders voted for it IIRC) and that if not for the purchase of SolarCity Tesla would be higher. But the defense will argue that Tesla Energy was indeed an important purchase strategically and for various reasons of direct value, some of which are definitely true (even diverting its workforce to work on Model 3, held up as an example of it not being worth as much, absolutely offered value to Tesla in the form of, well, faster Model 3 production). Courts don't generally like to get into positing alternate universes and operational details. The stuff that wasn't disclosed does seem potentially impactful enough that Elon/Tesla may face at least some damages, but I don't think it'd be the full purchase price.
None of which, again, has anything whatsoever to do with SpaceX.
>can you further explain the morality of sending rich tourists in orbit when people are dying now out of climate change?
LOL. Why the fuck are you here then posting on Hacker News? Why aren't you spending these precious minutes out saving the world? Working even a little bit more to earn a few extra dollars which could help starving families in Africa adapt to climate change or whatever? Have any hobbies? Ever buy any food beyond the most basic gruel necessary for continued bodily function? Etc etc.
That is all literally the 100% exact same thing: discussion about how to use one's luxury energy/mass budget. A core part of our entire effort as humans and human civilization has been to increase that, to get beyond the level of absolute subsistence and then be able to spend some of that on activities to our own goals for the future. If those activities don't cause harm to other people then it is absolutely bullshit moralizing to put your own subjective luxury goals above anyone else's. Morality should be about both making sure all costs are internalized and large scale actions to direct effort towards lifting up people, safety nets, protecting individual and group rights, dealing with extreme inequality, etc etc, just in general aiming to help every human maintain a reasonable level of life and have the opportunity to achieve some portion of their potential. And do it in a systemic fashion beyond individual choices.
Frankly you're a huge hypocrite to even bring it up, which is how these things typically go. You claimed in a previous post to have a PhD, which represents an enormous expenditure of resources that could have gone towards mitigating AGW or feeding the starving or whatever instead. You are a highly privileged person. And that's fine. You've no doubt worked very very hard even beyond your luck. But it should mean you think twice before turning right around and judging others. By world standards you are a rich person. Have you ever gone on a single vacation in your life? Why do you think the label "rich tourist" doesn't apply to you too?
It may be order-of-magnitude worse, but not 3 orders of magnitude (If you look forward to using starship for human transportation)
The biggest difference is the price and that they only sell full flights rather than individual seats.
This IS commercialized. Jared Isaacman contacted SpaceX and expressed interest in buying a flight. SpaceX put him in touch with people and then he bought the flight. Other missions have already been bought as well and likely several more that haven't been mentioned.
Are these detailed anywhere?
Being stuck in a tiny, tiny space with strangers and absolutely no way out seems like it could potentially cause issues even for people who have been psychologically screened. Hopefully these "experiments" they're supposed to be running will help keep them occupied & distracted.
Reading in space seems like missing the point of the "once in a lifetime" trip though. They probably have "fun activities" planned.
Any idea what Proctor’s business is? I find it odd the article went with “educator”
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/c...
https://twitter.com/inspiration4x/status/1433192632457564160
How Much Do Rockets Pollute? Are They Bad For Our Air? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4&t=3s
Maybe this is just me, but I think we need a new word for people who pay to take a ride on a spacecraft but have nothing to do with the operation or mission of that spacecraft. "Payload" seems rude, perhaps "passengers"?
Whatever they are, they're not astronauts.
Fundamentally, these guys have about as much control over their experience as your 'real' astronauts do.
They will do as much as NASA astronauts do on dragon spacecraft.
I understand the point that the word astronaut is reserved for highly trained individuals working for NASA, but the rants about it I keep seeing online on various forums are just so mean spirited for some reason. Calling them payload, seriously?
Yes, the ISS crew are mere passengers on SpaceX capsules. Just because I buy a ticket on a 737 doesn't make me an "aeronaut".
You can call it mean-spirited if you want, but the point is that some titles should only be earned, not purchased.