Boeing Starliner launches first crewed mission | Hacker News Reader

Boeing Starliner launches first crewed mission

bbc.co.uk

643 pointshelsinkiandrew686 comments

As exciting as this is, I’ve read that this capsule faces uncertain future after 7 launches: the rocket it was launched on is retired, and while it’s compatible with Falcon it’s not clear what the advantage would be wrt SpaceX’s capsule to warrant additional testing. Imagine working on something for over a decade only to see it fly just 7 times!

It isn't compatible with Falcon, it can be made to be compatible with Falcon in the future. It wouldn't really be worth doing though, since part of the point of having two providers is dissimilar redundancy, so that any issues with one platform don't affect the other. It's more likely that if Boeing wants to keep flying Starliner after using up the stock of Atlas Vs, they'll want to integrate it on Vulcan Centaur rather than Falcon.

One might imagine that an issue could be found on Dragon, which grounded it, but not the Falcon 9. That said, it’s definitely less redundant than one might like.

>Imagine working on something for over a decade only to see it fly just 7 times!

Haha, I'm guessing you don't work in the space industry. Frankly if something you work on gets to space at all you count yourself fortunate. My first job was at a defense contractor working on a big rocket. A senior engineer on our team had a picture of the Indiana Jones warehouse on the wall in his office, rows and rows of boxes. I asked him why, he said it's a reminder to not get too stressed about work - 9 out of 10 projects will never fly.

Things are changing especially in the new space corners of the industry, but for big projects requiring political will I think it's still the same.

> My first job was at a defense contractor working on a big rocket.

Out of curiosity, were you working on one of the Ares rockets?

>Frankly if something you work on gets to space at all you count yourself fortunate.

That is unless you work on a ballistic missile

This bares thinking about. On a working holiday in the UK it was a revelation to find just how huge the defence industry really is.

I have spent years building cars that ran once, twice to great effect/happiness of all involed.

Getting to space SEVEN times off one poweplant/project is nothing short of incredible.

> Getting to space SEVEN times off one poweplant/project

Sure, if you ignore the 20+ year old Atlas V that actually launched it...

The main goal of the project has been achieved as far as Boeing is concerned :)

Bear in mind they still need to return the astronauts safely to touchdown.

Having more than one thing capable of doing something is an advantage in a field as uncertain as spaceflight.

Yeah, but soon we’ll have Starship and Falcon + Dragon.

soon != now.

"The capsule" here means a decade of R&D and half a decade building production models. If turnaround is about 6-8 months, they're going to need at least two and I'll bet they build three or more because reuse and refurb won't go as well as they hope.

That means about 10 years of R&D since they got the initial contracts and then about half a decade of production for the flight articles and then a wind-down of a couple years and a skeleton crew to make the last few flights.

A 15-20 year project that sends dozens of people to space for the last years of the ISS's lifetime is not going to be a disappointment for 95% of the people who worked on this.

I don’t think you understand. It’s not 7 launches per capsule. There could be 7 launches in total for this.

>Imagine working on something for over a decade only to see it fly just 7 times!

Huh? My understanding was that something unique about the falcon is the capability of multiple reuses, in contrast to previous missions that were one and done uses. What past experience in the history of spaceflight might someone be referring to where seven reuses registers as a disappointment?

They won't reuse any Starliners 7 times. Twice is more likely. Three times reuse, perhaps. They can't refub in time to send the same craft up twice in a year as required by the contract so they'll need at least two. If anything goes wrong with either of those, they'll need a backup. Now they've got three for 6 flights. These vehicles will get one, two, or at best 3 launches and then retired to the scrap heap while SpaceX Dragon continues to ferry people to the ISS if it gets an extension and if not then to the first private orbital stations. Boeing should never again get a NASA contract after SLS and Starliner.

It did not launch on Falcon. Once the current stock of rockets it did launch on runs out they will have no launch vehicle.

> Once the current stock of rockets it did launch on runs out they will have no launch vehicle.

Exactly.

Just to elaborate for your parent, the Atlas V which currently flies Starliner uses an RD-180 engine that's manufactured in Russia. ULA is no longer able to procure any more such engines, and a rocket with those engines are no longer legally allowed to fly DoD payloads. Which prompted ULA to retire Atlas V in favor of Vulcan.

I think someone from ULA or Boeing (I forget which) recently said that they've begun the process of certifying Starliner on Vulcan, although I'll have to go back and make sure I remember exactly what was said.

This is about the entire lifespan of the Starliner program, not just one piece of hardware.

I think the parent comment is referring to there only being 7 launches total for the entire program before being cancelled, not 7 launches per capsule.

That would make sense, however (correct me if I'm wrong) they do seem to be referring quite specifically to the capsule itself.

On top of problems with helium leaks there's now another issue[1]:

> Starliner has been given a go to hold at 260 meters from the space station. During the approach two reaction control system jets have failed off. A manual flight test has been put on hold while flight controllers look to restore those jets with a hot fire.

[1]: https://x.com/SpaceflightNow/status/1798738262368104639

some updates here as well. https://www.space.com/news/live/boeing-starliner-live-update...

keeping my fingers crossed that everything works out. must be very tense for the astronauts.

update : issues mitigated, starliner has docked with the ISS. yes!

Sounds like there's a problem with the cooling system using more water than expected. If I understood the comms correctly it sounded like they switched to a backup system to try to alleviate the issue.

And there’s a leak of ullage helium, which they are unable to resolve, so I doubt they will be reentering with the capsule.

The helium leak was well understood and characterized before this launch attempt, see the last launch attempt. Helium leaks are not uncommon, and can be worked around.

Not reentering with this capsule would be a catastrophic failure. They are, unless something actually serious happens, certainly reentering on this capsule.

There are two additional leaks detected post launch, and they have been unable to stem them, and are down 6 RCS thrusters.

I anticipate catastrophic failure. Dunno where you think they’re going to get more helium from.

"Starliner’s currently maintaining plenty of helium reserves,” Boeing aerospace engineer Jim May confirmed Thursday morning.

"Currently the helium leak is not a safety issue for the crew, the vehicle or the mission.”

6 of 28. Looks good to me.

The Sun has a bit and it’s also in space.

It's crazy the US could soon have up to 5 different spacecraft/launch systems that can take humans to orbit with 2 more in development:

Falcon 9 + Dragon, SLS + Orion, Atlas V (Vulcan Centaur) + Starliner

Close to orbital payload launch, likely human rated in the future: Vulcan Centaur + Dream Chaser, Superheavy + Starship

Under development: New Glenn + Space Vehicle (?), Neutron

SLS is a jobs program. It's not economically viable at over $1 billion per launch.

As for Blue Origin and New Glenn, this is an object lesson that simply throwing money at the problem doesn't necessarily solve it. Did you know Blue Origin was founded ~18 months before SpaceX?

For the longest time (up until ~9 months ago), Bezos had the former Honeywell CEO in charge of Blue Origin, which to me was such an odd choice. You see, this guy seems to embody everything wrong with corporate America: he was completely focused on not failing rather than succeeding. So there were constant delays with New Glenn and the BE-4 engine, which is years behind schedule. You can't fail if you don't launch.

And the new CEO (David Limp) used to be in charge of Kindles.

It's a total waste of taxpayer money and an extension of the pork of the military/government-aerospace/industrial complex. And they're still using Russian-made rocket engines on Atlas V prior to switching to Vulcan Centaur, another expensive platform. The American taxpayer deserves to have billions in waste cut out and capital used more efficiently at SpaceX and other vendors where there is value/$.

Yet that was historically the most successful approach in XX century for most of research-intensive industries (space, transistors, energy etc) -- when government spends crazy amounts of taxpayers money for some programs that bring little $$ back, but sprawl a lot of commercial startup follow-ups.

Investing in commercial approaches as the step 1 doesn't seem to work in multi-billion R&D endeavors.

So yes, it's not fair, but turns out to be better for the country down the road.

That works for a bit, and then all the others jostle in and start feeding on the pork. SpaceX will get this eventually too if it does well enough and settles into a routine of project bids, project management, technical project success, and more bids.

SLS cost way, way more then $1 billion per launch. More like 4 billion $ per launch. They hope to get it to $2 billion $ eventually but that will take a while. 1 billion $ is the end goal that they use in marketing, but that's not happening anytime this or next decade.

> SLS cost way, way more then $1 billion per launch. More like 4 billion $ per launch.

So, the full stack of SLS costs $4.1B. But that includes the cost of Orion which is ~$1.3B when you include the European Service Module, and it includes the cost of 1 year's worth of ground support equipment including upkeep for various buildings like the VAB, etc.

The marginal cost of a cargo SLS (should one ever launch, which is looking increasingly unlikely) is a bit over $2B. Which is still a horrifically high price.

For people who don't know much about SLS, one way to put its cost into context is, every time the full stack with Orion launches, that's about 1/6th of NASA's yearly budget. And that doesn't count any development cost which is several tens of Billions.

I'm not sure that's true. I would bet with Orion its even more. It depends what you consider to be work before launch 1 as launch cost. And we don't really yet know the cost of the EUS.

You can of course get higher if you add development cost as well. But that depends on how many launches there are.

> You can't fail if you don't launch

There's a phrase "failure to launch" that would imply the opposite sentiment

I believe that the parent commenter means "you can't fail if you don't try"

If you're too risk adverse to even try, then just sit down and get out of the way. I want to put the shut up part of that quote in there too as in quit fighting for contracts/bids that could go to people that aren't afraid.

You can't fail if you don't try, but you can't succeed either.

Oooh the founding before spacex is a huge surprise. I always assumed it was bezos trying to keep up with the joneses with musk.

Whatever happened to armadillo aerospace?

Excessive hubris around solving hardware problems in software, they blew up their rocket and ran out of money as Carmack couldn’t justify it any longer: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/82qkvl/john_carmack_...

I think it's just more that Carmack didn't want to go all in with his entire life and net worth the way Elon did (and without which SpaceX would certainly have died exactly the same death). And who can blame him?

Wiki says:

    > In August 2013, Carmack indicated that following the crash of the STIG-B rocket earlier that year, he had wound down the company operations and had put the company in "hibernation mode."

    > In 2015, the assets of Armadillo Aerospace were sold to EXOS Aerospace Systems & Technologies, Inc.

> You can't fail if you don't launch.

The BE-4 was launched earlier this year. I wouldn’t assume that late means never.

the BE-4 is an engine - it was finally used in a rocket january yes - after being in development for almost 15 years. That us still kinda slow compared to spacex.

New Glenn was announced in 2016. An 8 year long development process is hardly slow in aerospace. The development costs are also somewhere between three and four billion dollars. The real problem with Blue Origin is that Jeff didn't really give a damn about Blue Origin and let himself get scammed out of his money.

Given how many people work at Blue, I would suggest its more then four billion $. The Ariane 6 cost 5 billion $ or more. BlueOrigin has been spending almost 2 billion $ a year.

True about founding before SpaceX. But wasn't it just a think tank for a while?

How does that make it better? :p

In many ways it still is just a think tank.

It's also a hedge against SpaceX imploding/compromise/whatever. In that role, cost is less important than having a provably functional product. I'm not saying anything is likely to happen to SpaceX, just saying that having SpaceX as a SPOF in the US space program would not be the best strategy.

Starliner is that hedge, SLS isn't. Using SLS for delivery to the ISS would be a crime against tax payers.

Such a sad take though, SpaceX is probably filled with America loving people not matter what a PR firms bot spew online about musk

Any sufficiently large acquisition is indistinguishable from a jobs program.

You seem to assume a good CEO equals a successful company, and a good CEO also needs to have industry experience.

I don't know if either of those are actually true, there are plenty of good CEOs who came from zero experience in the industry. And plenty of bad CEOs who came from plenty of experience in the industry. Both of these run successful and not successful companies.

For example the currently Boeing CEO does not have experience in airplanes, came from a business background. And is considered a bad CEO by the average person (though considered a good CEO by stockholders, or at least was before the past few months).

>You seem to assume a good CEO equals a successful company

the only assumption i see is the counter to that - a bad CEO equals an unsuccessful company. and i don't think that's a very controversial assumption.

A bad CEO can look great on paper and in the stock price. The product however will likely not keep pace, charging more for a product providing less value.

Long term value, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction are all intertwined. New management is more likely than not to harm at least one of those 3 .

> And the new CEO (David Limp) used to be in charge of Kindles.

Seems to imply there is an issue with a CEO of a space company previously working on Kindles.

> Bezos had the former Honeywell CEO in charge of Blue Origin, which to me was such an odd choice

Also seems to imply the CEO is bad because their previously only worked at Honeywell on thermostats.

In my mind none of the above has anything to do with how good or bad a CEO is. Perhaps I am misreading it. In which case ignore me.

I reject the notion that a good manager can manage anything.

I also reject the financialization of modern companies where we put accountants in charge who aren't subject-matter experts whose only playbook is to cut costs and jack up prices.

It's exactly what's wrong with Boeing today.

Obligatory Steve Jobs quotes on "idea people" [1] and Xerox [2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdplq4cj76I

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM&t=2s

I don't think it's crazy; it's competition, which is what should be happening. We want multiple private companies to be in this game, because that's the only way access to space will ever become practical at any kind of scale.

For me the crazy part is that SpaceX has done 12 crewed flights before Boeing even got their first set of test pilots of the ground. I recall back when NASA was justifying giving nearly twice as much money to Boeing that "because they were much more likely to be ready sooner."

It's not surprising that people in the largest organization on earth (our federal government) think that way. They are so risk averse it creates its own risk, namely, what if you miss out on one great opportunity after another due to risk aversion.

I just want to live long enough to see a ship, intended for long-term use, assembled in orbit.

I just want to live long enough to see Venus terraformed into an ocean and forest covered paradise.

Need a planet spinner if that's going to happen.

In discussions I've read on planetary climate modelling one idea is that if Venus had an atmosphere like Earth's but 50%+ thicker and an ocean covering 70% of it (like Earth) you'd get an ideal situation. Because of the strong sunlight and slow spin you'd get a tendency for thick storm clouds continuously covering whatever part of the planet was experiencing mid-day, shielding the planet from the strongest and hottest rays of the (60% stronger) sunlight. The warmth would convect to the night side keeping things from getting too cold. Depending on the conditions it's possible that below-freezing temperatures wouldn't even be common in the depth of the night.

The long night seems like a problem for life but forests already thrive in the warmer parts of the near-arctic. And in times past even Antarctica had tropical rainforests despite experiencing a polar night. Another idea I had was building a ring around the planet of dark material, perhaps of left over carbon after we cleaned up the CO2 rich atmosphere. The dark ring would provide shade to certain parts of the planet during the day and would reflect light for the long night.

A lot of mirrors in a 24h orbit might be easier.

Still, even then it will take, what, about a century to get rid of the CO2? (Does it even count as an "atmosphere" at ground level, given that it's past the critical point and the distinction between liquid and gas phases no longer exists?)

Clever. You seem to want to live on forever...

Well, isn't it what the ISS is?

> isn't it what the ISS is?

No, it has no propulsion system. That is the difference between a ship and a station.

I think there are thrusters on the Russian side of the station. They aren't large but they move the stations orientation for docking sometimes. (And cartwheels for fun and horror)

It does have thrusters used for orbital correction about monthly, (and maybe dodging debris here and there,) but it's fair to say that system is not for taking trips or anything.

angry Cygnus noises

I just want to live long enough to see a human walk on Mars.

Interesting. And I'm thinking I want to see a permanent lunar base but also, "Where does it end?"

Humans walked on the Moon in my lifetime. I should be contented with that.

> Humans walked on the Moon in my lifetime. I should be contented with that.

I'm apparently younger than you, and humans have not walked on the moon in my lifetime. I'm discontented by that.

It's wild to think this is true for anyone under the half century mark.

Soon there will be no living humans who have walked on the moon :/

Same, I’m terribly disappointed that I can’t simply walk on the moon. Parents generation really dropped the fuckin ball there eh

I want to live long enough to see a viable test of larger spaceships that could send humans to Mars. I really want to live long enough to discover evidence of at least microbial life elsewhere in the solar system - Mars seems like the obvious place we can reach with a good chance for it be possible. I know there's amazingly water vapor around Europa, that's so much more remote.

I think about 30 years should lead to more exploration of Mars, and maybe multiple landers andn robots getting there from here, maybe even a return trip. (human travel to Mars feels so far out, even if Starship works out in the next 10 years).

Personally, I want to live long enough to hit life extension escape velocity. :)

Yeah we bemoan how short-sighted people are, but that's because we only live for a handful of decades. Think of the kind of progress that we could achieve if people were free to follow their dreams for centuries, alongside the kind of respect for the life and nature that would be necessary to live as a citizen of the world for that long.

Or, immortal Joseph Stalin having breakfast with immortal Richard Nixon, while deciding who gets sent to the gulags today.

I'd settle for seeing my children grow up at least a bit!

That is exactly what the cislunar transporter is going to be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2023/nas...

I want to live long enough that I can go and see space without having to give someone a huge amount of money

What’s stopping you from helping to build it? Jobs in space tech exist. They need smart motivated people.

How long do you think for them to get to the point where they can carry all the raw materials up there?

That’s probably just a handful of starship trips of cargo

> likely human rated in the future: Vulcan Centaur + Dream Chaser

IMO, this one is the least likely.

There are a lot of problems that need to be over come for Dream Chaser to be crew rated. And AFAIK, they aren't getting NASA money to do it.

> There are a lot of problems that need to be over come for Dream Chaser to be crew rated.

Intriguing. Can you elaborate?

IIRC one of the big ones is that of how the crew is supposed to board the vehicle. Cargo Dreamchaser is launched in a fairing so that its aerodynamics don't matter on the way up. This is fine because the cargo can be loaded prior to payload integration. But that won't work if they're carrying crew.

The big one off the top of my head:

Dream Chaser flies in a fairing for aerodynamic reasons. In order to fly crew (so that the vehicle could have a working launch abort system), they'd need to figure out how to fly without a fairing.

From some quick reading it seems like the crewed Dream Chaser is intended to fly without a fairing. The cargo version's ability to fold the wings and fly within a fairing seems to be for 1) compliance with NASAs CRS-2 requirements, 2) wide compatibility with existing boosters that weren't designed for the forces that flying without a fairing would create.

Could be spin from Sierra but that's what they were saying to the press as of 2015 when they announced the cargo variant.

https://spacenews.com/sierra-nevada-hopes-dream-chaser-finds...

Naive question: Planes and helicopters do not have the ability to safely eject passengers mid-flight. We largely accept these conditions as a risk of those modes of travel. Why is LES/LAS a unique requirement for space shuttles?

Can't they blow the fairing as part of launch abort?

Star Liner has all the same problems that the Space Shuttle had. In an emergency, how do you get the crew out safely?

> Star Liner has all the same problems that the Space Shuttle had. In an emergency, how do you get the crew out safely?

Starliner has a launch abort system; the Shuttle did not.

From what I understand, they use a very powerful rocket (much more powerful than Crew Dragon) to get the capsule far away from the booster. I guess it can get far enough away that NASA is satisfied that falling bits of burning SRB aren't a danger to the parachutes.

It can’t have “all the same problems” because a number of the engineering problems came from having the spacecraft on the side of the launch vehicle

Pretty sure Star liner is at the top of its stack, so there is no risk of sheets of ice falling on it and damaging it

Starliner is put on top of the rocket, not next to it.

What? No it doesn't.

>There are a lot of problems that need to be over come for Dream Chaser to be crew rated.

Thanks, this is helpful to know. What do you know about the dream chaser problems?

It's a really exciting time. Also the Chinese have lots of space going on. Chang'e 5 is on its way back from the moon. Tiangong is quite large now. I'm thrilled to see humanity accelerate this.

SLS + Orion is so expensive that it's not worth listing, IMO.

Also doesn’t meet the same flight certification standards as the other options listed.

Don't forget that for the foreseeable future, until other plans are made, there is a hard mission count limit for starliner, which is the number of remaining atlas V cores. The engines are Russian made and subject to sanction, so nasa could just refuse to recertify starliner on a new platform, so sad, so sorry, and have starliner just disappeae into tte night while saving face fir boeing.

. . . so nasa could just refuse to recertify starliner on a new platform . . .

That could happen, but I don't see it as likely. NASA is far more likely to spend ridiculous amounts of money to keep it alive in the name of "competition" or some such.

NASA is keener on having Starliner flying than Boeing is. More likely scenario is Boeing decide they don't want to fly it anymore and they don't bother proceeding with the recertification, at least not without getting a lot more money from NASA.

>It's crazy the US could soon have up to 5 different spacecraft/launch systems that can take humans to orbit with 2 more in development:

While EU has none.

EU cannibalized its one (1) existing production line for making spacecraft (used to be busy making ATVs for ISS resupply) for Orion's service module production. They're not interested at all in increasing their own capabilities, they just want to not completely lose it.

Is neutron to be man rated?

> Is neutron to be man rated?

Yes and no.

It's probably more accurate to say "human ratable". They're planning on designing the rocket with human rating in mind, so that if they want to do it in the future, it'll be easier.

But NASA doesn't human rate a rocket - they human rate the entire system as a whole, so it doesn't really make sense to say "human rate Neutron".

Rocket Lab mentions “human spaceflight” on the Neutron page, that’s the only mention I’ve seen of it. I haven’t seen any plans for a spacecraft for carrying humans or how they might handle re-entry.

https://www.rocketlabusa.com/launch/neutron/

SLS + Orion should be in that second category.

Went from 0 to many pretty fast really.

I wonder when we will first step foot on the moon?

It's the new billionaire yacht club.

> billionaire yacht club

They comment on a thread about Boeing’s Starliner ferrying NASA astronauts to the ISS atop a ULA rocket.

I doubt there are any billionaires in Boeing, or NASA.

Only possible with the existence of "billionaires".

If by that you mean "average people pooling their billions to further advance science and technology", sure.

None of this was done in a vacuum of billionaire self funding.

> It's crazy the US could soon have up to 5 different spacecraft/launch systems that can take humans to orbit with 2 more in development

We had a launch system that could take humans to the moon in 1972.. haven't had one since. Maybe we will get another one in our lifetime, if it is even possible.

> we had a launch system that could take humans to the moon in 1972

Saturn V was ridiculously expensive [1] and very unsafe.

Apollo was built to get to the Moon fast half a dozen times. We’re building more ambitiously today.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V $1.5bn in 2024 dollars

It would probably become a lot more possible if we could get this "SLS/Orion with frickin' Starship as a lunar lander Rube Goldberg machine" monkey off our backs.

Is there much practical reason that requires sending people to the moon still? Modern robots are cheaper and can perform science more effectively than any human

That's literally the SLS.

This comment is an invitation to an uninformative comparison. Apollo was just barely able to take a crew to the moon and back, with many expendable stages, using 5% of US GDP to do it. Almost all the value in Apollo is indirect value in the form of technologies developed for Apollo.

Why replicate that? Indeed we should ask: Is there a goal to value, other than the obvious "the Chinese would get there first if we don't?"

A lunar "base" would just be a vastly more expensive ISS. We will discover that lunar regolith is a bigger nuisance than floating boogers in the ISS.

Ever since I finished all 4 seasons of "For All Mankind" I've been eating up news like this.

Truly awe inspiring stuff happening these days

Everyone who likes space stuff should go watch it. They focus too much on marriage drama for my taste and they kinda jump the shark in the later seasons, but the first season is a love letter to a past that should have existed, and in a way I can't express with words.

I work in the aerospace industry and just watching a depiction of it in a universe where people still just...gave a shit...especially about something other than money, brings about a whole spectrum of emotions.

I ended up fast forwarding through almost all the family-related drama. It did get absurd, as the seasons wore on they let the wrong writers get more and more pages. Just like star trek, space became a backdrop for a bland soap opera.

First couple of episodes were awesome - the constructed drama became a deadweight though and I couldn't endure.

The pseudo-incest really wasn't necessary but the rest is really good.

I loved the first season so much. But for the love of god, I should have stopped long before I became mad at it’s absurd drama.

And there's another Starship test today as well! Space fans are getting spoiled recently, and I'm all for it.

One thing which surprised me a bit was how fast it left the launch pad. It took just a second or a little bit more.

With Starship it appeared as if it was struggling to lift off, staying for a while burning fuel until it left the launch pad and even then it felt a bit slow at accelerating.

I'll see tomorrow if it was just an illusion.

This has to do with the launch vehicle's thrust to weight ratio (TWR) on the ground with a full tank. It's usually between 1.1 and 1.4. The Russian Proton has a famously high ground TWR and is known for "leaping" off the pad. Maybe Starliner is the same in this initial crewed LEO config.

For one, Starship is 392 ft vs 172ft of Atlas V + Starliner. Even if they accelerate off the pad at the same rate, Starship is going to look like it's moving a lot slower.

The better comparison is probably Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon in terms of mass / mission etc. Starship is in a totally different class

For Falcon 9 - it will look slower on takeoff as well. One reason not mentioned yet is that after engine start, Falcon is held down until all vehicle systems are verified as functioning normally before release for liftoff. So they can do pressure / thrust etc checks on the ground before releasing.

With solid rocket motors especially - once you light those you are pretty committed.

Mass does not strictly matter, it is the ground TWR of the launch config. Heavier rockets do tend to have a lower TWR but it is not a universal rule.

Starliner is also held for confirmation of all systems being functional even with the SRBs. Better to let them burn out on the pad and clean up the mess than to risk release with, say, asymmetrical thrust. That said I'm sure there are variances between the two rockets' procedures which could make one appear faster.

Interesting that they hold with SRB's lit.

I think SLS does 90% thrust on main engines - then lights SRB's but SRB ignition is takeoff. A problem at that point is launch escape abort (capsule to safety) if for example one SRB lit but the other didn't for some reason. Not sure it can otherwise manage the asymmetric thrust.

I’m not a rocket scientist but I do know the two rockets use different propellants. The Atlas V uses solid propellant, and the Starship uses liquid. I know liquid engines have the ability to throttle them, and I would guess solid does not (or a more limited capacity) so that could be at play here. Starship could ignite and then throttle up, which would leave it on the pad longer. I’m sure someone more knowledgeable than I can clarify!

Only the SRBs use solid propellant (APCP). The first stage is kerolox and the upper stage is hydrolox.

Although you are a bit off the mark, you did actually hit on the likely reason for the faster liftoff, which is that the SRBs have a much higher thrust-to-weight ratio than the SpaceX Superheavy booster.

As mentioned in other comments, the TWR at liftoff is what makes the difference. If you look at footage of Shuttle and Saturn V launches, you can really see the difference between the Saturn V's TWR of ~1.2 and Shuttle's TWR of ~1.5.

Starship (including the Super Heavy) weighs about 10x as much as the Starliner (including the Atlas V)

Photographs of the launch from Reuters:

https://reuters.com/pictures/boeings-starliner-blasts-off-fi...

Related. Others?

Boeing and NASA call off Starliner crew launch minutes before liftoff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40547338 - June 2024 (47 comments)

Boeing's Starliner Crew Flight Test delayed again, path forward unclear - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40434398 - May 2024 (28 comments)

Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40281272 - May 2024 (162 comments)

NASA and Boeing Are (Finally) Putting Astronauts on Starliner - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39843148 - March 2024 (9 comments)

Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36879769 - July 2023 (218 comments)

NASA safety panel skeptical of Starliner readiness for crewed flight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085531 - May 2023 (27 comments)

Boeing to ground Starliner indefinitely until valve issue solved - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28185195 - Aug 2021 (42 comments)

Boeing Starliner's flight's flaws show “fundamental problem,” NASA says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22297564 - Feb 2020 (140 comments)

NASA Shares Initial Findings from Boeing Starliner Orbital Test Investigation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22266747 - Feb 2020 (14 comments)

Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22260731 - Feb 2020 (60 comments)

Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194735 - Jan 2020 (55 comments)

Boeing Starliner updates: Spacecraft flies into wrong orbit, jeopardizing test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21843988 - Dec 2019 (240 comments)

New Spacesuit Unveiled for Starliner Astronauts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13488096 - Jan 2017 (65 comments)

Boeing-SpaceX Team Split Space Taxi Award - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8326845 - Sept 2014 (115 comments)

NASA to Make Major Announcement Today About Astronaut Transport to the ISS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8324848 - Sept 2014 (43 comments)

SpaceX Vies With Boeing as NASA’s Taxi to Station - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296567 - Sept 2014 (49 comments)

The value that you bring to this place cannot be overstated

I'm glad everything went ok.

This is a n00b question, but how do regulations apply to private human crewed missions in the US?

Are there clear guidelines already written? I’m assuming it inherits a lot of rules of general aviation? But since private firms launching into space is new, do the rules and regulations keep up? Or are they still to be written?

Rocket regulations apply including ITAR, FAA and others for any payload human or cargo launched on any vehicle . The launch doesn’t have to be even to launched from the US, rocket lab have to comply with them even when launching from New Zealand.

There are host of rules that NASA has for human spaceflight these are not regulations per se. Till now NASA has been the only buyer[1][2] of human spaceflights or the destination has been ISS which is jointly managed by them so even private operators to comply with these rules.

SpaceX and now Boeing human rate their spacecrafts to these specifications to allow them to compete for commercial crew contracts or dock to ISS[4].

In the next few years this will change, NASA is research organization not a regulatory authority sooner or later regulations have to move to either FAA or another new entity.

Currently no regulations exist for space proper. FAA does control a lot of launch related items, but don’t regulate things like spacesuits that now spaceX is developing currently.

There are no strict limits to FAA authority they do control Virgin rocket planes although it does cross the US defined line for space .

Knowing Musk’s temperament, what is likely to happen is FAA will try to extend their authority that he deems is overreach and he will sue in court saying they have no jurisdiction, either Supreme Court will say they do (not likely in Robert’s court) or congress will have pass law regulating this ( less likely in current congress it is too dysfunctional) but these things may change in the next few years when it does happen

—-

[1] Axiom buys private launches from spaceX but they still dock to ISS so I expect NASA rules apply.

[2] Jared Issacman’s last mission was the true first fully private mission to space but still used mostly stock Dragon so they mostly likely followed NASA rules

[3] all this from US perspective , Soyuz and China has capabilities and Soyuz and also in Mir space station have had some commercial flights of course

[4] only place you can go today , end of this decade there maybe private station or moon or even mars but not today

US regulation applies. On top of US regulation, basically every nation will see you as a potential security risk because the difference between an ICBM and space launch rocket is mostly payload and flight path.

Funny, on Twitter I've clicked through to every "For You", "Trending", "News", etc section.

It's not mentioned once.

I always see majestic rocket photography promoted on Twitter.

Why not today?

I thought Twitter was the worlds #1 news source.

What a relief for NASA and Boeing and a welcome sight for me personally as a space enthusiast - hopefully this will inspire the folks at SpaceX to get StarShip working.

Starliner vs Starship isn't really a valid comparison. Starliner is a new human carrying capsule which is fitted on top of an old rocket. Starship is a 100% brand new everything rocket and person carrying spaceship with ground breaking tech, lift capacity, full reusability, thrust, payload capacity, etc etc.

The rocket used to launch Starliner today is an Atlas V which first flew in 2002. I.e. it's a 22 year old rocket system.

But with continuous development with Vulcan Centaur engines replacing the Russian RD-180.

Atlas V

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V

has a first stage powered by the Russian RD-180 engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

and a Centaur upper stage powered by RL10 engines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10

Vulcan Centaur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_Centaur

has a first stage powered by Blue Origin's BE-4 engines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-4

and a second stage known as Centaur V. It's an upgraded version of the Centaur, also powered by RL10 engines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur_(rocket_stage)#Centaur...

Vulcan has only flown once, in part because of slow delivery of BE-4 engines, which to date have not powered any other launcher (though they are meant to eventually power New Glenn).

So I don't know what you mean by "Vulcan Centaur engines replacing the Russian RD-180".

Vulcan-Centaur is the rocket that replaces Atlas V.

The BE-4 is the engine on Vulcan-Centaur's booster stage, which replaces the RD-180 on the Atlas V booster stage. Both Atlas V and Vulcan use RL-10 engines on their main stage (what ULA calls Centaur).

And to add more confusion, the new engine for Ariane 5/6 is the "Vulcain". :D

> The rocket used to launch Starliner today is an Atlas V which first flew in 2002. I.e. it's a 24 year old rocket system.

Are you posting from 2026?

Starliner is the Boeing equivalent of Falcon/Crew Dragon which has been used for years.

Starliner's competitor from SpaceX is Dragon, not Starship.

Starship launch attempt is tomorrow, great week for space!

Have they not been though?

Excellent ... we need alternatives and competition in space.

This is probably the definition of the gov rejecting competition and choosing the absolute “safest” option, and just happens to still be around when others are nipping at their heels

Interesting that this did not make HN at all before the launch. There are way more cheerleaders for SpaceX than Boeing. But IMO it's still very cool, I could watch rocket launches all day.

It's been delayed so many times after getting very close to launch that it makes sense that everyone just lost interest.

On top of that Boeing's launch coverage is nowhere near as fancy as SpaceX (or new space in general, RocketLab and Blue Origin also tend to have pretty decent coverage, although neither of them are doing crewed orbital spaceflight yet). No views of the non-flight-control employees enjoying seeing their work fly, very little live telemetry, low resolution for when they do have live video, mostly CGI views once down to the second stage, no live views from the capsule in space either.

Finally, on top of that, Starliner is kind of just a dead end in its current state. Boeing only built the two it needs for this one contract, and it only flies on Atlas V, which are fully sold out now. So it can only do the 6 contracted ISS missions and then it's done until someone is willing to pay to have Starliner+Vulcan Centaur crew rated.

> Boeing only built the two it needs for this one contract, and it only flies on Atlas V, which are fully sold out now. So it can only do the 6 contracted ISS missions and then it's done until someone is willing to pay to have Starliner+Vulcan Centaur crew rated.

This is what I like about SpaceX. Of course they have government contracts, but it's always building towards something bigger.

I was really unimpressed with Boeing's feed and its lack of telemetry. No indications of altitude, speed, distance down range, etc. Even their timeline jumped rather than progressed. It was worse than some of those old Windows progress bars of old.

How many times was this launch delayed due to problems? I get excited, but can't stay excited for months.

It was delayed three times in the month leading up to launch, and there was an attempt just over a year ago that was scratched because they discovered they accidentally used a flammable material. So, four total times. But "staying excited for months" is misleading.

True, but you have to add previous attempts going back several years. Wasn't Atlas+Starliner actually rolled out to the pad last time only to be scrubbed and brought back for another 6 month delay?

The time more than a year before that when it was scrubbed for a stuck valve that I don’t think they ever fixed and decided it can still fly.

4 days ago. 48 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40547338

Also 30 days ago.

Everyone was excited for the one last time and I was around for that, I didn't even realize it was happening today. I just assumed it'd be delayed for another long period again.

> I didn't even realize it was happening today.

I did not, either. I tend to get most of my tech-related news via HN. Fortunately this morning I decided to swing past Ars to see if anything interesting was happening, and they had a high profile post about the launch. I made it to the livestream with less than five minutes to spare.

I had the same issue. I thought it was postponed for a longer period given the messaging from the last scrub.

I only knew it was launching 6 minutes prior because my partner alerted me about it because it was top stream on twitch.

Previous launch attempts did. But there are only so many successive "launch was scrubbed" stories that are interesting.

To be fair, SpaceX is far more cheerworthy.

Does the Starliner have any feature that current SpaceX rockets don't have?

Yes, it can reboost the station. Dragon can't. Cygnus, Dreamchaser, and Soyuz can reboost. This matters because the station can't boost itself.

Boost as in push it to a different orbit?

It has physical knobs and switches as opposed to relying on touchscreens. I consider that a feature, although a minor one.

It is worth noting that Dragon does have physical controls, they're just backups hidden under the panel below the screens for emergencies. This is on top of the redundancy offered by the screens, where if one screen fails, the same controls are accessible on the other ones.

Plus, since it's supposed to fly autonomously, there isn't a lot of physical control to be done. This isn't like with cars where there's an argument that tactile controls are easier to adjust without looking away from the road.

Are you an astronaut? Do astronauts prefer thousands of physical knobs? Do you think they would fly if they weren't happy?

Starliner isn't even a rocket, it's a capsule. A capsule (Starliner) got launched today on top of a really old rocket design (Atlas V) which first launched in 2002...

Not really. The biggest apparent difference in the user experience is how the vehicle is commanded.

Here's a pic of the Starliner control panel: https://x.com/TrevorMahlmann/status/1207437431374565376/phot...

And Crew Dragon's control panel: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/30/21275753/nasa-spacex-astr...

I shudder thinking about what would happen if a touch action on the touchscreen would get stuck

It does. It can (and will) land on land instead of water.

Like Soyuz?

Interesting, why would they want that capability?

All Russian space vehicles land on land because they don’t have easy access to warm waters and Kazakhstan steppe is big and empty.

But why boeing/nasa would want that?

Is that a feature or just a difference? I assume there's trade-offs with both - is landing on land significantly better?

They also have better produced livestreams in general, making it worth checking in in advance.

There was an article when the launch was scrubbed two days ago, but it didn't make much traction, and the few comments on it were (as objectively as possible) mostly "smirking SpaceX fans".

Objectively dissing on Boeing has become it's own pastime regardless of being a fan of anything else

There is no schadenfreude for the people in my circle. The same can be said for Intel.

We all see it as a huge national security issue that these companies are fumbling, given how foundational they are for U.S. security, self-reliance and tech leadership.

It made it before at least one of its other launch attempts, IIRC.

Uncrewed, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test_2

This rocket is not reusable so it’s kind of an antique.

The rocket is not, but the crew module is intended to fly 10 times, and is compatible with several rockets including falcon 9.

It's 'compatible' in that they can do the work to integrate it with another rocket if needed, which isn't really saying much because most payloads are like that. It isn't compatible with Falcon 9 in its current state, and IIRC because it's wider than F9, actually flying Starliner on F9 would require a lot more structural work too (devising an appropriate aerodynamic adapter and ensuring structural loads are acceptable).

Plus, NASA crew rates the full stack rather than treating the rocket and capsule separately, so integrating Starliner on another rocket would require the crew rating process to be repeated (granted, it'd be a bit easier since F9+Dragon is already crew rated).

The falcon with dragon is only partially reusable too (second stage discarded). The space shuttle reused more but is more of an antique so that's not a great determiner of antiqueness.

So all the expensive parts. Got it

boeing + spaceflight. they are braver than i

No one can hear you blow a whistle in space.

> I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

John Glenn

Oh but now it's so unimaginably worse than that. Boeing lost the contract for commercial crew to SpaceX, who was indeed the lowest bidder. But Boeing has connections, and got Congress to make NASA also give them a contract. So they did. And Boeing's contract ended up being worth about 50% more than the contract SpaceX got. It was expected Boeing was going to be the first to start launching crewed missions by a fairly wide margin. SpaceX started in 2020. Boeing started, right now.

Oh and the build up to this finale is no less... odd. Boeing did their pad abort test - demonstrating the ability for their capsule to rocket off on its on, like it might do from a failing rocket. And that test failed with only 2 out of 3 of the parachutes opening. But insert 'Boeing influence' - NASA decided it was a clear success. And not just any success, but a success so clearly successful that they simply let Boeing completely skip the launch abort test (where you'd to the same escape test, but in flight) and moved right on to complete unmanned tests to the ISS.

So they launch their first mission to the ISS, and completely miss the station leaving the craft in a potentially catastrophic scenario, though it does eventually make its way back to Earth. So NASA just pats them on the back 'Happens to us all! Just give it another go!' So they do, and on this flight 1/6th of the thrusters on the approach module failed, but by some act of God (and backup thrusters), the craft somehow managed to mate with the ISS. So of course NASA said, "Brilliant! Success! Bring on the humans!"

And that's where we are right now. And that is the company behind the rocket that's under you right now.

Despite headlines, air travel gets safer and safer every year. At least when measured by fatalities per departure. Boeing has had several high profile failures, but it's correlated with a huge increase in flights and a huge increase in expectations.

The problem is more that those failures were entirely preventable and caused by decisions that prioritised economic motives over security. And the manufacturer was squarely to blame, which is also not the case in most accidents.

Even when the industry overall is doing pretty well, we should still scrutinize every incident. There's no such thing as acceptable fatalities.

Don’t mistake the momentum of past success for current engineering and safety practices. If the MAX and 787 can get released with defects slipping out, there’s little certainty which other corners are being cut that can wipe out all progress of safety in the blink of an eye.

We all know air travel is safe. The concern is that the complacency involved with folks just parroting that argument is leading us to a world where that's no longer the case. Air travel isn't safe because of magic, it's safe because of decades of work, strong safety cultures, good regulations, etc. We're seeing Boeing had gutted it's safety culture, the FAA's made questionable safety decisions, overworked air traffic controllers leading to near misses, and so on. Despite the common refrain - the safety of air travel is a marvel of engineering, management, and regulation, not an innate law of the universe. If those pillars start cracking, we need to be clear eyed, take that extremely seriously, and fix it with high urgency

Yeah this morning I was thinking about what the astronauts must be thinking.

I would ride the Atlas/Centaur stack, it's been exceedingly reliable. Starliner itself? Not quite yet, given its checkered history.

Boeing brings up nothing but sadness in me these days. I really, really, really want that company to succeed and be awesome. Hopefully going forward Starliner will bring forward the excellence that has been Boeing in the past.

"Astronaut whistleblower shot himself 3 times in the back of the head in a parking lot."

-- News next week probably.

I find it amazing that this is treated as such a trivial achievement, with an attitude as if any one of us could have done this. Now back to our regularly scheduled social media apps.

It's a nice new capsule launching on top of a 20+ year old launch system (Atlas V).

It's a great accomplishment but it's not "super crazy"

It took them a decade and a half to make this thing. I think that alone speaks to the complexity of this achievement.

> Now back to our regularly scheduled social media apps.

"Ask not what flying cars can do for you; ask what 140 characters can do for your country." [0,1]

"We choose to go to LEO. We choose to go to LEO... We choose to go to LEO in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but so that MIC will learn to build without cost-plus contracting" [2, 3]

0. https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/education/teachers/curricul...

1. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/697729-we-wanted-flying-car...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon

3. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-plus-contract.asp

I think it is materially less exciting than it would have been if it had launched years ago when it was scheduled to. It provides competition with SpaceX in one very small niche of space travel with no applications to any other niche. Meanwhile SpaceX is building a Mars rocket with in flight refueling. I really wish they did have more competition, and I also hope they succeed.

I think one of the challenges (and let's be really clear, Boeing has MANY issues) is that there's a double standard (or at least different expectations).

How many SpaceX rockets and failures have there been? (And that's not a knock on SpaceX, either - this stuff is hard. Combining precision and technology with 'controlled explosion' is going to be a challenge).

But as a NASA person said - NASA-funded contracts "can't" have failures. They obviously do, but he was more talking to the acceptability, political and otherwise. One or two launchpad explosions of a taxpayer funded vehicle and you're fighting Congressional demands to shut down the entire program. SpaceX provides a layer of abstraction and indirection to that, so they can move faster - "Who cares if we blow up 10 in the next couple of years to get to one that works".

Not trivial, but also not consequential.

At some point we'll have to think of it as trivial, otherwise what progress are we making?

Unlike science (and particularly math) where everything is trivial unless novel, in most endeavors these are too separate axes. For example, there's no progress or novelty in a sports team winning a championship, but it's definitely not trivial to win. Same for an engineering project - there are many cathedrals out there, but building a new one never became trivial.

Every one of the thousands of brain surgeries and heart surgery are also remarkable.

It's not trivial, but it's less interesting than the other news stories about Boeing.

Rocket-science is just Newtonian physics ;)

Rocket science isn't easy, I would know.

Yeah for some reason when SpaceX did it we couldn’t stop hearing about it. When OldTech does it, nobody cares.

Quick, without cheating, can you name the second human being to run a mile in less than four minutes? Can you name the current world record holder?

I guess that most people in my small town don't know who Roger Bannister is. A lot more of them can tell you the name of the first local to officially run a mile in less than four minutes. They couldn't tell you if anybody from my state has done it since.

I guess that's just a long way to say, "That's natural."

If old tech had done it 5 years ago then that would have been newsworthy.

The first jet flight across the Atlantic was newsworthy. The 837th isn’t.

I hope someone double checked those doors.

I would say that the one redeeming quality of Elon Musk (in a sea of otherwise awful personality traits) is that for at least Tesla and SpaceX, that he was interested in running those companies primarily to produce a product. Like that was the primary focus and raison d'être of both of those companies, especially SpaceX I think. This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business.

I don't know if he still takes that approach. In fact, I kind of doubt he ever really did, but he certainly projected that image publicly, and most importantly to workers of those companies - whether he "really believed" it I guess is a moot point.

When you take the "businesses exist to return a profit to shareholders" approach you're always going to focus on leadership that has a track record of doing that, even if that excludes building a good product or for that matter even the long-term viability of the business. Thus, you see these CEO hires that don't seem to make sense - most of us unconsciously still think of businesses as things created to make a thing or do a specific thing, because that's a natural thing to believe.

Anyway I think you can attribute some of the success of both to this, as well as Musk's public image at least ca 2008-2018 or so.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your comment wouldn't be so bad if you had taken out the obvious provocations ("awful personality traits" etc.), but in any case it flew too close to the planet Musk and the whole thread got sucked in. We don't want to die that way.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589501.)

I did that more in a "let's take this as read and focus on the other things" way i.e. I knew I was going to give Musk a sort of backhanded compliment, and didn't want a bunch of replies from people who hate him, explaining to me carefully and in great detail why they hate him (even though I probably agree with them, it doesn't seem like an interesting discussion to have).

Alas, my efforts were in vain.

Most people who have worked close to him generally note that he has intimate knowledge up and down the entire product side (at minimum) of the company. This can lead to micro-management, but leads to far better results than most companies could ever hope to achieve.

Communication and agreement are what add cost and misdirection to development. When a tiny set of people with one clear goal pull the strings, it is much more efficient to reach the north star product.

This seems like an argument for a command economy.

I cant say I'm a fan of Elon but he got it right with SpaceX. Space is expensive, stupidly expensive. There was zero chance SpaceX would've been able to survive this long if they'd not focused on profits. Reusable rockets brought general launch costs down by millions, reusable farings even more (people underestimate how much they cost. $6 million a pair. At ~$62 million a launch thats a fairly sizable chunk of money to be throwing away).

Starlink was a fantastic way to ensure long term high profitability, and is set to bring them $6.6bn this year alone. For some context the Falcon 9 development costs were estimated by Nasa to be around $300 million, and Starship's development is estimated to going to have cost anywhere from $5-$10 billion by the time its fully operational.

Starlink's profitability is what's going to make it possible for some monumentally huge projects once Starship is in full swing.

In terms of Elons involvement in SpaceX it does seem to be a bit more than just a money making venture for him.

This comment is misleading, unintentionally of course.

The comment starts out with "long term high profitability", then offers "bring them 6.6B", and the central proposition of the comment is extremely high Starlink profits allows for free moonshots.

6.6B is a recent revenue projection, not profit.[1]

Their finance people say it's unprofitable, still. (off the record) [2]

Rooting for them and it will be profitable IMHO, but I've never heard any reporting it's profitable.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1co60j0/starl...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-10/is-elon-m...

Elon absolutely focuses on making money, which is why it was successful. I don’t know why your conclusion is completely backwards.

Do you think blue origin is focused on making money? They haven’t done anything that would indicate that.

SpaceX on the other hand focused on landing rockets completely to make money. There is no other reason to do it and it’s why NASA never focused on it.

Starlink is entirely to make money to feed the mars mission long term.

You might say that his visions aren’t focused on money, but the execution is ruthlessly so. It’s why both companies are famous for squeezing their suppliers so hard and inhousing when they can.

Yea I have a hard time distinguishing focusing on return vs focusing on product. They’re complimentary, not mutually exclusive. I hope those implementing my investments are focused on both.

Why do people always have to preface Elon praise with some initial criticism. The man has objectively created some incredible businesses.

Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar. This subthread was noticeably even worse than its surroundings.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Because they want to be seen as a moderate rather than an uncritical fan.

This happens for many online debates where extreme positions are common.

Because he is a complex human being with a very visible dark side and any praise of his achievements will make his terrible personality traits stain you like a soggy barf bag on an overnight flight

> The man has objectively created some incredible businesses

Even this, you need to put asterisks on "created" because he spends so much time building out lies about the companies he runs/ran because the creation myth is so important. The amount of unforced errors behind his tenure at Paypal, a lot of it around trying to be taken as the guy who "made Paypal"... it's just very silly!

And I think ultimately in a place like HN, where there are supposedly a lot of "builder" types, when you hear every Musk company say "yeah the way we stay productive is to keep Musk out of things...." everyone's natural bias against bullshitters kick in!

I think it's hard to discount Tesla really pushing forward EVs. I think it's extremely easy to discount all of his other stuff if you're cynical (yes I include SpaceX in there, though it's easy for me because I think manned spaceflight, let alone "going to Mars", is extremely silly). But this stuff isn't really fungible...

No doubt, but Tesla would not be where it is today without Musk's deceptive marketing, stock manipulation, disregard for labor laws, and just generally acting like he's above the law. One can admire the products he's had a hand in building without admiring the man himself. And the moment he got involved in politics it was inevitable that people would distance themselves from him.

Because he’s an easy person to dislike. And he’s spent a lot of his career taking credit for other people’s work.

He also has a section of people that are cult-like in their defense of him which adds fuel to the fire. “You’re jealous” or “you’re just angry he’s rich” or some other such nonsense seems to come out of the woodwork for anyone who has anything even slightly negative to say about him.

He's objectively ruined some incredible businesses as well

Because he’s the worlds oldest 14 year old boy

I do it very deliberately and I think it is good practice. It ads nuance and balance to Internet discussions which often tend to be very polarised with people shouting at each other. In my view Musk is a very flawed person but that doesn't justify spreading misinformation about SpaceX's very real and important accomplishments. Crazed evangelism over SpaceX also doesn't negate Musk's troubling history of public statements and actions.

> The man has objectively created some incredible businesses.

... and since then called a rescue diver a pedo, got into quite the mess regarding his partnerships and offspring [1], burned dozens of billions of dollars in Twitter, seems to be doing the public customer service for a bunch of literal neo-Nazis on Twitter [2], and is apparently on a truckload of drugs on the regular [3].

It takes years to build up trust, but it's very easy to completely erode it in a few weeks.

> Why do people always have to preface Elon praise with some initial criticism.

Because otherwise, people might accuse one of being a Musk shill, and there's unfortunately quite a bunch of these, completely ignoring any of the countless issues with Musk.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Relationships_and_ch...

[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/12/19/c...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e...

> in a sea of otherwise awful personality traits

This popular meme is all a gross exaggeration.

I don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole but IMHO there has been a whole lot of historical revisionism and propaganda regarding the history of both Tesla and SpaceX.

Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company. Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits. Also, it arguably only survived thanks to a 2009 Department of Energy loan (for $465 million). If you look at the history here, this loan is under a cloud.

This is particularly funny given Elon's self-made propaganda.

SpaceX succeeded (IMHO) in spite of Elon not because of him. I've read (admittedly unverified) accounts where someone in SpaceX's leadership essentially built a wall around Elon to insulate the rest of the company from him. SpaceX engineers themselves are a byproduct of NASA to a large degree. Also, SpaceX could not have succeeded without government loans, grants and contracts. Even today, it's completely reliant on the government purse.

Both Tesla and SpaceX have made huge promises and under-delivered on them or delivered late. People forget how delayed the Falcon timeline was. It just didn't matter because there was no competition: the ULA, for example, is a jobs program with no interest in competing on price or features.

And self-driving Telsas, anyone? Anyone?

I don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole, but when Elon "took over the company" it had no IP, or products, or employees and had produced nothing of value.

Attributing the success of Tesla to a government loan they paid back early is also joke and insulting to all the hard work of the employees and other investors.

"Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits."

This assumes no subsidies for oil and gas (plenty, including depreciation below cost basis!)

In terms of credits - those are in the 2%-3% range of revenue.

In terms of SpaceX being the most dependent on the govt - totally false. Things like SLS are cost plus, have cost $20 billion with almost nothing to show for it. SpaceX is so available, cheap and reliable they are literally launching ESA payloads (ESA won't even mention them its so embarrassing), most commercial payloads that can actually go to bid and competitors payloads (looking at you Amazon).

This rings true but in Elon's defense:

- None of the markets he participates in could ever truly be free markets no matter what due to their very high (and necessarily high) capital requirements. It's not like other tech companies which use government money to monopolize markets that have low entry barriers and end up messing with millions of little guys who think they're operating in a free market... Then it takes a decade for them to learn that they actually had 0 chance of ever competing in that market due to asymmetries in margins caused by gov subsidies.

- He consistently gave the government value for money. If his companies weren't there, the government would have spent the same amount of money (or more) and obtained worse results.

You have good points, but I really feel like most of those things could be said about any successful company in the aerospace business.

> Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company.

He invested in a 6 month startup that consisted of an office and desk. Tesla had no money, no plan, and a borrowed electric kit car. Musk was the early investor.

From a practical point of view, Musk was indeed the founder.

In spite of all your criticism, neither Tesla nor SpaceX would exist without Musk, and Musk has greatly pushed forward the technology of both, creating two new major industries.

He is a founder at Tesla, as when he entered the round A financing Tesla was just three guys, some networking, and nothing more. Even the "Tesla" trademark and logo registration was made by SpaceX people. He didn't found his own car company with just J. B. Straubel (another Tesla founder who was being paid by him to develop electric car batteries at the time) because he thought it would be better to cooperate with that other group that was was inspired by the same idea and he though he would be able to concentrate more on SpaceX that way. He was wrong and had to take "take over the company" later to avoid bankrupcy, move the Model S design headquarters to SpaceX, etc. And it's now nothing like what it was when he first put money on it.

As for the loan, Fisker got an even bigger one and went bankrupt[1]. Ford took a much bigger one (justified by their size) and in 2020 still didn't manage to pay it back[2]. What is wrong with the loan Tesla took, kept it alive, and it paid back early with interest?

USA likes to tout free markets and lobby against protectionism, but aside from the UK as a first mover nobody ever industrialized without protectionism and directed industrial policy, and I would argue it is impossible or at very least inefficient.

I agree SpaceX could not have succeeded w/o the government contracts, but that is true to any space launch company. All SpaceX contracts were acquired as the lowest bidder, often offering dramatically lower prices and higher value than anyone. Just look at the Commercial Crew where Boeing got $4.49B, SpaceX got $2.6B and did a better job.

Elon time is a known phenomenon. "At SpaceX we specialize at converting the impossible to late". And delays are a common thing in the aerospace industry. Can you name a rocket in recent times that was developed faster, or even just less delayed than Falcon 1? Or than Falcon 9? I bet you find much easier to name those who were more.

Musk succeeded in two industries that were certified money pits. You have a big graveyard both before and after 2002 of bankrupt companies in both fields.

It's ludicrous to believe SpaceX succeeded despite Musk when all other "new space" companies started before or around the same time, with the same NASA/Military complex boosted engineers and contracts available to them, failed, and when Musk has been so involved in SpaceX. Instead of unverified accounts, what about hearing about the organizational structure of early Spacex from a senior NASA scientist that worked with them[3] (the whole series of videos with him is very interesting), or many other similar accounts [4]?

[1]https://publicintegrity.org/politics/two-doe-electric-car-lo...

[2]https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-...

[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&t=197s

[4]https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

Yeah I mean, I agree with you on this stuff - I just wanted to make a point about production for use vs production for profit and how a manic fixation on the latter can lead to adverse outcomes. And, like I hinted at, I don't think Elon Musk really prioritized the former - in fact I don't think he understands the difference between the two - but he did cultivate a narrative around his personality and management style that led a lot of people to believe that he valued the former, including at his companies which shaped the culture there to some extent.

I own a Tesla, for practical purposes it is self-driving.

IMO he is the main design engineer of all products in all his companies. This is why I admire him greatly and don't get the MSM parotting about him being a terrible person because -insert random half true MSM story about some emerald mine or being born into a rich family- or whatever other clickbait bs.

His companies where all founded based on his own engineering idea about how an important (existing) product/service could be fundamentally !at least an order of magnitude! better in multiple areas by designing it with a different approach or even different goal (going to space as a country vs commercially building a precense on mars for example).

His vision about the future, substantiated by (simple) physics calculations + drive to actually do it make him outright unique in the world right now.

There would be no SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, etc without Elon Musk. Period. I don't get why people must insist on what a terrible personality he has (often based on gossip and outright lies).

I think you really put this well:

This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business.

Call it cynicism, but decision calculus from upstairs always work in that direction (i.e. gotta hit arbitrary financial goals for this quarter because that's how bonuses and comp gets dictated) so I think in that mindset so I don't setup myself for disappointment or surprise if a decision that doesn't appeal to that shorted-sighted thinking doesn't gain traction.

>This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. >The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business.

Thanks for putting it words that I could not normally articulate. On HN, I find people are quick to label capitalism=only for profit,hence bad for people and the supposed opposite i.e socialism=good for people. The lack of nuance among cranial challenged is annoying, without realizing that the later embodies the quintessential the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions.

I mean, for what it's worth I'm a Marxist and that fact definitely influenced my choice of words there and how I think about this stuff. That said, while I'm also a communist (because I can't think of anything else that describes me better), I do think that Marx's critique of capitalism is his most enduring body of work that remains relevant to this day, while his contributions to how to build socialism are important for historical purposes but have been mostly superseded by later theorists. I don't think he would have found that particularly surprising, either.

Capitalism is about the accumulation of capital goods into private hands and centralization and socialization of production. To my mind, that's what it does and what drives it forward - most everything else is secondary. That's not quite the same as "only for profit" but it's close. People under capitalism don't all think of it that way, but unfortunately the humans aren't in charge. The logic of capitalism, is.

Gallows humor on the livestream chat: bet NASA will get another movie out of this.

This is a bit meta, but is it surprising that the BBC news website is the go-to source for a broad range of news stories that end up on HN? What and where are the competition?

It's politically neutral and generally less opinionated. Competition is reuters, AP, other public media such as canadian tv, france24 etc.

The BBC is not politically neutral. It's the legal propaganda arm of the British State.

AFP as well

There are plenty of reasonable US sources, NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, but they are all paywalled.

It’s also surprising that BBC, a government-funded media outlet, is showing ads. Either the government funding isn’t enough or they are trying to recoup some of those costs by showing ads to people who’ve already paid for the content with their taxes (even the international part is paid for - see below).

> Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use the BBC's streaming service, iPlayer. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and is used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic and Persian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC

BBC doesn't show ads within the UK. Imposing them on the international audience to defray the costs to the license payers seems not unreasonable.

Bloomberg and WSJ (but not the opinion pieces) are my default sources

Unfortunately one of the doors came off mid-flight...

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