Mere weeks after Starship's breakup, the vehicle may soon fly again | Hacker News Reader

Mere weeks after Starship's breakup, the vehicle may soon fly again

arstechnica.com

24 pointsamichail81 comments

All these years and Starship seems like an inaccurate name for rockets, just because sci-fi movies gave us better things to dream of.

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Gwynne Shotwell, not Musk, runs Space-X. She is very good at it. She really is a rocket scientist.

I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship because of the Musk association. The money might be good, the work fantastic and exciting, but at some point saying "I work at SpaceX/Tesla/whatever" will become dangerous to one's health?

Musk put good people in charge of some of these companies, Gwynne Shotwell is a great example, but his sphere if influence is big enough that the collateral damage could be significant.

> I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship

For whom? There isn't another ship. (Literally. Ariane has nothing, ULA is on its deathbed, Blue Origin might do something in the 2030s and nobody is moving from Hawthorne to Xi'an.)

SpaceX remains a jewel of American industry and technological achievement. If you're an ambitious aerospace engineer, SpaceX is the only place where you'll see your cutting-edge work launched.

There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX. Now that SpaceX has shown reuse is possible, it's easier to convince anyone that reuse is viable.

Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers to get on this too.

The issue is that space launch is a lot smaller market than EVs with a lot higher unit costs. I think the majority of the companies you mention are going to fail, because the market isn’t big enough for them all. Rocket Lab is most likely to survive because they’ve already got a decent sized business even though it is primarily at the low end, but moving up the market is arguably easier than starting from scratch. The others are competing not just against SpaceX, but also Blue Origin (which despite being rather slow is still way ahead of most of the companies you mention), as well as against Rocket Lab and each other

> There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX

These are all smallsat launchers. I have worked with a few of their teams and have mad respect for their work. But between launch cadence, fundraising and mission profile, they’re not comparable to SpaceX.

> Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers

SpaceX has a global commanding position and domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed. It’s fair to say it has a monopoly in commercial launch outside niche operations, e.g. dedicated smallsat.

> they’re not comparable to SpaceX. Not yet indeed. If SpaceX were to fail for whatever reason, eg. Musk falling out of grace with his orange buddy or whatever else, there is sort of backup now I guess.

> domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed

Agreed, but I think SpaceX showed that reuse could be done before Musk got any political influence (and went off the rails...).

SpaceX is the stoic incumbant by now. They have the launchpads and enough money to fight any challenging patents. If I was an up and coming rocket engineer, they would be my goto stable career choice. If I had ideas, i would shop around.

What about Rocket Lab? (Well, unless people start to get Musk vibes from Peter Beck…)

> I am worried that the good people at SpaceX might decide to abandon ship because of the Musk association. The money might be good, the work fantastic and exciting, but at some point saying "I work at SpaceX/Tesla/whatever" will become dangerous to one's health?

Meanwhile, plenty of people still work in industries such as oil+gas, tobacco, gambling, military tech, etc. No hate, no threats, business as usual.

SpaceX has a clear mission; Tesla not so much. What is the use of building electric cars "to save the planet" while your boss is enabling a ton more environmental damage using the money from Tesla sales and charger network (and his giant compensation package)?

I’d argue Tesla has succeeded in its original mission of bringing electric cars to the masses.

Profitability, vehicle autonomy, market share etc weren’t really the reasons why the company was founded.

> Tesla has succeeded in its original mission of bringing electric cars to the masses

Sort of. China has done more for this mission than Tesla, certainly Musk, at this point.

Yeah, but now?

I think we need like a wiki for people to read all the stories that people have posted about working for Musk companies to understand why so many people stay. I have recently seen so much misinformation about Musk being pushed. Its completely fair to criticize a person that deserves intense criticism, it just does a disservice to other readers if the entire context is not explained because it then propagates false assumptions about Musk which he then uses to 'surprise' his critics because they were operating under incorrect beliefs.

At this point, no not going to happen. The money sucks given how much you work, no work/life balance. These people already sacrificed their personal lives to get the company to this point. No other company is getting to Mars first. If you are an Olympic class engineer, would you really just walk away from getting to be a part of history? I guess unless you are at the top of your field you are not going to feel the same as these guys.

Regarding engineers burning out, given that Tesla and SpaceX are some of the most desired companies for new Engineering grads Musk will have a continual supply of engineers to grind down to dust as the old ones become useless to him.

There'll always be young people excited to work on the cutting edge of something they're passionate about, even if it means being horribly overworked and underpaid. See also the games industry, movie VFX, etc.

Thats a good point. I'm thinking how is Musk able to attract so many of them? His payroll obligations are enormous(think about how many he employs across all is factories).

We need competitors to Musk, preferably nicer, that can attract the best of the best. I guess in order to fight a psychopath you need tendencies of being a psychopath yourself?

A wiki is exactly what you don't want if the problem is "misinformation".

A Supreme Court ruling that NDAs and non-disparagement agreements violate the first amendment, however, that might help.

If they do, what is the net harm? The technology that SpaceX was losing money to for decades is now known. Their moat isn't as deep or wide as it used to be. See Space Pioneer, CAS Space, Galactic Energy, LandSpace, ...

How many of the companies you mentioned have even one reusable flight to show for, much less a proven track record?

Catching up to SpaceX is something even us Europeans haven't accomplished.

> How many of the companies you mentioned have even one reusable flight to show for

All of them?

there are a lot of extremely intelligent people that would want to work for musk. why ? beats me, but reality is reality.

She's a mechanical engineer, not a rocket scientist (though the term is overrated anyway, there are plenty of "rocket scientists" who do very boring things).

No, we can hate Musk all we want, but we shouldn't rewrite history because we despise him. He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer.

> He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer

Musk founded SpaceX. He hasn't been a chief engineer in anything but title for a long time. To the extent he deserves respect, it's in giving its team the insulation he's denied Twitter and the American people.

Who made the bets on Merlin and Raptor engines, Falcon 9, reusability and Starship?

SpaceX employees online say he was heavily involved in engineering, as chief designer; but even imagining he did not, just allowing those crazy ideas to actually happen has incredible merit.

This will go down in history as the most shameful descent into madness of the 21st century. I sincerely hope he gets hospitalized for his drug addiction or whatever is going on, allowing others to take back command of these companies before they run into the ground.

As someone who has followed Musk for some time, I agree. He seemed mostly normal in the early days. But when the money supply became large, he appears to have lost his mind. As many others, I suspect he is on some seriously potent drugs.

His fate may not be all the different from Howard Hughes. A wealthy and influential figure from not so long ago who lost his mind towards the end.

The problem is when someone becomes that rich, they remove anyone from their circle who tells them no. And for Musk, even all legal consequence has been fully removed now. We all need guardrails otherwise our worst basic instincts start to take over. You mention Hughes, but I also think about someone like Hsieh.

Sadly, the similarity is there. Hsieh and Musk were both quite happy nerds and then they became very rich very quickly and drifted off into drugs. Both are/were really into Ketamines and openly talked about it. Both are/were strunggling with depression. Both had friends warn them that they are on a bad path. Let's hope Musk will manage to stop the drugs before they stop him.

Hsieh also had a famous musician pleading with him near his end, though for a different reason.

"But when the money supply became large, he appears to have lost his mind. "

One of my favorite insights applies:

Power doesn't corrupt; it reveals.

   -- Robert Caro

> Who made the bets on Merlin and Raptor engines, Falcon 9, reusability and Starship?

Merlin and Falcon 9, yes. Methane for Raptor, yes, but the integrated design and certainly Starship are not Musk. (Chopsticks, yes.)

There is absolutely no chance Starship is developed using steel without Musk. There is absolutely zero chance that Mechazilla would exist without Musk. These are massive elements of the Starship program.

Now, it's true enough that he didn't literally _build_ these things. He is the CEO. Steve Jobs didn't build the iPhone.

But these programs are very obviously shaped by Musk to a large degree.

> no chance Starship is developed using steel without Musk

What are you basing this on? It was carbon fibre or steel. SpaceX tried carbon. The bake was too inconsistent, so they went with steel. This was the stated and obvious design path since Falcon Heavy’s design trajectory plateaued.

Steel is by no means obvious. No one else in the industry uses it. (No one else in the industry uses carbon fiber, either, except things like fairings).

The obvious choice that everyone uses is aluminum, or various alloys, like aluminum-lithium.

So you think he had no hand in the engineering decisions and work surrounding Starship? On what are you basing this? Because most sources I've seen seem to indicate he is very involved.

I think the most obvious answer is that he was both heavily involved in key strategic decisions and not as technical as someone holding the Chief Engineer title usually would be. And is evidently less involved now, as he's doing more other stuff (SpaceX also appears very focused on "things that make a profit in near-earth space" rather than "things that might be needed for a near tern Mars mission"...)

Certainly he's more useful to organizations when he goes in with the approach of listening to engineers' ideas to build stuff than when he goes in with the approach of gutting the organization in revenge for things he's taken exception to.

Do you think engineering managers are doing a ton of technical work day-to-day? Because a "Chief Engineer" is a level (or two or three) above that. Of course the Chief Engineer isn't doing a ton of low-level technical works, that's not the job.

In a larger company a chief engineer isn't doing low level technical work, but they are normally an engineer with deep domain knowledge of the low level work being done, and not a CEO-type also responsible for other companies and the company's commercial priorities. So no, I don't think the design of Starship looks any different if he decides he's too busy to attend design meetings because of his other five jobs. Their other top level execs are very, very good engineers.

SpaceX also wasn't very big in the early years, and the CTOs and chief engineers of the space launch startups I know absolutely do involve themselves in the low level technical work. I don't imagine Elon did much of that even when he did make a point of interviewing every new hire and sitting in on meetings about low level purchasing decisions.

That's a common refrain, but an inaccurate one.

Musk was heavily involved in the engineering efforts at SpaceX. NASA struggled to keep up with his continual and extremely detailed stream of questions regarding engineering choices, with an obsessive and relentless focus on blueprints.

The list of engineering achievements and innovations (often unorthodox) is too long to list in a comment, but I highly recommend the book The Space Barons by Christian Davenport [0]. It's a fantastic read.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons

Yes. But all the good stuff Musk did was before he started using drugs.

Aren't you attempting to disconnect something that is not disconnected?

Startship is a huge deal in the industry. It does everything that the Space Shuttles used to, and a lot more besides. The focus on it is entirely justified AFAICT.

It doesn't do much other than rapid unscheduled disassemblies so far

It doesn’t justify bypassing safety regulation checks

Mind citing?

Normally, when a vehicle like this crashes, there is an inspection. Historically there have been and they have been finished normally.

It was started also this time: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/faa-spacex-starship-explosio...

E.g. in 2023 such inspection lasted around 5 months and "63 corrective actions the company "must take to prevent mishap reoccurrence"" was stated by FFA. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closes-spacex-starship-mish...

However, this time, as the article states, it was suddenly "finished". Nothing. They wouldn't have time to conclude it properly.

Not a citation of the claim you made.

Regardless of all the political angles, I'm very curious how the (apparently legal) interference of Musk in the FAA will play out when it comes to SpaceX.

Musk can be oversold to be sure but I wouldn't say he got lucky. SpaceX has made a number of unconventional (or at least unconventional at the time) technical decisions that seem to have paid off. He's either really good at picking the right people and then trusts them or he's got an eye for the correct decision. It's too many times to call it luck.

Taking a break from the culture war does a lot of good. Some people on both sides have been whipping themselves into frenzy that the world is going to end for decade and a half now (almost two if we count the tea party) and it shows at the temps people going to therapy have been growing.

Take a break. Take a kitkat. It's going to fine. In four or eight years the other side will take power and you will have your revenge.

This one feels different. Musk and Trump are doing real damage to trust, US soft power and government institutions all of which have taken decades to build. They're trying to do things that could lead to pensioners having their income cut off, hundreds of thousands of people entering the job market suddenly, and whatever economic effects that brings. Then the actions actually leading to more deaths in Ukraine and emboldening Putin, and whatever that brings with it.

The main thing is that these are the kinds of actions that can't be reversed overnight if power flips. eg, You can't just rehire an entire department and have them operating effectively. We'll be feeling these things for years afterwards, possibly decades.

They're causing real damage, and it's intentional.

If after betraying South Vietnam, the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan there is any trust in US left, leaving Europe to help Ukraine instead of US would hardly diminish it either.

Yes, if you take one point in isolation without the rest of the context it's easy to dismiss it.

Fine for you, perhaps, but not fine for everybody.

> Take a break. Take a kitkat. It's going to fine.

Tell that to people in Ukraine who were invaded by Russia. They were provided support by the US. Our leader and Musk are now blaming the victim and want them to surrender to the invader. Or pay $500B for US to give them additional support.

This is what we have come down to. People are dying and we are trying to shake them down like a mafia. Even mafia bosses are not that heartless.

Tell the Ukrainian kids hiding under desks from incoming missiles to take a break and take a kitkat.

US have absolutely no obligations towards Ukraine. It may aid or deny aid based on US interests, but Ukraine's are irrelevant. UK has only obligation towards US kids.

And US have a long history of shaking down people dying in the trenches - like the Louisiana purchase and Alaska Purchase.

And Ukraine is Europe's not US problem anyway.

It isn't about obligations, it is about the best interest of the US. Which is very clearly not handing everything to Russia for no good reason, and for nothing at all in return.

Significant amounts of US power and respect comes from its position as a benevolent dictator since ww2.

That position is currently being thrown away, and will have consequences. I suspect many Americans don't even realise the benefit they have from such global soft-power, and won't for another decade. 2025 isn't a turning point, the hearts and minds have been on the wane since 2003, but it's likely to be an inflection point.

> And Ukraine is Europe's not US problem anyway.

It actually is a problem of the US just as much as it is a problem of Europe. Russia has been financing and steering terrorist organisations across the world, most notably the entire MENA clusterfuck via its proxy Iran, and if Russia isn't stopped in Ukraine, they will escalate in other parts of the world.

Yes, the United States does have obligations to Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

In exchange for them giving up nuclear weapons, the US, the UK, and Russia guaranteed its security and borders.

The US did bad things in the past... So that excuses them doing more bad things now?

You seem to be speaking from a position of privilege though. A white, straight male who already has accumulated some assets will probably be fine. I'm not so sure about everyone else though.

I also think framing this as just a culture war is downplaying the dismantling of the US government and US influence around the world. Cozying up to Putin for example, will likely have geopolitical ramifications for decades.

The second you say something like that first sentence you have already lost the argument.

Which is annoying as the US is going to face some serious consequences from Trumps idiocy, phrasing it the way you did, is handing the future to Trump and his kind.

What word/phrase would you use instead to highlight the fact that for some people, sure, it's just some crap on the Internet, that it's just a bunch of hot air, a theoretical culture war, fought from the comfort of their couch, but that for other people, they've lost jobs, friends and family have been deported, they've lost their healthcare because the doctors were fired and the clinics unfunded. People are going to lose their farms. I mean, sure, they probably didn't die, but I'd call losing your job, having to sell the farm, not seeing the doctor, being forced into bankruptcy maybe a little bit of a shade of being "not fine". That's ignoring any problems in a war zone like Ukraine or the West Bank.

But so okay, let's be sensitive to others, and avoid using the word "privilege". What word/phrase better describes the situation where for some people, the harm is largely theoretical; something happening to other people, and that for a different set of people, there's real life ramifications to stuff the p-word people only hear about on the news.

Not sure how stating a fact is losing the argument. Notice I put a lot of qualifiers on what privilege means. Young people with no assets are getting crushed, good luck ever affording a house. Women are losing rights at an alarming rate. Non-white people are being demonized.

The trend was clear pre-COVID, but accelerated during COVID. The K recovery is real and those on the upslope will likely continue to be just fine while everyone else continues to go backwards - even large segments of Trump voters.

> Cozying up to Putin for example, will likely have geopolitical ramifications for decades.

Yes. It will help reign in China.

No it won’t. It shows China the US won’t stop expansionism. Further, the US pulling out all over the world leaves a huge power vacuum open for China to step in.

So far only one of those two has invaded neighboring countries.

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