SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy successfully - biggest rocket since Saturn V

[Phr3121]

An important distinction is that the New Shepard is not an orbital rocket. It basically goes straight up, enters space, and comes back down. SpaceX is landing rockets that have delivered satellites into orbit, sometimes beyond low earth orbit. This requires an incredible amount of horizontal speed which, in addition to being much, much larger rockets to begin with, puts SpaceX far ahead of Blue Origin in the landing, and general rocket game. The Falcon Heavy is also more powerful than Blue Origin's next rocket, the New Glenn, which is years away from a launch.

I'm not so sure. That could all change in the near future. We will have to see how SpaceX does financially. Blue Origin could also change their strategy, plus they have more money:

"As a result of being completely privately funded, Bezos’ deep pockets could render Blue more flexible than SpaceX when pricing launches. If Blue chooses to aggressively price New Glenn by accounting for booster reusability, it could pose a threat to SpaceX’s own business strategy. If SpaceX is unable to recoup its investment in reusability before New Glenn is regularly conducting multiple commercial missions per year, likely no earlier than 2021 or 2022, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 pricing could be rendered distinctly noncompetitive."

"By contrast, NASA has invested no money into Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. This launch system, which has a large payload fairing and is capable of many lunar missions, has almost exclusively been privately developed. Blue Origin is funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who just sold $1.1 billion in Amazon stock to continue support for his rocket company. Another company, United Launch Alliance, has invested some funding to the BE-4 rocket engine but nothing to the New Glenn project."

"SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will have about 30% more thrust than Blue Origin's largest New Glenn rocket. Falcon Heavy's nine engines will together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. Meanwhile, the 3-stage New Glenn will have a lower capability of 3.85 million pounds of thrust. The New Armstrong will be even more powerful."

NASA will beat them both. "NASA is building the Space Launch System (SLS), a rocket designed to take people into deep space and potentially Mars. The space agency will be able to configure the rocket differently for each mission."

Status: No earlier than late 2019
Height: 322 - 365 feet (98.1 - 111.3 meters)
Liftoff thrust: up to 11.9 million pounds (5 million kg)
Capability: 150,000 - 290,000 pounds (70,000 - 130,000 kilograms) to LEO
Planned payloads: Cargo, astronauts

 

[unimackpass]

I launched a few rockets myself when I was a kid. Anyone remember 'Estes'? Man, that was so much fun. Kids today are all about the internet and the iPhone. That's why they have grown stupid.

Good times. We were dealing with the real world, now it's cyberspace.
More cyberspace is what people really want, virtual reality in order to escape actual reality. Just look at some of the wonder bread posters on in in the wr. The ultimate cynics that hate reality.


"You know.. I know this steak doesn't exist. I know when I put it in my mouth; the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy, and delicious. After nine years.. you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."

"Whatever you want mr. Riggins."

 

[ralphc1]

Is that a specific question directly to water pads? Yes -- they've done it multiple times

Where was this view on the last landing? They claim the only views are from the barge itself. That looks like a view from a helicopter or a drone.

 

[ralphc1]

I admit I'm a big fan of his, but I admit some of people's criticisms of him are valid, like that he doesn't delivery on the time-frames he promises. But I think a lot of people don't understand the significance of what he has accomplished - like landing rockets, or literally creating the electric car industry, which many of the major auto makers have committed to completely switching to in the coming years. And he's not just the "money guy," there are plenty of billionaires who have failed in the rocket industry, and he was nowhere near being a billionaire when he started SpaceX. Also, when was the last successful American care-maker startup before Tesla? I believe Ford is the only other American auto-maker that actually makes cars that has never gone bankrupt.

Tesla motors was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning after GM ended it's electric vehicle [EV1] project. GM started development of electric vehicles in 1990 and had the Impact in trials in 1993 and in 1994 one set the land speed record for an electric vehicle.

The EV1 was leased to users starting in 1999 but production was ceased in 1999 and the cars recalled in 2003 to the dismay of those who leased them. They wanted to buy them and there were waiting lists to lease one. GM wouldn't sell them. GM basically built the electric cars to prove to the California Air Resources Board that they weren't viable but actually proved the opposite. People who had them loved them and there were thousands on waiting lists.

 

[ralphc1]

Tesla is falling apart. Burning through money like crazy. This publicity stunt of launching a car into space was meant to distract from that. It didn't work. The company still hasn't made any money and is in debt up to its eyeballs. Way behind schedule on cars. Musk has broken so many promises. Spread himself way too thin. Telsa has major, existential problems. Losing engineers. Bush league engineering in general.


Report: Tesla Model 3 'Bottlenecks' Left Some Portions to Be Assembled by Hand. Despite long touting its commitment to automated production — what CEO Elon Musk has called “the machine that builds the machine” — Tesla Motors might have resorted to less advanced techniques to build its new Model 3 sedan.

FREMONT, Calif.— Tesla Inc. TSLA -8.63% blamed “production bottlenecks” for having made only a fraction of the promised 1,500 Model 3s, the $35,000 sedan designed to propel the luxury electric-car maker into the mainstream.

Unknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter.




etc etc Other car companies are gonna pass them. Everyone from Ferrari to Nissan. They lost out. The company only has popularity and a good stock price because of Musketeer cult. But that has vanished. Stock in toilet. Earnings non existent. Behind schedule. etc. It is not a well run company by any sense of the imagination.

Elon thought he could do it all. He should have partnered with someone who already had production facilities. He might eventually make it into full production but will there be enough profit in it? All of his dreams take lots of money to accomplish.

 

[Cocrehamster]

Tesla motors was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning after GM ended it's electric vehicle [EV1] project. GM started development of electric vehicles in 1990 and had the Impact in trials in 1993 and in 1994 one set the land speed record for an electric vehicle.

​

​

True, but they didn't have the financial backing or managerial ability to become a major car maker and jumpstart the EV industry, IMO. Tesla is definitely what created the electric car industry as we know if today, I and I just can't see them doing so without Musk. His money kept them alive, it was his vision to make the cars beautiful and fast to make them desirable, and to start with the high dollar low volume sports car, then the slightly cheaper, higher production luxury sedan, then the mass market car. He also personally has done an incredible amount with regard to ironing out their supply chain, and I believe he also recruited JB Straubel, their CTO, who has been instrumental in their battery development.

The EV1 was leased to users starting in 1999 but production was ceased in 1999 and the cars recalled in 2003 to the dismay of those who leased them. They wanted to buy them and there were waiting lists to lease one. GM wouldn't sell them. GM basically built the electric cars to prove to the California Air Resources Board that they weren't viable but actually proved the opposite. People who had them loved them and there were thousands on waiting lists.

The EV1 story is pretty crazy. Didn't they force people who had them to return them, and then they just crushed them all?

 

[JonesBones]

The last time I read about Teslas value as a whole was several months ago, and it's definitely changed since then. I'm recalling quotes lke this one, from August - "Over the course of 2017, the company’s market capitalization has soared beyond those of major manufacturers like Ford, GM, BMW, Honda, and Nissan".

http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-price-worlds-4th-largest-automaker-by-value-2017-8

I don't know how directly market cap relates to stock price, but yeah it's gone down since then. Point taken.

Sorry for my tone. I had been drinking and have a love hate relationship with Tesla. I was a believer. Then wasn't. But then realized if enough people believe in it anyway it, it can succeed. So I was a believer again. I have posted pro Tesla shit all the time. They have a lot of orders from big companies on their new truck. They aren't dead yet.

 

[JonesBones]

I'm not hyping up Wozniak here though. People hype up Jobs insanely. He's better than Musk, but he shouldn't be in the same breath as Lebron James or someone who didn't need that kind of assistance.

Wozniak is a genius. His work made Apple. Most people know that Wozniak was the genius. I mean people who know anything about the company. And I think the pendulum swung the other way now. Where now Jobs is being underrated because of being thought so overrated. He's like Bisping or someting. He goes back and forth between under and overrated all the time.

I loved that scene in the movie. Where Wozniak says "I am sick of being Ringo when I know I am John." lol.


Steve Wozniak: What do you do? You're not an engineer. You're not a designer. You can't put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board! The graphical interface was stolen! So how come ten times in a day I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?

Steve Jobs: Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.

Steve Wozniak: ...to the only successful product that this company has ever made. I'm sorry to be blunt, but that happens to be the truth. The Lisa was a failure, the Macintosh was a failure. I don't like talking like this, but I am tired of being Ringo when I know I was John.

Steve Jobs: Everybody loves Ringo.

Steve Wozniak: And I am tired of being patronized by you!

Steve Jobs: You think John became John by winning a raffle, Woz? You think he tricked somebody or hit George Harrison over the head? He was John because he was John.

Steve Wozniak: He was John 'cause he wrote 'Ticket to Ride', and I wrote the Apple II.

 

[EGarrett]

Wozniak is a genius. His work made Apple. Most people know that Wozniak was the genius. I mean people who know anything about the company. And I think the pendulum swung the other way now. Where now Jobs is being underrated because of being thought so overrated. He's like Bisping or someting. He goes back and forth between under and overrated all the time.

I loved that scene in the movie. Where Wozniak says "I am sick of being Ringo when I know I am John." lol.


Steve Wozniak: What do you do? You're not an engineer. You're not a designer. You can't put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board! The graphical interface was stolen! So how come ten times in a day I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?

Steve Jobs: Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.

Steve Wozniak: ...to the only successful product that this company has ever made. I'm sorry to be blunt, but that happens to be the truth. The Lisa was a failure, the Macintosh was a failure. I don't like talking like this, but I am tired of being Ringo when I know I was John.

Steve Jobs: Everybody loves Ringo.

Steve Wozniak: And I am tired of being patronized by you!

Steve Jobs: You think John became John by winning a raffle, Woz? You think he tricked somebody or hit George Harrison over the head? He was John because he was John.

Steve Wozniak: He was John 'cause he wrote 'Ticket to Ride', and I wrote the Apple II.

I have the "Steve Jobs" biography and read the first half of it. Wozniak was what a real genius looks like, including the way he taught himself to build computers. The "Steve Jobs" movie annoys me, among other reasons, because it marginalizes Wozniak so much, making him the equivalent of a whiny afterthought, (Seth Rogen is also such a beta that it was almost insulting in a way).

Jobs was very, very smart, and knew a lot about product design and marketing, and was extremely hard-working. He made a good team with Wozniak. But where Jobs knew how to get money out of consumers, Musk primarily knows how to get money out of bureaucrats and investors.

 

[GhostZ06]

A perfect vertical landing also...

penis rocket ?

that is the ugliest rocket design ever

 

[GhostZ06]

NASA had a better rocket 50 years ago - a much better rocket.

Elon is brilliant but the overstatements following this recent launch are nauseating.

They also had a better shuttle replacement program the Ventrue star and the X-33...

 

[GhostZ06]

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


i cant beleive no one picked up these shuttle designs




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

now we have this skylon program, since its British, and the British are totally incompetent an are taking 200000000 year to complete,
its not being funded by the united states mainly and the not so much the british

 

[Cirris]

NASA had a better rocket 50 years ago - a much better rocket.

Elon is brilliant but the overstatements following this recent launch are nauseating.

The operative word there. Thanks to Clinton, Bush, and Obama, NASA is a shell of its former self.

Don't get all butthurt cause it takes someone like Elon Musk to push the mantle of exploration that fills the vacuum that was created by the failures of previous administrations.

Also the only reason NASA even had those rockets was the enormous budget they were granted from the Red scare propaganda.

 

[tkotom]

The operative word there. Thanks to Clinton, Bush, and Obama, NASA is a shell of its former self.

Don't get all butthurt cause it takes someone like Elon Musk to push the mantle of exploration that fills the vacuum that was created by the failures of previous administrations.

Also the only reason NASA even had those rockets was the enormous budget they were granted from the Red scare propaganda.

You completely missed my point, I suspect because you're of a low IQ.

NASA's technological knowledge is still much more advanced than SpaceX, despite the fact that SpaceX's ranks are filled with fantastic ex NASA minds. Naturally, that is the case for many reasons.

There's no need to overstate accomplishments, it's dishonest.

 

[EGarrett]

The majority of the folks in the tech industry has acknowledge Elon Musk as brilliant.

Musk's companies have been the most short-sold on their entire stock exchanges multiple times, and from what I've seen, every time he co-opts a trendy idea, like AI research or self-driving cars, the people who work in the field end up giving him the "valley girl stink eye" at how little he seems to know about it. Someone here posted a graph where Tesla was rated as the worst (or nearly the worst) among car companies developing self-driving technology.

Sorry if I sound like a jerk. It's not that Musk isn't intelligent, but his talent is in marketing and getting government and private investment, moreso than inventing and running a company.

 

[deltapapha]

Here is something I would like to eventually be able to discuss in layperson's terms:

What are the 5 (or so) main problems/issues/challenges that SpaceX has in successfully landing a giant rocket booster on an ocean-born landing pad?

And what are no longer problems? Meaning ones that were before (recent in time) but have been worked out once and for all and no longer require continued 'debugging'.

Can anyone comment on this or point me in the right direction. Me and a few friends started a sci.&tech. group to discuss things like this.

 

[EGarrett]

(Quote deleted, because I don't want to call anyone out personally, but someone said Musk is a "genius" because he memorized a bunch of books about rockets)

Okay, I apologize in advance because I'm going to sound like a jerk again. Musk is a very smart guy, but you're going too far. In short, geniuses don't memorize. They innovate. It might seem like I'm being nitpicky, but this is an important difference. Most people who actually do "genius things" tend to shock people with how limited their actual knowledge is. They learn one field in extreme depth, and know very little in everything else. They're not trying to build a hyperloop train, launch cars into space, AND design solar roofs. They're at home, studying ONE of those, monomaniacally, until they get to 10,000 hours (or 10 years or so), then they put out something that totally blows everyone's mind and redefines that field, usually with no money at all.

You can't buy that. You can't get that through the government handing you money, or going on talk shows, or following the latest trends. People who really do the things that shape and change the world are outcasts, they're poor, have few friends, are unloved, and don't fit into the world. If anything, they're tragic figures. The saving grace is that they can do special things that no one else in the world can do, and in the long-term, humanity rests on their shoulders. It bugs me on a deep level to see someone use self-marketing and all the latest trends and government loans to try to steal the word "genius" for themselves. It bugs me on a really deep level.

 

[JonesBones]

I have the "Steve Jobs" biography and read the first half of it. Wozniak was what a real genius looks like, including the way he taught himself to build computers. The "Steve Jobs" movie annoys me, among other reasons, because it marginalizes Wozniak so much, making him the equivalent of a whiny afterthought, (Seth Rogen is also such a beta that it was almost insulting in a way).

Jobs was very, very smart, and knew a lot about product design and marketing, and was extremely hard-working. He made a good team with Wozniak. But where Jobs knew how to get money out of consumers, Musk primarily knows how to get money out of bureaucrats and investors.

That is your opinion. But I prefer polymaths. I relate more with Jobs. And Musk. We spread ourselves thin. Da Vinci and a ton of others did the same. You don't have to go deep into something. Just deep enough into many things. Pasteur is a good example. He dipped shallowly in enough fields to accumulate something great.

You are talking about modern people. The ancients studied everything. Look at Newton. Leibniz. Goethe. Made contributions across a vast variety of fields. Richard Feynman too. He was all over the place. Goethe for christ's sake. He makes Wozniak, Musk and all these other guys look like manlets. An intellectual giant of the highest order. Jon Von Neuman too.

Freeman Dyson made this distinction before. He is also a breadth guy but as good a mathematician and physicist as they come. He is a great specialist but prefers to branch out.

Great scientists come in two varieties, which Isaiah Berlin, quoting the seventh-century-BC poet Archilochus, called foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are interested in everything, and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are interested only in a few problems which they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein was a hedgehog; Richard Feynman was a fox.

 

[EGarrett]

That is your opinion. But I prefer polymaths. I relate more with Jobs. And Musk. We spread ourselves thin. Da Vinci and a ton of others did the same. You don't have to go deep into something. Just deep enough into many things. Pasteur is a good example. He dipped shallowly in enough fields to accumulate something great.

Polymaths? It's arguable that they're genius marketers, but granting that, what's the other thing that Musk and Jobs are geniuses at?

You are talking about modern people. The ancients studied everything. Look at Newton. Leibniz. Goethe. Made contributions across a vast variety of fields. Richard Feynman too. He was all over the place. Goethe for christ's sake. He makes Wozniak, Musk and all these other guys look like manlets

They studied everything because there was far less to know back then. That's why they have the title "the last man to know everything" to refer to different polymaths.

Freeman Dyson made this distinction before. He is also a breadth guy but as good a mathematician and physicist as they come:

Actually, Dyson agrees with me.

Great scientists come in two varieties, which Isaiah Berlin, quoting the seventh-century-BC poet Archilochus, called foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are interested in everything, and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are interested only in a few problems which they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein was a hedgehog; Richard Feynman was a fox.

See above. Dyson spoke directly about this issue and said unequivocally that deep scientists are more important.

 

[JonesBones]

Polymaths? It's arguable that they're genius marketers, but granting that, what's the other thing that Musk and Jobs are geniuses at?


They studied everything because there was far less to know back then. That's why they have the title "the last man to know everything" to refer to different polymaths.


Actually, Dyson agrees with me.




See above. Dyson spoke directly about this issue and said unequivocally that deep scientists are more important.

Musk and Jobs are not polymaths. lol. I am talking about idea of breadth of knowledge in general.

And Dyson is being humble as usual. He'd probably say Neil De Grasse Tyson is a better scientist than him.

Dyson has won numerous scientific awards but never a Nobel Prize. Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg has said that the Nobel committee has "fleeced" Dyson, but Dyson himself remarked in 2009, "I think it's almost true without exception if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get hold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for ten years. That wasn't my style."

And it isnt because there was less knowledge. Did you ever think they just liked a variety of things?