Elon Musk Wants To Build a New Starship Every 72 Hours (arstechnica.com) 203
Ars Technica's senior space editor visited SpaceX's South Texas Launch Site for a long profile of Elon Musk (who was wearing an "Occupy Mars" t-shirt). Just two weeks ago Musk had called an all-hands meeting at 1 a.m. which led to a massive hiring spree of 252 people, doubling the site's workforce, within the next 48 hours. "Most of the new hires, even those who had inked contracts at midnight, were told to report for work the next morning..."
SpaceX is designing its factory here to build a Starship every 72 hours... Musk has brought lessons learned from Tesla's assembly line so workers do not burn out. They will work three 12-hour days and then have a four-day weekend. Then they'll work four 12-hour shifts with a three-day weekend. Thus, with four shifts, the Boca Chica site can operate at full capacity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. SpaceX is throwing in hot meals every three to four hours, for free...
"A high production rate solves many ills," he said. "If you have a high production rate, you have a high iteration rate. For pretty much any technology whatsoever, the progress is a function of how many iterations do you have, and how much progress do you make between each iteration. If you have a high production rate then you have many iterations. You can make progress from one to the next...."
Other engineers have built an in-house, shielded machine to X-ray the welds... These machines existed only in the minds of engineers four weeks ago. The tent they've installed them in for testing was built less than three weeks ago. Musk has always had a knack for hiring brilliant young engineers, and those in the Boca Chica tents were mostly in their 20s, busting their tails for the boss. Willingly. Why? Because Musk empowers them to go fast, do cool things, and, very soon, to see their machines fly...
"I'll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I'd like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars," Musk said.
It's a 4,000 word article, but the last paragraph really captures the mood. "The place feels the way a U.S. Navy shipyard must have felt in the weeks after Pearl Harbor -- insanely busy but also purposeful. These kids and swarms of recently hired technicians are fighting against impossible odds every day, and they're determined to win. Don't tell them it can't be done.
"They're not having any of that in Muskville."
"A high production rate solves many ills," he said. "If you have a high production rate, you have a high iteration rate. For pretty much any technology whatsoever, the progress is a function of how many iterations do you have, and how much progress do you make between each iteration. If you have a high production rate then you have many iterations. You can make progress from one to the next...."
Other engineers have built an in-house, shielded machine to X-ray the welds... These machines existed only in the minds of engineers four weeks ago. The tent they've installed them in for testing was built less than three weeks ago. Musk has always had a knack for hiring brilliant young engineers, and those in the Boca Chica tents were mostly in their 20s, busting their tails for the boss. Willingly. Why? Because Musk empowers them to go fast, do cool things, and, very soon, to see their machines fly...
"I'll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I'd like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars," Musk said.
It's a 4,000 word article, but the last paragraph really captures the mood. "The place feels the way a U.S. Navy shipyard must have felt in the weeks after Pearl Harbor -- insanely busy but also purposeful. These kids and swarms of recently hired technicians are fighting against impossible odds every day, and they're determined to win. Don't tell them it can't be done.
"They're not having any of that in Muskville."
His mouth runneth again (Score:2, Funny)
OMG its been almost 4 hours since Elon Musk was in the news, about time he made more outlandish statements.
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Re:His mouth runneth again (Score:4, Funny)
"Hey look everyone! Someone who didn't read the article!"
You must be new here. That's _everyone_ besides you.
PS. And it's RTFA!
Re:His mouth runneth again (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, well it is better than all those fucking stories about rich and greedy arseholes competing with the most mansions, the biggest super yacht, the most super cars, the tiniest genitals and the most young people sexually abused (because of those tiny genitals), all this crap cheered on by corporate main stream media because the arseholes pay with advertising dollars for their egos to be publicly stroked, their only achievements the biggest piles of cash and the most corrupt politicians on the payroll.
You know why there are so many stories about Elon Musk because the rest of the rich achieve fuck all except being greedy arseholes and celebrating greedy arseholes for being corrupt egoistic arseholes is just so last millennium.
Re:His mouth runneth again (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't stop him from acting like an asshole, and I can't force him to use his resources and influence for interesting research and experimentation.
Out of his own will, and on his own dime, he is doing the latter and not the former. More power to him.
If we have to have people with power over others, I'd rather have Elon Musk than Martin Shkreli, and yes, I'd have rather have McCains and Warrens instead of Trumps and Clintons.
As for getting rid of all the rich and powerful, and replacing them with enlightened altruists working toward an egalitarian utopia? I have no idea how that is even theoretically possible. Every attempt is logically bound to end up with hungry assholes clinging to their newly attained power, because it is not the altruists that can lead a revolution to victory.
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lol it's not his own dime he got rich by seizing the legitimate earnings of sex workers through his abusive PayPal ToS.
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The endorphins from the last bullshit have just about worn off, time for more!
Next up - Elon Musk decides to teleport to the Sun!
You forgot about something something Elon Musk and Reddit.
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"Next up - Elon Musk decides to teleport to the Sun!"
But only at night.
what could go wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I heard about this. It's about correctness, not work ethic. 6-hour shifts just seem like a better way to get a low error rate.
Of course, if it's all going to be robots eventually, it won't matter, but throughout Elon has had a focus on involving the fewest people possible in this, presumably to keep the quality of people up. Maybe there's something to that. but 12 hours of precision welding sure seems like a stretch.
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Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I heard about this. It's about correctness, not work ethic. 6-hour shifts just seem like a better way to get a low error rate.
Of course, if it's all going to be robots eventually, it won't matter, but throughout Elon has had a focus on involving the fewest people possible in this, presumably to keep the quality of people up. Maybe there's something to that. but 12 hours of precision welding sure seems like a stretch.
A learning curve. No matter how hard we try, we an't (and shouldn't build rockets in a tent.
Re:what could go wrong (Score:5, Informative)
What's the cheapest possible way to build rockets successfully? The only way to find out is to start in an open field and gradually work your way up until success. Seems like you need at least tents, but we know that experimentally, not armchair reasoning. SpaceX is building its "highbay" low-budget VAB. I'm sure that was needed, or they wouldn't. But I admire the attitude of "don't just assume we need to spend money on something because other people have in the past - let's try it and see". Engineers can solve all sorts of problems, after all.
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What's the cheapest possible way to build rockets successfully? The only way to find out is to start in an open field and gradually work your way up until success. Seems like you need at least tents, but we know that experimentally, not armchair reasoning. SpaceX is building its "highbay" low-budget VAB. I'm sure that was needed, or they wouldn't. But I admire the attitude of "don't just assume we need to spend money on something because other people have in the past - let's try it and see". Engineers can solve all sorts of problems, after all.
I think I look at it differently. If we want to buld these things in a tent, we work down from what we know.
What do we know? We know that welding stainless steel can be an issue. The different components can disassociate from each other, becoming "not" stainless any more, or worse, becoming brittle. We know that it takes a lot of skill to create a normal really good stainless weld, but space and vacuum and horrific temperature cycling being unforgiving, the requirments are even more strict.
I also am c
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I also am concerned about their system of having a common bulkhead between Fuel and Oxidant tanks.
It put men on the moon, I'm sure it will continue to be fine. It's pretty normal whenever the fuel is cryogenic. The pressure on either side of the bulkhead is roughly the same, so it's safer
The recent Starship failure had nothing to do with a common bulkhead, the failure was at the bottom of the tank, where it attaches to the thrust structure. That Falcon 9 failure was due to the helium tank IIRC - Starship doesn't need helium tanks to pressurize the main tanks as they drain, so no problems there.
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Consider an airliner being refuelled. Does everybody leave the plane during fuelling, the answer is no. In theory, an airliner could explode during fuelling.
With a rocket, it is safer to strap in the crew first and to arm the launch abort system before fuelling up the rocket's stages. The launch abort system can detect when the integrity of the booster stages has failed which triggers the launch abort system to fire its thrusters to get the crew capsule away from the rest of the exploding rocket.
Historicall
Re:what could go wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure spacex quality is bad, that must be why they just pulled off their 50th landing while Boeing’s rocket had two failures and just about caused a disaster
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As long as there are good breaks, it can be done (by young people at least). You recharge on the long weekends. Precision is more a function of process and having the right tools.
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Most of the work will have to be done by robots. Their most recent failure was due to hand welding stuff incorrectly, and the plan for non-prototype vehicles is to use machines to do repeatable perfect welds.
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Re:what could go wrong--no it's better (Score:3)
I am a software engineer but I come from a families if shipbuilders (the water kind). Working in a shipyard from my early teens, I found it was typical to work 48 to 72 hours without sleep.. sometimes longer. These were usually close to deadlines. Other times, we would work 12 to 14 hours and those were the lazy times.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where it almost always cold and wet. I also saw and watched fishermen go out, come back, and not come back. They spend sometimes 3 to 5 days without sle
Hotel Musk (Score:3)
As I said previously [slashdot.org] here on /. I think Musk will do more than just space tourism flights.
SpaceX will build their own space station too.
Why not if they are prepared to capitalise on their own launch tech to create a global satellite internet service.
Framed with the Corona virus is makes even more sense (not saying corona is that lethal, but the next big one?).
Go hang out in orbit until it blows over if you have the money.
Musk has never been shy about stating that his primary objective is Mars but I believe he needs staging posts.
The concept videos of Starship [youtube.com] include refuels but only between starships.
But I think having a base in orbit allows for a cache of fuel and spare parts. No one climbs Everest without using the base camps.
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18 months in micro-gravity will be far more detrimental to the body and dangerous than facing COVID-19.
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Well, lets hope only for the elderly above 70, just like covid :D
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There's limited demand for fuel in orbit though. Take one dedicated tanker Starship, refuel it in orbit, and you can fuel probably 1.5-2 cargo/passenger Starships.
A larger fuel reserve doesn't reduce the number of flights from Earth needed to lift that fuel. Moreover you have to accelerate the entire tanker in order to transfer fuel to another ship (at least according to current SpaceX plans - it sidesteps a TON of other difficulties.), so having more fuel or capacity actually wastes fuel with no benefit.
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Wouldn't it be far more simple, assuming we have a large station in orbit, to just use pumps? Why worry about exotic counter weights when you can just hook up some hoses?
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They already said what they are planing to do (Score:2)
I think Musk will do more than just space tourism flights.
Yes, they already said what that was - point to point sub-orbital earth travel, any pontoon earth in 30 minutes from anywhere else.
Probably twice as much as normal air travel to start, but it would be a massive hit just for not having to sit for 10-20 Horus on a plane.
If they are rolling out in massive numbers I see no reason why they could not become as cheap as, or even cheaper than tractional air travel as they are less complex to maintain.
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I'm guessing that fuel cost per passenger will be higher than conventional air travel.
Airplane fuel is way more complex to make than rocket fuel, I don't think that will remain the case.
If you are making as many Starships as they are planning to make, you also Strat to get economies of scale going for fuel as well...
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A 747 has to push air the whole way there, a (nominally) ballistic orbital vehicle only spends fuel at the beginning and the end of the flight. I really can't imagine large numbers of folks wanting to sit through 3+g's though. If they could profile the flight to stay around 2g's it might could work ok.
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Just to be more clear - why build a starship every 72 hours?
Why scale to a level that probably outstrips Boeing or Airbus in building aircraft unless you are planning on sending a lot of passengers somewhere?
I honestly don't think Mars looks like a whole lot of fun [nasa.gov], yeah get there and get your selfie on the red one for boasting rights, but then what?
It's a long way just to see it and it is a pretty hostile place. It 'aint a fortnight on Maui.
I'd rather live on our blue and green earth or admire it from a pl
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I'm a bit to old to be considered, but I would go any day. And I know plenty who would go too, e.g. my GF.
Unfortunately he is likely to slow and I have not enough money to go as a tourist (to Mars). But I'm working on the money for a Luna trip and a day or more in orbit.
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Most likely also a Mars station in orbit. I wonder if he knows about the Aldrin's idea of having a kind of perpetium taxi service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Monte-Carlo Solution? (Score:4, Funny)
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> The goal is to put One Million people on Mars.
WTF! Does he know something us plebs don't? Is there an asteroid on it's way?
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"Is there an asteroid on it's way?"
Yes.
When?
Who knows, but it's coming.
Not with 12 hour shift though. (Score:2)
I guess that's what OP meant.
There won't be one million landing.
And with those "reassuring" announcements, there won't be a million launching either!
The prices cannot possibly so cheap, that they would cancel out those employment and safety ethics.
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And a radiation shield, be he barrels over such details.
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That's what the boring machines are for. And yes, they are made to fit in a starship cargo hold. Bore them tunnels and get a nice underground habitat going. Helps with temp regulation, radiation shielding, and if location is chosen well, easy to make it hold atmosphere.
All of this is a long way off of course, but somebody's gotta start it I guess...
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Elon figures he'll need to launch 1000 Starships to Mars to make a viable colony. He's not thinking small here.
Building 1 Starship per day (which I think is the ultimate goal) isn't crazy. In WWII, GM had a plant that produced 1 bomber every 24 hours, with far more parts and complexity than Starship without the engines. The Starship body just isn't that complicated. The real challenge is going to build 6x as many Raptor engines. Rocket engines are the hard part of rocket science, after all.
Re: Monte-Carlo Solution? (Score:2)
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Hard to say, since we only know what Elon tweets about. Doesn't seem like he's thinking too much about the payloads yet. He's definitely planning to send a bounch of ships and get a proven, working fuel factory before sending people, we know that much.
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Starship is an unmanned craft. The support for humans will be added later. Using the same basic design for the cargo version, the tanker version and the people version is a lot cheaper than designing 3 unique space ships from the ground up. And in order to prove it's really safe for people you need it to have flown hundreds of times on cargo/tanker flights first. When you're mass-producing it for a few million a pop, one size fits all makes sense.
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Elon figures he'll need to launch 1000 Starships to Mars to make a viable colony. He's not thinking small here.
Building 1 Starship per day (which I think is the ultimate goal) isn't crazy. In WWII, GM had a plant that produced 1 bomber every 24 hours, with far more parts and complexity than Starship without the engines. The Starship body just isn't that complicated. The real challenge is going to build 6x as many Raptor engines. Rocket engines are the hard part of rocket science, after all.
The problem of course, is that the results of a tiny weld failure are quick and catastrophic. They are building the things in tent for chrissakes!
In addition, are the starships actually that simple? A lot of tanks and wiring go into that.
My guess based on a bit ofknowledge is that the cure for this, the idea of building an entire functional and safe starship every three days will be twofold.
Stop building them in tents, and build an actual indoors construction facility with extensive environmental co
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addition, are the starships actually that simple? A lot of tanks and wiring go into that.
Compared to a bomber? Certainly. Very few moving parts in Starship.
Stop building them in tents, and build an actual indoors construction facility with extensive environmental controls and testing.
Except the goal is cheap spaceflight. The entire point of the effort is not to spend money "just because". If tents work, then you only need tents. You'll only know by trying.
Employ an army of people to design build, and test the Starships.
Most people would contribute negatively to this project. The cost of mistakes is just too high. I can see the desire to keep headcount down, but I'm not sure 12-hour shifts is the right trade-off.
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addition, are the starships actually that simple? A lot of tanks and wiring go into that.
Compared to a bomber? Certainly. Very few moving parts in Starship.
Even if so, those things aren't all that comparable. Many problems with a bomber can be worked through. Most problems with a spaceship or rocket stack have really unhappy endings.
Stop building them in tents, and build an actual indoors construction facility with extensive environmental controls and testing.
Except the goal is cheap spaceflight. The entire point of the effort is not to spend money "just because". If tents work, then you only need tents. You'll only know by trying.
I addressed that in your other reply to me. We just look at it from different starting points.
Employ an army of people to design build, and test the Starships.
Most people would contribute negatively to this project. The cost of mistakes is just too high. I can see the desire to keep headcount down, but I'm not sure 12-hour shifts is the right trade-off.
There we agree. There are times when long hours cannot be avoided, but to provide good devices, you need fresh people who are not tempted to take shortcuts.
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Many problems with a bomber can be worked through.
WWII aircraft had very little margin for error (remember, it's been almost twice as long since mid-WWII as that was from the first airplane). Like spacecraft, they had some redundant parts where it was the most useful, but beyond that you were screwed if something failed. Heck, we lost a B-17 with passengers and crew just last year, and it was inspected constantly.
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LOL you honestly think a starship with literally millions of circuits and parts has LESS parts and complexity than a WWII bombe
Most of the complexity is in the engines, and computers mean far fewer moving parts. The Saturn V had over a million moving parts, but almost everything not in the engines has been radically simplified by computerization in the decades that followed. Without the engines, Starship is mostly fuel tanks. The complexity of flight and navigation is all managed by software, after all. Sure, a CPU is insanely complex, but SpaceX doesn't build those, they just bolt them on and program them.
Now, as I said above,
Boom! (Score:3)
They've had two Starship prototypes blow up over a few months. This will be a massive step forward.
We can have one blow up every three days!
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Is it any wonder he needs to build more of them? He'll lose 20 people on each launch, but he can make it up with volume.
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Just two. They where just tests, that is why we do testing. Do you have any idea how many rockets exploded on Cap Canaveral before monkeys then men flew into space... many. We even lost 3 Men in Apollo 1. And we lost two maned space shuttles.
The plan is to have robotic bases on Mars before we send the people, The rockets will have many full up tests before we send people to Mars.
Going to space has always been a high risk endeavor. A rocket is a big bomb, you take that risk for the possible rewar
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And we lost two maned space shuttles.
Well, putting fur on a shuttle was a bad idea from the get-go - I'm not sure how it even got past the idea stage.
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And we learned from that the hard way. Now Elon Musk is landing boosters. Reusing most of the parts and has plans to reuse more or the parts. You simply have to love his drive and his ability to put the right people in the roles that advance his goals.
Rockets are hard: (Score:2)
Never fear. We expect them to go all splodey at first.
It's just too good a joke to pass up.
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Just two. They where just tests, that is why we do testing. Do you have any idea how many rockets exploded on Cap Canaveral before monkeys then men flew into space... many. We even lost 3 Men in Apollo 1. And we lost two maned space shuttles.
The plan is to have robotic bases on Mars before we send the people, The rockets will have many full up tests before we send people to Mars.
Going to space has always been a high risk endeavor. A rocket is a big bomb, you take that risk for the possible reward of going to space.
Well, okay. We are supposed to be a bit beyond that 1950's model of "These things blow up all the time, so who cares?"
We learned a lot from those days. Don't forget that Russia launches a damn reliable rocket, and the Atlas rockets are quite reliable as well. And even back in the day, the Saturn 5 first stage with the F1 engines has the distinction of no losses of the completed stacks.
It's dangerous, yes, but we're not actually moving forward at the moment.
Anyhow, before you gloat about Spacex's suc
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Not actually moving forward at the moment???
How many reusable rockets did the world have just a decade ago?
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"They've had two Starship prototypes blow up over a few months. This will be a massive step forward."
That's how pressure tests work, you increase pressure until it bursts, then you check where and how to improve.
There's one going on right now.
Got to Love Elon (Score:4, Interesting)
His Goal for Telsa was to prove the electric car was a viable profit making industry. He has done that and more. just look around: GM has built a better car battery. And others will follow and compete.
Now he is going to prove getting off this rock is possible for some of us. He may even save the human race should a catastrophe happen to this planet. Lets hope NASA can follow his examples. The Chinese will! I hope the language of space is not mandarin, unless you already are fluent speaking reading and righting Mandarin.
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to prove the electric car was a viable profit making industry. He has done that and more.
As he has yet to either have a profit over any single year or four quarter period, I'm curious as to what makes you think of Tesla as a 'viable profit making industry'.
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Seems like they said the same thing about Amazon a decade or so back.
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Seems like they said the same thing about Amazon a decade or so back.
They laughed at Galileo Galilei, they laughed at Albert Einstein, But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
I like what Spacex is doing.
But a lot of their fans are pretty religious about it, apparently believe that if Musk dreams about a space ship powered by Wombat shit can break the speed of light, then by Musk, he cam build Space Ships powered by Wombat shit, and he can build them at the rate of a million per day.
If he wants to.
Spacex has a big problem right now, no matter how much the hardcore
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If they stopped expanding, they'd be making a profit. Of course, that would be stupid. They have an opportunity to be far more than just a catalyst. No other car being produced has matched them. Some being announced may match or beat where they are at today, but that will be tomorrow and Tesla will also be ahead of where they are at today.
Tesla is in the same position MS was in decades ago when Gates said that anyone six months behind them was of no concern. The ones trying to nip at MS's heels were also be
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Spoken like a true Browncoat.
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"He" ain't done shit! (Score:2, Insightful)
*He* ... merely told actual inventors and enginners and planners, etc his *grand vision*, and told them to "make it happen". And against all odds, they scrambled, and did it.
What exactly did *he* actually do? I mean actual work. Inventing, engineering, building, . . .
Now *he* rakes in all the fame. Such a *genius*! . . . ;)
--.--
"Literally the next Steve Jobs." -- "Wozniak"
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He likely has a great public relations department. for selecting the best inventors and engineers.
I am not going to repeat others said about his vision. You need a goal before you can hire a staff to do the work.
I have seen that Steve Jobs was a mean task master. He told the coder boot loader that every second the user had to wait for the Macintosh to boot cost ( a bigger number ) a hundreds man hours a year. and would not except the boot time until (another made up number ) the time was cut in half.
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He is kind of a genius because:
a) he knows when the time is right to make a thing
b) makes it sucessfull and even earns money
c) keeps the money instead of spending it on bullshit (see e.g. Michael Jackson)
d) scales his businesses and founds new ones
e) all successful and most likely profitable
f) has a hand to hire the right people who in turn hire the right people
F) is probbably the most important part of his "genius".
Re:Got to Love Elon (Score:5, Insightful)
We will know if GM built a bettter car battery in 8 years or so. I am sort of dubious, because it's more like your cell phone battery than a lithium car battery. It uses cobalt. GM brags that their EV battery uses less cobalt "than other EV batteries", but Tesla uses none. We know that Tesla batteries last. It will take a while to know that about GM batteries.
Musk is great. He took a lot of things that everyone knew about and nobody would dare to do, and made them work from a business perspective. We need lots more people like that.
Re: No, I don't (Score:2)
Wrong. Most of the people who did something extraordinary were not very nice....to say the least.
Humanity would be stupid to cancel such people. Nothing substantial ever came from consensus.
BTW, the best doctors I've ever seen were....unseemly. I am willing to put up with almost anything if they actually help me.
Same for teachers...oh and BTW during communism that meant that it was only those 'difficult' characters dared to dare us thinking outside the totalitarian framework.
Agreeable, nice people follow th
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Most of the people who did something extraordinary were not very nice
That is nonsense.
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Newton was mean to almost everybody, and I believe Gauss was known to be irritable. Hitler, on the other hand, was extremely charismatic.
I don't really care how nice or mean of a guy he is if he's getting things done.
Conspiracy theory time! (Score:2)
What does Musk know? Is some planet killer lining up it's shot even as we read this story? Are the governments of the world doing what they can to get at least a viable remnant off the planet before it hits?
I read too much sci-fi, I'm sure, but it's fun to contemplate.
Nah, he's just setting the biggest goals imaginabl (Score:2)
You can only get big by thinking big.
Doesn't mean you get *that* big, or go *that* fast/far,
but you certainly go furter than if you thought small.
The only problem is, that you will create a lot of disappointment with your overhyping.
It's better to think big, but announce small, then surprise big. But he's too flashy and full of himself to know that.
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SpaceX would not be where it is today with a modest public persona. You don't attract top aerospace talent by announcing small while keeping your big plans secret. The audaciousness of the Mars dream is the only reason SpaceX was even able to make orbit -- they wouldn't have had the motivated top employees to achieve that if they'd told the media they were planning on being just like all the other space startups that went on to fail.
The only way a modest persona works is if you're Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos
I want him to build a Starlink sooner than summer (Score:2)
When's the next big Starlink launch?
Why is he not investing money (Score:3)
Re: Why is he not investing money (Score:2)
Any suggestions?
Realistic ones?
Short-term?
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He has probably worked out that chemical propulsion is (just barely) enough for mars missions. Electric drive has high specific impulse but extremely low thrust and with the existing technology travel times to Mars are likely longer than with chemical propulsion.
His approach has been to optimize existing base technology rather than developing new. Its a reasonable approach and has done well so far.
Investigating advanced propulsion is also a reasonable approach - but probably a lot higher risk, but with bet
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Chemical propulsion is always going to be the way you get to orbit. Non-chemical propulsion is something you develop for missions around the solar system after you've made orbit affordable. And it may be something best worked on by a different company, since it's a different set of skills.
For now, cutting the cost to orbit by 100x is far, far more valuable than any optimizations you could make to post-orbit flight.
"do not wear out" ... "12 hour shifts" (Score:2)
Why am I suddenly thinking of Rockefeller?
Was anyone checking if they don't wear out? Perhaps with a tommy gun?
I am uncomfortable with this (Score:2)
Starship Princess (Score:2)
No problem. Just source parts from China. And if an outbreak should happen to occur in space? "Don't worry, hon'. Re-entry heat kills the virus".
Wow (Score:2)
Just two weeks ago Musk had called an all-hands meeting at 1 a.m. which led to a massive hiring spree of 252 people
This is the most aggressive Coronavirus response yet!
A brilliant strategy (Score:2)
Empower people to make you rich. It'd be pretty cool if other CEOs followed this revolutionary approach. All too often companies succeed in spite of the "leadership", not because of it. In fact succeeding thanks to the leadership is so rare that the press finds it noteworthy.
Don't knock it (Score:2)
If Trump wins again, there will be the demand
Market size (Score:2)
Launches with third party payloads (+ launches with SpaceX payloads).
2016: 8
2017: 18
2018: 20 (+1)
2019: 11 (+2)
While other companies are producing under capacity and sharing components to keep a regular production
Dr. Seuss (Score:2)
"They're not having any of that in Muskville."
Every Musk down in Muskville knows Elon's heart is two sizes too small.
12h shifts, what could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
12 hour shifts in mechanical construction work makes absolutely no sense.
And the switch between 3 and 4 workdays per week neither.
If he thinks such long shifts work, it should be a constant 3 work days, 4 days of shift. How do you even define start and stop times? Everyone the same? What is a good time to start if you work 12h? I could start around 10:00 in the morning, before I hardly would start. And then the day would end 22:00 ... not really a good end.
If I want to go to sport classes around 20:00, I h
analyse .... change .... test ... THEN release. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have a high production rate then you have many iterations.
Incorrect!
You can only "iterate" as the result of analysing errors and the ability / speed to fix them, check the fix works and then incorporate the change into a product. Unless each of those Starships is tested (flown?) before the next one rolls off the assembly line, there is no possibility to discover its faults and to "iterate" changes.
This process might have worked during last century's wars, when vehicles and planes would be put into service as soon as the paint was dry, but unless Musk is planning launch each Starship direct from the factory gate, it won't be possible to collect data about its performance before the next one appears. Worse, it will not have time for the data from each Starship's maiden flight to be meaningfully analysed and for considered fault-finding and changes to be implemented.
SpaceX needs to know how long it takes to run a change from first indications of a problem or sup-optimal performance, through to having a solution made and tested on the ground. Once it knows the development time of an "iteration", then build one new Starship per time-cycle. Fly that, analyse it (and looking for explosions in the sky is not the sort of analysis that is needed) and THEN build the next.
That process will take a hell of a lot longer than 3 days.
And without that, all he will end up with is the logistical nightmare of having every single Starship being slightly different and therefore incompatible with every other one. A problem that every airforce in the world is critically aware of in its spare parts / upgrade management.
Re: (Score:3)
>there is no possibility to discover its faults and to "iterate" changes.
Sure there is - you may not be able to incorporate the lessons from SN01 into SN02, but SN03 and later can still benefit. And even SN02 may be able to benefit if it's one of the last parts of the process that had the problem. Worst case you probably don't have to scrap the whole thing, just the problematic components, and so the production slows while replacements are made.
Of course, if it's a fundamental design or process problem
Re: (Score:2)
Overrated, troll.
He would have called it the USS-Enterprise NCC-1701 But that would have been redundant. Musk likes cool names, we all know this is an interplanetary vehicle.
Yes, you are an overrated troll. (Score:3)
But back on topic: Yes, calling it "starship" is stupid and wrong, and so typical of his annoying flashy style, that makes people dislike him, even when they like his projects.
Re: (Score:3)
So Boeing's decision to name their capsule Starliner is stupid and wrong and so typical of Boeing's annoying flashy style that makes people dislike them... or do you have an irrational Musk fixation?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you're offended by "star" vehicles which don't travel to stars there is plenty of prior art for that, even the name "Starship" itself. Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. Lockheed C-141 Starlifter. Beechcraft Model 2000A Starship. Boeing CST-100 Starliner.
Re: (Score:2)
Nevertheless his Starships travel amoung the stars and in space.
There is actually no real difference ... except you want to nitpick about something.
*Stalin organ enters the chat* (Score:2)
You were saying? :D