SpaceX just made every rocket on the planet obsolete: Space Fund founder

YouTube ^ | October 15, 2024 | Yahoo Finance

[SunkenCiv]

SpaceX successfully landed its Starship rocket in what Elon Musk calls one of the company's most important launches. SpaceFund founder Rick Tumlinson joins Josh Lipton on Asking for a Trend to talk about what the landing means for SpaceX and the space exploration industry. The venture capital fund focused on space exploration is invested in SpaceX. "What we're witnessing here [is the] combination of the railroads, the steamships, airplanes, all in one. Like 100 years from now, people are going to look back at this period of time as sort of when humanity breaks out into space, Tumlinson says, adding the next steps for SpaceX is "to do a bunch more flights".

SpaceX just made every rocket on the planet obsolete: Space Fund founder | 5:05
Yahoo Finance | 1.27M subscribers | 22,416 views | October 15, 2024

[NorthMountain]

Starship/Superheavy has yet to put so much as a microgram of payload in orbit.

[PIF]

Oh no, leaky tanks, they’ll probably forget to put sensors aboard ‘em. Punctures are going to be a risk irrespective of what approach is used or who builds it.
—

Its not a matter of sensors - its a matter of how much fuel remains, how much is still usable.

Everything leaks in space to some degree, especially fuel tanks put in orbit for 2 years.

Ion and nuclear engines do not care about fuel punctures.

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... they've also said that their main job was moslem outreach, that genderfluidity isn't a mental illness, that DEI isn't bigotry, and that space exploration and excellent engineering aren't important.

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[cgbg]

They also need use of nanotechnology meta-materials that have greater strength and resiliency than we are seeing in current craft.

This is all doable but if Musk rushes it we are talking serious fatalities.

[SunkenCiv]

Still, you're acting as if this is some kind of problem that can't be solved, which is absurd.

At some point in the future, ion drives *could* play a role, but they are very slow to accelerate, and the larger the mass, the longer it takes. Deceleration takes approx. the same length of time.

Ion drives require electricity, and electrical generation in space using photovoltaic tech has been in use for a long while. Due to energy requirements they also would have a much worse problem than tank punctures, due to their sheer size, but once up there they only need to have the occasional replacement part.

Musk's Boring Company has done very little business on Earth, but is something that will be vital for habitats on Mars. Reusability, vital for Mars colonization. Autonomous surface vehicles? Ditto. Photovoltaic roofs? You get the idea.

[SunkenCiv]

Uh, no.

[SunkenCiv]

The same can be said of any launch system in the development stage, so what you said there is just irrelevant bashing.

[NorthMountain]

in the development stage,

That's my point. It is not operational. Even the very operational Falcon 9/Heavy hasn't made every other rocket on the planet obsolete.

I know this is FR, where hyperbole and groupthink reign supreme, but let's at least TRY to stay grounded in reality.

[SunkenCiv]

That wasn’t your point, or you would have made it in the first place. Neither one make sense.

[NorthMountain]

BWAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahaha!

I pity you.

[PIF]

That’s an idea that many space types think true.

[PIF]

They also need use of nanotechnology meta-materials that have greater strength and resiliency than we are seeing in current craft.

—
I saw a piece - can’t remember where - that 3-D printing would fix many production problems at some point

Bringing all these newer technologies together would be astounding in making space vehicles - something only Musk could do.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s backwards. Cargo doesn’t require life support, so using balloons (speaking of puncture problems) to move cargo to Mars makes sense. And if you’re going to claim that Bigelow’s balloons are puncture proof, then why not use them to store fuel in orbit?

[nicollo]

Despite his wacko bigotry, Henry Ford was the most significant person in history so far -- he didn't invent industrialism, or even the assembly line (he saw the Armour 'disassembly line' and had a light bulb moment), but he not only metamorphosed manufacturing and brought down prices to broaden adoption, he literally transformed transportation, which led to our taken-for-granted modern road networks (worldwide; I grew up on a washboard gravel road in a home with a gravel driveway). He also mechanized agriculture (the buildout goes on, but that's also worldwide), and Ford was an early aircraft manufacturers.

Ford's genius was his maniacal focus on highest quality at lowest cost. It took him a while (c. 7 years), but once he realized the relationship between production volume and economies of scale, it was all over for his competition. He held at one point something like 80% of the worldwide automobile market.

It was only GM's invention of auto financing (GMAC in 1919) that eventually took out the Model T: even though Ford took the base price down to low $200's, with financing consumers preferred a better performing $450+ Chevrolet. Additionally, up until that time, the T held the highest ratio of cost / horsepower, which the Chevrolet eclipsed in 1923/24 as it took over the market.

As for roads, it wasn't the Model T that created them, it was state and federal lobbying by elite motorists clubs who pushed the issue starting in the early 1900s, well before the T had it's impact. (Btw, the vast majority of T's sold were to urban/suburban consumers, not farmers; it was, of course, dominant in rural markets.)

[SunkenCiv]

Also, GM introduced a variety of colors in exterior paints, the self-starter, and the automatic transmission, realizing they could sell the car to the husbands by getting the wives on board. Henry's response was the infamous, "Americans will buy any car, as long as it's the Model T, and as long as it's black."

On the Dixie Bee Line (Recorded 1926) | 3:26
Vernon Dalhart - Topic | 444 subscribers | 544 views | November 27, 2015

[SunkenCiv]

Hard surface roads began to arrive out here in The Boonies a little before WWI. By arrive, I mean, this township and a neighboring township cooperated and passed a *40 year* millage to build a six mile long, one lane concrete road down the township line. This was to help move (not surprisingly) the products of agricultural activity. My mother once mentioned that the millage finally finished up after my parents got married, and by that time federal and state roadbuilding had taken off. The last bit of the single-lane pavement finally got replaced well after I got my driver’s license.

[nicollo]

"Americans will buy any car, as long as it's the Model T, and as long as it's black."

That was marketing statement to reduce costs: black paint was cheaper. T's were mostly sold in green until 1914 or '15, I believe

As you point out, GM competed by selling different colors.

[nicollo]

That’s good evidence of road building, but it’s not causal.

[SunkenCiv]

This is some subthread, eh?

Naturally the forest cover in Michigan led to the use of wood for construction, heating, cooking, industry, and roadways, also railroad ties and for a good while, fuel for the trains. The stagecoach era lasted perhaps 40 years, and some of those routes survive in stretches of a mile or two, or in the case of subsumed routes, portions survive to this day as (for example) westbound I-96.

Prior to the automobile the easiest and quickest form of travel was by train, and for a relatively short window of time electric trolley lines popped up here and there. The one in this area boasted 70 mph travel, but sounds like it was probably a bit pricey for the time. I died out by 1940 I think. They used DC motors and thus the transformers were in the towers of each station, six miles apart. In towns and villages, they ran off overhead lines, but in the open country, third rail. Unimaginable to try that one today!

The first paved road in these colonies was in the 17th c, some of my ancestors actually opened their inn along there (it’s still open, remarkably), and there were some paved road projects in the late 19th century, but the construction of paved roads as a quasi-systematic thing did indeed start up in the 19-teens, as a consequence of the automobile and federal activity.

There may have been some rich auto owners who put in some circuits to enjoy, but it doesn’t appear to have been some kind of widespread movement.

[nicollo]

There may have been some rich auto owners who put in some circuits to enjoy, but it doesn’t appear to have been some kind of widespread movement.

It was a concerted, deliberate movement by wealthy automobilists to push road building for autos. For example, in 1909, NY State authorized some 50mm for roads for horse-drawn traffic. In 1912, the state re-funded the entire project to reassign those road to autos -- this being before the full impact of the Model T, and fully at the behest of the automobile lobby of groups like the Automobile Club of America and the American Automobile Association.

At the federal level, it took until the 1920s to move funding towards road for autos, and that was the result of these and like-minded organizations who-- btw, had to overcome enormous resistance from populists and Grange, etc. groups who remained anti-auto through the 1930s.