HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

No, but there were no fewer than 3 hosted live-streams (one which had 3 different HD live cameras you could switch to) with countdowns and technical commentary. All by non-traditional media. Remarkable what is possible nowadays.

Here they are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwC6LG_z8zE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJR4gZBLMNw

And the last one is constantly streaming 3 live feeds of the SpaceX Boca Chica facilities 24/7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbM7Vsz3kg

EDIT: And by remarkable, I don't just mean technical capability but the really impressive non-traditional media community that has grown up around New Space the last 5-10 years. Here's amazing, close-up 4K video of the hop by yet another non-traditional space media person:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXzPu6MM99Q

⬐ ChuckMcM

Can't wait to see if they can pull this off.

Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy."

On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that.

I had hoped see Starship hop 150m today[1] however that seems to have been scrubbed.

There is a really good lesson here for folks which is ignore the people saying you won't be able to do something and just execute. They can't argue with results.

EDIT: updated the link to point to the live camera pointed at the Starship SN5. Not sure what happened there. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbM7Vsz3kg

⬐ holler

> There is a really good lesson here for folks which is ignore the people saying you won't be able to do something and just execute.

I like this. Agree with your sentiment and as an armchair space fan, very excited to see the splash down. Can't help but feel inspired.

⬐ Animats

Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy."

Yes. Can we cancel the NASA Space Launch System now?

⬐ metiscus

So in trying to answer your question I found this rather long-winded but nonetheless interesting and appropos link.

https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/

⬐ sbierwagen

I read that article all the way to the end, which was quite a slog. (You can definitely tell this guy is in the business of stretching out content to fit in more ad breaks) The conclusion at the end appears to be "NASA didn't see Starship coming at all, and built a very conservative, very expensive expendable launch system, that underperforms Starship on every metric". There is a logical next step, after you come to that conclusion...

It is, of course, very reasonable to wait for Starship to actually launch and demonstrate a couple flights. But I would be very very surprised if SLS still exists in two years.

⬐ nordsieck

> Can we cancel the NASA Space Launch System now?

IMO, NASA/Congress will hang on to SLS for as long as it is remotely defensible.

The US will need 2 heavy lift, large diameter rockets before SLS gets the axe. Once Starship and New Glenn are flying it'll be significantly more difficult to justify the $2 billion / year spent just on the SLS program (not counting the actual rockets, which are another $1 billion a pop).

⬐ taneq

Exactly. Governments and large multinationals don’t like relying on a single supplier for anything because a single supplier is a single point of failure. No matter how good a new option is, they’ll keep the old option on life support until they have a third option.

⬐ nickik

With the ungodly amount of money spent on SLS they could support and build multible large rockets easly. The SLS is the single point of failure you should try to avoid.

⬐ CrazyStat

I dare say it has little to do with having a third option (since SLS is still years away from being an option) and more to do with pork barrel politics.

⬐ taneq

Oh, I'm sure that's also a major factor. I just meant that we shouldn't expect the U.S. government to 'pick a winner' and cancel SLS even if they're competing head to head and it's clear SpaceX is blowing SLS out of the water.

⬐ baybal2

> On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that.

I read somewhere that Musk have managed to hire top of the cream engineers of America's aerospace contractors, and NASA for very small money, relatively speaking, after NASA got its original "new crewed mission" project cancelled.

And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well.

⬐ getpost

It seems to me SpaceX's secret sauce is continuous iteration on vehicles that actually fly. It's hard to see how Boeing or Blue Origin can develop expertise with any confidence their designs will work, except, apparently, by going very slowly. Of course, Boeing has somewhat of a track record, but Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX and still hasn't achieved orbit.

⬐ paranoidrobot

I think it's a bit unfair to look at Blue Origin like that.

While it's true that Blue Origin hasn't done anything more than a few test flights, they've definitely got a different view of the way to develop rockets.

Blue Origin effectively has no requirements to make a commercial return. Until Jeff Bezos runs out of cash (unlikely), gets bored (seemingly unlikely), or pissed off (who knows) they can keep going doing whatever they like. Certainly making money is an eventual goal, but it's not like a few delays or failures are going to result in them being unable to make rent.

For this reason, they've developed from the other end, first - perfecting their launch and landing with a smaller-scale rocket and iterating from that perspective.

SpaceX on the other hand is definitely marked by their early days where they were down to their last few $ and Elon being out of cash to keep running the business if it didn't work. So they've been working mostly on the "get something that customers will buy" side of things, with the addition of landing/re-use coming secondary.

⬐ Spare_account

> Blue Origin effectively has no requirements to make a commercial return.

But do they have any requirement to make a rocket? When will New Glenn fly?

Will they ever produce something that does something useful? I hope they do, we need competition in commercial space flight.

⬐ baybal2

I don't think so.

Musk has hired pretty much the same people who were making the same rockets for LM, Boeing, and NASA.

Their experience surely contributed to their speed.

To me, they give a feeling that they have some very experienced, and conservative type managing their engineering who does everything by the book.

⬐ bpodgursky

I think there's some nuance here -- my take is that SpaceX has a very good balance of knowing when going slowly and carefully is critical (launching important customer vehicles, launching crewed missions), and when it's critical to move fast and iterate (eg, every other time).

SpaceX has blown up a LOT of vehicles via mistakes, by iterating fast and learning from them. They use these as learning experiences, and if they can get a few satellites up in the interim, that's great (see: the starlink launches on re-used rockets). But when it comes to launching actual astronauts, they checked every one of NASA's million boxes.

NASA and Boeing are unfortunately incapable of operating in fast-and-loose mode, even when it would be better to iterate and break a few rockets. The two-mode operation is why SpaceX dominates, and likely will continue to crush.

⬐ baybal2

I believe they are differentiated by not doing a lot of random iterations in comparison to the competition.

Blue Origin for example managed to completely redo pretty much everything about their design few times over, while SpaceX had something resembling Falcon 1, and Falcon 9 on their drawing boards pretty much since the beginning.

Too much pivots, too much iterations, and close to no straight advancements.

⬐ Shorel

IMO a restart is not an iteration.

Iteration is "improve the current model".

A restart throws the current model away.

⬐ bpodgursky

I mean, I wouldn't call that a real "iteration", since Blue Origin didn't actually build or launch any of those designs.

⬐ nordsieck

> To me, they give a feeling that they have some very experienced, and conservative type managing their engineering who does everything by the book.

I think this is pretty clearly not true.

"The book" says that once you have an operational configuration you freeze it. I remember hearing that the shuttle program was having to scrounge for old CPUs from warehouses because someone of the processors it used were no longer manufactured, and they didn't want to make changes to the hardware.

In contrast to this, SpaceX is famous for continuously modifying their rockets - so much so that one of the NASA requirements for certification was that they freeze the design of their F9.

⬐ leoc

> I remember hearing that the shuttle program was having to scrounge for old CPUs from warehouses because someone of the processors it used were no longer manufactured, and they didn't want to make changes to the hardware.

Indeed they were literally buying Shuttle replacement parts from eBay: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/us/for-parts-nasa-boldly-...

⬐ orbital-decay

>"The book" says that once you have an operational configuration you freeze it.

I guess we've been reading different books then. The Shuttle you're referring to had been constantly modified and tuned (noise suppression to prevent STS-1-like body flap damage, autopilot, the anti-geyser line, LWT, SLWT etc etc etc). The other manned vehicle, Soyuz, is on its 8th major iteration already, and got many minor modifications in between.

They looked for old CPUs instead of upgrading because it wasn't worth it. Shuttle program got cancelled in 2004, and it was known well in advance that it will stop flying.

The difference is, they don't make headlines nearly as much. (Shuttle did early on, but it was too long ago)

⬐ bane

I agree with this. It seems pretty clear to me that SpaceX's key innovation is one of management -- namely rocket engineering using software-like iterative methods. The driving force of course is Musk, who comes from software but moved into hardware where we see the exact same iterative development at Tesla.

There's no reason that other launch providers can't be doing what SpaceX is doing, but they aren't. They continue to design and build using more traditional and conservative aerospace management approaches.

Blue Origin is run by somebody with a background in finance and retail.

ULA by a former mechanical engineer.

Arianespace is run by a former policy guy turned exec.

Rocket Lab is run by an engineer.

Scaled Composites (I know a different kind of beast) is run by an aerospace engineer.

and so on.

⬐ GlennS

Software people didn't invent the idea of doing quick, cheap iterations. It predates software really.

We have embraced it strongly as an industry though. Except for the C++ people of course.

⬐ jacobush

”software-like iterative methods“

Or Soviet-like iterative methods.

⬐ redis_mlc

> Scaled Composites (I know a different kind of beast) is run by an aerospace engineer.

Scaled Composites made junk (one-off subsonic airplane prototypes), and was sold to Northrop Grumman in 2007. The current name is "Scaled."

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

⬐ kiba

I agree with this. It seems pretty clear to me that SpaceX's key innovation is one of management -- namely rocket engineering using software-like iterative methods. The driving force of course is Musk, who comes from software but moved into hardware where we see the exact same iterative development at Tesla.

This is old stuff. They called it "skunkwork".

⬐ mcv

And Skunkworks was very successful too. Are they still using the same approach, though? I'm getting the impression they're not what they used to be.

⬐ ChuckMcM

"And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well."

That isn't really "ironic" though. All of the technology that NASA develops is "free" for any US company that wants to use it. Pre-pandemic NASA would host an annual NASA Technology exposition at Ames Research that was kind of like a science fair for nerds. There were posters, and often the original investigators, who would discuss what they did, what they discovered, how it could be used, etc. A number of bio-diesel companies got their start from NASA bio-diesel research.

I much prefer that model to the one where the NSF or DARPA funds a university research program that then patents the research and holds it hostage to licensing fees.

The other aspect of your comment is also somewhat out of touch with the relationship NASA has with space craft. NASA has never been the sole supplier of a space craft. They always let contracts to vendors who built components of spacecraft and then they integrated those components into a complete system. Many of the "big" components for space craft are not off the shelf, like engines, so unless you want the government in the rocket engine building business, you buy those from someone else. From the very first, NASA rockets such as Vanguard and Mercury Redstone were purchased from others.

That said, NASA recognized as early as the Mercury project days that they were not ever going to be a "supplier" of rockets to third parties. They use rockets to do science and they need someone to buy them from.

One need only look at the Space Launch System (SLS) to see the travails of NASA trying to project manage building rockets these days. The budgeting process is stuffed to overflowing with politics where congressional representatives make budget dollars contingent on them going to a company in their district or state, and science as a priority comes and goes depending on the administration.

NASA didn't "give" SpaceX money, they bought rockets from SpaceX to meet their needs. Just like a startup that "lands" a big enterprise customer that buys their product and as a result provides the resources for the startup to both grow and build and deliver the product that was purchased.

Looking at the price they paid, they got a good deal. The first "big" contract, the resupply missions, cost NASA way less than it would have if they had paid ULA to launch those missions. At the same time SpaceX made enough profit from that contract to continue improving the fundamentals. Once it was clear they could reliably get things into orbit, other people who wanted to buy "launch services" started inquiring. SpaceX has out competed every other launch provider in the world because they can launch a payload and make money on it at a price that doesn't cover the other vendors launch at all. And they can do that because they are vertically integrated (pun intended) providing the booster, the engines, and the delivery system.

If you want to look at being "subsidized" by the government then you need look no further than the "cost plus" contracts that the government used to write for launch services. Those explicitly allowed the folks as ULA to scrape a few billion dollars off the top every year to "insure a domestic launch capability." Something you need if one third of your national defense rests on being able to use a rocket to put a bunch of nuclear warheads into someone's country[1].

So I think it is important to give credit where credit is due. Elon Musk re-imagined how the space launch industry might be structured and Gwen Shotwell effectively built a company that could execute on that re-imagining. This even when the existing companies in the space called Elon's ideas "fanciful", "ludicrous", or in one case "drug induced."

I continue to watch Blue Origin as well, although I feel as if the team of Jeff Bezos and Bob Smith (the CEO) is not as strong here. It is particularly illuminating to compare choices they have made as a company (secrecy vs openness, prioritizing sub-orbital over orbital, Etc.) and how they have played out.

[1] Hence the research programs of Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan to name a few.

⬐ baybal2

I see it this way:

NASA tries to make a new launcher by itself, though with big inputs from your usual defence industry contractors.

Gets shut down by politicians.

SpaceX waltzes into the room, hires all fired engineers working on that from NASA, and LM for a dime, has NASA do half of their rocket for them, for NASA's money (and thus US government's.)

Essentially Musk resold the exiting RnD, and work of US government's engineers to US government.

⬐ mschuster91

> Essentially Musk resold the exiting RnD, and work of US government's engineers to US government.

What Musk/SpaceX do is a tiny bit different - they're taking politics out of the equation, because unlike ULA they have a boatload of private customers willing to launch satellites for cheap and not have a major problem if one or two launches go bust. If NASA/ULA manage to fuck up a mission there will be political consequences.

Not to mention that SpaceX is staff lean which means they have the freedom to do whatever they want to keep costs low, while NASA/ULA is under Congressional pressure to dole out money across the country, even if this is completely against efficiency (and for what it's worth the ESA/Ariane/EADS/Airbus complex suffers from the same problem).

⬐ ChuckMcM

I think our different point of view is here:

>NASA tries to make a new launcher by itself, though with big inputs from your usual defence industry contractors.

The way NASA works is as follows; First, they put together a program proposal. Like they put together the Mars Exploration Program[1] in response to their 2014 Science Plan[2]. The program is allocated budget from NASAs annual budget allocation from congress.

Then they create science missions which are specific projects within a program that support the program goals. The current Mars mission, Perseverance, is an example.

Then they go out and contract with vendors for hardware that they can use in the mission. That includes everything from rovers to launch services.

In the case of Artemis, NASA created a program to return a person to the moon. And they started creating requirements for the equipment that they would need. And they put out those contracts and request proposals, which capable vendors will send in. Then they select from the proposals they get and issue a contract. The vendor then builds the part to the requirements, NASA verifies that it meets there needs, and then they pay the vendor. Often these contracts will have several milestones that have to be met, and the vendor will be paid for meeting milestones. This lets the vendor get some money to buy raw materials and start construction, etc.

Cost overruns occur when the vendor discovers something between milestones that wasn't anticipated and they negotiate with NASA for additional funds to cover that need.

NASA has never "tried to make a new launcher", that they have done is specified requirements for a launcher that doesn't yet exist and asked people to send them proposals for how they would build it.

[1] https://mars.nasa.gov/

[2] http://smd-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/science-pink/s3fs-public/at...

⬐ nickik

That is just pure nonsense.

When NASA tried to create the Ares-1 they spend many, many billions and were basically nowwhere and the architecture of their vehicle was absolutly terrible and not remotely competitive with commercial rockets. The got 'shut down by politicians' is because it was a black money pit for a suppar rocket. The reason SpaceX 'waltzed in' was that they actually executed on price, so you don't really have an argument for shutting them down.

SpaceX doesn't just sell NASA RnD back to them. First of all, non of that RnD was anywhere near production level, and specially not at the prices SpaceX wanted offered. A lot of the NASA archtecture were simply fundamentally unusable or unpractical, specially if you wanted to use it in a commercial market.

In fact, one could argue that going againt everything NASA was doing at the time is what made SpaceX successful. SpaceX made its own choices on every part of the rocket and the capsule, systematically innovated on each part of the rocket and architecture ending up far away from what NASA would have ever even considered doing.

That NASA did in no why what so ever build half their rockets for them, or design them. I don't know where you came up with this.

What SpaceX is did is fundamentally innovate and rethink the problems to achieve a better solution both from a design and a manufacturing perspective. This downplaying of SpaceX achivement by claiming its all just NASA tech that they are selling to the government is just petty and sad.

⬐ baybal2

> SpaceX doesn't just sell NASA RnD back to them. First of all, non of that RnD was anywhere near production level, and specially not at the prices SpaceX wanted offered. A lot of the NASA archtecture were simply fundamentally unusable or unpractical, specially if you wanted to use it in a commercial market.

Saying that they "resold their own RnD to them" is not copy-paste Ares-1.

ULA, Nasa, defence contractors at large had decades of experience with kerolox rocketry starting with first American rockets, which they threw away, and Musk picked up at the cheap with their engineers. And it was a very safe, and sound decision.

The same for returnable capsules, and orbital vehicle expertise.

⬐ nickik

The engine that SpaceX started out-with was not very impressive, and it was also not just a simple copy of an existing engine.

And the Merlin now is a engine far beyond what any other US engine ever managed in a number of metrics.

Was it a bit easier to develop a kerlox engine for SpaceX in the US as compared to doing it in Bangladesh and starting fresh with every bit of technical knowlabe about Kerlox, of course it was but SpaceX went from a pretty simple starting point to an incredibly advanced rocket engine that they are flying now.

Putting the empasis on well somebody else has done a Kerlox engine before, rather then SpaceX designing and mass producing and incredibly advanced Kerlox engine is just downplaying what they achieved.

⬐ natch

That’s true of any space contractor. Elon acknowledges NASA’s contributions and the fact that they are standing in the shoulders of giants all the time. What are you getting at exactly?

⬐ Robotbeat

This is not exactly a fair take. the "new crewed mission" project has never been actually canceled. It's been delayed, and not due to lack of funding but poor execution. Constellation was better funded than commercial cargo and commercial crew and Orion has still been under development basically the whole time (although it changed names). Artemis continues, too.

People want to make out SpaceX as if SpaceX is ideologically opposed to NASA or government funding and thus are hypocrites, when that has never been true. People like working at SpaceX because SpaceX gets stuff done and is developing truly transformative technology beyond the expendable paradigm of Apollo. Technology that will expand the availability of space to several orders of magnitude more people instead of just a handful of heroes. And NASA loves it.

⬐ baybal2

> People want to make out SpaceX as if SpaceX is ideologically opposed to NASA or government funding and thus are hypocrites, when that has never been true

I am not saying that

⬐ justhw

Hey Chuck, I followed your link and it's an RV review video :)

⬐ ChuckMcM

Argh, and thanks! Not sure what happened there, updated the link to point to the LabPadre live shot of the Starship.

⬐ rdiddly

Maybe he meant this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QhUoOwHN8

⬐ leetrout

May the Schwartz be with you.

⬐ ChuckMcM

Here's a fun fact. A current Winnebago[1] of similar design to the one in the movie weighs 18,000 lbs, and 31' x 12' x 9' which is within the capability for Falcon 9 to both carry it in its Fairing (43' and 17' diameter) and to put it into low earth orbit. Falcon Heavy could put it into GEO Synchronous Orbit :-)

[1] https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/motorhomes/class-a/...

⬐ rdiddly

Oddly enough, putting it in terms of Winnebagos made it all the more impressive to me. I will henceforth stop making fun of articles and newscasts that use "layman's units" like coffee cups per football field or whatnot.

⬐ natch

>On the plus side

I didn't see where you had mentioned a negative side here. I can't think of one. And congrats on the dinner!

⬐ plazmatic

Not at all.

⬐ jypepin

sorry for my question but how is that impressive really? Aren't already a fair amount of other countries sending people to the international space station and back? I think even the founder of Cirque du Soleil went right?

That's cool that spaceX is doing it, but I miss how this is such a big event?

⬐ ChuckMcM

It isn't a question of countries it is a question of being able to launch someone and bring them home. Prior to SpaceX the only two countries that had this capability were Russia and China.

It is impressive that a company, not a country now also has that capability.

Put another way, for the last 10 years if a US Person wanted to go up to the ISS they would have to buy a ticket on a Russian Soyuz, now they have a choice.

⬐ slowmovintarget

“People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it”

― Bernard Shaw

⬐ W-Stool

That went right into my quotes file.

⬐ avindroth

Or “Lead the way, get behind me, or get out of the way.”