Big Flying Rockets: Space Launches V

[SpaceChampion]

If this is not the decade to do it, it shouldn't be done, because humans would have boots on Mars before samples could be returned robotically.  More likely sooner (~2028-2030), cached samples will simply be loaded onto a Starship with a methane/oxygen production prototype on board to refuel it, and we'd get the samples back from Mars as a bonus for no additional cost.

[polishgenius]

13 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

If this is not the decade to do it, it shouldn't be done, because humans would have boots on Mars before samples could be returned robotically. 

That doesn't seem likely. I'm not gonna believe anyone who promises humans on Mars in 'x' timeframe until we see at least plausible designs for interplanetary ships that can keep their crew alive.

[Erik of Hazelfield]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

That doesn't seem likely. I'm not gonna believe anyone who promises humans on Mars in 'x' timeframe until we see at least plausible designs for interplanetary ships that can keep their crew alive.

What are the problems involved in that? The record for staying in space is 437 days, by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on the Russian space station Mir. A quick search says a Mars journey takes seven months so a round trip would be on the same order of magnitude as has already been achieved.

I’m likely missing something here so please enlighten me! 

[Loge]

1 hour ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

What are the problems involved in that? The record for staying in space is 437 days, by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on the Russian space station Mir. A quick search says a Mars journey takes seven months so a round trip would be on the same order of magnitude as has already been achieved.

I’m likely missing something here so please enlighten me! 

Mir was in a low earth orbit. So is the ISS. Those low orbits are protected by the earth's magnetic field. Once a spacecraft is more than 1000km away from the earth's surface it get exposed to a lot of radiation. Depending on the solar activity, a flight to the moon can already be deadly.

[polishgenius]

Yeah, what Loge said is a big part of it. Plus, on space stations, food supply and maintenance can be handled by resupply from Earth. On an interplanetary mission, you have to have every possible failure covered by equipment, or the ability to make the equipment, on board. You have to bring your own food, and enough fuel to get home again.

 

Then you have to take all that bulk, fling it to Mars, land the relevant parts safely with enough fuel to get back up, survive on the Martian surface, then make that launch when the time comes. Which is harder than on the moon because of atmosphere and higher gravity. 

 

Then you have to bring all that weight home again.

 

The costs for the Mars rock retrieval mission are spiraling because, essentially, they're still working out how to safely drop a lander bigger than the usual ones- and they've never taken one off before. And that's a lander, no squishy fleshy bits. The problems of landing a human crew and their life support systems are hugely more complicated.

 

It can probably be done - none of the problems rely on solutions we have no idea how to do, like a space elevator or interstellar travel would. But it requires it done on a scale and with a level of infallibility we've not even come close to so far.

Edited July 9, 2023 by polishgenius

[SpaceChampion]

5 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Yeah, what Loge said is a big part of it. Plus, on space stations, food supply and maintenance can be handled by resupply from Earth. On an interplanetary mission, you have to have every possible failure covered by equipment, or the ability to make the equipment, on board. You have to bring your own food, and enough fuel to get home again.

Then you have to take all that bulk, fling it to Mars, land the relevant parts safely with enough fuel to get back up, survive on the Martian surface, then make that launch when the time comes. Which is harder than on the moon because of atmosphere and higher gravity. 

Then you have to bring all that weight home again.

The costs for the Mars rock retrieval mission are spiraling because, essentially, they're still working out how to safely drop a lander bigger than the usual ones- and they've never taken one off before. And that's a lander, no squishy fleshy bits. The problems of landing a human crew and their life support systems are hugely more complicated.

1.  That hasn't been true in 40 years of Mars mission designs.  All of them include using local resources to make the return fuel.  The Sabatier process is 18th century technology.  It's the reason for using methane/oxygen engines.  It is now known that the likely landing zones have plenty of accessible dust-covered ice on the surface, in equatorial latitudes, so the prospects for turning water into oxygen and hydrogen (the latter used as input for the Sabatier process to make methane) have been looking better and better over the years.

2.  No, the aerodynamics of Mars descent favours larger ships like Starship.  That's the whole reason for them planning to master the belly-flop maneuver.  Landing on Earth is harder, and they do that quite often with Falcon 9.  The Sample Return lander is just not large enough to exploit the buoyancy-like forces of the belly-flop, which aims to present as large a profile as possible when descending to decrease speed for free.   Moon has no option for that for obvious reasons, and it actually takes bigger velocity changes to land on the Moon than on Mars.

3.  First Starship Mars missions will be uncrewed cargo, possibly bringing the ship back but certainty leaving all the cargo there, including the equipment for making fuel on Mars, and all the food for a future human mission.  I'm really surprised you don't know this.  They have never planned to bring everything in one trip.

4.  No, they have their method, but they miscalculated early on.

From the article which you didn't read:

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Zurbuchen said there were "horrendous" technical mistakes made during the early planning phase at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The original concept involved sending everything on a single lander, including a small rover to "fetch" the samples from Perseverance. However, the depth of this analysis was insufficient and included large errors about the mass of the landing legs and other factors. For a time, the plan had to evolve to add a second lander, which increased the cost by more than $1 billion.

Nothing about that is about not knowing how to land a spacecraft on Mars.

 

Furthermore the possible solution discussed even within NASA is about ditching the JPL designed lander and going with a commercial option, similar to how the Artemis landings would be done.
 

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Foremost among them is having a competition for the development of the large lander that is the centerpiece of the mission—and which will probably comprise about half of the total cost.

“Why are we not putting out a call and having an industry competition for people like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and whoever else?" one NASA source asked. "They’re already building landers. Why can’t we ask them what they could do? JPL hasn’t even asked. We should be using a commercial, milestone-based approach.”

Zurbuchen said that NASA's current administration should be seriously considering this alternative if the Mars Sample Return mission is to continue.

"If I were in charge, I would develop a commercial option for the lander and seriously consider taking it away from JPL," he said. "Recall, this would be the first stationary lander done out of JPL. All others were built by Lockheed and that was before new capabilities by SpaceX and others."

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

From the article which you didn't read:

 

Mate, I know you're really buying into this space-as-soon-as-possible thing and seeing scepticism about it bothers you, but you can't respond to a post in which I quite literally said:

 

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It can probably be done - none of the problems rely on solutions we have no idea how to do, like a space elevator or interstellar travel would. But it requires it done on a scale and with a level of infallibility we've not even come close to so far.

 

,think my position is that they don't know how to land a  spacecraft on Mars, and then accuse me of not reading something. 

 

Like literally my entire post is about how they have the premises, but need to work out the details. 

 

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

2.  No, the aerodynamics of Mars descent favours larger ships like Starship.

 

I never said they didn't. But building larger spaceships that take off and land safely is harder than building small ones, which we know because they've launched and landed Falcon 9 200 times but the Starship... how many times? 

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Landing on Earth is harder, and they do that quite often with Falcon 9. 

Are you suggesting that the Falcon 9 can get people to Mars and off again? Because that's what it would have to be capable of for this to be relevant.

 

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

That's the whole reason for them planning to master the belly-flop maneuver. 

Planning is a very important word in that sentence. If they haven't done it yet, they can't possibly lay a timeline on when they'll be able to do it, safely, with people, on Mars, and certainly not 'next decade'. 

 

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

3.  First Starship Mars missions will be uncrewed cargo, possibly bringing the ship back but certainty leaving all the cargo there, including the equipment for making fuel on Mars, and all the food for a future human mission.  I'm really surprised you don't know this.  They have never planned to bring everything in one trip.

 

Okay, great. So... you think they're gonna start sending them off to Mars soon enough to have human boots on Mars by 2040? When they haven't even got a Starship out of Earth's atmosphere yet? Do me a favour. 

 

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

1.  That hasn't been true in 40 years of Mars mission designs.  All of them include using local resources to make the return fuel.  The Sabatier process is 18th century technology.  It's the reason for using methane/oxygen engines.  It is now known that the likely landing zones have plenty of accessible dust-covered ice on the surface, in equatorial latitudes, so the prospects for turning water into oxygen and hydrogen (the latter used as input for the Sabatier process to make methane) have been looking better and better over the years.

 

 

Okay, fair enough. They wouldn't take the fuel with them. But here's the section about the Sabatier process and its relevance to Mars missions, from Wikipedia:

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Manufacturing propellant on Mars

The Sabatier reaction has been proposed as a key step in reducing the cost of human mission to Mars (Mars Direct, SpaceX Starship) through in situ resource utilization. Hydrogen is combined with CO₂ from the atmosphere, with methane then stored as fuel and the water side product electrolyzed yielding oxygen to be liquefied and stored as oxidizer and hydrogen to be recycled back into the reactor. The original hydrogen could be transported from Earth or separated from Martian sources of water.

Importing hydrogen

Importing a small amount of hydrogen avoids searching for water and just uses CO₂ from the atmosphere.

"A variation of the basic Sabatier methanation reaction may be used via a mixed catalyst bed and a reverse water gas shift in a single reactor to produce methane from the raw materials available on Mars, utilising carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere. A 2011 prototype test operation that harvested CO₂ from a simulated Martian atmosphere and reacted it with H₂, produced methane rocket propellant at a rate of 1 kg/day, operating autonomously for 5 consecutive days, maintaining a nearly 100% conversion rate. An optimised system of this design massing 50 kg "is projected to produce 1 kg/day of O₂:CH₄ propellant ... with a methane purity of 98+% while consuming ~17 kWh per day of electrical power (at a continuous power of 700 W). Overall unit conversion rate expected from the optimised system is one tonne of propellant per 17 MWh energy input."

You are, once again, taking a theory, a proposal, an as-yet unproven/untested method (unproven and untested as far as satisfactorily drawing sufficient fuel to propel a rocket home from Mars, before you get picky about the fact that we know the process works in general) that needs to be developed, and using it to argue in favour of us having humans on Mars- and back- within 17 years. 

 

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Nothing about that is about not knowing how to land a spacecraft on Mars.

 

 

So, back to the quote from the article: sure, they know, in principle, how to land a spacecraft on Mars. They don't know the details of doing it at scale. The details are salient. You have to have them worked out before you say 'yes, this is what we are going to do and when we are going to do it'. What you're proposing is an Oceanview approach to sending people to space. Fuck that shit. 

 

 

I honestly don't understand why you're so combative about the idea that we won't be on Mars within the next decade and a half. It's just... not very plausible. Like I'll be delighted if they pull it off. But I can't see how they can, safely. We're just not there yet. 

[Kalbear]

Heck, I find it implausible simply because Musk says it'll happen, and betting against musk's timelines is one of the safest bets out there.

[SpaceChampion]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Like literally my entire post is about how they have the premises, but need to work out the details. 

Wow, stunning.

Literally your entire post is hiding behind the vagueness of "the details" when you don't know them yourself.  Try some humility. 

What details do you think they don't know?  The details contained in the flight software?  The flight software for Starship is the same flight software as for F9, tweaked to the particulars of timing, materials and sensors of Starship and Mars.  Same flight software they've used several times to launch.  So what else is it you think they don't know that would hold up a flight to Mars for decades?  Literally your whole post is designed to be as vague as possible so you can avoid anything substantive.   NASA itself asked SpaceX for access to their F9 flight data because flight in the upper atmosphere of Earth is analogous for flight in the lower atmosphere and surface of Mars.  So yes 200 successful launches and landings are very relevant.
 

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You are, once again, taking a theory, a proposal, an as-yet unproven/untested method (unproven and untested as far as satisfactorily drawing sufficient fuel to propel a rocket home from Mars, before you get picky about the fact that we know the process works in general) that needs to be developed, and using it to argue in favour of us having humans on Mars- and back- within 17 years. 

Math and physics are proven and tested.  That's how engineers make anything work FYI.  They can do the math on how much electricity they need and how long they need to run it, the chemical processes are well understood and not mere "theory".   If you can't name specific things that would take 17 years to do then you are constructing a narrative beyond what you know.

 

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So, back to the quote from the article: sure, they know, in principle, how to land a spacecraft on Mars. They don't know the details of doing it at scale. The details are salient. You have to have them worked out before you say 'yes, this is what we are going to do and when we are going to do it'. What you're proposing is an Oceanview approach to sending people to space. Fuck that shit. 

Do you have anything other than narratives and strawmen to prop up?   I know,  you do it a lot, so I don't expect you to change.  I don't think you would even recognize it when you do it.

You don't know the details, so therefore they don't know the details.  That's quite the narrative.  Fuck that shit.  Your level of reasoning here is on the same level as flatearthers and Qanon.

 

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I honestly don't understand why you're so combative about the idea that we won't be on Mars within the next decade and a half. It's just... not very plausible. Like I'll be delighted if they pull it off. But I can't see how they can, safely. We're just not there yet. 

You aren't even aware of all the things being done right now to understand what is plausible.  Two second googling does not make up for that.

I do find know-it-alls speaking about things outside their knowledge base to be irritating.  That has nothing to do with the topic at all, but the general problem of the nature of arrogant weirdos on the internet convinced by their own poor reasoning.

[Spockydog]

The first couple of minutes of this video make for sobering viewing, when considering the planning and logistics required on our first crewed mission to Mars.

And, frankly, given the fact that Safety-Second-Musk is the likely pioneer of this project, I suspect we might end up with something akin to plot of The Martian - minus the poopy potatoes but with much more stupidity and incompetence.

 

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Spockydog

[Gorn]

15 hours ago, Loge said:

Mir was in a low earth orbit. So is the ISS. Those low orbits are protected by the earth's magnetic field. Once a spacecraft is more than 1000km away from the earth's surface it get exposed to a lot of radiation. Depending on the solar activity, a flight to the moon can already be deadly.

24 people flew to the Moon or its orbit, and all of them lived to a healthy and advanced old age. A study done on 400+ US and Soviet astronauts and cosmonauts in the 90s found no statistically significant increase in cancer.

Sure, you will find scaremongering articles about space radiation throwing out scary numbers, until you put them into perspective, which is that a trip to Mars would expose you to an equivalent amount of radiation as a lifetime in proximity of a coal power plant.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Gorn

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Math and physics are proven and tested.  That's how engineers make anything work FYI.  They can do the math on how much electricity they need and how long they need to run it, the chemical processes are well understood and not mere "theory".   If you can't name specific things that would take 17 years to do then you are constructing a narrative beyond what you know.

 

To be clear here - math and physics are proven and tested; engineering is not. One example of this: we have no idea how well vehicles - remote piloted or otherwise - will need to deal with things like a lack of a magnetosphere on the way there. We have ideas and we have hopes, but those are things we need to design for and figure out, and those are not established values. We don't know the kind of stresses that a very large vehicle will have compared to smaller ones when going to Mars or the engineering tolerances that it will have to have. We don't know things like how to make sure that supplies remain viable on Mars other than theories. We've not done it 200 times and we don't have a robust system for manufacturing to those specifications. 

And that's the actual non-human factors. The human factors of sending people that far for that long without some of the protections we know we have are...difficult. These are things we can build around and work on - they are known knowns for the most part - but they are not something we've done before. And any engineer can tell you that doing something for the first time is hard, even if you know what you may need to do. It's expensive, it's challenging, and it can be more unsafe than usual. 

Another issue not brought up is that the primary people who would want to make this a reality - NASA and SpaceX - are both not in great positions compared to where they were 5 years ago to get this done. Musk's credibility has taken a massive hit and it is not clear how much he wants to do this compared to his other random pet projects. How much of his personal fortune is he willing to invest in this? Heck, how much of his fortune will exist in 5 years time given his current trajectory? NASA is the other alternative but they're almost certainly nonviable as an option for anything soon, especially with the way that the US is going with lack of investment in things like research or, well, NASA. One Republican in the white house and that dream goes away unless you can also use it to kill immigrants. 

[polishgenius]

 

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

 Your level of reasoning here is on the same level as flatearthers and Qanon.

 

 

That's cute. I said 'oceanview', so you had to find something else bad to accuse me of imitating. Your problem is that between the two of us, I'm not the one looking at something that doesn't exist and claiming furiously that it actually does and we'll have the proof any minute. Any minute. 

 

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I do find know-it-alls speaking about things outside their knowledge base to be irritating.  That has nothing to do with the topic at all, but the general problem of the nature of arrogant weirdos on the internet convinced by their own poor reasoning.

It genuinely blows my mind how you can type this out and post it and not for one second realise that you are describing Musk exactly. Which is indeed my entire problem with this entire thing. Musk is a whole-ass charlatan and anything he has anything to do with must be taken with a huge pinch of salt, even if he has real engineers working for him. Those real engineers are a good extra reason to doubt we'll even try to be on Mars in 2040 btw- he might want a hugely accelerated production schedule, but unlike twitter spaceflight engineering isn't something you can just fake for a bit and pretend it's still working, so he has to keep the experienced guys around and they'll resist him cowboying with people's lives. I mean, Tesla do, so there's still a danger, but there's a lot more observation on SpaceX. 

 

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

 

You don't know the details, so therefore they don't know the details.  That's quite the narrative. 

 

No, mate, the reason I think they don't know the details is because they haven't done it yet. If they knew the details they wouldn't be testing, speculating, theorising, testing again, failing because the practical tests are done for a reason so they work on it and test again until they stop failing etc etc etc. They'd be on it already. Like Kal says: it's not about breaking new ground theory-wise. It's about getting it right. 

 

Like, the first Artemis launch was delayed from its original plan by six years and that was getting a rocket into orbit, uncrewed, something people have been doing since the 50s, in prep for a flight to the moon, something they did in the 60s. Because it was a new rocket and new program and they had to work out all the (dirty word incoming) details. 

Edited July 10, 2023 by polishgenius

[SpaceChampion]

On 7/10/2023 at 12:26 AM, polishgenius said:

That's cute. I said 'oceanview', so you had to find something else bad to accuse me of imitating. Your problem is that between the two of us, I'm not the one looking at something that doesn't exist and claiming furiously that it actually does and we'll have the proof any minute. Any minute.

Ha.  You're the one seething here.  No I didn't accuse you of imitating.  I accused you precisely, you are using the same level of reasoning as them.   No imitation necessary.  Narratives about things you have no evidence for, logical fallacies, confirmation bias, context ignorance, consensually created group-think fantasies (LARPing), grown not on facts but previously expressed narratives; circling round and round on that repeated cycle, all powered by ego.  Its like you think you're a genius somehow immune to these things, while demonstrating them again and again.

Rockets cannot be launched and landed 200 times if anyone at SpaceX is guilty of any of those.   Proof is they do launch and land it and have been doing it for years.  You acknowledged that because it is a fact you cannot hide, then want to act like those successes are failures because in your non-engineer mind there is no connection between a mature rocket and one in development.  Really, nothing to learn at all from Falcon 9 is applicable to Starship?  Expertise carries over from one to the other quite easily.

 

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It genuinely blows my mind how you can type this out and post it and not for one second realise that you are describing Musk exactly. Which is indeed my entire problem with this entire thing.

Narrative.  And horseshit.  I'm glad it blows your mind though.  You need it.  That's the only reason I'm bothering responding to your at all.
 

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Musk is a whole-ass charlatan and anything he has anything to do with must be taken with a huge pinch of salt, even if he has real engineers working for him.

Narrative.  And horseshit.

Even if he has real engineers working for him?  The 10,000 engineers and mechanics and technicians working for him don't know anything, are not real?  But 200 rockets were launched and landed by how, magic?  You want to casually insult the whole lot of them, or is there any one beside Musk you have a beef with in particular?

 

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Those real engineers are a good extra reason to doubt we'll even try to be on Mars in 2040 btw- he might want a hugely accelerated production schedule, but unlike twitter spaceflight engineering isn't something you can just fake for a bit and pretend it's still working, so he has to keep the experienced guys around and they'll resist him cowboying with people's lives. I mean, Tesla do, so there's still a danger, but there's a lot more observation on SpaceX. 

So they were amazingly successful engineers, therefore you doubt their abilities?  Logical fallacy.  Motivated reasoning.  And horseshit. 

Which part of the last 20 years of rocket flights were "faked" by SpaceX, while capturing a near-monopoly of 80% and growing share of the worldwide launch market?  Name the evidence for faking anything at all at SpaceX.  I know you're going to claim you didn't say they faked anything, but you are saying that by implication:  there may be "real" engineers who do all the work, and but everyone else are "fake" engineers who do something else.  What do the fakes do?

Oh yeah, and you said  "the experienced guys" implying that SpaceX is doing nothing innovative, and "the real engineers" are only using knowledge acquired before coming to SpaceX to build and fly and land rockets.  Despite no one ever landing a rocket before SpaceX.  Despite having flown the only full-flow staged combustion cycle engine ever.   If you think you didn't imply they're not innovating, your thinking is just sloppy.

Logical fallacies.  Context ignorance. 

 

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No, mate, the reason I think they don't know the details is because they haven't done it yet. If they knew the details they wouldn't be testing, speculating, theorising, testing again, failing because the practical tests are done for a reason so they work on it and test again until they stop failing etc etc etc. They'd be on it already. Like Kal says: it's not about breaking new ground theory-wise. It's about getting it right. 

Logically fallacy.  And a kind of child-like understanding of what engineering development is all about.

As an engineer with 10 years schooling and working in the space field, directly with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency, particularly on Mars operations (including directly impacting how they teach astronauts these things), geology, astrobiology, psychology and other human factors, including funded contracts, yes I know how a great deal of this process works.  And I know you're full of shit.  What do you think they are testing if they DoN"t kNOw the deTAils??  Testing is literally "doing it", testing the details.  They have some 30 prototypes of the upper stage of Starship alone, they're not made for funsies.  They have hundred of Raptor engines, testing each one.  They could launch with what they have current, but want better.  Just recently the propulsion team, which Musk leads, found a way to squeeze 20% more performance out of the Raptor, meaning they can push the envelope on payload mass even greater.

Are you somehow trying to say there are testing without knowing in advance what the results of the testing will be?  Or know what to test, somehow without knowing "the details" of what to test?  Or don't have any sensors on their test firings, if they don't know what details to test?  Again I ask what details you think they don't know that isn't fucking obvious.

Ha, Kal kalspaining engineering to an engineer is not a point in your favour, or his.
 

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Like, the first Artemis launch was delayed from its original plan by six years and that was getting a rocket into orbit, uncrewed, something people have been doing since the 50s, in prep for a flight to the moon, something they did in the 60s. Because it was a new rocket and new program and they had to work out all the (dirty word incoming) details. 

The SLS rocket that was launched was the prototype, the first they made.  There was NO testing in flight beforehand.  Starship is on the 30th+ iteration, several which has flown, but the improvements are to improve how it is manufactured.  NASA doesn't care about improving manufacturing because it will never have many of them for that to matter.  Technically SpaceX already knows what to do, it's economics of flight they are seeking to improve. 

SLS is not doing anything new yet still taking 20 years to develop if you include the incorporated components of the prior Ares rocket that Obama wisely cancelled, before Congress forced funding for SLS to continue sending money to Boeing.  The problem with SLS is it cannot land anywhere (can only get near the Moon and hand off crew to Starship to get to the surface), took some 44 billion or so to develop (really depends on how honest the accounting is) and can only be available to launch once every two years at the most optimistic schedule.  On top of that it has reusuable space shuttle engines, but they throw them away each launch after only one use.  The engines for SLS are in limited supply, and will be none after 5 launches more than the 1 launched already.

SLS is not getting it right economically, because it is not sustainable.  It was wrong in conception, from the beginning.  The order from Congress was go back to the Moon sustainably.  That's the law, and NASA has broke the law on it. 

ALL the development of Starship is geared towards designing for the landing on Mars, doing it economically and manufacturing quickly.  Every other rocket is bespoke parts; Starship and Falcon are manufactured as quickly as cars, in weeks not years.  None of that would be possible without Musk who is exactly the person who studied the material properties of steel to see it would work better for rapid prototyping as well as thermally during atmospheric entry than all other material choices, despite resistance from his own team of engineers.

Now to claims Musk doesn't know anything about what he is doing, I saw this thread years ago and saved it, though most of it I knew already.  Relevant evidence from witness testimony can only exist in two categories, those who personally know and worked directly with Musk, and say he both knows engineering and contributes to engineering at both Telsa and SpaceX, and those who personally know and work directly with Musk who says he's an idiot.  First the first category.

 

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Evidence that Musk is the Chief Engineer of SpaceX

There is a lot of scepticism of the claim that Musk is an engineer at all let alone the chief engineer of SpaceX. I wanted to collate the evidence backing it up here. I know some SpaceX employees have affirmed the claim.

I'm just looking for statements by credible sources that provide insight to what extent Musk is involved in concrete engineering decisions vs. managerial duties. I would add to this post the statements brought up in the comments.

 

Statements by SpaceX Employees

Tom Mueller

Tom Mueller (Wikipedia, LinkedIn) is one of SpaceX's founding employees. He served as the VP of Propulsion Engineering from 2002 to 2014 and Propulsion CTO from 2014 to 2019. He currently serves as an Senior Adviser. He's regarded as one of the foremost spacecraft propulsion experts in the world and owns many patents for propulsion technologies.

Not true, I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time"

Source

We’ll have, you know, a group of people sitting in a room, making a key decision. And everybody in that room will say, you know, basically, “We need to turn left,” and Elon will say “No, we’re gonna turn right.” You know, to put it in a metaphor. And that’s how he thinks. He’s like, “You guys are taking the easy way out; we need to take the hard way.”

And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing.

Source

When the third chamber cracked, Musk flew the hardware back to California, took it to the factory floor, and, with the help of some engineers, started to fill the chambers with an epoxy to see if it would seal them. “He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” Mueller said. “He’s out there with his nice Italian shoes and clothes and has epoxy all over him. They were there all night and tested it again and it broke anyway.” Musk, clothes ruined, had decided the hardware was flawed, tested his hypothesis, and moved on quickly.

Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography).

 

Kevin Watson

Kevin Watson (LinkedIn) developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon. He previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory.

Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.

He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.

He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.

Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography). Kevin has attested to the biography's veracity.

 

Garrett Reisman

Garrett Reisman (Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Twitter) is an engineer and former NASA astronaut. He joined SpaceX as a senior engineer working on astronaut safety and mission assurance. He was later promoted to director of crew operations. He left this position in May 2018 and is now a Senior Advisor. He also functions as Professor of Astronautical Engineering at University of Southern California.

“I first met Elon for my job interview,” Reisman told the USA TODAY Network's Florida Today. “All he wanted to talk about were technical things. We talked a lot about different main propulsion system design architectures.

“At the end of my interview, I said, ‘Hey, are you sure you want to hire me? You’ve already got an astronaut, so are you sure you need two around here?’ ” Reisman asked. “He looked at me and said, ‘I’m not hiring you because you’re an astronaut. I’m hiring you because you’re a good engineer.’ ”

Managing SpaceX and Tesla, building out new businesses and maintaining relationships with his family makes Musk a busy billionaire.

“He’s obviously skilled at all those different functions, but certainly what really drives him and where his passion really is, is his role as CTO,” or chief technology officer, Reisman said. “Basically his role as chief designer and chief engineer. That’s the part of the job that really plays to his strengths."

(Source)

What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does.

(Source)

 

Josh Boehm

Josh Boehm (LinkedIn, Quora) is the former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX.

Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best.

(Source)

 

Statements by External Observers

Eric Berger

Eric Berger (Twitter, LinkedIn) is a space journalist and Ars Technica's senior space editor. He has been interviewing SpaceX employees for an upcoming book on its early days.

True. Elon is the chief engineer in name and reality.

(Source)

 

Christian Davenport

Christian Davenport is the Washington Post's defense and space reporter and the author of "Space Barons". The following quotes are excerpts from his book.

He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.

Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking.

Throughout the day, as Musk showed off mockups of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5, the engine designs, and plans to build a spacecraft capable of flying humans, Musk peppered Sarsfield with questions. He wanted to know what was going on within NASA. And how a company like his would be perceived. He asked tons of highly technical questions, including a detailed discussion about “base heating,” the heat radiating out from the exhaust going back up into the rocket’s engine compartment—a particular problem with rockets that have clusters of engines next to one another, as Musk was planning to build.

Now that he had a friend inside of NASA, Musk kept up with the questions in the weeks after Sarsfield’s visit, firing off “a nonstop torrent of e-mails” and texts, Sarsfield said. Musk jokingly warned that texting was a “core competency.” “He sends texts in a constant flow,” Sarsfield recalled. “I found him to be consumed by whatever was in front of him and anxious to solve problems. This, combined with a tendency to work eighteen hours a day, is a sign of someone driven to succeed.” Musk was particularly interested in the docking adapter of the International Space Station, the port where the spacecraft his team was designing would dock. He wanted to know the dimensions, the locking pin design, even the bolt pattern of the hatch. The more documents Sarsfield sent, the more questions Musk had.

“I really enjoyed the way he would pore over problems anxious to absorb every detail. To my mind, someone that clearly committed deserves all the support and help you can give him.”

 

Mosdell ( 10th employee ) found Musk a touch awkward and abrupt, but smart. Mosdell had showed up prepared to talk about his experience building launchpads, which, after all, was what SpaceX wanted him to do. But instead, Musk wanted to talk hard-core rocketry. Specifically the Delta IV rocket and its RS-68 engines, which Mosdell had some experience with when at Boeing. Over the course of the interview, they discussed “labyrinth purges” and “pump shaft seal design” and “the science behind using helium as opposed to nitrogen.”

 

After the meeting on Valentine’s Day adjourned, Musk offered to give the group a tour of his facility. To this group of engineers and entrepreneurs, it was like an invitation to a six-year-old to visit a chocolate factory. As Musk guided them through the factory floor, the group “let loose with detailed, technical questions, and he answered all of them,” Gedmark said. “Not once did he say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable answering that because it’s proprietary.’… It was certainly impressive.”

 

John Carmack

John Carmack (Twitter, Wikipedia) is a programmer, video game developer and engineer. He's the founder of Armadillo Aerospace and current CTO of Oculus VR.

Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so.

(Source)

 

Robert Zubrin

Robert Zubrin (Wikipedia) is an aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of human exploration of Mars.

When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people.

(Source)

 

Statements by Elon Himself

Yes. The design of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket booster I changed to a special alloy of stainless steel. I was contemplating this for a while. And this is somewhat counterintuitive. It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction.

(Source)

I know more about rockets than anyone at the company by a pretty significant margin, I could redraw substantial portions of the rocket from memory without the blueprints

(Source)

Tim Dodd: "What people don't understand is that you're the lead engineer. You're literally sitting"

Musk: "Literally. This is a... I've actually had a dinner with some, with a, with a friend and he was like 'well who's the chief engineer of SpaceX?' I was like it's me. He was like 'it's not you, who is it?' Look it's either someone with a very low ego or I don't know."

(Source)

Interviewer: What do you do when you're at SpaceX and Tesla? What does your time look like there?

Elon: Yes, it's a good question. I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things*. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design.* Engineering and design, so it's developing next-generation product. That's 80% of it.

Interviewer: You probably don't remember this. A very long time ago, many, many, years, you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every piece of engineering that went into it. And I don't think many people get that about you.

Elon: Yeah. I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something, which is fine. Business is fine. But really it's like at SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is Chief Operating Officer. She manages legal, finance, sales, and general business activity. And then my time is almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture. At Tesla, it's working on the Model 3 and, yeah, so I'm in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory. Because the biggest epiphany I've had this year is that what really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. And that is at least two orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself.

(Source)

 

And now the second category, those who say he's an idiot after interacting with him personally regarding technical subjects and the engineering at SpaceX and Tesla:

Spoiler

*Empty set*

 

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

As an engineer with 10 years schooling and working in the space field, directly with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency, particularly on Mars operations (including directly impacting how they teach astronauts these things), geology, astrobiology, psychology and other human factors, including funded contracts, yes I know how a great deal of this process works.  And I know you're full of shit.  What do you think they are testing if they DoN"t kNOw the deTAils??  Testing is literally "doing it", testing the details.  They have some 30 prototypes of the upper stage of Starship alone, they're not made for funsies.  They have hundred of Raptor engines, testing each one.  They could launch with what they have current, but want better.  Just recently the propulsion team, which Musk leads, found a way to squeeze 20% more performance out of the Raptor, meaning they can push the envelope on payload mass even greater.

 

 

This paragraph is either deliberately misinterpreting what I mean by 'they don't know the details', or it's accidentally misinterpreting it, in which case I'm not sure there's much more I can say. Obviously they know what it is they're testing, but the reason they have to test it is because they (deep breath here, I know this part is hard for you) don't know if it's going to work in the field.

 

 

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Even if he has real engineers working for him?  The 10,000 engineers and mechanics and technicians working for him don't know anything, are not real?  But 200 rockets were launched and landed by how, magic?  You want to casually insult the whole lot of them, or is there any one beside Musk you have a beef with in particular?

What are you fucking talking about? I literally said they're real engineers. You say I'm the one who's seething, but you've just launched a paragraphs-long diatribe against the direct opposite of something I've said.

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

So they were amazingly successful engineers, therefore you doubt their abilities?  Logical fallacy.  Motivated reasoning.  And horseshit. 

And again here. Me: 'I trust that the engineers working for Musk will at least reign in his tendencies to chase towards things as fast as possible and make sure to do it safely'. You: 'oH so yOu DoUBt tHeiR aBilITieS?'

 

That's two separate parts of your post where you've twisted something I've said to suit yourself, btw.

 

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Which part of the last 20 years of rocket flights were "faked" by SpaceX, while capturing a near-monopoly of 80% and growing share of the worldwide launch market?  Name the evidence for faking anything at all at SpaceX.  I know you're going to claim you didn't say they faked anything, but you are saying that by implication:  there may be "real" engineers who do all the work, and but everyone else are "fake" engineers who do something else.  What do the fakes do?

 

Whereas this isn't even twisting, or misinterpretation. I literally said nothing even close to implying anything was faked. Not even vaguely. Not even slightly. You're just straight-up lying, and hoping anyone reading your post won't go back up to my post to check whether I actually said that.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Are you somehow trying to say there are testing without knowing in advance what the results of the testing will be?  Or know what to test, somehow without knowing "the details" of what to test?  Or don't have any sensors on their test firings, if they don't know what details to test?  Again I ask what details you think they don't know that isn't fucking obvious.

 

By the logic you're using here, the starship exploding during the April launch was what they knew would, and wanted to, happen.

 

Okay, so Musk does have real engineering skill, fair enough. He still builds cars where the steering wheels fall off, installs self-driving systems for the public which regularly try to run over bystanders, and does spaceship launches without installing launchpad shielding. Teslas are famously shoddy cars, quality-wise, and you simply can't have that kind of thing on a spaceship.

Maybe charlatan is the wrong word in this context, but he's a fucking clown whose primary goal is to get there first, not get there right. It's very clear that what he's inerested is not achieving things but Elon Musk achieving things, and the thing about this conversation is it's very clear that that's where you are too.

Edited July 13, 2023 by polishgenius

[polishgenius]

Just to be clear on my stance here, this is a list of things (pretty definitely incomplete, because things like 'design the life support system is a summation of many working parts) that the Starship project has to do in order for human boots to be on Mars.

 

Launch the Starship (done)
Land the Starship (done)
Launch the SuperHeavy
Have the SuperHeavy reach space
Have the Starship in orbit
Land Starship from orbit
Design the life-support system for Starship
Have the life-support system for Starship tested to make sure it can survive months in space without failure, or with the ability to repair it if it does
Design the method of manufacturing the fuel on Mars
Land the Starship on Mars
Test the method of manufacturing fuel on Mars, on Mars
Keep Starship operational for however long it is on Mars, dealing with environmental factors.
Take off from Mars
Get back from Mars
Land Starship on Earth, safely, after the stresses of a year of operation and a two take-offs and a landing
Design a human-supporting base for Mars
Build a human-supporting base for Mars
Hoik all the gear needed for a human-supporting base on Mars to Mars 
Land that gear without damaging it
Get humans to Mars
 

A lot of these things would be firsts not just for SpaceX's designs but absolute firsts. Combine all that development with the fact that the lowest-energy launch windows to Mars occur every 26 months, so either a lot of the testing is limited to those windows or you commit to plans that take a lot more energy and therefore cost more.

But apparently I'm full of shit, concocting a narrative, etc etc because I'm sceptical that all this is going to be done within 17 years using a craft that hasn't reached Earth orbit yet. A project pushed by a man whose initial date for having humans on Mars was 2025, btw.

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by polishgenius

[Corvinus85]

On 7/9/2023 at 8:40 PM, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

To be clear here - math and physics are proven and tested; engineering is not. One example of this: we have no idea how well vehicles - remote piloted or otherwise - will need to deal with things like a lack of a magnetosphere on the way there. We have ideas and we have hopes, but those are things we need to design for and figure out, and those are not established values. We don't know the kind of stresses that a very large vehicle will have compared to smaller ones when going to Mars or the engineering tolerances that it will have to have. We don't know things like how to make sure that supplies remain viable on Mars other than theories. We've not done it 200 times and we don't have a robust system for manufacturing to those specifications. 

But we have sent plenty of unmanned vehicles out of Earth's magnetosphere, so we do have an idea. Couple that with all the gathered data about Martian conditions from direct observations and otherwise, we can create accurate, scaled up engineered models for vehicles. Yes, until they go to Mars we cannot have 100% confidence in a newly engineered vehicle but the models and Earth testing can help raise that confidence level quite highly. NASA has a helicopter on Mars, which worked the first time the attempt was made. It was engineered on Earth.

The human factor is definitely harder to establish. 

Edited July 13, 2023 by Corvinus85

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

But we have sent plenty of unmanned vehicles out of Earth's magnetosphere, so we do have an idea. Couple that with all the gathered data about Martian conditions from direct observations and otherwise, we can create accurate, scaled up engineered models for vehicles. Yes, until they go to Mars we cannot have 100% confidence in a newly engineered vehicle but the models and Earth testing can help raise that confidence level quite highly. NASA has a helicopter on Mars, which worked the first time the attempt was made. It was engineered on Earth.

The human factor is definitely harder to establish. 

We have some ideas, though I will say that NASA has some ideas; as far as I know SpaceX has done none of that yet. And NASA has significantly higher engineering standards and survivability requirements for their equipment compared to SpaceX in terms of redundancies and capabilities. That makes NASA slower and much more expensive, but it also means things that would normally fail will just...not fail, and until we're sending Falcons out there we won't have that info.

And we can get that info! None of this is unsolvable. But a lot of it is not standard by any means. 

Mostly as I said above it is always a safe bet to bet against SpaceX and Musk's estimates and thoughts on when we will be able to do things. Heck, it's reasonable to bet against NASA most of the time, though they're a bit better. Especially when so much of this is based on either political will or the personal fortune of a person. 

[Erik of Hazelfield]

SpaceX and NASA do things differently. NASA has historically opted for very methodical calculations of each step to make sure nothing goes wrong while SpaceX has had more of a trial-and-error approach. They can do this because they do mostly unmanned launches and because they design everything with manufacturability in mind.

And it works. I agree that Elon Musk is an asshole and a narcissist, but there’s no denying what SpaceX has done for the space industry. They will succeed to send people to Mars one day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it in the next decade. 

[Week]

3 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

And it works. I agree that Elon Musk is an asshole and a narcissist, but there’s no denying what SpaceX has done for the space industry. They will succeed to send people to Mars one day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it in the next decade. 

There's an open question at this point whether that methodology and his leadership will remain as effective. The launchpad debacle from the last launch, while, again, eminently solvable, is representative of damaging and questionable decision-making among the leadership.