Fair point! SpaceX has their site at Boca Chica, but its really only capable of demonstration launches that can thread the needle between Florida and Cuba. Frequently operating rockets need a wider range of orbits you can reach, and so you really need a site on the coasts.
That's a fun idea! I don't see how you would execute that unfortunately though. Hubble wasn't meant to be re-mounted after deployment. Starship wouldn't be able to just gobble Hubble up and have it rattle around in its fairing during re-entry
I agree that this was historically the case, but the newest generation of space companies are making a solid case that the financial ROI is a reality and not just a theoretical promise. As the industry matures, government customers are becoming less critical to the success of many of these companies (although gov't will always play a strong role).
At this stage of the space industry evolution, with the sufficient but still limited technology readiness of propulsion (for deep space exploration) and the much lower technology readiness of resistance in extreme environments (for onsite exploration and colonization), it seems to my modest rationale that such five startups are just aiming at minor or lateral goals? Especially considering that YC can really put anyone / anything interesting enough in direct contact with the most important and active people in the field? And the bottleneck, for both branches (propulsion, colonization) is current materials science & engineering, so that 20 years ago the world needed developers for the dotcom revolution, while today it needs materials? Just food for thought, obviously, so take my ramble for what it is.
Developers, developers, developers was about the things those developers would create. The equivalent here would be engineers, engineers, engineers.
You need to use materials to make something, and that thing needs to fulfil a purpose. But until you have an objective and try to make the thing and work out what the thing is, you don’t even know what your requirements are. That’s why engineering projects like Apollo and the shuttle drove materials science advances.
If you put the materials first you run the risk of creating a carbon fibre composites company to make giant space rocket hulls, just as the people actually making the rockets decided for their project they’d use steel.
Ah, thanks for elaborating! Fair and interesting point. It's true that the work these companies are doing is not pushing the cutting edge of technology readiness, but is instead exploiting the most recent advances in R&D by finding business cases that now are possible. As new materials and science advance in research institutions, startups will then step in to commercialize that tech. So I guess I'm saying we shouldn't necessarily expect YC startups to be at the frontier of R&D
Tim Dodd's interview with Musk revealed there is actually a method to the madness. Tim's summary:
Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it does not matter who gave them to you. He notes that it’s particularly dangerous if an intelligent person gives you the requirements, as you may not question the requirements enough. “Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” He further notes that “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong.”
Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted. Musk noted that the bias tends to be very strongly toward “let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” Additionally, each required part and process must come from a name, not a department, as a department cannot be asked why a requirement exists, but a person can.
Simplify and optimize the design. This is step three as the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist.
Accelerate cycle time. Musk states “you’re moving too slowly, go faster! But don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first.”
Automate. An important part of this is to remove in-process testing after the problems have been diagnosed; if a product is reaching the end of a production line with a high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process testing.
lol SpaceX, or anyone for that matter, didn't learn shit from Armadillo. AA was bunch of hacks doing garage projects, they were never close to commercializing anything and were more like Mythbusters-esque group having fun than professional engineers. Don't know about Masten. SpaceX did receive a shitload of handholding from NASA at the start before outpacing them.
As an example, Masten Space was created after SpaceX, but the ideas "build a little, test a little" predates both of these companies.
SpaceX has built on top of lots of existing ideas - commerce instead of government services, simplicity instead of performance, vertical integration instead of spreading orders, testing philosophy, re-use...
