This is already in the cards via the commercial crew development process. SpaceX has already flown a pressurized capsule and returned it safely to Earth several times, they are currently working on a manned capsule which will be one of the most capable manned spacecraft in quite some time. And it will almost certainly be used to ferry US crew to the ISS.
However, a lot of people don't realize that the commercial crew program is not fully funded by congress. There's a little bit of funding for developing certain novel aspects of manned spacecraft, which has been doled out to the current commercial crew hopefuls (SpaceX, Boeing, and SNC). But, even if any or all of those companies deliver a capable manned spacecraft there's no guarantee whatsoever that there will be money available for a contract.
One of the important things that Musk is doing here is drawing attention to that fact.
The number of titles that follow the format, "Elon Musk wants X" I think are starting to warrant a browser extension that replaces them with "No Mr. Bond Elon Musk wants the World" or something similar.
I was just thinking something along the same line! If you look at him early in his career he was much more of an introvert. He appears to play to the press to increase the exposure of his companies which have missions in which he truly believes. He's said something to the same effect. As someone who believes in the missions of the companies he's help found and run, I'll excuse this annoyance. But yes, agreed, enormous annoyance.
Reading more into the article Elon's SpaceX has a genuine argument. The US Administration specifically put certain Russian dignitaries (some of which are part of Russia's space program) on the sanctions list for Russia's involvement in Ukraine. SpaceX brought it up with the Federal courts which the US Administration should have already enforced.
Now on the flip side it seems that SpaceX is putting their relationship with NASA as a priority. You would think they would want Russia as a client in the future as well but I think that will never happen now.
Musk and Russia burnt bridges a long while back when they screwed him and made fun of him when he was trying to first start doing space. He got fed up and in sentiment along the lines of "fuck you, I'll do it myself" decided to go make his own rockets instead.
I strongly doubt he is interested in being polite to Russian rocket industry.
Someone else posted the article link a few days ago on HN, but it went like so:
Elon: I'm here for 3 ICBMs. The price is $21 million, correct?
Russians: No, the price is now $21 million for 1 ICBM. You don't have that kind of money? You can't play with the big boys.
Elon: on the plane ride home How hard can it be to build a rocket?
The Russians also had a salvage tug off the Space Coast leading up to the CR3 resupply mission (it was the most powerful salvage tug in the world at its commissioning). Take that for what its worth.
Russia isn't going to be in a position to afford to launch it's own satellites for a good long while in the future, and no one not in Russia would want to help them given the way they're currently acting as a government.
Plenty more money from pretty much anywhere else in the world to be had in terms of payloads, but in a practical sense I suspect it's a lot easier to launch US-based payloads then ones from overseas - shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
> Shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
While I certainly don't disagree, we're talking about a company who's business is shipping sensitive satellites into orbit, so they're probably better positioned to know how to undertake shipping them round the world than most people!
not true at all. I JUST spent several weeks in Russia, people will go out of their way to bring up Putin and be unhappy about him (at least to foreigners).
Compare this to the universal love and admiration for Obama in the US, and say, Stephen Harper in Canada... Because no one in the west is ever dissatisfied with anything politicians do.
There's poor in every country. Russians are certainly better off than they have been historically, and better off than neighbours like Ukraine (certainly before their 'revolution', and especially after).
Regardless, this is about sending things into space which isn't the realm of ordinary citizens, but governments. The Russian government certainly is flush with cash.
The financial markets certainly disagree with this assessment. The government's credit rating is dropping in free fall, and capital is fleeing the country.
The Russian "government" per se won't run out of money, since there is no clear border between public governance and corporate governance anyway. Essentially the state does what the oligarchs tell it to do, and everyone else does what the government tells them to do. If it weren't for the legendary corruption, this might actually be a powerful system...
In Russia there's not only "some poor". Health services are reported to be almost inaccessible without bribes, and people do behave as if a war or catastrophic inflation is coming.
I also think that Russia had a little something to do with the problems the Ukraine was having over the last few years. In a region renowned for corruption it is hard to tell if Janukowitsch and his friends robbed the country blind with or without outside help...
Elon's priority is to keep SpaceX healthy as a business and lay the regulatory framework required so that human life can become multi-planetary. Simple as that.
Be careful if you use the GitHub "Web Flow" (edit button on files on GitHub) and this Extension. Saw one commit where someone was editing a readme to make some small correction. Well, the extension went ahead and replaced all the instances of "the cloud" with "my butt" along side his changes.
Actually a generic addon that let you swap any 2 parses.
Because I really want something that replaces, "Full Stack Engineer" with "Knows python AND java-script". Because every time I hear that parse I cringe, 75% of the Linux Stack is C, how is a full stack engineer skating by without knowing it?!
> Musk, also the founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors (TSLA), established SpaceX in 2002 as part of his broader mission to make other planets habitable by humans.
That reads like something you'd see in history books 100 years from now, after we've already inhabited other planets.
Not sure if will replace just yet as the industry has a very robust tried and tested approach and rightly so when safety is concerned. Yes the Russian set-up is older than Windows XP, but they keep on updating and patching it. When you view it like that, it works.
Now that all said, yes some competition is needed and SpaceX can only be a good thing. But even if the better solution on many levels, including politics. It is still a very young platform that will take a few a bit more time to get that level of not only knowing that it works. But also knowing what can go wrong.
It is often in engineering better to have a part that you know exactly how it will fail than a better part that you do not know exactly how it will fail. That is what separates safely engineering design in contrast to IT people who are more conditioned to new is better mentality. So when you read about some 8 bit system running on a bit of kit that your dad would of deemed old, it is not because the latest is better, it is because it just works and all possible fault outcomes have been worked out fully.
I thought this was always the plan... Why pay a foreign (and not so friendly) country when a private company can do it cheaper, faster and better (and you have much more influence over it)?
The russian space program and their entanglement with NASA is something I would really like to keep going forward.
I think I understand the other factors, but this helps to keep US politics in check, even if just by a tiny bit.
The only thing keeping US politics "in check" is US citizens. So far, I'd rather have a world "slightly dominated" by the US rather than by the Chinese or Russians...
If you think that anything space related has pull on US politics, you are wrong. Our current congress would cut NASA's funding in a heartbeat if it remotely conflicted with any of their interests.
This is unfortunately true per Neil Degrasse Tyson's (NDT) speech in front of Congress to increase NASA's federal budget. It currently stands at 0.48% of the Federal Budget. There is a great youtube video highlighted NDT's points on this. I believe the video was around the initiative http://www.penny4nasa.org
I agree the entanglement is a good thing, but our dependence
on them might have been contributory to their boldness on
Ukraine, deterrence is still needed.
Cooperation and interdependence prevents these events.
No need to be skeptical - that's logical, why use a foreign country as your main provider, especially a country you are not always in agreement with.
The larger question though is if that is beneficial for the market as a whole. The idea of NASA not doing stuff internally is to benefit from the cost efficiency of the market. If NASA uses mainly SpaceX, they run the risk of creating a Halliburton like symbiosis and in that case you wonder why they don't do stuff internally rather than giving a share of taxpayer money to private shareholder and destroying the whole market by over-favoring one company in particular.
And I'd further observe in context that SpaceX has already delivered to the Space Station, in rockets designed to carry humans that simply haven't been certified and trusted by experience yet, as opposed to rockets that are fundamentally incapable of carrying humans for some reason. It's essentially impossible to have any more credibility here without actually having delivered astronauts to the space station, which is nearly the only step remaining.
I deeply respect the man for his vision. I watched a documentary on him. In 2008, he was close to bankruptcy. He had a fleet of Tesla cars that had to be recalled due to faults. SpaceX had had three failed launches and he had no money to pour in.
What did he do? He thought of trying for the fourth and final time. It worked!! In his own words, Elon said with tears in his eyes, that if the fourth launch had failed, he would have been broke. The next day he got a call from NASA. That saved SpaceX. I know hero worship is not very healthy, but can't help but marvel at Elon's vision.
Musk's move seems suspiciously like the sort of thing I would say during a game of Settlers of Catan to go from appearing to be in 3rd place to winning on my turn.
He's suggesting that it would be safer for the person with the most visible points to not trade with the person apparently in second place. And oh, how convenient! I have just the resources you need, and I'm certainly not a threat to your supremacy [on your turn].
Please. Look at what's happening in the Ukraine. Can you see the US invading Mexico or Canada and keeping the territory because our President was a megalomaniac?
Even when we do invade somewhere to take out someone like UBL, Saddam Hussein, or Noriega; when we're done we clean up, rebuild some infrastructure, and leave.
No other nation on earth in history has restricted the wars it fights in such a principled way, rather than using them as excuses to just take more territory.
Confused about downvote? SpaceX is a start-up in Silicon Valley. Google is a start-up in Silicon Valley. Russia is providing a commercial service in an established industry with huge start-up costs to the US Governement. Halliburton is providing a commercial service in an established industry with huge start-up costs to the US Governement. SpaceX has a founder whose background is not in this industry. Google has founders whose backgrounds are not in the business of providing Government services. Russia is very much in the business of providing government services. Halliburton is very much in the business of providing government services. Seems like a solid analogy.
However, a lot of people don't realize that the commercial crew program is not fully funded by congress. There's a little bit of funding for developing certain novel aspects of manned spacecraft, which has been doled out to the current commercial crew hopefuls (SpaceX, Boeing, and SNC). But, even if any or all of those companies deliver a capable manned spacecraft there's no guarantee whatsoever that there will be money available for a contract.
One of the important things that Musk is doing here is drawing attention to that fact.