My issue with Musk sending a Tesla into space

[Baruch]

You really don't have any filters, do you.

When the US rocket people ask von Braun about his missiles he said he'd taken everything from Goddard.

Nazi war criminals are honest.

Personally I admire Von Braun of course, but then I am part German-American ... and want to FEMA camp everyone.

No, it was Galileo who should be blamed, and Newton.  Damn those physicists ... as per Oppenheimer, now they know sin.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Pious little fucker, ain't you.

[Baruch]

Pious little fucker, ain't you.

Don't show me yours, and I won't show you mine ;-)

No, I am just playing with you ... I don't see any reason for you to come out of "crazy field" and start defending Von Braun.  I find it remarkable, if not admirable, how the US took Nazi scientists in ... at least to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets.  And yes, I admire Goddard too ... he had to put up with totally ignorant reporters in the 1920s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXPBhy7i10

Anything done, is political ... not just idealism.  I was a younger interested guy compared to the hero in this movie.  Should I show you my thank-you letter from the White House, for my naive childish idea about an ion engine?  Yeah, I only got three days work on the Hubble ... but that will be a memory I will carry with me always.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I wasn't defending von Braun, idiot.

[Coveny]

Maglev doesn't get you to space.

Also, have you stopped to think where the capital is going to come from for a maglev infrastructure that does not currently exist?  This isn't a project he can just piggyback on top of an Amtrak line.

Yes a Maglev DOES get humans into space with the StraTram Gen-2. (although I was just suggesting a Gen-1 and to send humans up the normal way) As far as the capital and infrastructure that doesn't exist... tell me again about the capital and infrastructure existed for SpaceX when they started up? Tell me again about the millions NASA has given SpaceX to help it have the capital and infrastructure it needed to exist. Obviously this isn't something that can piggyback on top of an Amtrak as it needs a vacuum tube to achieve the required speeds as well as around 80 miles of acceleration. Please do a bit a research on the Startram Gen-2 and stop with these strawman arguments that aren't what I'm suggesting at all.

So, SpaceX and the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, and the $1.9 billion contract to deliver supplies to the ISS.  Musk isn't interested in space, maglev trains and electric cars for their own sake.  He plans for all of these to be very profitable.  Space is what's going to have to pay for maglevs.

Basically, you've got the cart before the horse.  Hyperloop is the least certain to be profitable.  Space and cars are known markets with pre-existing infrastructure.  Musk didn't need to build a new launchpad to put the Falcon Heavy up, nor does he need special roads for the Tesla to drive on.  High speed railâ€"and that's fundamentally what Hyperloop isâ€"does not have a successful history in the United States, and it's likely to be a money pit for a long time.  There aren't pre-existing tunnels under partial vacuum that he can just lease the use of.  SpaceX and Tesla are going to have to pay Hyperloop's way for quite some time.
There's a difference between risking the failure of a theory to meet an experimental test, and the failure of the experiment entirely.  Again, it's not just a matter of sticking an experiment into the fairing of a rocket.  It needs to be developed for space, capable of surviving not just the harsh conditions of space but also the physical punishment of the launch itself.  You're not going to kit-bash that together in your garage and run it out to Canaveral in the back seat of your car.

That's the point of this: the entire launch was already an experiment.  They had every other aspect of the flight to look at; the SpaceX ground crew had enough to do without the distraction of putting a functional payload into space.

And if you can develop a camera that can survive the launch, survive space itself, orient itself in space, *and* send back high quality images from as far as the Moon, much less Mars and beyond and do it for $2 a unit, I'll nominate you for a Physics Nobel myself.  Even taking maneuverability out of it, I don't think you can send a unit capable of returning images from even low Earth orbit for $2 a unit.  If you want to posit an experiment to waste on top of what's already an experiment, at least pose a plausible one.

Fair enough, the $2 per nanocraft is an exaggeration but Strange Hawkings and NASA have an idea where "each craft would cost little more than a smartphone to produce" that could travel to Alpha Centauri, so I assume if it didn't need to survive as long or go as far it would be cheaper to produce, so although they won't be $2 each, they would be under $200 each. The Tesla could have been sold (as it was the first from the plant) for some amount to cover the costs of production... OR he could have sold the data he got back from the probes to recover the cost of creating and sending them out to the stars. He's not getting anything back on the Tesla.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/nasa-nano-starship-breakthrough-starshot

[trdsf]

Yes a Maglev DOES get humans into space with the StraTram Gen-2. (although I was just suggesting a Gen-1 and to send humans up the normal way) As far as the capital and infrastructure that doesn't exist... tell me again about the capital and infrastructure existed for SpaceX when they started up? Tell me again about the millions NASA has given SpaceX to help it have the capital and infrastructure it needed to exist. Obviously this isn't something that can piggyback on top of an Amtrak as it needs a vacuum tube to achieve the required speeds as well as around 80 miles of acceleration. Please do a bit a research on the Startram Gen-2 and stop with these strawman arguments that aren't what I'm suggesting at all.

One: Gen-1 is a reasonable theoretical way to get objects into space, but unlike rockets it's also an unproven way.  By all means, research, but you are rather coming across like you think rocket science should be dropped now in favor of constructing a system that doesn't yet exist.  The Gen-1 concept requires levitating the launch body 10cm; maglev trains levitate at around 1.5cm.  StarTram assumes costs per kJ that simply do not exist yet.

Also, how many of these do you think can or will be built?  The site requirements are pretty daunting, since it involves carving out a 130 km tunnel in a mountain, evacuating it, and sealing it with a plasma window on a scale not yet attempted, much less accomplished.  Even granting that the plasma only needs to be in operation during the brief moment the external hatch is open, that's yet another part of the system that's theoretical.  And for minimal atmospheric effects, it needs to be close to the opening, so both the cargo vessel and the hatch mechanism have to be built to withstand some 15,000ºK (26,000ºF), however briefly.

And the estimated cost to build just one is nearly $20 billion.

And that brings us to another problem.  All it takes is one glitch to take down the entire system.  The cargo vessel contacts a wall at up to 30g, the plasma window fails and the entire tunnel explosively decompresses, a minor earthquake a few kilometers deep cracks the tunnel wall, the hatch opens a fraction too slow, a terrorist plants a bomb, any failure that causes the payload to contact the tunnel wall and the entire launch system is useless, possibly irretrievably so.

If a Falcon Heavy blows up on the pad, they lose the pad, not all of Kennedy Space Center, and they move the next launch to a different pad and get back to the business of shooting things into space while other teams sort out what went wrong and putting the pad back together.


Gen-2 is completely unfeasible for the foreseeable future.  That's a mega-engineering project that involves magnetically levitating an evacuated tube a thousand kilometers long rising over twenty kilometers into the sky.  Make that a 'someday' project; I'd bet you that it's technically unfeasible until the mid-2200s at the very earliest, but neither of us will be around to see who's right.  I am confident that even if made a research priority, the engineering difficulties to overcome are great enough that it won't happen within the next 50 years, and you are talking about these things as if we should be constructing them right now.  That's just not plausible.

Do the research, but that's not a basket we can put any of our eggs into just yet.  Not even one.  I'm not going to say what the future will be, but the present of space delivery is rockets.

Which leads me to point two: Yes, exactly, that's the whole point about infrastructure.  Musk didn't have to invent systems from the ground up.  Reliable rocket engines exist, to be studied and improved upon.  The fundamentals of efficient and effective ground control are understood.  Space-based communications are already a thing.  Launch facilities exist.  He gets to focus on doing it more efficiently, rather than on doing it at all.

Show me where the equivalent exists, in the United States, to do the same with Hyperloop (much less StarTram of any type).

I'll wait.


For now, and for the foreseeable future, maglev still doesn't get you to space.  Rockets do.  And they make the profit that can be turned into maglev research, because it's not just going to automagically happen out of the goodness of someone's heart or spring fully formed out of a theory.  There's a lot of basic research to do, and that has to be paid for, and hey, look, the guy who just made a huge media splash and got a whole lot of positive attention for two lines of business that will almost certainly be at least a little bit more profitable because of it... well what do you know, he's one of the people who's actually paying to do that maglev research.

Even if Musk himself doesn't pursue StarTram, if he makes Hyperloop work, that's the technology that makes StarTram work, and someone else will do it if he doesn't.

That Tesla in space pushes, indirectly, the very thing you want to see happen.

So what's the problem?

Fair enough, the $2 per nanocraft is an exaggeration but Strange Hawkings and NASA have an idea where "each craft would cost little more than a smartphone to produce" that could travel to Alpha Centauri, so I assume if it didn't need to survive as long or go as far it would be cheaper to produce, so although they won't be $2 each, they would be under $200 each. The Tesla could have been sold (as it was the first from the plant) for some amount to cover the costs of production... OR he could have sold the data he got back from the probes to recover the cost of creating and sending them out to the stars. He's not getting anything back on the Tesla.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/nasa-nano-starship-breakthrough-starshot

Oh, I'm well familiar with the Breakthrough series of goals; I'm especially interested in Breakthrough Listen.  They're also completely irrelevant to the Falcon Heavy launch.  You're back to talking about future things, not now things.

Musk is getting back exactly what he needs (and, I expect, wanted) from his Tesla in space: additional positive publicity.  He would not have gotten the boost from a dummy payload, and the money raised from selling the car, I expect, would turn out to be less than the increased sales Tesla Motors will make over the coming year, probably a great deal lessâ€"we can check back on that later to see if sales growth improved after the launch or if it maintained its previous rate.  I think it will.  Hey, look!  A testable hypothesis!

The point is, people are talking about Tesla, and SpaceX, and I repeat, since you ignored the point entirely, that these two need to be successful in order to pay for Hyperloop, and that's the best currently feasible testbed for the technology that can become StarTram.

Falcon Heavy already has actual paying missions scheduled for this year.  Guess where some of that money is going?  Even if Tesla Motors continues to struggle with profitability, the basic research on electric components is vital to any Hyperloop system.  And I assertâ€"and we can come back in a year and look at the numbersâ€"that this will improve Tesla sales, which means more research on charging/discharging systems and other components necessary to Hyperloop and beyond, and makes more money available for Hyperloop research, either as a matter of cutting Tesla's losses, or actually pushing it into stable profitability.


However, if you really want to obsess on experimental results, the car has been automatically picked up by ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System), providing a fine demonstration of that experimental system's capabilities.  They weren't looking for it; ATLAS noticed something in the vicinity of Earth (as it's meant to) and logged it; now they know they can detect something as small as a car at a distance of over half a million miles.

And that was a gimme, it wasn't even planned.

[Jason78]

Yes it's called Startram gen-1. You shoot the freight into space and then send humans up to construct it through the regular method. Then once it pays for itself you create Startram gen-2 and get rid of the fossil fuel component completely. The weight of getting freight into space costs a LOT more fossil fuels, over all, than getting humans into space. (because we need a lot more freight up there than we need humans up there)

Cool!   Where has that been built?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Cool!   Where has that been built?

In dreams.

[Coveny]

One: Gen-1 is a reasonable theoretical way to get objects into space, but unlike rockets it's also an unproven way.  By all means, research, but you are rather coming across like you think rocket science should be dropped now in favor of constructing a system that doesn't yet exist.  The Gen-1 concept requires levitating the launch body 10cm; maglev trains levitate at around 1.5cm.  StarTram assumes costs per kJ that simply do not exist yet.

Also, how many of these do you think can or will be built?  The site requirements are pretty daunting, since it involves carving out a 130 km tunnel in a mountain, evacuating it, and sealing it with a plasma window on a scale not yet attempted, much less accomplished.  Even granting that the plasma only needs to be in operation during the brief moment the external hatch is open, that's yet another part of the system that's theoretical.  And for minimal atmospheric effects, it needs to be close to the opening, so both the cargo vessel and the hatch mechanism have to be built to withstand some 15,000ºK (26,000ºF), however briefly.

And the estimated cost to build just one is nearly $20 billion.

And that brings us to another problem.  All it takes is one glitch to take down the entire system.  The cargo vessel contacts a wall at up to 30g, the plasma window fails and the entire tunnel explosively decompresses, a minor earthquake a few kilometers deep cracks the tunnel wall, the hatch opens a fraction too slow, a terrorist plants a bomb, any failure that causes the payload to contact the tunnel wall and the entire launch system is useless, possibly irretrievably so.

If a Falcon Heavy blows up on the pad, they lose the pad, not all of Kennedy Space Center, and they move the next launch to a different pad and get back to the business of shooting things into space while other teams sort out what went wrong and putting the pad back together.


Gen-2 is completely unfeasible for the foreseeable future.  That's a mega-engineering project that involves magnetically levitating an evacuated tube a thousand kilometers long rising over twenty kilometers into the sky.  Make that a 'someday' project; I'd bet you that it's technically unfeasible until the mid-2200s at the very earliest, but neither of us will be around to see who's right.  I am confident that even if made a research priority, the engineering difficulties to overcome are great enough that it won't happen within the next 50 years, and you are talking about these things as if we should be constructing them right now.  That's just not plausible.

Do the research, but that's not a basket we can put any of our eggs into just yet.  Not even one.  I'm not going to say what the future will be, but the present of space delivery is rockets.

Which leads me to point two: Yes, exactly, that's the whole point about infrastructure.  Musk didn't have to invent systems from the ground up.  Reliable rocket engines exist, to be studied and improved upon.  The fundamentals of efficient and effective ground control are understood.  Space-based communications are already a thing.  Launch facilities exist.  He gets to focus on doing it more efficiently, rather than on doing it at all.

Show me where the equivalent exists, in the United States, to do the same with Hyperloop (much less StarTram of any type).

I'll wait.


For now, and for the foreseeable future, maglev still doesn't get you to space.  Rockets do.  And they make the profit that can be turned into maglev research, because it's not just going to automagically happen out of the goodness of someone's heart or spring fully formed out of a theory.  There's a lot of basic research to do, and that has to be paid for, and hey, look, the guy who just made a huge media splash and got a whole lot of positive attention for two lines of business that will almost certainly be at least a little bit more profitable because of it... well what do you know, he's one of the people who's actually paying to do that maglev research.

Even if Musk himself doesn't pursue StarTram, if he makes Hyperloop work, that's the technology that makes StarTram work, and someone else will do it if he doesn't.

That Tesla in space pushes, indirectly, the very thing you want to see happen.

So what's the problem?

Oh, I'm well familiar with the Breakthrough series of goals; I'm especially interested in Breakthrough Listen.  They're also completely irrelevant to the Falcon Heavy launch.  You're back to talking about future things, not now things.

Musk is getting back exactly what he needs (and, I expect, wanted) from his Tesla in space: additional positive publicity.  He would not have gotten the boost from a dummy payload, and the money raised from selling the car, I expect, would turn out to be less than the increased sales Tesla Motors will make over the coming year, probably a great deal lessâ€"we can check back on that later to see if sales growth improved after the launch or if it maintained its previous rate.  I think it will.  Hey, look!  A testable hypothesis!

The point is, people are talking about Tesla, and SpaceX, and I repeat, since you ignored the point entirely, that these two need to be successful in order to pay for Hyperloop, and that's the best currently feasible testbed for the technology that can become StarTram.

Falcon Heavy already has actual paying missions scheduled for this year.  Guess where some of that money is going?  Even if Tesla Motors continues to struggle with profitability, the basic research on electric components is vital to any Hyperloop system.  And I assertâ€"and we can come back in a year and look at the numbersâ€"that this will improve Tesla sales, which means more research on charging/discharging systems and other components necessary to Hyperloop and beyond, and makes more money available for Hyperloop research, either as a matter of cutting Tesla's losses, or actually pushing it into stable profitability.


However, if you really want to obsess on experimental results, the car has been automatically picked up by ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System), providing a fine demonstration of that experimental system's capabilities.  They weren't looking for it; ATLAS noticed something in the vicinity of Earth (as it's meant to) and logged it; now they know they can detect something as small as a car at a distance of over half a million miles.

And that was a gimme, it wasn't even planned.

The tech is proven it's not just theory. The falcon didn't exist before Musk made it, so the same basic logic would apply there. It took things that worked and put them together in a different way to be more efficient. The same thing applies to Startrams.

Yes I think rocket science should be phased out as a way to get off world. It's very inefficient.

The Japanese Maglev already achieve 10cm of lift. Again this exists and is proven technology. (in reference to the Gen-1)
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzdGFydHJhbXByb2plY3R8Z3g6NDI1YjVjZmMwZmRjY2VlMg

If we built only one it would out produce all the rockets we currently have. We could "launch" multiple times a day with ease if we wanted to.

Yes a plasma window of that size does not exist, but we have them and they work, the only the difference is making it bigger.

SpaceX has invested Billions into their program. I get the number is big, but when you play in this area it's really not that big. (I mean have you looked at our "defense" budget...)

Do you seriously comparing catastrophes between the two? Rockets are just controlled explosions, and if anything goes wrong everyone dies. If something goes wrong in a tube in most cases some people might get hurt, but no one will die.

And if something goes wrong with the 90 miles of tunnel with the Startram it doesn't destroy 90 miles of tunnel...

I'm not arguing for the Gen-2, but I will argue that it's not feasible in the foreseeable future. It's VERY feasible, it's just people have grown to love their rockets ships and don't want to give them up. On the tethers "Startram tethers, in contrast, needs tethers with breaking lengths of only tens of kilometers, which is well within the specifications of modern fibers.". But I will give you that levitating the tube is more technologically advanced/difficult. (but I'm not advocating that as the first step, I'm advocating the Gen-1 version for now)
http://www.startram.com/startram-technology

I have done the research (maybe you should as you didn't know we already achieved 10cm) and it's possible for the Gen-1 without much in the way of "new" tech. The cost savings are out of this world. (pun intended deal with it.. hehe)

Show me where the falcon existed before Musk built it, in the United States, actually in the world... I'll wait. There is a saying inventors stand on the shoulders of giants. Both the Falcon and the Startram take tech that existed and adapt it, any argument you use against the Startram can be equally used against the Falcon.

Only you and Musk's foreseeable future, others however aren't so short sighted and can look paste doing the same thing that they have always done.

Ok the Atlas thing I didn't know about and was pretty cool. Fair enough.

[Hydra009]

The tech is proven it's not just theory. The falcon didn't exist before Musk made it, so the same basic logic would apply there.

There's a slight difference between building a slightly modified version of something that has long existed to bringing something that currently only exists on paper to life.

[trdsf]

The tech is proven it's not just theory. The falcon didn't exist before Musk made it, so the same basic logic would apply there. It took things that worked and put them together in a different way to be more efficient. The same thing applies to Startrams.

Yes I think rocket science should be phased out as a way to get off world. It's very inefficient.

The Japanese Maglev already achieve 10cm of lift. Again this exists and is proven technology. (in reference to the Gen-1)
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzdGFydHJhbXByb2plY3R8Z3g6NDI1YjVjZmMwZmRjY2VlMg

If we built only one it would out produce all the rockets we currently have. We could "launch" multiple times a day with ease if we wanted to.

Yes a plasma window of that size does not exist, but we have them and they work, the only the difference is making it bigger.

SpaceX has invested Billions into their program. I get the number is big, but when you play in this area it's really not that big. (I mean have you looked at our "defense" budget...)

Do you seriously comparing catastrophes between the two? Rockets are just controlled explosions, and if anything goes wrong everyone dies. If something goes wrong in a tube in most cases some people might get hurt, but no one will die.

And if something goes wrong with the 90 miles of tunnel with the Startram it doesn't destroy 90 miles of tunnel...

I'm not arguing for the Gen-2, but I will argue that it's not feasible in the foreseeable future. It's VERY feasible, it's just people have grown to love their rockets ships and don't want to give them up. On the tethers "Startram tethers, in contrast, needs tethers with breaking lengths of only tens of kilometers, which is well within the specifications of modern fibers.". But I will give you that levitating the tube is more technologically advanced/difficult. (but I'm not advocating that as the first step, I'm advocating the Gen-1 version for now)
http://www.startram.com/startram-technology

I have done the research (maybe you should as you didn't know we already achieved 10cm) and it's possible for the Gen-1 without much in the way of "new" tech. The cost savings are out of this world. (pun intended deal with it.. hehe)

Show me where the falcon existed before Musk built it, in the United States, actually in the world... I'll wait. There is a saying inventors stand on the shoulders of giants. Both the Falcon and the Startram take tech that existed and adapt it, any argument you use against the Startram can be equally used against the Falcon.

Only you and Musk's foreseeable future, others however aren't so short sighted and can look paste doing the same thing that they have always done.

Ok the Atlas thing I didn't know about and was pretty cool. Fair enough.

Let me give you a word that you've thrown around a lot: strawman.

Point to where I ever said never to bother looking at other methods, that rockets are the only way ever.

I'll wait.

Next time, read what I wrote.  Don't argue against something I never said.  In fact, I have repeatedly stated, and you have repeatedly ignored, that it looks pretty clear that Musk is just as interested in Hyperloop as everything else, and that Hyperloop is where the technologies that make StarTram possible will get developed, and the success of SpaceX and Tesla are necessary to fund that.


One other point about disasters: if you have a 100km tunnel and the 70th kilometer is plugged because a coil failed and a cargo unit slammed into the wall at several gs acceleration, pray, how do you intend to continue using it?  You can't just move to another pad.  You need another complete system, not just a replacement component.


Where did the Merlin engine that powered the Falcon Heavy come from?  Well, if you're interested, the Merlin 1D engine is based on the earlier Merlin 1C, which was based on the Merlin 1A, which was based on a TRW design for a lunar descent module.  Startram requires us to do things that have never been done and scale up systems that have never been scaled up.  That's the whole point of evolution over revolution.  So Musk can build a better rocket engine because we have some pretty good rocket engine designs and their operation is pretty well understood.  No one can build a better magnetic launch system because there's never been one to build on before.


I don't fault you your enthusiasm for this design.  It'd be awesome to see even Gen-1 in service.  But you're deliberately ignoring realities that currently exist, and you're way too ready to blindly accept the claims of one paper as written, as if it can go right into operation with nothing more than a couple tweaks to existing technologies that have never been scaled up that far.

The Powell paper is interesting.  I think either project is feasible long term to very long term.  As I have repeatedly said and as you deliberately misrepresented above.  But I think he's over-optimistic about the system's duty cycle, and both the cost and the length of time it will take to bring even Gen-1 into operation.

Also, they're fixed trajectory systems.  The paper itself says you need different launch sites to be able to do both equatorial and polar orbitsâ€"you don't even get out of the abstract before that little shortcoming is mentioned.

So either you have these huge tunnels scattered all over the place or... you keep using rockets, so you can guide the vehicles once the payload is in orbit.  Which means you're still lobbing large containers of liquid oxygen and either R1 or liquid hydrogen into space.

[Coveny]

There's a slight difference between building a slightly modified version of something that has long existed to bringing something that currently only exists on paper to life.

Something that has long existed like MagLev trains? 1902 if you're curious.

[Hydra009]

Something that has long existed like MagLev trains? 1902 if you're curious.

Ever see a maglev train in outer space?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I'm going to predict the privatization of space if current trends continue with primarily nobody but billionaires funding space exploration at least in the US.. Luckily we're not the only nation heading to space, but I can envision everything beyond our earthly atmosphere being off limits to everyone except those who have probably already laid claim to it..

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm going to predict the privatization of space if current trends continue with primarily nobody but billionaires funding space exploration at least in the US.. Luckily we're not the only nation heading to space, but I can envision everything beyond our earthly atmosphere being off limits to everyone except those who have probably already laid claim to it..

Luckily most nations, including those with current space capabilities have signed treaties against doing just that.