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Hondas in Space
mikejz84 writes "Fast Company takes a look at SpaceX's attempt to challenge the high cost of space. This cost cutting philosophy includes buying equipment on eBay, looking to milk trucks for tank design ideas, and rummaging though junk yards. CEO Elon Musk remarks 'A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. But I would bet you 1,000-to-1 that if you bought a Honda Civic that that sucker will not break down in the first year of operation. You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets.'"
time to get cheap rockets? i have a bad feeling...
I can't wait to ride to space in one of these.
Hmm.. on second thought...
I thought Honda already had their rice rockets
You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets.
Or you can have a cheap car that is also a rocket!
Be relentless!
..but if it is relaiable. And guess what - those God damned expensive NASA rockets are most relayable ones. Strange, isn't it? :)
If you have problems with your car, ups, rocket in the space, you are propably a gonner. There is no technical car service in the space. And I have big doubts if NASA can put out a resq. team specially for you
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
.......I always liked the idea of Mad Max in space.
You can pick up way more hot chicks with a Ferrari than you can with a Honda. 'Nuf said.
Upper management digging through dupsters looking for parts to the design I create.....
How about Yamahas, Daihatus, Toyotas in space ?
is not reliable??
are you kidding, you might mean not practical, but please dont say not reliable. I hope they dont damn sue you over this.
Well, seeing as they already make lawnmowers, snowblowers, ATVs. industrial generators, motorcycles, boats, scooters, jetskis, and tillers and trimmers... I for one look forward to greeting the new Honda Rocket division.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Well I'd rather fly into space in a honda than in a ferrari. I mean, sure, you take off alright in both, but then you pretty quickly need to select second gear and the ferrari will only go crunch.
On the other hand, I'd rather fly in either of them than in a contraption of ebay components gaffa-taped into a rocket shape. I mean, I'm reasonably sure those are real swarovski crystals, but quality control is much higher on a rocket than on a wedding dress, right?
right?
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
They aren't meant to be reliable. They're meant to be fast, and cool, which they are. But they aren't meant to be everyday drive-it-to-work cars, and they are in the shop a lot more often than your average Honda Civic.
Honda Civic vs cheap? A Suzuki maybe.
And since when are rockets mass-produced? Man you need mass-productive experience, to create cheap and reliable transport.
However I do agree that costs can be surely reduced with an order of magnitude with careful planning, and keeping an eye on cost-effectiveness.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
If it costs $1,000,000 per pound to send somebody to space, virtually nobody goes to space, no matter how "safe". At that cost, it isn't worth it.
However, when the cost comes down enough, SO WHAT if a few people die?
Now, it sounds callous, but when you look at statistis, Motorcycles (AKA murder-cycles) are MIGHTY DANGEROUS..
NOBODY IS BANNING THE KAWASAKI, ARE THEY?
When you see somebody get on board a relatively cheap, fast, murder-cycle, do you tell them about the risks?
See, when space travel is cheap and "good enough", people will use it, even if it's as dangerous as a (gulp!) murder-cycle.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Almost all cars bought on the market today will go up to 100,000 miles without a checkup (sure, they say you should get one, but if your a cheapss you can push it). However, a spacecraft is only going around 600 miles at most during a flight. The space station is at 250 miles and I'm sure that no commerical rocket will get there anyway.
Come on, although the poster might have a point in saying that Hondas are extremely reliable, he just cannot say Ferraris are not reliable and will break-down.
I am the -lucky- friend of a Ferrari owner's son. He's had a Maserati cambiocorsa and now owns a 575 Maranello.
Yes these things have un-satisfiable thirst.
Yes they cost a shit load in insurance.
Yes you will change the tires every 5000 Miles
However,
No they will not break-down as you go for a WE trip
People will break-down with ferraris just a much as any other car when all you do is trash it at the green lights (kills the clutch, transmission and tires).
A lot of these people go out on the tracks come bitching about brakes screaching and all is normal.
Pretty much any car, will have reduced life expectancy if you abuse it. And I think there is a higher tentation trashing a Ferrari than a measly Civic LX.
There is a good reason why Ferraris are the best selling super-sport cars (besides Porsche). And yes reliability is increasingly a reason for that.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. But I would bet you 1,000-to-1 that if you bought a Honda Civic that that sucker will not break down in the first year of operation. You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets How can you compare automobiles to spacecraft? The reason those Civic's are so damn reliable is that they've been making them for years. It really is not feasible to mass produce rocket ships in this manner. Especially when they're talking about buying spare parts off of eBay! When a car breaks down everyone doesn't DIE. Rockets are not cars. They are ridiculously more complicated and there is too much at stake when an error occurs. These things should be left to NASA.
Do you see how my mind works? It's like a laser!
...for guidance on the sly like this group did.
...from the movie Armageddon (ya, the movie sucked)
Rockhound: "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?"
Life is not for the lazy.
but most space rockets are built by lowest bidder!
A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. But I would bet you 1,000-to-1 that if you bought a Honda Civic that that sucker will not break down in the first year of operation.
Ofcourse! A Ferrari is built to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the machinery, sacrificing silly stuff like economy, comfort and reliabiliy.
A Honda Civic is built to be as cheap as possible, but without sacrificing reliability. If repairs ended up costing as much as the car it would be a tough sell. :)
/greger
It's not so much the cost part as the simplicity part or finding the right way to do something. He mentions this in the linked article but it seems to be missing from the story above.
An AK47 assault rifle is more reliable than an M16 because it was designed to be simple and mass-produced, not designed to be cheap. A Honda Civic is more reliable than a Ferrari because it has less moving parts and is mass produced, ditto the Soyuz space capsule that the Russians use - on a per mission basis, it's had less failures than the shuttle.
It doesn't mean the rocket is being made with bits from scrapyards and eBay, just that the ideas are being lifted from non-rocket science thinking, and some of the tools are secondhand. Either way, getting someone into space on top of a controlled explosion is not cheap however you look at it, and if they can cut down on the peripheral costs, then good luck to them.
Have they managed to use rice as rocket fuel or something?
As a member of the US Military CURRENTLY in Iraq I want to say one thing...
given two options:
1) Dead Iraqi's while letting Saddam murder and rape his own people AND The American beliefe in freedom and a chance at a happy life that means nothing
OR
2) Dead Iraqi's, A Saddistic asshole out of office and on trial, a saddistic regiem toppled, and some dead American's DEFENDING the idea's that OUR country was built on. Freedom and Democracy. (And a little oil in the end. big whopptie doo.)
You can sit on your high horse and claim that your idea's are perfect. But both options have good and bad sides. 'Bush's' invasion of Iraq is the lesser of two evil in my not so humble opinion.
And I have the balls to put my life on the line supporting it. AND your freedom to bitch while sleeping in a nice bed with hot showers every night. I will also support the freedom for other countries. I'm sorry your too short sighted to consider other people tho. I pity you.
Corporal Werner
USMC Iraq
p.s. Whoever modded this as informative needs to pull their head from their arse. again, in my not so humble opinion.
but I'll bet a honda civic costs more money to -develop- than a ferrari does...
the russians have fairly reliable rockets - but they do fail. the reason they've done so well with safety is that they have great backup systems.
the soyuz launch system has a mechanism that can eject the entire capsule if something goes wrong on launch. it's been used and it works.
I suspect reasonable reliabilty + good backup systems is the way to go. oh, and -no- parts from the junkyard....
What about a delorean ? :-D
That goes through both space AND time!
two features for the price of one
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
While privately built rockets (especially unmanned) are going to be much cheaper I dont see how the civic ferrari analogy holds.
A civic is more reliable precisely because of the number made. Sell a million or so cars a year and you have a vested interest in not having reliability problems, and a LARGE sample to draw from for possible improvements for next years car.
Ferrari meanwhile has a much smaller sample from which to identify problems. Looks like this CEO is good at shovelling shit just like the rest of them.
You say that like you don't realize that probably 50% of the people that read and post to Slashdot also served. But WTF do colored index fingers have to do with anything?
A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. But I would bet you 1,000-to-1 that if you bought a Honda Civic that that sucker will not break down in the first year of operation. You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets
Bad analogy.
A Dodge Neon is a cheap car too. It is doubtful that someone would claim that it is a very reliable car.
On the flip side, a Ferrari is usually a car that is driven very hard - a guy in town owns one, and he sure does like to drive it very very fast - like a sports car. I'm not sure if a Honda or Neon would have the same reliability if driven very very hard. CUstomer expectation and use makes a big difference in how one views reliability.
And finally - they make millions of Hondas. There is a lot of evolution going on to make it right. But no matter what - with a rocket, you're only going to build a few, not a few million - the evolution just isn't there. I bet they'll build more ferraris this month than he'll build rockets in a decade - and let me tell you, they don't build too many ferraris in a month!
Inexpensive does not equate to reliable. If that were true, cheap replacement distributors for your Civic would be a great deal. But they're very unreliable in my experience. What gives?
Watch F1 races. How many mecanical failures did the Honda team suffer last season. Countless. If memory serves, Ferrari suffered exactly one mechanical failure. For almost a decade now, Ferrari has had some of the most reliable F1 cars.
This brings a whole new meaning to the term "Rice Rocket". He does realize the flaw in his analogy right? You don't buy a Ferrari because it's reliable, you buy a Ferrari because you can hit 200 in it. If you try to bolt junkyard parts on a Honda in an attempt to go 200 in it, it will be far less reliable than the Ferrari.
11*43+456^2
we sell automobiles and emotions. A 1980 Honda civic will never get the status a mercedes benz (same age) has.
Allthough the rice cookies are reliable and cheap (in fact they are not cheap, compare a mercedes cdi engine with a rice cookie), there is a good reason there are still cars built for real men.
The point is that good rockets do not change that at all. And rice drivers allways fighting against this prejudice proves it right.
regards from germany (aka 'das Automobilland')
marco
I remembered watching this series back in the 70's: Salvage 1
meh
The reason falcons will be cheap is not because they use cheap components, but because they have a different approach than old defense contractors like boeing and lockheed.
In fact they use very high quality materials such as a titanium thrust frame in the first stage. But they can afford that because the first stage is reusable.
They also try to avoid any hazardous materials like explosive bolts and dangerous chemicals since that makes working with the rocket before launch much safer and thus cheaper. The falcon I is the first rocket that is allowed to fly without an explosive flight termination system because of redundant thrust termination systems. So there is no bomb on board.
Take a look at the falcon launch complex. It is basically just a simple concrete building and a flatbed truck. The satellite is integrated while the rocket is horizontal, so they do not need a huge building for satellite integration.
The launch control center is a truck trailer, so they only need one for all launch pads and do not have all that expensive computer hardware sitting around idle.
Now compare that with the launch complex for the boeing delta IV. There is a vertical integration building for fitting the payload, a huge umbilical tower and all kinds of facilities to handle the huge quantities of liquid hydrogen that the delta IV needs.
The only large rocket that has a comparably clean launch pad like the falcon is the russian/ukrainian Zenit (also used by Sea Launch), which is also the cheapest of its class.
The falcon I will also have a very benign launch environment for the payload. The amount of vibration is much lower than with other rockets since the falcon does not use solids. See the payload users guide for details.
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
women don't post on slashdot at 6:21AM on a Saturday
They've been trying to divorce themselves from DPRK Taepo No Dong boosters. Maybe they can buy a few rockets from SpaceX, modify them into IRBMs, plug a sub 1500Kg on top and become the first eBay nuclear power.
Seriously, getting into near orbit is one thing. Getting where you need to be is quite another.
Much of the technology used in the automotive industry comes straight from NASA. Space -> Civics, not Civics->Space. :p
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Lovely. Ferrari...Honda... I'd think I'd rather have the expensive launch vehicle to deliver payloads into orbit, not the "Rocket most stolen for parts". Then again... maybe I should look into setting up a rocket chop shop...
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
In SpaceX's case, the reusability aspect with ocean recovery of parts means a single rocket is not going to be cycled through the entire launch operation in a day even though it is theoretically possible to do so with an ocean launch system. However, with a small fleet of vehicles, it might be feasible to get the whole system cranking out a couple of launches a week.
That's when it starts to look like an aerospace "Honda" since you start applying Deming's statistical methods to the operation.
Seastead this.
...a FOAF built himself a Lamborghini Countach replica. It was cheaper (even factoring his own time at $80 an hour and swapping the kit from left-hand drive to run on Aussie roads), faster, more stable on the road, safer in an accident, could take a driver up to 15cm taller (an original Lambo maxes out at about 180cm) than the real thing and unlike said real thing you can't make a permanent dent in it with your thumb.
Some of the modern Honda street-legal factory-made sports-cars will also out-accelerate and out-handle most if not all Ferraris. And so will the Subarus. The epithet "rice-burner" isn't what it used to be.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ofcourse! A Ferrari is built to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the machinery, sacrificing silly stuff like economy, comfort and reliabiliy.
Very insightful: that's precisely why rocket ships are Ferraris, and will be for some time. Getting into space requires an immense amount of energy, and right now the best way to get that energy requires a whole bunch of heavy fuel which also has to be lifted.
The thing needs to run close to tolerance just to get off the ground. It's going to take a lot of work to change the balance.
Considering the reputedly elite pool of /. posters, it is embarrassing how many comments to a story like this are devoid of even a shred of logic or critical thinking. And I'm not even talking about the folks who have the impression the HONDA corporation is building rockets ... OMFG.
See you space cowboy
I don't care if it is a cut rate ship, as long as Microsoft isn't the operating system on board!
Take a look
Regards,
Roger Born
Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker
writing.borngraphics.com
"Sorry. No Refunds."
BUT... Hondas sure as hell aren't built from parts off ebay, milktruck tanks and bits from junkyards!
http://www.sandstorming.com
It was that show from the 70's, where they made a space ship in a junk yard and flew to the moon. Let me refresh your memory. Dang it was beautiful.
Well, as long as they really do use gaffer tape and not duct tape, I'm good with it. Gaffer tape has saved my sorry rear on many occasions, and not just for taping things. I have used it as clothes patches, props, ankle braces, hair ties, and rope among other things. It should definitely be taken on any trip to space. I personally believe it was Scotty's secret stash of gaffer tape that saved the Enterprise on so many occasions. Gaffer tape could hold the universe together!
Anyone have a favorite gaffer tape story?
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
It is indeed an ridiculous analogy.
The Yugo was a very cheap car, and its quality sucked.
Quality is engineered and manufactured in throughout the entire lifecycle of a product.
It seems no one is talking about experience curves here, and they are vital to the discussion.
An "experience curve" is a way of explaining that the price per unit for any device decreases with the sum of the production repititions.
This means that it's the area under the curve that matters, the total number of produced items. A Wikipedia article explains it here.
The multiplier for how much it decreases obviously varies with the device. Any number of examples abound. For one, Photovoltaic cells are decreasing in per-unit price in good accordance with the sum of the cells ever produced. The idea of the government purchasing or subsidizing the purchase of items (examples: ethanol, PV-cells) fits in nicely to this function.
Rockets have not followed the curve because artificial limits (trade secrets, military secrecy, launch licenses, technology transfer) and purchasing uncertainties (NASA defending their turf) has clamped down on information transfer. If info flows freely, everyone benefits from cheaper devices.
This may not be what we want. Rocket tech = missle tech = N. Korea lobbing a nuke at us = maybe we'd better not publish the cheap rocket designs in Popular Science today, eh? (fearmongering).
Check out the wikipedia article link above, you'll see it directly applies to this situation.
--Kevin
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
honda makes airplanes now too, business jets, and has plans for a very cheap (compared to the competition) personal jet. link
I would say one day we'll see a variety of privately manufactured space travelling vehicles,at least intra solar system/near space variety, and probably sooner than most folks think, if they can keep production of fuels up at a reasonable cost over the next several decades, along with just general manufacturing, seeing as how that is so closely tied to oil as well. That is going to be the largest technological challenge that we all face really, peak oil and what to do about it. Well, that's my opinion, put it that way. I think that there already exists enough tech right now to make a Model A generic rocket good enough for some limited space travel, just not a lot of call for it, but it's getting closer. You get dudes like branson combined with rutan and mass production and Q and A out of asia and combine all that sort of interest and you'll see private space travel, at least to limited short term orbital flights, probably within a couple of decades, maybe even sooner. That nut has been cracked, just needs oil to stabilise and more research on alternative fuels and on replacing oil "stuff" here on the ground with other forms of alternative enerrgy so that oil can be used for the more energy dense and expensive applications such as "flight" in general speaking terms.
BAD reporter - she completely forgot to mention where to send my resume...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
you know anyone who believes like you should not be allowed to carry a weapon. You are the sadistic assholes. And the U.S. is now responsible for the torturing and rape of 1000's of innocents. And because of this "election" we are training an Iraqi army that will probably come under the control of Iran.
/signed
There are of course limits to any analogy.
He does make good point in that there are often solutions to engineering problems that come from completely different fields. Those solutions may be already mass produced, which gives added layer of security to design.
In other words, rocket science doesn't always have to be rocket science.
As old mac users say "think different"
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
It's even outlived its successor, the MX "Peacekeeper" from the Reagan era. MX has been retired, but the Minuteman III lives on. They're "remanufactured" every few decades, on a slow upgrade cycle. The basic vehicle lives on.
So the "cheap booster" is quite feasible, if you order a thousand at a time.
If i'm not mistaken - Elon Musk owns a Maclaren F1 - a cool US$1m and it does 240mph. I wonder how reliable IT is?
If anyone remembers Salvage 1... sounds like pretty much the same idea to me.
Perfectly Normal Industries
The unkillable car. Drive it without oil? So what, just hocks up a loogie and keeps on going. Radiator frozen soild? So what. Engine just coughs a couple of times and then purrs.
I knew a lot of high school kids who tried everything they knew to kill the Dodge Dart w/ slant 6s their parents had handed down to them to get a "cooler" car. Nothing worked. The cars would not die. Like "Jaws" in Bond movies.
god created shit....honda made it move
ripped from bash.org
I tried submitting a story on SpaceX a couple of weeks ago, but it was sadly rejected. Here's the text of the submission, along with some other interesting info:
Spaceflight Now has an article on SpaceX, a low-cost space launch company started by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk (he is no longer with PayPal). The article describes SpaceX's small-size Falcon I rocket, scheduled to launch a military imaging satellite on its maiden flight in March, and their medium-size Falcon V rocket, scheduled to lift a prototype Bigelow inflatable space habitat next year. Interestingly, the Falcon V has enough capacity to lift a Gemini-style capsule with 5-6 people to orbit. Both rockets have per-pound launch costs approximately one-fifth that of comparable rockets. Long-term plans call for evolving the basic design to heavy-lift and super-heavy lift rockets, assuming SpaceX survives its legal battles with defense giants like Northrup Grumman. Musk believes that ultimately a launch cost of '$500 per pound or less is very achievable' (compared to $10,000 per pound for the Space Shuttle). Elon Musk is a member of the Mars Society, and started SpaceX after he realized that current launch costs would be a large barrier to his plans for a philanthropic mission to put an experimental greenhouse with food crops on Mars.
This radio interview with Elon Musk from 2001 is pretty neat, and has some information I haven't seen elsewhere.
Can you rely on a Civic to go 200mph?
NASA spacecraft intended to carry humans are much analogous to a Rolls Royce, with every part is made to exacting quasi-military specifications and assembled by hand.
My rights don't need management.
CEO Elon Musk remarks 'A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. I like how that's stated like it's a known fact. I'm curious how many Ferraris Elon Musk has owned to come to that opinion.
As one who served in the military myself (long ago) I encourage expression of all opinions. Please don't stifle the very freedoms we have defended.
Not just motorcycles - how many men, women, and children died while crossing the continent in conestoga wagons in the mid-1800s?
Sumpin tells me this guys doesn't get many chicks - hot or otherwise.
"It's a little too small to get laid in, but you get laid the minute you get out!"
(Yeah, I know, it was referring to Porsche. But it's the same principle.)
For a moment there, I thought ASIMO was going into space. I was thinking how cool that would be to read about. You can imagine my disappointment.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Interesting how the people who are loudest about defending our liberty are also the loudest to condemn those who use freedom of speech to express their opinions.
As one who served in the military myself (long ago) I encourage expression of all opinions. Please don't stifle the very freedoms we have defended.
I find it interesting that you are doing the very thing you are posting against--it's wrong for the parent to tell the grandparent he's FOS because that would be "stifling" his freedom of speech, but it's perfectly acceptable for you to condem that response. Freedom of speech is not freedom to be beyond rebuttal.
And I say this as someone who largely disagrees with the parent poster.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Honda does a lot of "off the wall" projects that (like Asimo, racing engines) some of which turn into real businesses (their lawnmower engines led to motorbikes which lead to their auto business). Why aren't they in this business?
...an F40 does get to 100MPH in 8s (3x faster than a Delorean) vs 11s for a WRX Sti (the US version of the Sti is 1.5s slower than that again), but it's still the same speed as an F355 or a Lotus Esprit Turbo, faster than any Mazzer and a lot of other Ferraris, and only marginally slower than a Z8. The NSX is only a second slower.
Just looking down the table, whatever you Yanks do to cars when you import them seems to cost about 20% of their performance.
One thing the Subarus do a lot worse than Ferraris is stop, despite Enzo's statement about his cars being made only to go. An awful lot of them - in the hands of amateurs - wind up hugging trees despite the number of rally wins they notch up.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...beating a WRX through a dirt or sand slalom. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Let's remember that the Shuttles undergo heavy maintenance and system check before, after, and during flight. If you did that much work on a Honda, there wouldn't be a problem. Then again, look at the Millenium Falcon.
I have a few issues with this argument:
You misspelled both regime and whooptie.
You misused an apostrophe in "Iraqui's" as well as "American's" (or did you intend that to be posessive?)
Your use of "Evil" in the high horse phrase should be plural. It should also be "you're too short sighted" (Apostrophe usage again)
Probably why you are a corporal...
I digress...
When I was in Al-Kharj S.A. (Desert Storm 1997) our tents were quite nice. Cable TV. Air Conditioning. And the Shower water was in big bags that sat out in the sun all day. If you didn't get a warm shower for the day, it was due to piss-poor time management.
I however am a "Nuke 'em till they glow" kinda guy. I am even wearing my Duke Nukem 3D t-shirt COME GET SOME.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
In nearly fifty years, they've reached a fair level of reliability.
When I first read this, what came to mind was an old 1970's made for TV movie about a junkyard owner who goes to the moon to salvage the stuff left behind. The rocket was made out of junkyard parts (I think the command capsule was a cement mixer bucket).9 782/salmoon.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/
http://www.cylon.org/tv/Salvage/s1-02.html