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From PayPal to Planetary Travel
furnk writes "PayPal founder Elon Musk muses about his plans to send rockets to space and his eventual hopes for making life 'multi-planetary.' 'I said I wanted to take a large fortune and make it a small one, so I started a rocket business,' Musk said. SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts."
I can't wait to start getting helpful unsolicited emails informing me that someone's attempted to use my SpaceX account that I don't even have to purchase tickets to Mars.
Damn phishers.
The former CEO of paypal just dropped a $100k matching challenge to the singularity challenge. Transcend humanity first, then the stars are nothing in comparison. Why terraform for oxygen when you can run on antimatter?
Last I checked (astronautix.com, spacex.com), you will still get more kg in orbit per dollar spent with RKK Energia than SpaceX.
Is PayPal still evil? Was the ripping off of small-time eBayers part of the great good of getting Mankind into space?
Thanks to Peter Thiel (former CEO) for supporting the singularity challenge. Check singinst.org.
What is it with them ? Like the Amazon owner who wants to get into rockets, now this guy and don't forget Richard British guy who tries to break every meaningless record.
News. We have rockets already.
Try and beat Pegasus for cost/lb.
Don't forget John Carmack, the creator of Doom. He's now applying his creativity and physics knowledge to his Armadillo Aerospace project.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
"I said I wanted to take a large fortune and make it a small one, so I started a rocket business"
Mr. Musk, I believe that innovations are made by man trying to find an easier way to do something (A.K.A. the desire to be lazy). The rocket business sounds like a lot of work, so why don't you and I innovate, and we'll buy me a new house to help you achieve your goal of having a smaller fortune. I don't mind, really. I will do anything to help.
Check out my site: IM User Directory
Personally I think the company that will make the most headway and profit in space is the one which devises a way to get us there for much less per kg. Even the lightest space station weighs in the tons and at $20k/kg it's quite difficult to make a profit. There was a German company a while back that had some great ideas (http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/otrag.htm) but we need to make serious inroads here before space will *really* become profitable.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
He'd get in trouble if he tried to send his rockets someplace on Earth.
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
Falcon 1 trashes Pegasus in price per pound. Check it out on astronautix.
Assuming Musk's numbers are legit, he's trashed the light payload launch market's numbers already, and is prepping to trash the medium and heavy payload market's numbers in the same way. If this is the case, we're talking about the first major rocketry cost reductions since the 1960s.
Of course, that's a very big "If". Lets hope he actually pulls it off; this is a project that space enthusiasts really should really be cheering, not a little unscalable rocketplane that takes millionaires on "zero g for a few minutes" joyrides that don't approach any of the real challenges involved in reaching orbit.
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
Charles Hill, professor of aerospace and ocean engineering, said the university had a $1 million spacecraft that was mothballed after the Columbia explosion.
Whatever happened to the good ol' days where astronauts had balls and the administrators let them prove it? Spaceflight is a little dangerous, sure; but I'd volunteer if I was given a 50/50 chance of returning alive. I'm sure many other people would too.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Since there's already been a few of the inevitable complaints/jokes about PayPal, let me be the first to remind people that Elon Musk sold PayPal to eBay several years ago, and no longer has any sort of affiliation with the company.
In a couple years, he may even have finally settled on a propellant choice! Who knows, it may even have an ISP greater than 200! ;)
Don't get me wrong. I like Carmack. I even idolized him a bit when I was younger. But Armadillo Aerospace is just amusing. It's hard to take seriously even as a "space" tourism concept, let alone a concept that could come close to bordering on nearing the possibility of theoretically, even with a few deus ex machinas thrown in for good measure, reaching orbit.
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
Perhaps he should invest in some cosmic shielding research. I was just reading an article eariler today in the current issue of Scientific American that you could end up reaching Mars with severe DNA and brain damage. The obstacles do not lie in the innovation of rockets, but in protecting the traveler.
Sig free's the way to be.
I can't help thinking about all the explorers who set out from a tired conservative European world to find the 'new world'; multi-year trips, many lost ships, false starts, disasters and discoveries. In some ways we now live in a very conservative risk averse world that likes to try and keep the status quo rather than push the boundaries and explore new hosizons.
How long will it be and how many 'lost ships' will we see before we get another Christopher Columus, Marco Polo or James Cook?
the comapny which figures out how to build in space. why transport a space station in pieces using boosters which you're going to toss back in to the gravity well. Instead, weld the ends shut on the boosters, throw in some control and life support equipment, and you've got a low cost space station in orbit.
I'm a big fan of Elon Musk, who started SpaceX with the money he got from selling PayPal to eBay. He's a pretty good example of someone who grew up with dreams about space who's trying to make those dreams a reality. I think his efforts with towards dramatically decreasing the cost of space launch are quite important, and crucial for his (and my) long-term goal of making humanity a multi-planet species.
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A number of people have been complaining about Musk and his three launch scrubs in the past few months, where the countdown was terminated for various reasons before the rocket left the ground. It should be noted though that these sorts of delays are pretty much the norm for the launch business. For example, there were eleven separate attempts to launch the ARGOS satellite on a Boeing Delta II rocket.
This set of notes by Michael Belfiore from their pre-launch press conference for their launch attempt late last year is a pretty interesting read and gives great insight into what Musk wants to do with SpaceX. Some excerpts:
SpaceX's second Gen rocket engine will be the biggest rocket engine in the world, though not the biggest in history. The F1 engine that sent people to the moon is no longer in production, so Musk doesn't count that.
Q: What customers will you put on Falcon 9?
A: We haven't thought a lot about it because it's speculative, but big customers would be NASA, Bigelow Aerospace, which is launching its first subscale space station module next year, and potentially people who just want to go to orbit and just spend some time on orbit. Also we could do a loop around the moon, which actually wouldn't require a huge rocket. [Space Adventures recently cut a deal with the Russian Space Agency to do just that, so that may be what inspired Musk to say that.]
Q: When will you go to space?
A: I'm not doing this to go into space myself, per se. I want to help build a space faring civilization. It would have been very easy for me to pay to go to the International Space Station myself. I want to help other people get to space.
Musk: The expansion of life on earth to other places is arguably the most important thing to happen to life on earth, if it happens. Life has the duty to expand. And we're the representatives of life with the ability to do so.
Q: When will you fly cargo missions to the space station?
A: I hope in the next 3 to 4 years.
Another question from me: Are you developing a manned vehicle right now, or have you thought that far ahead yet?
A: I can't comment on that right now.
Q: What's next in the entreprenurial space field?
A: Lots of people doing things--Paul Allen [who funded SpaceShipOne], Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, John Carmack with Armadillo Aerospace...Musk thinks we're heading toward a Netscape moment, when someone turns a profit, and hopefully it'll be SpaceX, and then investment capital will start to flow in.
...someone to man that station.
Go Russian and you're looking at $2.38k/kg for a Soyuz or Proton. Perhaps even less for a Volna. That launch rates are way down (2004 was the lowest year since 1961) is rather troubling, though.
Are the numerous launch announcements followed shortly by the "why it didn't launch this time" emails shortly thereafter :)
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Wasn't it co-space-pioneer Richard Branson (Virgin Atlantic Airways) who said: "If you want to become a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline..."
Not very original a quote from Musk, then.
Branson is targeting 2008..With all these guys rushing out to space, may be we can see a 'traffic jam' in space soon. Well, I guess everyone is thinking of the unclaimed 'real estate' out there.
Elon Musk is an idiot. Read below to find out why.
PayPal was founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. Elon Musk's competitor, X.com, merged with PayPal in 2000. Elon Musk became PayPal's CEO and Peter Thiel stepped down. Elon then ordered the PayPal system to be rewritten for Windows (it previously ran on Linux). This rewrite was strongly disliked by engineering, but Elon Musk persisted. The Windows rewrite was completed after six months of hard work, but was deemed too unstable to use. Elon Musk was fired by the board of directors of PayPal in late 2000 through a vote of no confidence. He would have destroyed PayPal.
Peter Thiel stepped up to become CEO, again, and made PayPal into a gigantic success.
SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts."
Unfortunately, it looks like the suit against the merger of Boeing & Lockheed's launch operations (effectively creating a launch monopoly) has been dismissed. Some comments from RLV News (a fantastic space news resource, btw):
A judge has dismissed the lawsuit by SpaceX against the Boeing / Lockheed plan to form the United Launch Alliance to provide most all of the large payload launches for the Air Force for the next several years: SpaceX vs. Boeing and Lockheed Lawsuit Dismissed - NasaSpaceFlight.com - Feb.17.06.
From the description of the decision, it sounds like a Catch-22 situation. The judge is saying that you can't sue to stop the formation of a monopoly until you have built your system and proved that it is capable of competing against the monopoly. However, in a monopoly situation, especially in such a capital intensive area as rockets, it can be extremely difficult to raise the money to build your system if potential investors see that you will be kept out of a primary market. Talk about a barrier to entry!
In this case, Elon Musk has said he will build the Falcon 9 regardless, but it's a shame he has to enter a playing field tilted against him from the start.
An additional comment from the Space Law Probe: The court did not address the merits of SpaceX claims. (Nor, by the way, did the judge make note of whether a successful Falcon launch might have made a difference in the analysis or ruling, as some will no doubt wonder.)
Why would anyone become "multi-planetary" when there's no reason to do so? Other planets are harsh, inhospitable places. What's the incentive to spend the billions upon billions of dollars it'd take to develop the technology for a colony? "Coolness?" Not to mention the unknown health costs of living in a lower gravity for years.
It's all about economics, and if the economics aren't their the lowest launch costs imaginable aren't going to matter. The closest economic benefit we've got is mining Helium-3 from the moon, and even that's a pipe dream. I'm sure there will be a manned mission to Mars someday, but that's not anything like being "multi-planetary"
AccountKiller
Yeah, it's a rocket club posing as a company for liability and tax purposes :) But they're having fun and that's all that matters.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...if he can't even manage to tell a joke. Here's how it goes:
Q: How do you make a small fortune?
A: Start with a large fortune, and join the rocket business.
He would have destroyed PayPal.
I'm not sure he could have destroyed a company that was and continues to be a nightmare for its customers.
Clearly you have some inside knowledge, so why don't you tell us about PayPal's unconscionable (Judge Fogel's word, not mine) operations in regards to its customers...
Although your post is flamebait, I somewhat agree. I am sick of hearing about guys like Musk and Levchin who became rich by creating a company that treated customers HORRIBLY and had questionable financial and legal activities, some of which PayPal was fined millions for and some which are still being examined.
But none of that seems to matter, now that they're rich and making big toys? I disagree.
I'm a big fan of Musk, too, and of private space enterprise in general.
My biggest problem with Musk is the lack of information at his website. If you want to generate a political movement (and that's what he's trying to do -- vying for Air Force contracts is the very definition of politics) you need to have much better publicity.
And his website sucks. While it's kind of pretty, there's almost no content. The news, in particular, is weak --three sentences and movie that won't play on Linux about the most recent static firing.
He has no excuse. He built PayPal! He knows the 'net! He has seen the kind of virtuous circle that can be built up through good communication. I cannot for the life of me understand why SpaceX fails so spectacularly in the communication mission.
And don't say that they are trying to keep their proprietary details secret -- if he's really interested in promoting inexpensive space travel, he'd *want* those secrets out there!
I contrast this with Carmack's spectacular Armadillo Aerospace site. All of his successes, failures, dead ends, oopses -- all presented in more detail than any sane person could ever want. With Carmack, you really feel like you can understand the process as much as you can without picking up a welding torch.
Anyway, I really can't complain. I'm sitting around making movies instead of spaceships -- please treat this rant as constructive criticism.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Musk is funding sending rockets into space. Peter Thiel is funding self-improving Artificial Intelligence whose technological innovations will make rockets, as well as the rest of vanilla-human technology, obsolete. Which is more visionary?
So are you going to go to space for sheer "coolness"? Sure, we might. Why do you think fashion and beauty are so important in human societies? Besides, I'm sure other planets and the far reaches of space offers things that we can't even imagine right now. Additionally, our adventures into space have given birth to several things we use daily: digital-signal processing, cordless power-tools, cool suits, video stabilization, etc. Imagine all the cool stuff we'll get from the side effect of going to Mars; cool stuff that'll benefit humanity.
Boycott Sony
I've paid attention to Carmack's Armadillo site for years, and it's very entertaining stuff. But to characterise Armadillo Aerospace as a business seems to be a bit of a mischaracterisation; it seems more like a hobby to keep Carmack and his buddies amused on their days off rather than a serious business at this stage. If it was, he'd make progress a lot faster (because he wouldn't have to wait to the weekend to test, for instance). They have built some very cool stuff, and it's great that they're prepared to share it with the rest of us. But they don't seem to be in it to make money any time soon.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
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Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...antimatter gives me the runs something terrible.
While I appreciate their audacity, I don't think they have a serious appreciation of just how complex, heavily multiplexed and interdependent our brains and supporting systems are.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...in order to be able to take some payload, but your basic point remains sound. Shuttles are effing expensive beasts to run. Far better to use something much simpler, more robust and reliable which more importantly was designed to do exact what you want to achieve.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...and they're starting to run out of buyers, partly as a result of that and other persistent, nagging, low-level greediness and control-freakism.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hello,
I have been told that you are selling rockets into the outer spaces. Unfortunatly, I live in Krezblekistan, and I cannot pay in a conventional way. I will pay you triple asking your price via Western Union if you would have kind enough for sending it here. Reply soon!
Thank You,
phishingfranc07
I said I wanted to take a large fortune and make it a small one, so I started a rocket business,'
I know of a much much faster way to turn a large fortune into a small one. Get married and have kids!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
..a hacker uses fake info to pay for a trip and only gets caught after take-off?
You have 2 basic options:
a)Send him down alone in an economy class module that doesn't have parachutes.
b)Call it quits and ruin the flight for everybody.
I think I'll just settle for a spot on the beach.
Any word on when they're going to try again at launching the Falcon 1? At the company website, Musk writes on Feb. 10 that he'll post a long update "next week" regarding the static fire test and a new launch date. It's been two weeks now, and still no post....
There never was a rocket, no you can't have "your" rocket back because there is no rocket.
Musk's PayPal ripped me off for thousands of dollars. There are several class action lawsuits pending against PayPal, several of which reflect the same scam they pulled on me, siphoning millions of dollars in interest on unfairly "frozen" accounts. His rockets will probably explode in space, out of reach of national liability laws.
--
make install -not war
interesting - didn't know this. Have you got a reference / URL to the story?
Why would anyone become "multi-continental" when there's no reason to do so? Other continents are harsh, inhospitable places. What's the incentive to spend the huge quantity of gold it'd take to develop the technology for a colony? "Coolness?" Not to mention the unknown health costs of living in on the other side of the Atlantic for years.
It's all about economics, and if the economics aren't their the lowest launch costs imaginable aren't going to matter. The closest economic benefit we've got is a short cut to Asia, and even that's a pipe dream. I'm sure there will be a manned mission to Asia via the Atlantic someday, but that's not anything like being "multi-continental"
Enter Columbus, and the multiplying of Europe's economy (and that of the rest of the world) to a level never seen before, that has continued to grow for 5 centuries.
Still think you're so wise to turn your back on any vision bigger than your pocketbook?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
When they got confiscated. Seriously. Someone once paid me for a coding gig through paypal, who seized the money as they deemed it "suspicious".
I completely agree with Musk. Keep it Simple is a great motto!
Try taking a look at Terry Pratchett's Strata.
There one of the basic ideas was:
1. There are/have been lots of civilisations out there.
2. Sooner or later every civilisation hits a Big Problem(tm), possibly a terminally problem.
3. If we try to differentiate maybe some part will survive.
Sure, there's still a lot of work to do, possibly there are other problems which should be solved before, maybe this is not yet the right moment... maybe, maybe not.