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An Inside Look At the SpaceX Rocket Factory
Dave Bullock writes "The folks at SpaceX are working hard in their Hawthorne labs, cubicles and factory, building rockets that will hopefully bring future astronauts to the International Space Station. At the behest of Wired, I toured the former 747 factory which is now a rocket assembly line. 'Eschewing the traditional startup trappings of two college grads eating ramen, watching Adult Swim and coding until the wee hours of the night, SpaceX instead employs hundreds of brainiacs and builds its rockets in a massive hangar that once housed a 747 assembly line. Started in 2002 by PayPal founder Elon Musk, SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) brings a startup mentality to launching rockets into orbit, which until recently was almost exclusively government turf. The hope is that minimal bureaucracy, innovation and in-house manufacturing and testing can be used to put payloads into space at roughly one-tenth the cost of traditional methods.'"
I'm all for minimal bureaucracy and maybe minimal in-house manufacturing would be good but is it a smart idea to have minimal innovation and testing?
increase productivity. Everyone knows ramen is brain food and people code better when sleep deprived.
Little bit concerned about the launch technology
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
"Eschewing the traditional startup trappings of two college grads eating ramen, watching Adult Swim and coding until the wee hours of the night"
What a surprise. A company that isn't an IT company doesn't behave like an IT company.
Get your head out of your ass Wired, that's only 'traditional' for companies whose products rely on code. Caterers don't code all night. Cabinetmakers don't code all night. Organic farmers don't code all night. Graphic artists don't code all night. And that's only a handful of the startups by friends and family over the years - not one of which involved coding all night. Only two of them are college grads too... The caterer graduated from culinary school and the organic farmer just got her doctorate - in history. And not one of them was under thirty.
There's a hell of a lot more to the business world than IT. There's a hell of a lot more people in the business world than college graduates.
Making a design that lasts is a challenge; a "working" design is easy.
Are they making this a design that lasts? (like it was massively over-engineered). Are they making this a design that is safe? (as in not blowing up or falling apart). And are they making this a design that is easier to build and maintain? (think old VW or Chevy).
Or are they making this cheap? (as in quality), or "good enough" (as in design)? Are they testing every aspect? (stress tests in newer alloys, or even the little things like o-rings)
Sure, doing this on a tight budget is important, but... I'd take my chances with the 42-year-old Soyuz design before overcoming my skepticism. And Soyuz is still operational!
Here's to hoping they know what they're building, instead of making the next high-maintenance toy. I'd rather them take the time to do it right, instead of rushing to mediocrity.
There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
I still am amazed that anyone else is shocked that a private company can do something for cheaper than the gov't. In the company there is one boss and he sets the vision of the company. Unfortunately for gov't work, there are 536 bosses and all of them have the ability to over rule the other. This is why most gov't projects cost more than the original contract. In the case of this company their goal is a rocket and currently no one is interfering with that goal. Wait until NASA finally orders their first rocket from them, and all of a sudden NASA wants Y spec instead of X spec, we will then see the cost go up.
insert inflammatory comment here!
increase productivity. Everyone knows ramen is brain food and people code better when sleep deprived.
Definitely. I'm sleep deprived and I can say that my code is excellent. When I can get it to compile. And after that, when I'm looking for bugs and stupid programming mistakes, like failing to initialize pointers prior to use or checking for buffer overflows, but hey, I like working for Microsoft's quality assurance department.
My blog
Some parts of the 747 may have been produced in Hawthorne, but the 747 is (and always has been) assembled in a Everett, WA. The article mentions the Hawthorne facility having a "massive hangar". The real thing is gigantic (eg: 90' ceiling).
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/facilities/
Who does the writer think make the current crop of rockets - some bureaucrats in DC?
Space X is just another space vehicle manufacturer, same as Boeing and others.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
in rocket science so the idea of trying to sort out what is wrong and not going home is appropriate.
Now I wouldn't launch on some caffeine high no sleep coder or engineer.. but I can see pressure situations where I might have to one day... (like its up there but its broke now)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Reducing the costs of space launches is great, now how about a plan for dealing with space junk?
I'm glad to hear that SpaceX plans to provide transfer services to NASA between the time the Space Shuttle is retired and Ares becomes active. I believe the plan was to rely on the Russians or other country's space programs to provide us with transfers, something I don't feel terribly confident in. It's never wise to put yourself in a position like that where another country can deny delivering food or medicines if they decide they don't like your recent politics. At the very least, SpaceX gives NASA an alternative to consider.
The collapse of investment capital together with the prior overseas outsourcing and prior enslavement of many parts of the world for cheap labor, and low taxes (all of this after thousands of years of mediocrity), combined with comprehensive corruption in almost every tech sector means that whatever they do accomplish (not much in real terms) would never be as good as it could have been and should be. A few corporate thieves will launch into orbit for celebrity "fix the hubble again Tony". Nothing to see here.
We tried to do it the IT way at first, but you should have seen the fit the HOA threw after the first stage ignition test. I don't see what the problem was, the neighbors have barbecues over at their place all the time. And don't get me started on all the whining over a little bit of harmless pressurized hydrazine in the garage. I mean we only leaked a few liters of the stuff.