oldtimer Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 44 minutes ago, CECAA850 said: Set a date yet? Still working on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 34 minutes ago, oldtimer said: Still working on it. Don't work too hard. We can wait. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted October 31, 2017 Moderators Share Posted October 31, 2017 19 hours ago, Mallette said: REALLY take exception to that, but if you can give me some reason to accept it I am open. A business genius would not be in the business of expending 100% of his energies on a trip to Mars. Certainly no historical precedent for that. Further, he is personally credited with the SpaceX engine design concepts whether he personally built them or not. About the only thing in common with NASA's average 40 year old designs is a reliance on Newton's Laws. If you've paid attention to my posts, I have not derided the great accomplishments of NASA...but I have pointed out they took many times the money and many times the time of what Musk...and others...are doing. As to bullshit on both sides, no problem if that is your opinion but it would be more courteous to specify just what you are flashing the BS button about as PWK did. I've been here way too long to take offense at such comments, but IF I invoke one I have a record of addressing the issue directly. Dave 1 I will try to give you some reason. First, my information about who does what at SpaceX has mostly come from reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by by Ashlee Vance, an Esquire article from about five years ago (I will see if I can find it) and, my faithful weekly cover-to-cover read of Aviation Week and Space Technology (subscriber since 1976). First, there is no question that Musk is a renaissance man in the quattrocento sense of the word. He can look at a major undertaking, like a new car company, or getting into the business of being a private contractor for space launches, with private rockets, and determine whether there are opportunities for profitability. Those are major achievements in and of themselves. Put another way, Mueller would never have had the opportunity to do what he is doing if it were not for someone like Elon Musk. My point is that he is not a rocket scientist, nor does he claim to be. He found his steely-eyed missile man, Mueller. You know the story of how this thing got started. In about 2000 Elon had an idea of sending a mouse or a plant to Mars. That's it. He gets the aerospace consultant Jim Cantrell who worked on mars mission-related projects his entire career before going into consulting. Cantrell puts Musk in touch with Arianspace to purchase engines, and they want too much. They think they can get a great deal on Russian rockets and he makes a couple of trips to Russia to buy their engines (ICBMs actually),. Russia screws him around and on the flight back he says they can build their own engines. Musk finds Mueller who he credits for giving him the background information on how to reduce launch costs by a factor of 5, and eventually 10. He then decides to get into the space launch business, Mueller is credited by Musk and SpaceX as a "Co-founder" of the company. As for who is doing what and how, the book and magazine article are pretty clear that Elon has in his mind how to do it all faster and cheaper, and is thinking about two or three projects ahead while people like Mueller are executing on the first project. Some other things to consider. All of the SpaceX patents are related to propulsion. They are all in Mueller's name. Elon Musk has patents, none are related to aerospace, most are related to Tesla such as the car emblem and the charging connector. When you look at the official SpaceX Youtube channel, the discussion on propulsion (video below) the presentation is by Mueller, who starts video by saying he is the "Co-founder and VP of Propulsion for SpaceX" and proceeds to take you on a pretty cool tour of the McGregor, TX test facility. There is too much bullshit, not so much from you, from others to go through it all regarding the history of NASA's manned Mars mission planning, how they are funded, how they execute projects, etc. to try and answer it all. I will post some resources for people to read if they really want to understand it, but Dave, you and I know there is a lot of crap in this thread about NASA that doesn't bear any relationship to reality as the way things really were between 1960 and 2000 in connection with NASA's efforts to try and get funding for a manned mission to Mars. Enjoy this video, if you like this I will post the transcript of Mueller speaking to an astronomy club on propulsion, working for Elon, etc. from this year that is quite fascinating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 2 minutes ago, dwilawyer said: Some other things to consider. All of the SpaceX patents are related to propulsion. They are all in Mueller's name. Elon Musk has patents, none are related to areospace, most are related to Tesla such as the car emblem and the charging connector. Thank you for the explanation. Don't have time for the video now but interested. As to patents, if Mueller is an employee would then not belong to SpaceX as "works for hire?" That was the law when I worked for corporations. In any event, Musk is the conceptual force behind everything in the SpaceX designs from what I've understood but stands to reason he'd not draw up the designs and realize an engine personally. You need a Mueller for that. But I need to do some more research. 7 minutes ago, dwilawyer said: In about 2000 Elon had an idea of sending a mouse or a plant to Mars. I've always heard from a variety of sources that he's been planning to visit Mars since he was a teenager. However, I can offer no proof of that as it's come from so many sources I just accepted it. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted October 31, 2017 Moderators Share Posted October 31, 2017 19 hours ago, Mallette said: Didn't quote your entire post in the interest of brevity as you make some good points and I really prefer to avoid point by point except in extreme debate conditions. But even if NASA had the 100% percent public and government support it could never reach its goals as fast as Musk. I'll answer only one of your questions, that of the peak cost to the taxpayer...4% at maximum for which the ROI was in the most conservative and skeptical estimates, 5 to 1. Dave As far as the timing, you are wrong. NASA would have had men on Mars in the mid-80s, at the very latest, if they had gotten the funding they asked for year after year. If you want the source for that I would be happy to post that when I get back home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted October 31, 2017 Moderators Share Posted October 31, 2017 Just now, Mallette said: Thank you for the explanation. Don't have time for the video now but interested. As to patents, if Mueller is an employee would then not belong to SpaceX as "works for hire?" That was the law when I worked for corporations. In any event, Musk is the conceptual force behind everything in the SpaceX designs from what I've understood but stands to reason he'd not draw up the designs and realize an engine personally. You need a Mueller for that. But I need to do some more research. I've always heard from a variety of sources that he's been planning to visit Mars since he was a teenager. However, I can offer no proof of that as it's come from so many sources I just accepted it. Dave They do belong to SpaceX, SpaceX is the assignee, just as Roy Delgado is on his patents and they are all assigned to KGI. Musk's Tesla patents are in his name, with Tesla as assignee. His mother says he has always wanted to go to Mars. Like most geniuses ( I suspect) he thought it might be best to send a mouse first. Travis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted October 31, 2017 Moderators Share Posted October 31, 2017 Just now, dwilawyer said: Musk is the conceptual force behind everything in the SpaceX designs I think his conceptual thinking in terms of engines was that they needed them. After he spoke to Mueller he realized he could build them cheaper and he could make money as a launch company. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 3 minutes ago, dwilawyer said: NASA would have had men on Mars in the mid-80s, at the very latest, if they had gotten the funding they asked for year after year. Fully agree and remember. I lost a bet of a bottle of whiskey at the time of the first moon landing that we'd be on Mars by 1980 and have a very large lunar colony by then. And, I think that while costs and timelines are higher with government bureaucracy and contractors stretching for all the money they can get, NASA proved it could move on the Apollo project when properly motivated and supported. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 4 minutes ago, dwilawyer said: They do belong to SpaceX, SpaceX is the assignee, just as Roy Delgado is on his patents and they are all assigned to KGI. Good to verify. But, without PWK there would almost certainly be no Roy patents as the concepts were all based on what he learned from his mentor. I suspect a similar relationship between Mueller and Musk. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted November 1, 2017 Moderators Share Posted November 1, 2017 Doorbell has rung 23 times tonight, I swear it is same 5 groups of 4. I found the Esquire article. https://www.google.com/amp/www.esquire.com/news-politics/amp16681/elon-musk-interview-1212/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted November 1, 2017 Author Share Posted November 1, 2017 16 hours ago, dwilawyer said: I found the Esquire article. OUTSTANDING...what a great article! I recommend it as Elon 101 for all. It's clear the writer isn't quite the fan I am, but that is fine, even a good trait in a journalist. This, at least for me, supports my "Elon conceptualizes, and someone else realizes..." statement that everything at SpaceX was his concept right down to the engines: "He showed Cantrell the spreadsheet he'd been working on. "I looked at it and said, I'll be damned — that's why he's been borrowing all my books. He'd been borrowing all my college textbooks on rocketry and propulsion. You know, whenever anybody asks Elon how he learned to build rockets, he says, 'I read books.' Well, it's true. He devoured those books. He knew everything. He's the smartest guy I've ever met, and he'd been planning to build a rocket all along." He'd even contacted someone who could build it for him — at least the engine. On a dry lake bed at the outer edge of the Mojave Desert, a propulsion engineer named Tom Mueller was doing what he calls "amateur rocketry" with a group of enthusiasts who called themselves the Reaction Research Society. Except that Mueller wasn't an amateur; he worked for an aerospace company that was about to become part of Northrop Grumman, and he went out to the desert to "do the crazy stuff I wasn't allowed to do at work." He'd built a rocket engine in his garage, and one day he got a call from an associate who said that "an Internet millionaire" named Elon Musk wanted to see it. Musk wound up visiting him at a warehouse where he was assembling his engine, and seeing it was, in Cantrell's words, "apparently a religious experience for Elon." "He was very focused," Mueller says. "He asked if I could build it, and I said, 'Yes, if I had the right people.' Then he said, 'How much will it cost?'" There is also support for my "1/10th the cost and 10 times as fast..." statements as well as a great story about a NASA contractor wanting 500,000 for a valve, being what they'd charge NASA, and Elon just had it built on site. Thanks, Travis! Will get to the video as soon as I have the time. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/space-travel-leads-to-neurological-disorders/ar-AAukBdU?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted November 22, 2017 Author Share Posted November 22, 2017 Now comes Mr. Musk with another transformative initiative that will likely in itself pay for BFR many times over. The 30 charge, 400 mile range, autonomous truck with a 2 year timeline. Given most of the technology is already existing and proven, not even a stretch...but the economic implications for the nation as well as Musk are simply off the charts. Pretty much in a paradigm shift more on the order of the first transcontinental railroad. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 22, 2017 Share Posted November 22, 2017 10 hours ago, Mallette said: Now comes Mr. Musk with another transformative initiative that will likely in itself pay for BFR many times over. The 30 charge, 400 mile range, autonomous truck with a 2 year timeline. Given most of the technology is already existing and proven, not even a stretch...but the economic implications for the nation as well as Musk are simply off the charts. Pretty much in a paradigm shift more on the order of the first transcontinental railroad. Dave You'd think that robbery would be an issue with autonomous trucking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted November 22, 2017 Share Posted November 22, 2017 23 minutes ago, CECAA850 said: You'd think that robbery would be an issue with autonomous trucking. Robocops are built in... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted November 22, 2017 Author Share Posted November 22, 2017 No more reason than any other kind. Less, IMHO. Certainly vehicle security (continuous video recording) will be much more prevalent. Plus, how do you move it somewhere to unload it when it's locked itself up and is broadcasting an SOS and screaming bloody murder? Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 16 hours ago, Mallette said: No more reason than any other kind. Less, IMHO. Certainly vehicle security (continuous video recording) will be much more prevalent. Plus, how do you move it somewhere to unload it when it's locked itself up and is broadcasting an SOS and screaming bloody murder? Dave Jam the signal and off you go. My thought was that there wouldn't be any of those pesky armed humans there to stop you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted November 23, 2017 Author Share Posted November 23, 2017 5 hours ago, CECAA850 said: Jam the signal and off you go. My thought was that there wouldn't be any of those pesky armed humans there to stop you. Not even going to guess how Musk will deal with that...but if you and I can think of it somehow I suspect he'll have it covered. Can't be any harder that reliably landing a rocket on a postage stamp. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted December 4, 2017 Moderators Share Posted December 4, 2017 On 9/30/2017 at 7:31 PM, Mallette said: Yep, I get that. But no signs of him freaking out yet. Dave Maybe until now. He he starting to lose it? http://www.sciencealert.com/elon-musk-plans-to-launch-his-red-tesla-roadster-to-mars-in-january-2018 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted December 4, 2017 Share Posted December 4, 2017 That's called marketing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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