# The Great Ongoing Space Exploration Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** science-math\ **Created:** [November 16, 2020, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703 "2020-11-16T12:18:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2022, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/402 "2022-09-30T00:16:38Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I expect Eric Berger of Ars Technica to write something up very soon. I may have missed some details. And there we go: > **[NASA and SpaceX are studying a Hubble telescope boost, adding 15 to 20 years...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-and-spacex-are-studying-a-hubble-telescope-boost-adding-15-to-20-years-of-life/)** > > "It's doing great science as we speak." ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/403 "2022-10-01T23:08:47Z")
Firefly makes it to orbit on their second launch: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/aEMBBI4l2JE/maxresdefault.jpg "Firefly Joins The Orbital Rocket Club") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEMBBI4l2JE) As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I don’t see how all of these smallsat launchers will survive economically. Still, congrats to them on making orbit. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/404 "2022-10-04T14:00:53Z")
A debris tail from the DART collision has been spotted: > **[Telescope in Chile Spots Huge Debris Trail from NASA's Asteroid Crash Test](https://gizmodo.com/telescope-spots-huge-debris-trail-nasa-dart-1849610800)** > > A new image shows a roughly 6,000-mile trail of debris in the aftermath of the historic DART test. Not a surprise to me. Dimorphos is a rubble pile, so there’s little to hold it together. If it didn’t have a debris tail by now, that would be a surprise. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/405 "2022-10-12T12:08:16Z")
The DART missiion changed the orbit by about 32 minutes: > **[DART mission successfully shifted its target’s orbit](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/dart-mission-successfully-shifted-its-targets-orbit/)** > > The asteroid Dimorphos had its 12-hour orbit shortened by a half-hour. Brian ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/406 "2022-10-12T12:17:18Z")
Sucks for all the Didimooners who now have to buy new watches. ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/407 "2022-10-12T15:46:56Z")
Wow, that’s a much bigger shift than I was expecting. Maybe due to the rubble-pile nature of this asteroid. They need to find a more solid body to test on next. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/408 "2022-10-12T19:32:11Z")
I would think a rubble pile would be harder to move, as some of the momentum from impact would be dispersed by particles moving in a bunch of directions. The more energy that goes into disrupting the surface and blasting it into space, the less is available for moving the rest of the thing, or so it would seem to me at first glance. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/409 "2022-10-12T20:14:23Z")
Loose stuff will move away from the impact, which will be in various directions other than the desired one. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/410 "2022-10-12T20:27:22Z")
And some of it won’t reach escape velocity and come right back down. The best case for moving an asteroid would be a fully inelastic collision where the final momentum of the object is the sum of the momentum of the spacecraft and the asteroid. On the other hand, if a rubble pile can be blasted apart, it might be dispersed enough that it would burn up in the atmosphere as small particles instead of punching through and causing havoc. The Earth gets hit with approximately 50 tons of matter every day. So long as it’s spread across the planet, it’s fine. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/411 "2022-10-12T21:39:34Z")
And something for the multi-millionaires (or maybe billionaires) here: > **[SpaceX announces a second private flight to the Moon aboard Starship](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/spacex-announces-a-second-private-flight-to-the-moon-aboard-starship/)** > > "We can't force the timeline. It will happen when it happens." Unfortunately: > Given the amount of development work ahead of it, Starship is unlikely to be ready for crewed circumlunar trips before 2025 ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2022, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/412 "2022-10-18T13:55:12Z")
> **[Jim McDivitt, astronaut who led Gemini 4 and Apollo 9 missions, dies at 93](http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-101722a-james-mcdivitt-gemini-apollo-astronaut-obituary.html)** > > Former NASA astronaut James McDivitt, who commanded Gemini 4, the first U.S. mission to conduct a spacewalk before leading Apollo 9, the first test flight of the Apollo moon lander in Earth orbit, has died at the age of 93. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/413 "2022-10-21T04:51:39Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I don’t see how all of these smallsat launchers will survive economically. Still, congrats to them on making orbit. I agree. SpaceX did not have a SpaceX to compete with when they were growing up. These newer commercial rocket companies do. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/414 "2022-10-21T14:48:33Z")
Sometimes first-mover advantage is overwhelming. Sometimes it is not, especially if the first mover gets locked into what is eventually recognized as v1.0 tech. I agree w your implicit point that SpaceX will be one of the examples that do end up getting great benefit from being the first mover, while the several Johnny-come-Latelys will suffer greatly from SpaceX’s large presence. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/415 "2022-10-21T21:20:12Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Sometimes first-mover advantage is overwhelming. Sometimes it is not, especially if the first mover gets locked into what is eventually recognized as v1.0 tech. This feels like it should have been somewhere in the middle, but everybody else dropped the ball and SpaceX ended up way in the lead. First-mover advantage helps most when there is some kind of network effect. Anything communication-oriented is a clear example, whether telephones or social media. When the value of the system is based how many people are on the network, even a tiny early advantage can quickly become insurmountable. I don’t think that really applies to rockets. On the other hand, you have the technological lock-in you mentioned, which is at its worst when a company creates a whole ecosystem behind its technology that they are unwilling to discard. Dumbphones vs. smartphones being a fairly recent example. The Falcon 9 booster is a pretty nice system, but it was also retrofitted to a non-reusable system, and succeeded in part via sheer dumb luck (specifically, that the Merlin engine, designed for the Falcon 1, and which SpaceX couldn’t afford to scale up in size, enabled propulsive landing by allowing the thrust to be scaled down via shutting engines off). It’s definitely 1.0 tech. But instead of everyone else immediately recognizing the potential, they went into full denial mode about the possibility and benefits of reusability. And even today, rockets which are _still in development_ aren’t taking reusability into account. Even that might not have been a deal-breaker, had SapceX calcified around their 1.0 technology as so many companies do. But they didn’t, and both evolved their tech and set on a next-gen system. So here we are. I hope Rocket Lab survives at the least. Their Neutron rocket is more like a v1.5 system. Still not completely reusable, but takes some useful lessons into account and decreases the upper stage costs. But competing against Starship will be difficult. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/416 "2022-10-21T22:26:05Z")
Agree 100% w all that. In addition to network effects, there’s also design & production skill. In a new industry, or a new paradigm shift in an existing industry, it’s possible to climb that learning curve as you’re inventing it, then use your superior economics to bludgeon others still trying to climb their own curve. Whatever else we might say about SpaceX, they’ve learned how to build complex bleeding-edge devices at comparatively hefty scale & pace at relatively low prices. Conversely, e.g. ULA has not. SpaceX did the world a service by producing the first existence proof of re-usable tail-landing boosters. But as long as their trade secrecy is good, that proof provides rather little practical benefit to their competitors. On a loosely related note, Boeing has been working hard to bring their airliner manufacturing up a notch beyond how they built / build the 787 which is itself a major leap forward from how they built / build the 777. Full end-to-end digital modeling, so-called digital twinning, and largely tooling-free production are the new buzzwords. With additive manufacturing, ahem, added to the pile. Much of their dithering about their next project, be it son-of-737 or son-of-757/767, is that they’re not _quite_ ready to launch that step-change of design & production efficiency. They fully expect that this secret sauce, once it’s available, will destroy the economics of their competitor for a generation. We shall see. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/417 "2022-10-21T23:33:17Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Whatever else we might say about SpaceX, they’ve learned how to build complex bleeding-edge devices at comparatively hefty scale & pace at relatively low prices. Conversely, e.g. ULA has not. It’s all about constraints limiting vision. Musk has adopted ‘permissionless innovation’, where he gives his engineers carte blanche to come up with better ways of doing things. If they can convince him, it’s done. SpaceX being owned by a billionaire who understands engineering and need answer to no one is really the secret of their success. If Musk had gone to work at ULA, he would have had very little impact. The classic example: Starship was originally going to be a composite rocket. SpaceX had already invested something like $20 million in a huge carbon fiber mandrel for the rocket fuselage, hired composites engineers, etc. But one engineer convinced him that Starship would be better made of stainless steel of a type that gets stronger when chilled (302 Stainless). Musk looked over the data, agreed, and changed course immediately, scrapping maybe a year’s worth of work. In the end, development went faster. In contrast, an established old-space company like ULA is burdened by commitments, stakeholders, vendors, contracts, hierarchies, rules books, fiefdoms and middle managers. Engineers have little authority to challenge constraints. New ideas have to go up and down chains of risk-averae managers. No one has the authority to toss away $20 million in infrastructure without endless meetings, reviews, stakeholder input, yada-yada. In an interview with ‘The Everyday Astronaut’, Elon Musk was asked what was the most important message he could give to engineers. He said, “Never be afraid to challenge the constraints you’ve been given.” He’s right, but very few companies have a culture that allows it, and certainly not old aerospace companies used to cost-plus contracts and government requirements and oversight. Blue Origin went the other way. Bezos hired an old-space CEO, who populated the company with old-space management. And they are getting old-space results. When IBM tried to make the first PC, they had to spin off a division and hire new people to do it. They were a mainframe company, and they just couldn’t adopt the high speed development and practices required for the PC industry. Too much bureaucratic inertia and too many peoole certain they knew how to do things based on their experience in minicomputers and mainframes. When Lockheed needed to build innovative aircraft quickly, they spun off the ‘skunk works’, and gave Kelly Johnson pretty much carte blanche and freedom from red tape and the typical bureaucratic approval chain. He worked miracles. If the big space companies want to compete with Musk, that’s what they should do. Spin off small, nimble design and development companies with very limited oversight and red tape. Give them permission to innovate along with big-company money. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2022, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/418 "2022-10-22T13:00:33Z")
Wikipedia says Musk has a BA in physics. The engineers who work for him must more educated than that. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/419 "2022-10-22T18:27:37Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Wikipedia says Musk has a BA in physics. The engineers who work for him must more educated than that Your point? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2022, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/420 "2022-10-22T20:58:56Z")
I’ve always held the opinion that he hired people who knew how to do things, rather than build things himself. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703/421 "2022-10-23T14:18:08Z")
Since the posts you were responding to were about how Musk structured his company for flexibility rather than about how he is building rockets by hand, I don’t see the point of your post. No one was claiming that Musk built or designed the rockets himself? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703.md?page=20) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-space-exploration-thread/925703.md?page=22)