I've been an avionics intern at SpaceX for the past two years, and I can tell you for sure that if anyone is gonna take humans to Mars it will be SpaceX. The same goes for propulsive landing of a rocket for reusability: <a href="http://www.spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=0&cat=recent" rel="nofollow">http://www.spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=0&cat=rec...</a><p>Everything at SpaceX is designed with reusability in mind, and every system is highly redundant. And to top it off, they have some of the best, most talented, and most experienced engineers out there.<p>With all that said, the reason why SpaceX will succeed is their culture. Most of the company's employees are young and highly motivated (including myself I guess). When I started my work at SpaceX, one of the engineers told me to prepare to shed some blood and tears as well as prepare for the most stressful yet rewarding work of your life. He was right. There were times where I did not go home for 4 days straight (this was not recommended). They did not asked me to do this. I just wanted to do it. The thing that is cool about SpaceX is that you will do REAL work on you first day, and you will have a significant impact right away. Even if you are an intern.<p>I know a lot people on Hacker News are essentially web programmers (Me too actually. Django FTW). If you guys are looking for a job, they are always hiring. One way to get hired is to start out as an intern (if you are at an intern stage in your life). If you want to actually program the rocket, and got some ROCK SOLID C++ programming skills, then you are exactly what SpaceX wants. So please apply. Space exploration is hands down one of the important pursuits we can have as civilization, so the best need to work on this challenge in my view.<p>Let me tell you, there is no feeling to see something that you designed and built actually entered outer space. I can't describe it. You just have to experience it for yourself. So if you're bored on your current job, look into SpaceX. Plus having Elon Musk as a boss is pretty bad ass. The guys is simply defines legitness!
<i>And prices are expected to rise significantly in the next few years, according to defense department officials. Why? Musk says a lot of the answer is in the government’s traditional “cost-plus” contracting system, which ensures that manufacturers make a profit even if they exceed their advertised prices. “If you were sitting at a n executive meeting at Boeing and Lockheed and you came up with some brilliant idea to reduce the cost of Atlas or Delta, you’d be fired,” he says. “Because you’ve got to go report to your shareholders why you made less money. So their incentive is to maximize the cost of a vehicle, right up to the threshold of cancellation.”</i><p>I can't help but think of all the other places where that kind of system operates and makes costs much higher than they should be... How much better would the world be if fewer resources were wasted thus?
<i>Talking about a city on Mars by the middle of this century—even as SpaceX has yet to fly its first cargo mission to Earth orbit—is one of the reasons space professionals are skeptical about Musk’s claims.</i><p>And yet, it's this kind of completely unrealistic goals that really pushes things forward. Even if SpaceX only gets... dunno, 25% of the way to that goal, chances are they'll have accomplished more than anyone else is trying.
I think this is an answer to people who are "too smart to succeed" because they optimize the product only. It's just a matter of optimizing <i>across</i> domains, (e.g. trade-off cost and performance), which takes a certain adaptability and flexibility of mind. It's a kind of lateral intelligence and reframing which is useful in solving everything but textbook problems.<p>> Simplicity enables both reliability and low cost.<p>As Woz said - though Woz also mentioned the advantage of making it simple enough to fully hold in his head. (<a href="http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html</a>). So, in a back-handed way, a limited working memory can be a gift (though I'm not suggesting that Woz's working memory was limited). <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3258655" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3258655</a><p>one page (works) <a href="http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=1+visionary+%2B+3+launchers+%2B+1%2C500+employees+%3D+%3F+%7C+Space+Exploration+%7C+Air+%26+Space+Magazine&urlID=464931307&action=cpt&partnerID=285367&cid=133542138&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.airspacemag.com%2Fspace-exploration%2FVisionary-Launchers-Employees.html%23" rel="nofollow">http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&tit...</a>
<i>“It’s very common to do component and system-level testing…. That’s very typical in aerospace, ” says Alan Lindenmoyer of Houston’s Johnson Space Center, who has been working with SpaceX since 2005 as manager of the agency’s Commercial Crew and Cargo program. “But to actually put a vehicle together and do system-level testing of the rocket is not. That’s a level of rigor you don’t typically see.”</i><p>So they do unit <i>and</i> integration tests? Sounds thorough...
I'm inspired by this man's dreams and the way he's striving for it, even though the end goal is decades off.<p><i>Musk makes no secret of the end goal: Create a new civilization on Mars. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in September, he outlined the business plan—if that’s the right term for something that looks decades into the future. “If you can reduce the cost of moving to Mars to around the cost of a middle class home in California—maybe to around half a million dollars—then I think enough people would buy a ticket and move to Mars,” he said. “You obviously have to have quite an appetite for risk and adventure. But there are seven billion people on Earth now, and there’ll be probably eight billion by the midpoint of the century. So even if one in a million people decided to do that, that’s still eight thousand people. And I think probably more than one in a million people will decide to do that.”</i>
The greatest point of the article: Patents have become bullshit.<p>Here is the quote:
They don’t even file patents, Musk says, because “we try not to provide a recipe by which China can copy us and we find our inventions coming right back at us.”
Watching the rocket re-use video, I realized that Elon Musk is not just building a space commerce empire, he's actually putting himself in a position where he could be the world's first true supervillain.<p>Not that I think that's what he's up to, but if he has a lair on Mars, and controls the galaxy's only fleet of interplanetary missiles.... he could ask for quite a ransom. The parallels to Ozymandias are a little scary.<p>Just sayin'.
As long ITAR exists, the rest of the world will eventually overshadow USA [0] for peaceful ventures into space. Also, SpaceX is competing against very entrenched corporations that resorts to many tactics [1]. For SpaceX to advance USA's space technology, they'd have to submit to military expensive contracts too, militarising space. I really wish I could support American space companies.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/jca8h/itar_is_a_terrible_thorn_in_our_side_lets_have_a/c2b9oum" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/jca8h/itar_is_a_t...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.space.com/1701-spacex-sues-boeing-lockheed-martin.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.space.com/1701-spacex-sues-boeing-lockheed-martin...</a><p>Edit: Why am I being downvoted? That ITAR makes USA alone in space travel?
This article discusses how SpaceX seems to be able to get things done faster, for less expense, and with better performance, than any of its competitors -- partly because they care more about the end result of being able to send stuff and people into space and to Mars instead of just selling launches.
It's a Linux-powered rocket too!<p><i>The Falcon 9 was designed from the beginning to be human-rated, meaning an increased focus on reliability. The rocket’s avionics and controls are triple-redundant (as will be some sensors in the human-rated version of the Atlas V), and the flight computers, which run on Linux, will “issue the right commands even if there’s severe damage to the system,” Musk says.</i>
I love space and programming more than anything. This article just filled my head with a bajillion ideas and made me wonder why on earth I haven't thought before about chasing both in my career choices.<p>A very inspiring read, complete with such nice asides about how operating as a startup with a mission can get so much fun <i>and</i> work accomplished, and shows that serving the interests of shareholders and profits first can utterly derail accomplishing your mission.
It's interesting how they attribute so much of their success to Apollo program information. So much data must have been created during that program - I wonder how much of it is sitting on dusty shelves unused?<p>I've often wondered what type of improvements you could make if you built a Saturn V type rocket with modern technology and materials. It looks like we're probably going to find out over the next ten years.
Clearly they are. They have shown what can be done when you take proven designs and techniques and skip the bureaucratic BS that is inherent in being a NASA, Boeing, etc.
Single Page version (+ Readability)<p><a href="http://www.readability.com/articles/2pzowoyw" rel="nofollow">http://www.readability.com/articles/2pzowoyw</a>
Does anyone have any idea how to figure out what their "energy per Pound to orbit" is and how it might compare to their competition? Would be curious as their relative efficiencies.
"On the flight home, he recalls, “I was trying to understand why rockets were so expensive. Obviously the lowest cost you can make anything for is the spot value of the material constituents. And that’s if you had a magic wand and could rearrange the atoms. So there’s just a question of how efficient you can be about getting the atoms from raw material state to rocket shape.”<p>Brilliant.
If you are, like me, interested to learn more about Space X, watch Musk's AIAA 2011 Keynote. Q&A session covers a few interesting technical problems. He talks about costs, reusability, vertical launch, nuclear propulsion etc.<p>Part 1 is here <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTpZEKDShWM" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTpZEKDShWM</a>, but Q&A starts at 5 mins into part 2 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjzMs4nvfcc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjzMs4nvfcc</a>
I really wish there was a good way for non-americans to contribute to SpaceX.
While their spare use of external suppliers seems to make sense, it makes it even harder to contribute. I find it sad that the potentially biggest undertaking of mankind is once again an USA only party - run by a foreigner (Musk).<p>Well at least everyone will be able to buy SpaceX shares once they have an IPO.
SpaceX claims to be able to manufacture cheaper than China while being more thorough than NASA, all the while developing and building their components in-house. I would love for all this to be true but would have to remain sceptical for the time being.
But can you buy insurance for their launches?<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/02/space_stasis.single.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/0...</a>
UPDATE: I'm posting this comment to address some of the questions you guys asked.<p>I'm actually an Computer Science guy stuck in the body of an Electrical Engineer. I mostly design hardware, however in my first year I did a good amount of highly optimized embedded systems programming. I wish I could go into more detail but that's against company policy.<p>However, my high school (the good old days) robotics mentors that also work at SpaceX are the top developers of the avionics software. What they mostly do is program the flight computer. Also the code that just brings every little sensor data together. Again I would really love to sit here and talk to you guys about the technical details, but I'm simply not allowed. So sorry for the broad sentences.<p>Regarding the type of people that get hired. As I said SpaceX hires the BEST. As an intern, KEN BOWERSOX, an amazing astronaut sat 2 desks away from me. I could have walked up to the guy at anytime and ask him how it was like in space. Look at this list of people running the company: <a href="http://www.spacex.com/company.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.spacex.com/company.php</a>
After reading that you see how top notch these people are. The same goes for their employees.<p>SpaceX hires from everywhere, but it seems they are really into the stereotypical TOP engineering schools. It felt like everyone was from Stanford. A lot of people from University of Michigan, Carnegie Melon, and MIT. The company is in California, but it felt like that a huge chunk of the company was recruited from outside the state. Just go into the parking lot, and you can see license plates from every state (I saw one from Maine...long ass drive). There were few interns from the University of California system (like myself).<p>If you guys want to apply, I want to not just tell you all the good stuff. There is also the not so pretty side. Be prepared to give the job your everything. Specially if you are a young engineer because you mostly likely don't have any experience under your belt to make you an irreplaceable asset. Also people forget that SpaceX is a STARTUP. Yes they have 1500 employees. But this is not some little photo sharing iPhone app company (no offense guys, you really need stop with those). It's an aerospace startup, which means 1500 employees is pretty much a small amount of people. Also Elon Musk has this philosophy where a small amount of people can achieve BIG things. With that said they are hiring like crazy last time I checked (which was like 2 months ago).<p>Since it is a startup, job security is not good. Since the people they hire are very good, they mostly don't get fired. But at the same time the deadlines, and goals can sometimes seem like a fantasy. This sometimes leads to people getting fired. This happened a lot during my stay.<p>With all that said, from working at Jet Propulsion Lab, and now SpaceX my goal is turn my current graduate research into a startup. I've learned that I'm simply not the type of person that can work for others for the rest of my life. Graduating with an engineering degree and doing 9 to 5 stressful job will get old very fast. After my stay at SpaceX I already feel burned out (I worked on some high priority projects). However, I am really passionate about my current project (I can't stop thinking about it), and my goal is to turn that into a company. Unfortunately, I might have to say goodbye to SpaceX to pursue this dream.