What's happening in space (that's interesting)

Ten years ago I would completely agree. What’s interesting is I’m pretty sure that I saw a similar animation circa 1970. Certainly with vertically landing spacecraft on Mars and reusable space shuttle landing. I honest expected to see us on Mars by 2020 and certainly a moonbase by 2020. So in some ways I just sort of feel like we are making for the years between 1973-2008 when nothing really happened in space that was that interesting.

By almost all accounts SpaceX is highly profitable. The were making money even before they started re-using stages and each stage they are reusing saves them 20-30 million. They had 18 successful launches last year which brought in revenue in the range between 1-1.5 billion. They are vertically integrated basically raw material come in and rockets go out and the raw materials of rocket aren’t that expensive. aluminium, plastics, glass, and kerosone.

That said they certainly don’t have the capital to finance a million person colony on Mars

Good for them. I am honestly shocked they are making money. Tesla after all is recording losses. But I don’t expect SpaceX will ever put even a single human on Mars. At least not on their own. I think they simply don’t have the resources or the technology to make it a viable mission for people who are expected to make it there and back alive.

Why do you keep bringing Tesla up? The only thing they have together is Elon Musk. They are completely separate companies otherwise.

And fully segregated accounting-wise—Tesla is public, SpaceX is privately held. If there were any cross-funding, we’d know.

I do think Blue Origin has a greater shot at long-term success. There’s a lot less money pressure when you can just call up the owner and say, “Jeff, we need another billion.”

Because I expect that Musk’s personal holdings include a substantial amount of stock in both corporations. He can recapitalize one if it needs money if the other is strong. If they both start to fail (as Tesla is currently losing money) then his resources may not stand the strain. But it seems that SpaceX is profitable, so the need may not arise.

Tesla has nothing to do to support SpaceX, which already the the most dominant commercial launcher already. It’s not going anywhere. Tesla has a far bigger chance to go under.

I have been on a space kick recently. Can anyone recommend some space books to read? Either non-fiction or plausible/semi-plausible fiction ones set in our solar system?

Thanks heaps.

Thanks for posting, it was good to watch.

I don’t know what it is but even now whenever I see the shot of the two boosters landing simultaneously I get emotional while thinking of the grandeur of human ingenuity. This must be 1/10th of how people of the previous generation (to me at least) must have felt seeing the moon landing.

Gene Krantz and Chris Kraft also wrote good books, but Lovell’s is my personal favourite.

Seven Eves by N Stephenson is pretty good. It’s fiction.

The Martian was a fun read, with enough space rocket geekiness to satisfy I’d think.

Rendezvous with Rama might fit. It takes place after the planets are colonized and is fairly grounded, with the exception of Rama itself. Notably it is as much exploration of unfamiliar as it is space.

Or something about the Apollo program like Hidden Fugures perhaps is more to your interest now. There’s a bunch of books on that genre that I only passingly know about. But there’s plenty to find there.

It’s not a book, but the series “From the Earth to the Moon” is without a doubt the best series ever on the original Apollo Missions.

Thanks guys, some great suggestions.

If I can suggest something that isn’t a book, Moon Machines is a great series that goes in depth on six parts of the Apollo program: the Saturn V rocket, command module, navigation computer, lunar module, space suit, and lunar rover. I’d never before heard about the overly ambitious plans for the computer that fell through because 1960s technology wasn’t good enough or the company that got a contract to make space suits because they were so good at making bras.

I’ll second the Martian, a really good book.

Buzz Aldrin is a hero of mine so I probably overlook some flaws in his books, but I really enjoyed both of his last two

This is basically a memoir with some inspirational quotes.

This is pretty serious science book that goes into some detail about how we get to Mars. Buzz has PHd in orbital mechanics from MIT, so he is more than just a pretty face.

Playing the computer game “Kerbal Space Program” will teach you a hell of a lot about orbital mechanics and rocket science.


(from xkcd)

I love this biography, though it never gets out of Earth’s atmosphere. It’s about one of the founders of Jet Propulsion Laboratories. He was really into building rockets, reading science fiction, and practicing black magick.

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Angel-Otherworldly-Scientist-Whiteside/dp/0156031795

I really liked this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-Charles-Murray/dp/0976000806/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518486603&sr=1-11&keywords=apollo

It was originally written in 1989 I think. It’s kind of dry, but really pulled me into the early days of the US space program…the people, the uncertainty, the whole winging it as they went along.

It’s not about astronauts…it’s about the people who actually built it from nothing. Even from the first chapter in the late 50’s with hot-shot engineers driving down to some trailers in a swamp in Langley, VA

I’ve read a bunch of astronaut memoirs, and this is by far the most entertaining:
http://amzn.to/2HecGOK

Informative too, of course. :)