Bill Whittle explores why Elon Musk and SpaceX beats Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin in the race for space. They started about the same time, but the Musk approach is wildly different from that of the Amazon king.
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32 replies on “No Contest: Why Elon Musk (SpaceX) Beats Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) in the Race for Space”
As I have posted before, my father was a senior research aerospace engineer for NASA, at JPL in Pasadena, CA. In the early days of unmanned space flight, the development time frame was long, in order to make the success of the mission that much more likely to succeed. In later years, this was trimmed down to save money, and as a result a number of missions failed. Of course funding, which changed from one administration to the next had to be considered. This is the advantage of private endeavors that do not have to rely on the political winds of the moment.
I’m going to throw this in here, May get me banned because he does swing for the fence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmzmHffY6l4&list=RDGMEMYQNnkCeucvXPZmorerFbHg&index=16
Nice Python reference, Bill.
Based on my ignorant layman’s understanding – our mega-giga-tera and beyond bytes, came about through the successful application of quantum mechanics developed in the late 1980’s; applied to computer chips in 2000 – 2001; for which the guys that developed received the Nobel prize in ? 2006? or later.
As far as my ignorant pea brain understands – it’s spooky chip making where a huge (infinite?) amount of data can be placed on a chip because… It’s not always there
(In some quantum universe? Alternate reality? Magic place?)
I’m not an expert in this so I’m not positive but I think you might be confusing two different things. Most of the increases in memory are I believe because of our ability to manufacture to smaller and smaller sizes and therefore stick more memory on the same size chip as well as improved architectures. Now as it got smaller they might need to take into account quantum effects but thats purely to make it work correctly, its not a quantum computer. These all still work using 1’s and 0’s, turning the transistors on and off. There are just many more smaller transistors in modern chips.
What you seem to be talking about in your second paragraph are quantum computers. They are still very much in early research stages, nothing that is commercially available. As opposed to normal computers using transistors that can be either on (1) or off (0), quantum mechanics does do some very weird stuff that would allow for it to be in multiple states at a time. I don’t know about how much data a quantum memory chip could hold but they are mostly talked about for their computing power. Since it can take multiple states instead of just 1 or 0 it can have massive computing power compared to our normal computers.
Again, I am an ignoramus.
However, I did see a few videos and explanations of “quantum mechanics” as applied to chip manufacture.
The essence was – the more memory you stick on a chip; the more “transistors” turning on and off, the more heat that is generated.
In order for a chip to hold more memory, some of that unused “Memory” must not “be there” in order to not overheat the chip.
I’m pretty sure that the Nobel Prize awarded for quantum physics was to these two guys who developed their work for the previous 20 years, which is what enabled computer chips to hold more memory.
Flash memory, the basis of almost all solid-state drives, uses a mechanism called “quantum tunneling”.
https://atomsandsporks.com/2020/04/19/quantum-tunneling-and-flash-memory/
(I previously worked at Intel Corp. on solid-state drives.)
How alien Musk’s approach is to that of Our Betters inside the Beltway.
Elon makes me think of another great man. Reading his biography and having extensively researched this man I wonder why more people haven’t been taught about him and his tireless pursuit of excellence though hard work.
“Success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents 1 percent of your work which results only from the 99 percent that is called failure. Many people dream of success. To me success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents 1 percent of your work which results only from the 99 percent that is called failure.
Success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection.” – Soichiro Honda
Scott, I love your thought about how we might apply the same “go and do it now” approach to our own endeavors. Fighting the tendency to sit and plan and hypothesize without testing our ideas against reality is key. Musk has talked about the importance of iterating rapidly on testing ideas and designs, and seeking ways to get more iterations in in a shorter time span. It’s that courageous approach, together with a compelling and relentless long-term vision (COLONIZE MARS!) that’s driven everything he’s done to get to this point, that will leave plodding slow-lane efforts in the dust.
It’s basically the combination of Gall’s law and trial and error.
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” ~John Gall
So do some trial and error until you get a simple system to work and then refine it into a more powerful and complex system, but you’ll never create the complex system until you’ve first created and tested a simple system.
The title reminded me of one of the old movie Rocketman https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120029/ that made me ROTFL and planrt of quotes sipping for real life uses. “It wasn’t me!” “Now, THAT was Julie!”
The difference between a “steely-eyed missile man” and a carpetbagger?
Elon Musk is willing to risk it all to the point of bankrupting the effort, Bezos not. He likes being rich. Elon wants to make a difference.
BTW! Some guy named Bill did an excellent Firewall called My Friend Failure. Done years ago but I try to watch at least once a year….as a reminder “to make failure your friend…or it most certainly would become your mortal enemy…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlLbFZxrzrc
Hungry!
That is one way to describe that difference between Elon and Jeff. While neither is hungry in the actual financial or biological sense, their attitudes are shaped by whether they “need to” or “think its a kinda neat idea” and wanted to try it.
Craig Ferguson stated in the Preface of his book “American on Purpose” Failure is not disgrace, it’s just a pitch that you missed. You better be ready for the next one. Elon Musk is ready!
I’ve put Musk in doghouse a few weeks ago when he bought bitcoin for $1.5 billion of Tesla’s money adding to the bubble.
Elon makes me think of Stark.
https://youtu.be/Kfq2j1jQJG8
Bezos reminds me of Dr. Evil. Not even cool enough to be Blofeld. But wants to be.
Bezos, successful yet much more like Justin Hammer than Tony Sark.
Love it. Hammer” just want you to know, that guy lived. “
“Jarvis, sometimes you have to run before you can walk. “
Swinging for the fences doesn’t win games? Guys like dave Kingman, Steve Balboni, etc. would probably respectfully disagree. Or maybe it means that swinging for the fences was their only real skill set at the plate…
Depends on the measure of success. Sure Kingman had 400+ HR, but he only ever played in the post-season once, and that was his first year.
Balboni had a shorter career but his best individual season was probably 85 and the Royals did win it all that year. But, yea they were boom or bust. And they busted a lot.
Point though, is if you had a line up of 9 Kingman’s and Balboni’s do you think you would win much at all? People are trying these days, but that is not who is winning WS.
I’m too young to really know those names, but I think this is an example of where the analogy breaks down.
If all you do is sit and wait for that perfect pitch to send to the fences, you’ll never get a hit. You’ve gotta get up there and swing, knowing you’ll strike out a lot. Accepting those strike outs, and not getting discouraged, is the cliche line that fits, I think.
From what Bob said, if they just swung for the fences, that sounds more like what Bill described Bezos doing, and what others also try to do: make the big splash to get attention. If you’re good, or plan well or do what is needed to make it work, then it works great. If you are just hacking at the ball every time you’re at the plate (to return to the baseball analogy) then you’ll probably just strike out. When quarterbacks, or basketball team leads or that 4th slot in the baseball rotation feel like they have to shoulder the team and win the game, they tend to not do what they need, make mistakes, and lose the game instead. Unless of course you have one of the greats and he does literally carry the team that game.
Mission statements for companies started out as a mantra to get everyone moving in one direction. To remove the inefficiencies and make sure that everything you do supports that mission. My two favorite mission statements:
MD Anderson Cancer Center: Making Cancer History
Notice how it can be read two ways. Brilliant. Everyone knows how to run their daily life.
From the water tower at Marine Corps Recruit Depot: Parris Island. We Make Marines.
Simple and straightforward. What is your job today? Look up at the tower.
Mission statements have become these flowery things that are more for investors than employees. They don’t really tell you how to go about your job.
Here is Woka-Cola: Our vision is to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body & spirit. And done in ways that create a more sustainable business and better shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives, communities and our planet.
If I worked for coke that would not help me make a decision on how to proceed with anything.
Now, let’s look at SpaceX and Blue Origin.
HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT
MAKING LIFE MULTIPLANETARY
BUILDING A ROAD
We’re committed to building a road to space so our children can build the future.
Can you tell which is which? One of those is actionable if you are an employee. One sounds like a dream, not a plan.
Well put! This is such an important distinction, and so often overlooked. I’ve become wary of organizations with unfocused mission statements, viewing them in much the same way I do packs of zombies. Lack of clarity of purpose eats brains.
Elon Musk behaves like an engineer/mechanic who wants to see the widget fly; whereas, Jeff Bezos is a bureaucrat who wants all TPS forms completed (Did you get the memo?).
I was so excited to get my Amiga 3000 w/ 2, TWO, 50mg hard drives.
Loved my first computer, that 16K TI 99/4A. A few years later I was amazed that we could afford the whopping 64K that our Commodore 64 packed.
My first hard drive was 5 MEGAbytes and powered by what looked like a washing machine motor. Took minutes to wind up, and boy was calibration noisy. Did wonders for my Imsai 8080 (with Z80 installed) and we actually had a printer net for printing work orders which were routed to the various shops as required. Those were the days!!!