Why SpaceX May Get Humans to Mars – First
Musk Sleeps Near Factory Floor to Spur Tesla Manufacturing, Bloomberg
“Elon Musk, determined to turn his electric-car company into a great maker of things, said that he keeps a sleeping bag in a conference room adjacent to Tesla Motors Inc.’s production line in Fremont, California.”
Why Elon Musk Sleeps in a Sleeping Bag, Motley Fool
“So I move my desk around to wherever the most important place is for the company, and then I sort of maintain a desk there over time to come and check in on things. But I suspect probably by the end of this quarter most of my time will not be spent on the factory floor.”
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NASAWatch is frequented by many outstanding people who know NASA much better than I. I’m curious to know where and when inside NASA have people experienced this level of urgency in their work?
Sure. Just One example for me: Working flight ops at JSC on the shuttle program- the most intensive shuttle flight rate ever- followed by the next three years in the shuttle program office during the period when we completely relooked at every nut, bolt, process, and analysis.
I work on pre-phase A R&D work. A typical week is at least 50 or 60 hrs. Although I don’t need to be in the office/lab to be “working”. Aside from doing research work a lot of time is spent writing proposals, papers, NTRs, reading papers, etc.
I don’t think 60hrs a week is that unusual for an engineer or scientist.
7am to 5 or 6pm mon-fri, go home spend a few hours with the kids, put them to bed another hour or two at night then a few hours on the weekend, can easily add up to over 60hrs.
Oh it happens – after accidents usually. I can remember routinely working until 9 pm during design reviews. There are a lot of hard working people at NASA. But how many Center Directors would do something like this? Bolden? How many people can be found at NASA HQ after 3:30?
I’ve never check NASA headquarters. But I do know of a place where managers used to claim that everyone there worked 60 hours a week. Yeah. Sure. Check the parking lot on weekends and after 5 or 6 PM on weekdays. I never checked at 5 AM, but unless everyone was in by then, the math doesn’t work.
It’s always after the “Lock the doors” command has been issued.
I don’t think I’ve seen senior managers camping out in the office with sleeping bags. At lower levels, it varies, but a fair fraction of the people involved (NASA employees, as well industry and academic contractors) are quite willing to put in long hours and camp out in their offices. Some aren’t, but many are. Sometimes, the problem is getting them _not_ to do so: It really isn’t sustainable in the long term. Sometimes the current emergency isn’t as urgent as it seems, and the risk of mistakes from overworked people or of burning out your really talented people, is more important.
Camping in the office is not always a good thing. Sometimes it shows just how screwed up the situation is.
SpaceXers do what they do because they love what they do. You do not have to convince anyone to stay and work longer. It just happens and most of the time its magical.
There are some hilarious moments.
Engineers and Scientists at NASA typically work very long hours and care very deeply about their work.
Never saw it at NASA but the folks I knew at ISRO running Chandrayaan had sleeping bags at their posts!
All the time! From flight ops to mission integration, many times there is a serious sense of urgency. One example in particular: Post Columbia investigations/return to flight analysis. More times than I can count!
This is not even debatable. Spacex will get there first. NASA is so far ahead right now but its political masters do not care about doing great, difficult things, it is about how many resources (code for dollars) are going to my center?
In what way is NASA ‘ahead’?
It’s interesting to frame the Mars-thing as a race.
Instead of focusing on hours worked, how about efficiency and working smarter? Does it matter if people spent 40 or 60 or 80 hours a week working on X-30 or X-33 or HL-20, X-38, etc if at the end of the day, some political decision renders it all moot anyway, and they might as well have been at the bar playing pool the whole time?
We’ll see. Musk’ companies have done some pretty impressive stuff, but he does miss deadlines, and this will tax his personal and company resources considerably if he ever wants to do a crewed Mars mission.
That said, my money’s on him beating NASA to Mars, simply because I don’t think NASA is going to get people to Mars before 2040. They’ll just never quite get everything they need together to do it, and they’ll re-orient the projects they’re working on for more humble goals (I’m thinking they’ll switch over to a Moon-first program if the ESA, Japan, Russia, and maybe China want to contribute).
I think that there is a key point here: Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. I would argue that, on a fundamental level, this objective-directed ‘hunger’ is not present in the present-day NASA.
SpaceX will push as hard and as fast as it can. Meanwhile, NASA and its contractors will just kill time with studies about the feasibility of establishing committees to discuss the parameters of proposed studies about whether to carry out studies; all whilst absorbing every dollar that can be committed to the project on ‘overheads’.
Sad but true in my experience, since 2000ish at least, with a new twist more recently. Now it’s hard to even get a new study approved. After all, every dollar is committed already, every dollar is someone’s already. If you want to study something new you must be a troublemaker wanting to take someone else’s money. So real studies have been declining for many years now. Projects just trade small nuances and nitpicking among themselves, much as you pointed out, endlessly.
As was observed in the joke about the old Soviet system, near the end the KGB had become so inefficient it could merely meet to talk about arresting people. The Soviets couldn’t even efficiently study an invasion of a neighbor anymore.
I respectfully disagree. The hunger is there at NASA. The problem with NASA is the lack of hunger in Congress. Elon doesn’t have to deal with that at all.
There is probably the same hunger at NASA as SpaceX at an engineering level however the problem is at a much higher level, a congress full of people concerned only with their own constituencies and what benefits them, A NASA management only concerned with doing congress’ bidding, old space contractors only concerned with maximizing their profit margin, sadly you are truly limited in what you can achieve when working under those conditions.
maybe NASA’s plan is to help spaceX through the backdoor and ride on their rockets to mars because congress will not fund NASA correctly.
I wouldn’t mind that, if SpaceX gets there technically. But I suspect that they wouldn’t be able to commit more than a comparatively small amount of funding to it unless SpaceX’s lobbying efforts get much stronger, because of the need to preserve work and NASA centers in politically connected states.
Musk had talked a few years ago (pre MCT) on costs relating to heavy lift. The X and XX HLLV’s. I believe the selling rate he said was around 250 – 300 million. If SpaceX was using a 40% gross mark up it would put the build cost in the neighborhood of 150-180 million. This was for the 1st stage and 2nd stage not any capsule/vehicle/cargo carrier.
I wonder if they could eat that much cost on a test flight? I would imagine they will not evolve landing like the F9 but try and land the very first stage.
I was wondering the same thing. And our genial host wondered last week if SX was looking to provide rides to Mars for NASA or anyone else.
I wonder if this is the secret of Musk’s success: He personally invests time, energy and effort into the outcome, including being on site and available to personally untangle problems with projects entering critical phases. That has to cut out a few levels of bureaucracy right away.
I don’t know anybody who works at NASA,, but have always figured it is populated by conscientious and dedicated people. And I am gratified to see this sense largely corroborated by those who are in a position to know.
(I did meet Keith, once, and briefly, if that counts 🙂 )
People at NASA do work hard. I slept in a rental car once after staying too late at a design review in Alabama to get a hotel room. I am not sure if that is common or uncommon. That said the exodus from NASA HQ at 3:30 pm can be quite dramatic.
Well it is DC. If they don’t beat the rush, traffic gridlock can lock them inside/on the beltway until mid-evening.
I seriously don’t understand the “NASA vs. SpaceX” fiction.
SpaceX survives today based on NASA funding (and some commercial and air force funding).
If SpaceX gets people to Mars and brings them back, it will be on NASA’s dime. That’s not SpaceX getting to Mars “before” NASA, any more then it was Boeing, North American Aviation, and Douglass Aircraft company getting astronauts to the moon “before” NASA in 1969.
NASA has ALWAYS relied on contractors in the commercial sector to build its spacecraft.
So. . . what are you talking about when you say “first”?
SpaceX will work in partnership with NASA, but will follow its own path.
I don’t see it as NASA vs SpaceX but I don’t think saying if SpaceX gets to Mars it will be on NASA’s dime is entirely correct, all SpaceX will be doing is what any commercial company does, leveraging money and expertise gained from it’s contracts to achieve it’s goals which for most companies is fiscal profit but for SpaceX is Elon Musk’s dream of establishing a Mars Colony, I think undoubtedly NASA will be a big part of any SpaceX Mars mission but as a partner not a leader, all the major mission decisions will be in the hands of SpaceX which as I see it is a positive as it avoids the political influence which has dogged NASA.
Because NASA is not contracting SpaceX to go to Mars, but SpaceX is going regardless. And it will not be a NASA spacecraft that SpaceX has been contracted to build. SpaceX will rely on past NASA work for sure, as well as current NASA assets such as the Deep Space Network and mars orbiters, just as it relies on the US highway system to enable moving around its rockets. So far, at least, SpaceX is a transportation company, pure and simple. The recently announced Red Dragon to mars is a technology demonstration of a transportation system, not a science mission, although they may sell some space for science. It will surely agree to send NASA astronauts to mars for the right price, that is their business model. SpaceX will likely get to mars in its own designed ships before NASA get to mars in its designed ships.
My guess would be that SpaceX will offer to take one or two NASA astronauts and assorted equipment free of charge in exchange for use of the DSN and other NASA assets it may find useful.
It’s not 2008 anymore. SpaceX doesn’t survive on NASA funding. NASA is still its largest customer but it has plenty of other business. In the next two years, SpaceX will do 10 or so missions for NASA, but it will do 7 for Iridium and three or more for each of two or three other clients including SES, plus a number of singleton missions.
As for the “first to Mars” talk, what is meant by that is that SpaceX is increasingly likely to have a human expedition to Mars assembled and ready to depart based on its own heavy-lift rocket many years before NASA will be ready to try such a thing – if they ever are – using SLS and Orion.
The one “vs.” the other fiction is not entirely unwarranted, sad to say. As you point out, SpaceX may just get into the NASA Mars plans, by merit of being able to achieve significant advances and contributions within real world, actual budgets. That said, it’s one thing to be welcomed, or for sanity to reign across the board, for everyone in NASA to see the importance of affordability, or future sustainability, while it’s another thing entirely to end-up there IN-SPITE of many forces inside and outside NASA.
Remember that Churchill saying-“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened”
Taking credit for discovering the truth finally, when it’s been smacking you on the head over and over, yeah, I guess that it’s always going to happen. Historians will inevitably say “see -WE figured that out together…and the US and NASA made it to Mars first”. SpaceX…see paragraph 7, at the bottom. I can so see myself reading that when I’m at Shady Pines-or seeing it on the hologram-thing. I’ll giggle real oddly, and the nurse will think she needs to up the meds.
Boeing Starliner first crewed flight slips to 2018:
“We’re working toward our first unmanned flight in 2017, followed by a manned astronaut flight in 2018.”
SpaceX says it still on for 2017.
Color me unsurprised.
Another advantage that SpaceX has – is that they are the ‘defacto’ supplier for MarsOne… i.e. the funding for the mission may not even need to come from Elon – it may actually come from MarsOne (assuming, of course, they can actually get their funding)… It’s possible that MarsOne could provide partial funding in exchange for X number of crew slots (or something like that) – just wild speculation on my part…