SpaceX BFR - Earth to Earth - Anywhere on Earth in 60 minutes or less.

[Devilyaki]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4KR4-TN-Yo&t=612s
complete stupid and retarted, I am sure it will go down in history just like the hyperloop and solar roadways

[Osmeric]

he doesn't inhabit the same reality that the rest of us do.

That's why he reduced launch costs by an order of magnitude and you didn't.

[Nerraw]

but it's just fantasy at this point

2 years ago, the notion of landing a rocket back on land was considered a fantasy. 9 years ago, the notion that a privately-owned launch provider would compete with the likes of ULA and Roscosmos would almost have landed you in a psych unit.

He does what he say he will do. His internal timeframe may be closer to Mars years than Earth years, but they happen.

[Chickat]

This was my thought as well, he's basically created a private NASA and one of the first successful car companies in decades, two huge accomplishments.

Nothing wrong with dreaming.

All the negativity back home is likely why he immigrated to the US.

Where is he from?

[Nerraw]

Where is he from?

South Africa. He immigrated to Canada when he was 17 or 18, and then to the US a few years later. He is literally the living embodiment of what the American Dream is supposed to be.

[Chickat]

South Africa. He immigrated to Canada when he was 17 or 18, and then to the US a few years later. He is literally the living embodiment of what the American Dream is supposed to be.

Was he rich or did he make it from scratch?

[Masark]

Was he rich or did he make it from scratch?

I'd say upper middle class. His parents are a model/dietitian and an electrical engineer.

[Nerraw]

Was he rich or did he make it from scratch?

From scratch. He basically created small companies and sold them and invested that money into new enterprises. Then he struck gold when he created PayPal. He then sold it and put every cent into Tesla and SpaceX. He was completely broke in 2008, he often tells the story of how he couldn't even afford a Christmas present for his girlfriend at the time. He was bailed out by NASA who saw potential in SpaceX and signed a contract for launching supplies to the space station. And here we are, 9 years later.

[Chickat]

From scratch. He basically created small companies and sold them and invested that money into new enterprises. Then he struck gold when he created PayPal. He then sold it and put every cent into Tesla and SpaceX. He was completely broke in 2008, he often tells the story of how he couldn't even afford a Christmas present for his girlfriend at the time. He was bailed out by NASA who saw potential in SpaceX and signed a contract for launching supplies to the space station. And here we are, 9 years later.

Awesome story. Bet there will be a move one day.

[Skroe]

From scratch. He basically created small companies and sold them and invested that money into new enterprises. Then he struck gold when he created PayPal. He then sold it and put every cent into Tesla and SpaceX. He was completely broke in 2008, he often tells the story of how he couldn't even afford a Christmas present for his girlfriend at the time. He was bailed out by NASA who saw potential in SpaceX and signed a contract for launching supplies to the space station. And here we are, 9 years later.

It's also worth mentioning when he was forming SpaceX in the early 2000s, he vacuumed up a bunch of engineers from NASA, TRW, Northrop, Lockheed, ATK, Orbital and Boeing who had been involved in "roads not taken" space projects during the 1990s and first two years of the 2000s.

This is important for historic reasons and in many ways explains why SpaceX is what it is. SpaceX's rather silly name is representative of the "New Space" companies that rose after the Columbia accident. Most of those companies, many with silly names, mostly relied on bad concepts (rocket planes) or commericializing surpluss or retired US and Russian government platforms. They weren't so much in the business of making their own things. Rather they refirbished and launched government things they got for cheap.

They all fizziled out. THe one that didn't was Orbital, which is an Old Space company anyway. It commercialized old US ICBMs. It also commercialized old Russian lunar program engines and married them to new upper stages. But there was a lot of recycling (to its credit, Orbital makes a lot too).

SpaceX, pretty much alone, made its own rocket from scratch and did not recycle old government parts. Sure the basic concept of the engine and the rocket owe themselves to distant government prototype cousins, but nothing ever produced. SpaceX started with an engine, the Merlin-1, then they built Falcon 1. Then the Falcon 9, and then 4 revisions of the Falcon 9, including the landing tech. It's been a highly iterative approach.

SpaceX owes its place in the launch market to a "go slow" approach. Rather than rush for riches by launching old ICBMs, Elon Musk worked for a decade to build the technologies to make the Falcon 9 possible.

[Nerraw]

SpaceX, pretty much alone, made its own rocket from scratch and did not recycle old government parts. Sure the basic concept of the engine and the rocket owe themselves to distant government prototype cousins, but nothing ever produced. SpaceX started with an engine, the Merlin-1, then they built Falcon 1. Then the Falcon 9, and then 4 revisions of the Falcon 9, including the landing tech. It's been a highly iterative approach.

SpaceX owes its place in the launch market to a "go slow" approach. Rather than rush for riches by launching old ICBMs, Elon Musk worked for a decade to build the technologies to make the Falcon 9 possible.

As an interesting side story, the reason Elon Musk decided to do everything from scratch was that the Russians tried take crazy advantage of him. He and his team flew to Russia to buy old ICBMs to refurbish for rocketry, but they blew him off and only wanted to sell at a price several times what they had indicated earlier on. The story goes that he decided they could do everything themselves during the flight home. The Russians laughed at him 15 years ago. And now they themselves are being made redundant. Karma really is a bitch sometimes.

[Skroe]

As an interesting side story, the reason Elon Musk decided to do everything from scratch was that the Russians tried take crazy advantage of him. He and his team flew to Russia to buy old ICBMs to refurbish for rocketry, but they blew him off and only wanted to sell at a price several times what they had indicated earlier on. The story goes that he decided they could do everything themselves during the flight home. The Russians laughed at him 15 years ago. And now they themselves are being made redundant. Karma really is a bitch sometimes.

Yeppp. Excellent points!

As a side story to the side story, I think we have to look at Orbital (Orbital ATK, now owned by Northrop Grumman). Orbital has been around for decades but "got into" the commercial space launch industry post-Columbia by combining engines and rockets it built for NASA for the Shuttle (and Air Force for space launch) with retiried Peacekeeper MX ICBM parts and 40 year old Nk-33 engines it bought from Russia (as part of the Soviet moonshot) to fill out a bunch of different product spaces for launch. What it has is a tremendously diverse, expensive, unreliable product sheet. Oh sure... quite a bit cheaper than a Atlas V. But far, far more than a Falcon 9.

What oribtal would like to do, 10 years from now, is what SpaceX has done 13 times this year. Because they took a short cut. Of the "buy surplus government shit" New Space companies, only Orbital "made it", in the sense they actually launched things. And its been deeply troubled. And all the time they spend doing that set them years back from competing with SpaceX.

Orbital ATK will be around and be fine, but the Antares launcher does not have much of a future, and the Minotaur IV / Minotaur V only flies as long as they have 30 year old retired Peacekeeper MXs lying around. They'll probably keep going as an upper stage, small payload and engine tech company (subcontractor), much as they always have been.

The other one "earning it", of course, is Blue Origin.

Thats why SpaceX's future is secure. Sure, Elon Musk has been aggressive and optimistic with his timelines, but SpaceX has followed a rigorous evolutionary process, from engine, to ever larger rocket, to gradual tech migration. NASA talked about new Solid Rocket Boosters in the shuttle for 30 years. It never delivered. SpaceX has does repeated major evisions on the Falcon 9 in what... the space of two WoW expansions?

There is no reason to doubt that the Raptor Engine will static fire in the next couple of years, will be on a simple test rocket (maybe one or two of them) sometime after 2020, and be ringed around a core as part of a heavy lift vehicle near 2030. SpaceX will be following exactly the roadmap they followed with the Falcon 9, on a larger engine and larger rocket, just with enormously more resources to do it.

[Noradin]

Tracks are also many kilometers long, and in the case of continuously welded tracks there are no expansion joints. The problem is solved by prestressing the track and keeping it firmly anchored.

The hyperloop tube could also be designed with expansion joints using bellows to maintain a vacuum seal. This is not rocket surgery.

You can look at large particle accelerators for examples of vacuum-filled tubes tens of kilometers long. The LIGO detectors are another example. The quality of the vacuum in these devices is MUCH better than it would have to be in Hyperloop.

As someone who works with the kind of technology you describe I have to tell you that they are not scalable to the extend needed for the Hyperloop, and certainly not the way that was implied when Hyperloop was presented. The accelerators you speak of are much, much smaller for one and aren't placed in open air through some desert. They take a lot of energy to keep, too, and the most that will happen when the vacuum gets worse is that some miniscule particles get slowed down.
What I saw of the Hyperloop was fit for a science fiction roman, not real life. Sometimes those things mentioned in said books make it into reality a few decades later, but that is very rare. And there is a reason for that: Dreaming is easy, almost everyone can do it.

[Nerraw]

The Iridium NEXT-3 mission is ongoing right now. Stage 2 reached Antarctica about 32½ minutes after launch from Vandenberg. If the Falcon 9 can do it in that time, the BFR sure as hell can do it too.

[Hammerfest]

This is what Elon Musk was going for all along with SpaceX. What we are seeing is a bait-and-switch happening before our very eyes.

[Nerraw]

South-eastern Africa looking great today.

[Osmeric]

As someone who works with the kind of technology you describe I have to tell you that they are not scalable to the extend needed for the Hyperloop, and certainly not the way that was implied when Hyperloop was presented. The accelerators you speak of are much, much smaller for one and aren't placed in open air through some desert. They take a lot of energy to keep, too, and the most that will happen when the vacuum gets worse is that some miniscule particles get slowed down.
What I saw of the Hyperloop was fit for a science fiction roman, not real life. Sometimes those things mentioned in said books make it into reality a few decades later, but that is very rare. And there is a reason for that: Dreaming is easy, almost everyone can do it.

Accelerators require MUCH better vacuum, though. Hyperloop would work just fine with a vacuum of maybe 1 millibar (maybe even more), orders of magnitude worse than the ultrahigh vacuum in a storage ring. Remember, the original Hyperloop concept used low pressure gas to propel and levitate the vehicle (using gas pumped down through skids.) This is the sort of pressure that can be reached industrially with steam ejector pumps or robust mechanical pumps.

The much higher pressure inside Hyperloop means it can tolerate much large leaks than in an accelerator, for a given volumetric rate of pumping capacity. It also means there's no need to bake out the vacuum system as you might in ultrahigh vacuum situations.

[Skroe]

What are you on about?

Probably upset Musk is going to be able to show every day people the curvature of the Earth .

[Masark]

Probably upset Musk is going to be able to show every day people the curvature of the Earth .

I would like space launches to become cheap enough that it will be practical to send every politician in the world into orbit and see if we can make practical use of the overview effect.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

So essentially.

Put people into ICBMs.

What could go wrong.

As opposed to cramming people in a metal tube attached to wings filled to the brim with highly explosive fuel.

What could go wrong?