According to Isaacson's biography of Musk, Musk relentlessly challenges the existence of every part in Tesla and SpaceX machines. He's willing to go too far, having to sometimes put a part back in.
Everything in the manufacturing process is also challenged to justify its existence.
This is how he managed to reduce the costs by 90%.
Isaacson’s “biographies” are glorified puff pieces. Musk is as unrecognizable in his as Jobs was in his.
Both Tesla and SpaceX had teams keeping Musk busy on bs just so that the engineering teams could do their work.
The second he took control, we got the cybertruck and the starship, the worse products both companies ever built (or attempted, in the case of the starship).
> Musk relentlessly challenges the existence of every part
This sounds insightful until you find yourself debating with the CEO for the eleventh time about how his high-school understanding of the physics involved breaks down in a particular case.
Musk is very lucky to be moving such quantities of money that his companies are big enough to protect themselves from him, if you ever wonder how Musk would fare on a tight budget, look no further than the Oceangate.
Do you remember when he bought Twitter and fired everyone, and the mass media and employee outcry was that a) the service would stop working and b) he would bankrupt the company, yet a few years later it’s massively more successful than Twitter ever was as a public business?
Regardless your thoughts on Elon, his drug habits, and his political brashness, I don’t think you can say he’s in any way close to the Oceangate guy. There is something legitimately special about him and his collective.
>"According to Isaacson's biography of Musk, Musk relentlessly challenges the existence of every part in Tesla and SpaceX machines."
This removal of surplus-age is common in the automotive industry, and one of the reasons that cars are such an amazing value. It seems like Musk's remarkable ability to achieve cost reductions (at least in the aerospace context) is attributable to his pursuit of vertical integration. Airframers (aeronautical vehicle designers & manufacturer) are bound by the costs dictated by their component suppliers, especially after a configuration has achieved regulatory approval. SpaceX has managed to avoid being 'held hostage' by pseudo-monopoly suppliers.
How does something like this happen despite Ford knowing all the 'secrets' a company like Tesla or the Chinese know? I have a few guesses:
1. Its the structure of the company. In this video the presenter talks a lot about all the hoses and clamp connectors etc. The cooling department thinking they had to stay relevant made sure the car incorporated a design that had all this nonsense.
2. Maybe they didn't put their 'A' engineers on this car. Its plausible: the F-150 is their massive money maker. However this car was supposedly developed under some skunkworks program and yet here we are.
3. Maybe there was sabatoge from elsewhere (suppliers, middle management etc.) You watch a movie like Ford vs Ferrari and while im sure a lot is dramatized, I can't help but think man they were talking about the dysfunction of Ford way back then?!
Then we have Youtube documentaries like this one about the Ford Taurus SHO talking about how they screwed up so much that they had one chance left to get serious...like what? Shouldn't they be serious every day? Thats what the Chinese are doing.
The presenter further added how they had to ship entire engine blocks to Japan so that they could 'fix' them and unlock 80 more horsepower that Ford just left on the table. If factual, this should be a total embarrassment: You had to send your handiwork to a entity with a better reputation so that they could 'fix' your mess?
At some point, you have to acknowledge that the naysayers were wrong: Thinking (especially among the short community) was that Tesla had some cool ideas but their implementation was horrific, they couldn't just make up for 100+ years of institutional knowledge that the legacy companies had. The Tesla cars showed some of this thinking: quite poor build quality, poor after sale support, poor parts network. These things improved over the years but still isn't perfect.
But at the same time you have to acknowledge that the legacies suffer from their own problems that dont put them as far ahead as newcomers as you'd think. Sometimes a lot of that institutional knowledge becomes a liability when a paradigm shift occurs.
yes and no. Like you said, automotive and aviation industries are bound by a lot regulatory and path dependent constraints.
Elon's strength is his willingness to pull the plug and transition away from suboptimal solutions. This is bolstered by his willingness to double down.
Imagine if Boeing said "screw all this recertification technical debt for the 737 MAX airframe, we will start fresh. Customers can take it or leave it"
Slight aside, he also has driven capability that was challenging to justify existence for, and was later removed re: Dragon 2 propulsive landing via SuperDracos, landing legs, and the ballast sled. I'm sure the Dragonfly programs matured their abort programs, but surely, that was a ton of time and effort wasted.
I find it mind boggling that you can 3d print rocket engines. I thought that the standard line is that 3d printing metal wasn't developed enough for anything serious. Not a mechanical/materials engineer, but if you can 3d print rockets what's off the table? Jet Engines and that's about it I think?
From the article links, I am amused that SpaceX uses cybertrucks to tow their rocket engines around the grounds and not a normal cheaper truck. They also do it in a totally uncovered trailer, which must be good for the guys taking pictures for forums. But isn't that also good for guys taking pictures for competitors / Russians/ China?
> I thought that the standard line is that 3d printing metal wasn't developed enough for anything serious.
This hasn't been true for over a decade. High value relative to weight, highly complicated internal geometry, or repeated need for one off parts are all reasons to choose 3d printing today for production parts.
3d printing metal has some strength downsides, I'm not sure what it is for the raptor engines, but I've heard other space companies claim ~5% less strength that traditional methods for aluminum structures, but that can be worth it in cases where you are able to make shapes that wouldn't be possible with traditional methods, or if you save enough money by printing it. Rocket engines often can benefit from intricate internal channels and shapes that you can 3d print as once piece with no way to do it via subtractive manufacturing.
It has mild strength downsides, but very severe fatigue and damage tolerance downsides. Knowing this, it makes sense that 3d printing tech would make headway in space industry but not (yet) in aviation
One of the things that 3-D printing allows is a fine honeycomb structure. This comes with a somewhat bigger strength reduction, but a dramatic weight reduction. Less materials is cheaper.
Also subtractive manufacturing requires paying to melt away a lot of metal. 3D printing saves.
I don't know all of the ways in which SpaceX is using
GE9X aircraft engines have 3D printed low pressure turbine blades, so I think the view that jets are somehow exceptional is already disproven. There are real benefits to using additive processes for turbojet/fan applications: many jet components have intricate passages and bizarre shapes to conduct gasses, and they are hideously expensive to manufacture with conventional tools.
> And the problems haven’t been completely ironed out: the first launch attempt of Starship’s flight test 13 was aborted automatically by the vehicle’s flight software at T-0 (right before liftoff) this past July when several Raptor 3 engines failed to start
And several engines failed to relight on the booster for flight 13. I believe ice in feed lines is viewed as the most likely cause.
I'm pretty sure that the heat exchanger is going to end up being one part they have to put back in. Pushing CO2 and H2O (both ices at prop temp) into the tanks just seems so ill-advised to me. The amounts of contamination are small, but there are just so many different ways that can go wrong.
The thrust vector control (TVC) subsystem is usually considered a part of the engine. The major change the Soviet NK-33 underwent for a USA model was the addition of TVC, and the engine was named differently, so there are two engines, named differently, which mostly differ by the presence of TVC.
Raptors can be used without TVC. Be that by using differential thrust, or just not needing that - because rocket is controlled using other means, or other engines - it's possible. Tory Bruno specifically explained that he meant - among other things - that absence.
A picture of the engine working on the test stand can be that for the engine - or for the chamber, a significant component of the engine, with or without turbopumps involved.
Tony Bruno, when referring to the partially assembled engine, was complaining about the lack of engine controllers, fluid management, and TVCs [1].
In addition, SpaceX isn’t cheating by not including TVCs. They purposely designed their rocket to need a minimum of them and fully take advantage of the space savings the lack of TVCs affords them.
[1] “So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.”
Oh yeah, Tory Bruno made that gaffe of a comment publicly, and completely unprompted, before he abruptly quit. I had forgotten, but you’re right of course.
TLDW but TVC for rocket engines is usually achieved by like one hydraulic suspension rod each for X and Y axes(Y and Z in rocketry? idk) serving as parts of the engine mounting frame. It shouldn't add a lot to the system.
> A full-flow staged combustion engine is very complex, and prior to the Raptor only two had been built, neither of which successfully flew on a rocket.
Isn't the Space shuttle main engine / SLS engine a full-flow staged combustion engine?
In SSME, most of the LOX never goes through a preburner.
The SSME uses the same kind of fuel-rich combustion chambers for both preburners. This presents a problem for the oxidizer side because any leaking along the shaft between ox pump and turbine in either direction would be catastrophic. This is resolved by an extremely expensive and complex multi-stage helium-purged rotating seal.
One of the cool parts about most FFSC designs, and the raptor in particular, is that they can afford slight leaking from high pressure to low pressure through any seal in the system and it's broadly safe, and only marginally reduces performance. This allows them to be made much more cheaply.
> There turned out to be less detail available here than I hoped.
I'm surprised the author was surprised that a component of a multi-billion dollar company which is vital to it's future success in the industry and is covered by US regulations governing information export wasn't available as a cut-away diagram.
According to Isaacson's biography of Musk, Musk relentlessly challenges the existence of every part in Tesla and SpaceX machines. He's willing to go too far, having to sometimes put a part back in.
Everything in the manufacturing process is also challenged to justify its existence.
This is how he managed to reduce the costs by 90%.
> According to Isaacson's biography
Isaacson’s “biographies” are glorified puff pieces. Musk is as unrecognizable in his as Jobs was in his.
Both Tesla and SpaceX had teams keeping Musk busy on bs just so that the engineering teams could do their work.
The second he took control, we got the cybertruck and the starship, the worse products both companies ever built (or attempted, in the case of the starship).
> Musk relentlessly challenges the existence of every part
This sounds insightful until you find yourself debating with the CEO for the eleventh time about how his high-school understanding of the physics involved breaks down in a particular case.
Musk is very lucky to be moving such quantities of money that his companies are big enough to protect themselves from him, if you ever wonder how Musk would fare on a tight budget, look no further than the Oceangate.
Do you remember when he bought Twitter and fired everyone, and the mass media and employee outcry was that a) the service would stop working and b) he would bankrupt the company, yet a few years later it’s massively more successful than Twitter ever was as a public business?
Regardless your thoughts on Elon, his drug habits, and his political brashness, I don’t think you can say he’s in any way close to the Oceangate guy. There is something legitimately special about him and his collective.
7 replies →
And you know this how? ...
>Both Tesla and SpaceX had teams keeping Musk busy on bs just so that the engineering teams could do their work.
This is Tumblr origin nonsense, especially given that he's allegedly been involved with Engineering work he's not cleared for.
>"According to Isaacson's biography of Musk, Musk relentlessly challenges the existence of every part in Tesla and SpaceX machines."
This removal of surplus-age is common in the automotive industry, and one of the reasons that cars are such an amazing value. It seems like Musk's remarkable ability to achieve cost reductions (at least in the aerospace context) is attributable to his pursuit of vertical integration. Airframers (aeronautical vehicle designers & manufacturer) are bound by the costs dictated by their component suppliers, especially after a configuration has achieved regulatory approval. SpaceX has managed to avoid being 'held hostage' by pseudo-monopoly suppliers.
>This removal of surplus-age is common in the automotive industry, and one of the reasons that cars are such an amazing value.
You say that and then a company like Ford releases this as their EV to show the world that they are competitive with Tesla.
[1]: https://youtu.be/C1dQtlrI7uU?t=70
How does something like this happen despite Ford knowing all the 'secrets' a company like Tesla or the Chinese know? I have a few guesses:
1. Its the structure of the company. In this video the presenter talks a lot about all the hoses and clamp connectors etc. The cooling department thinking they had to stay relevant made sure the car incorporated a design that had all this nonsense.
2. Maybe they didn't put their 'A' engineers on this car. Its plausible: the F-150 is their massive money maker. However this car was supposedly developed under some skunkworks program and yet here we are.
3. Maybe there was sabatoge from elsewhere (suppliers, middle management etc.) You watch a movie like Ford vs Ferrari and while im sure a lot is dramatized, I can't help but think man they were talking about the dysfunction of Ford way back then?!
Then we have Youtube documentaries like this one about the Ford Taurus SHO talking about how they screwed up so much that they had one chance left to get serious...like what? Shouldn't they be serious every day? Thats what the Chinese are doing.
[2]: https://youtu.be/5VTRhCC3gZI?t=56
The presenter further added how they had to ship entire engine blocks to Japan so that they could 'fix' them and unlock 80 more horsepower that Ford just left on the table. If factual, this should be a total embarrassment: You had to send your handiwork to a entity with a better reputation so that they could 'fix' your mess?
[3]: https://youtu.be/5VTRhCC3gZI?t=212
At some point, you have to acknowledge that the naysayers were wrong: Thinking (especially among the short community) was that Tesla had some cool ideas but their implementation was horrific, they couldn't just make up for 100+ years of institutional knowledge that the legacy companies had. The Tesla cars showed some of this thinking: quite poor build quality, poor after sale support, poor parts network. These things improved over the years but still isn't perfect.
But at the same time you have to acknowledge that the legacies suffer from their own problems that dont put them as far ahead as newcomers as you'd think. Sometimes a lot of that institutional knowledge becomes a liability when a paradigm shift occurs.
1 reply →
yes and no. Like you said, automotive and aviation industries are bound by a lot regulatory and path dependent constraints.
Elon's strength is his willingness to pull the plug and transition away from suboptimal solutions. This is bolstered by his willingness to double down.
Imagine if Boeing said "screw all this recertification technical debt for the 737 MAX airframe, we will start fresh. Customers can take it or leave it"
17 replies →
Slight aside, he also has driven capability that was challenging to justify existence for, and was later removed re: Dragon 2 propulsive landing via SuperDracos, landing legs, and the ballast sled. I'm sure the Dragonfly programs matured their abort programs, but surely, that was a ton of time and effort wasted.
You win some, you lose some.
If you aren't failing now and then, you aren't really trying.
I've been inspired by that to refactor my code so that function parameters are minimized (many pass TMI).
I find it mind boggling that you can 3d print rocket engines. I thought that the standard line is that 3d printing metal wasn't developed enough for anything serious. Not a mechanical/materials engineer, but if you can 3d print rockets what's off the table? Jet Engines and that's about it I think?
From the article links, I am amused that SpaceX uses cybertrucks to tow their rocket engines around the grounds and not a normal cheaper truck. They also do it in a totally uncovered trailer, which must be good for the guys taking pictures for forums. But isn't that also good for guys taking pictures for competitors / Russians/ China?
> I thought that the standard line is that 3d printing metal wasn't developed enough for anything serious.
This hasn't been true for over a decade. High value relative to weight, highly complicated internal geometry, or repeated need for one off parts are all reasons to choose 3d printing today for production parts.
> I am amused that SpaceX uses cybertrucks to tow their rocket engines around the grounds and not a normal cheaper truck
If they buy $131M worth of Cybertrucks[1], they might as well use it for something...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-bought-tesla-cybertru...
3D printed metal components are also in Hyper cars, Bugatti and Koenigsegg have implemented them for different components
https://newsroom.bugatti.com/en/press-releases/bugatti-refin...
Apple uses some 3d printed components at volume, i.e. the ultra 3 and 4 watch cases.
Beehive is 3D printing jet engines today, albeit small and potentially only going one way.
Why would you want a yet engine to go backwards?
1 reply →
3d printing metal has some strength downsides, I'm not sure what it is for the raptor engines, but I've heard other space companies claim ~5% less strength that traditional methods for aluminum structures, but that can be worth it in cases where you are able to make shapes that wouldn't be possible with traditional methods, or if you save enough money by printing it. Rocket engines often can benefit from intricate internal channels and shapes that you can 3d print as once piece with no way to do it via subtractive manufacturing.
It has mild strength downsides, but very severe fatigue and damage tolerance downsides. Knowing this, it makes sense that 3d printing tech would make headway in space industry but not (yet) in aviation
16 replies →
One of the things that 3-D printing allows is a fine honeycomb structure. This comes with a somewhat bigger strength reduction, but a dramatic weight reduction. Less materials is cheaper.
Also subtractive manufacturing requires paying to melt away a lot of metal. 3D printing saves.
I don't know all of the ways in which SpaceX is using
What makes jet engines less printable than rocket engines?
GE9X aircraft engines have 3D printed low pressure turbine blades, so I think the view that jets are somehow exceptional is already disproven. There are real benefits to using additive processes for turbojet/fan applications: many jet components have intricate passages and bizarre shapes to conduct gasses, and they are hideously expensive to manufacture with conventional tools.
> And the problems haven’t been completely ironed out: the first launch attempt of Starship’s flight test 13 was aborted automatically by the vehicle’s flight software at T-0 (right before liftoff) this past July when several Raptor 3 engines failed to start
And several engines failed to relight on the booster for flight 13. I believe ice in feed lines is viewed as the most likely cause.
I'm pretty sure that the heat exchanger is going to end up being one part they have to put back in. Pushing CO2 and H2O (both ices at prop temp) into the tanks just seems so ill-advised to me. The amounts of contamination are small, but there are just so many different ways that can go wrong.
The thrust vector control (TVC) subsystem is usually considered a part of the engine. The major change the Soviet NK-33 underwent for a USA model was the addition of TVC, and the engine was named differently, so there are two engines, named differently, which mostly differ by the presence of TVC.
Raptors can be used without TVC. Be that by using differential thrust, or just not needing that - because rocket is controlled using other means, or other engines - it's possible. Tory Bruno specifically explained that he meant - among other things - that absence.
A picture of the engine working on the test stand can be that for the engine - or for the chamber, a significant component of the engine, with or without turbopumps involved.
Tony Bruno, when referring to the partially assembled engine, was complaining about the lack of engine controllers, fluid management, and TVCs [1].
In addition, SpaceX isn’t cheating by not including TVCs. They purposely designed their rocket to need a minimum of them and fully take advantage of the space savings the lack of TVCs affords them.
[1] “So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.”
https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1821679540973765026?s=20
Oh yeah, Tory Bruno made that gaffe of a comment publicly, and completely unprompted, before he abruptly quit. I had forgotten, but you’re right of course.
https://www.spacex.com/content/starship/holy-grail-of-rocket... at 13:35 has a good view of a raptor 3 with TVC, do you think that adds substantially to what is pictured at the top of the article?
TLDW but TVC for rocket engines is usually achieved by like one hydraulic suspension rod each for X and Y axes(Y and Z in rocketry? idk) serving as parts of the engine mounting frame. It shouldn't add a lot to the system.
2 replies →
> A full-flow staged combustion engine is very complex, and prior to the Raptor only two had been built, neither of which successfully flew on a rocket.
Isn't the Space shuttle main engine / SLS engine a full-flow staged combustion engine?
In SSME, most of the LOX never goes through a preburner.
The SSME uses the same kind of fuel-rich combustion chambers for both preburners. This presents a problem for the oxidizer side because any leaking along the shaft between ox pump and turbine in either direction would be catastrophic. This is resolved by an extremely expensive and complex multi-stage helium-purged rotating seal.
One of the cool parts about most FFSC designs, and the raptor in particular, is that they can afford slight leaking from high pressure to low pressure through any seal in the system and it's broadly safe, and only marginally reduces performance. This allows them to be made much more cheaply.
No, it's a fuel rich staged combustion cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25
As it said raptor was the first and the SLS engines are way older.
I think China has made a full flow engine too.
3d printing metal has come a long way!
> There turned out to be less detail available here than I hoped.
I'm surprised the author was surprised that a component of a multi-billion dollar company which is vital to it's future success in the industry and is covered by US regulations governing information export wasn't available as a cut-away diagram.
Someone was reverse engineering the engine in public on a spacex owned website.
It got taken down.
It’s extremely premature to celebrate something which hasn’t been shown to work in its intended application, nor at the original specs.
Given the original specs are the kinds of numbers Musk pulls out of his behind, I wouldn’t expect it to anytime soon.
It’s certainly an achievement of SpaceX engineering what they can do despite his constant meddling.
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