What kind of a world would I have imagined if I'd gotten the news from the future in the form of just that one headline? Answer: A much worse world than the one we've got.
September 12, 2021
I lived through the "space race" of the 1960s, and I would never have thought that I'd ever see a headline like this.
"Elon Musk is dominating the space race. Jeff Bezos is trying to fight back."
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The old-school way of "fighting back" in business or technology was to produce a better widget, not by employing a roomful of lawyers and suing your competitor because he's achieved an advantage due to hard work.
"Answer: A much worse world than the one we've got."
Wait. We haven't gotten around to fully weaponizing space yet. On the other hand, Elon Musk hasn't finished launching all his Starlink SpaceX satellites yet.
The race continues ...
Someone never read any Heinlein when growing up.
RCB: "The old-school way of 'fighting back'... was to produce a better widget, not by employing a roomful of lawyers and suing your competitor..." A quick review of the decades-long, vicious lawsuits over airplane technology, telephony, and television make me think such lawfare was not uncommon. (Not raised as a defense of Jeff Bezos.)
Why would you have imagined a worse world? Isn't competition a good thing? Or am I misunderstanding your comment?
If you haven't ever done it, I'd love to see you try out and blog your thoughts and impression using Gapminder's Worldview Upgrader.
The number of ways we are wrong about so much, is both frustrating but even more so reassuring. From Hans Rosling (gone too soon) and his son's work on how to not be ignorant about the world.
See also Our World in Data & Human Progress for more great information and data.
The only hope Bezos has left to try and catch Musk in this "not really a race anymore "race"' to space, and he knows it, is Lawfare to stop Musk rather than building something truly competitive.
Bezos purchased "old space thinking, adopted old space practices, set old space goals and embraced old space tech for his programs...and "moves" at a glacial pace (see "Where are my (BE4) engines Jeff?" memes on behalf of Tory Bruno of ULA as well as "Jeff Who?" memes). Jeff hasnt even gone orbital yet!
Musk jumped generations ahead in thinking regarding objectives (grander, bigger, more robust (welders slapping rockets together outside near a beach in Texas and you can watch LIVE every day on youtube!)), rapid inexpensive prototyping and design iterations on the fly leading to design and fabrication and performance breakthroughs, production rampup knowedge gleaned thru his Tesla experience applied aggressively, etc.
This was "foretold" so to speak at the famous lunch attended by Musk and Bezosback in 2004:
"1/ In 2004, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos met for a meal to discuss space.
It was one of their few in-person interactions.
The conversation they had perfectly captures the different approaches they've taken to space exploration.
Here's the story 🧵 "
https://t.co/g8hAsEj3d4
Musk is going to Mars whether anyone else wants to go and not just to visit (like NASA's puny Artemis program which is just Apollo continued plus a little more).
Because Musk is going to Mars his programs and rockets and engines and development is/are bigger faster meaner stronger and it makes it easy for his team to create modest subprograms adapted to 1-off missions like winning the Human Landing System (HLS) for the Artemis/moon contract from NASA over Blue Origin ("Sue Origin") and legacy space dudes like Boeing/Lockheed Martin etc.
Yeah Bezos is fighting it out in the courtroom. Not a lot of respect for him among space fans.
I check in daily on several youtube channels and blogs following SpaceX. They are "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead". And they're doing it on display for all the world to see. Really unique aspect of our times.
It would have sounded like a couple of Bond villains competing for world domination.
If course Bezos fighting back is to try to get the government to do his work for him.
Why not get your shit together and produce stuff... what a interesting and new concept...
Zillionaires could find a lot worse ways to spend their money and affect the course of human events. Just for instance, Bill Gates dropped millions all OVER the "Common Core" initiatives of the past two decades.
IBM let the old school way prevail, and gave rise to today's home computing miracles while the company itself withered. Kodak and Polaroid joined buggy whip makers on a list of history's former greats when better widgets arrived and they failed to outcompete the newcomers. Tesla is trying to replace the internal combustion vehicle by government fiat. Amazon is overworking poorly paid warehouse workers until robot tech advances enough to completely replace the meat sacks. There are several large defense contractors in the US because the government wants it so, not because Boeing and Lockheed and Raytheon each make widgets better than the other guy. There are lotsa ways to skin the cat to win market share, market dominance.
Microsoft fought back in a similar way to Bezos, making sure nobody else's software got put on PCs. How are they doing?
Never underestimate the ability of a well paid government to insure success of a private company.
Bezos isn't fighting back, he's actively slowing down progress. Somewhere in hell, Roy Cohn is smiling.
Why would you imagine it a worse world?
I love the competition, but Bezos has been a sore loser, appealing the loss of contracts to congress and using the cudgel of the WaPo as a means of getting what he wants.
Isn't it enough to be the richest man in the history of the world?
Seen from a more distant perspective, the rivalry of Musk and Besos is more consistent with what the visionaries of space flight had in mind than the largely propaganda-driven space race the Cold War era spawned in fact.
"Musk jumped generations ahead in thinking regarding objectives (grander, bigger, more robust (welders slapping rockets together outside near a beach in Texas and you can watch LIVE every day on youtube!)),…"
Burly cis-men building rockets is the future I was promised. (flying cars were always silly).
"Tesla is trying to replace the internal combustion vehicle by government fiat."
Where would Musk be without my tax $$?
"It would have sounded like a couple of Bond villains competing for world domination."
Exactly.
Thanks for summing it up so succinctly.
I thought of the Biff dystopia in Back to the Future II.
I knew people who worked at Blue Origin.
Haven't really known many people inside Spacex yet. Going to work on that.
The people at Blue Origin said they preferred the job security there to Spacex. Apparently Spacex has constant productivity reviews and actually fires people.
Every organization has at least 10% of their workforce that the organization would be better off replacing.
Joe Smith: "Isn't it enough to be the richest man in the history of the world?"
Bezos knows the trajectory of Musk's operations will inevitably, and probably not that far off, crush Bezos and his fortune.
Just look at the incredible interwoven synergistic aspects of Musk's primary businesses:
- Spacex rocketry/R&D/metallurgy/propulsion/Planetary scale space operations and development
- Starlink satellite based communications(even ViaSat, the clear losers in the near term have been forced to schedule launches on Spacex rockets!)
- Tesla (R&D/Artificial Intelligence-Full Automated Driving/battery development, etc)--have you seen Beta 10.1?
- Tesla Robotics (AI-Autonomous action/mech engineering advancements/Robots by the thousands on Mars for initial development/construction/production, etc)
- The Boring Company (tunneling technology/practices.....knowing we will need to construct large structures "underground" for permanent colonization on Mars and the Moon)---Even NASA needed Bruce Willis as shown in that "Documentary" titled "Armageddon".
- Solar tech and development (obvious here)
The knowledge/production transfer across these endeavors are endless.
None of any of that is an accident.
And the most important difference of all? Musk's management style which has permeated the entirety of the leadership teams across all operating organizations.
No BS management. And his teams, comprised of no BS fixers of problems, move at the pace Musk requires.
If you have the time, check out this Starbase tour (in 3 parts) Musk gave to just some interested space geek from Youtube. Fascinating and telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
Musk is a passionate engineer at heart and in work. Bezos was a software leader peacock so, while Bezos stepped down from leading Amazon day to day to take over Blue Origin on a day to day basis, Musk's structural (now) business advantages guarantees his eventual overtaking of Bezos.
That's what Bezos' weird performance on that Suborbital Apollo-like capsule launch event was all about.
Althouse: ""It would have sounded like a couple of Bond villains competing for world domination."
Perhaps that is also because it has not been until relatively recently that individuals were possessed of such wealth that initiatives that previously could only be attempted by nation states were now open to those individuals.
The other element that exists today that did not exist back in the 50's/60's/70's is the universal relative ease of access to astonishing computing power and available core knowledge/experience in so many technical fields across so many disciplines.
Not to mention advanced production/manufacturing techniques. Even Howard probably has some insight into all that (I'm assuming from previous Howard posts that touched on those things).
So, you've now got the resources + knowledge/tech needed without governments.
What's the only remaining element required to launch a private effort?
Desire.
And Musk is providing that. Relentless, unstoppable passion and desire for making humans inter-planetary.
But if it makes you feel better, would you like to tweet at Elon to start carrying a white fluffy cat?
The headline itself would not have surprised me in the mid 60s; I had already read Heinlein’s “The Man Who Sold the Moon.” The wealthy, driven civilian protagonist, by hook and by crook, builds the first spaceship to land on the moon.
It’s rich to hear team Bezos whine that Musk does not follow the rules. The fiend even kept a Tesla assembly plant open during the coronavirus pandemic in defiance of local health officials! I’m a little disappointed Bezos doesn’t tell us how many people died of COVID because of Musk’s refusal to follow the rules. In this competition Musk is beating Monopoly Bezos like a rented mule.
... If course Bezos fighting back is to try to get the government to do his work for him.
... Bezos isn't fighting back, he's actively slowing down progress.
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is Jeff Bezos as much hands on as Elon Musk? does he have any personal vision for "man in space" driving him?
In the 1960s, people argued about whether getting into space, or landing on the moon, was worth the incredible expense. The "space race," in which the U.S. was competing for milestone accomplishments against hostile foreign governments, was one was to convince everyone that it was worth the cost.
Today, getting into space is still incredibly expensive, but there's a sense that it could also eventually be profitable -- from space tourism, scientific experiments, and mining natural resources. With Amazon and Tesla, Bezos and Musk have both shown they're willing to follow the model of "no profit now, then lots of profit in the future when we're dominating the marketplace." That's worked out pretty well for them.
The real question will be who "owns" space -- nations who get there first, private companies with better technology and huge bank accounts, everyone, or no one? If recent news (and some of the best science-fiction movies from the past 30 years) have anything to say about it, private companies -- perhaps in concert with certain governments -- are trying hard to stake their claims.
"It would have sounded like a couple of Bond villains competing for world domination."
"Exactly".
Only to someone who automatically assumes very wealthy people are not only "villains", but also out for "world domination".
Thank God America avoided that "world domination" thing after completion of the first trans-continental railroad.
“It would have sounded like a couple of Bond villains competing for world domination.”
Damn. Althouse got her “exactly” in first.
Great that private enterprise, with all it’s efficiencies and innovations, is doing this. Horrifying that there are two men so obscenely wealthy that they can do this as a personal indulgence. Shit, with that kind of wealth you could probably fix an election or something….
'Bezos purchased "old space thinking, adopted old space practices, set old space goals and embraced old space tech for his programs...'
And designs space vehicles that look like enormous flying dicks, don't forget about that.
Perhaps that's just ironic : )
“Answer: A much worse world than the one we've got.”
The slow boiling frog comes to mind.
This is a different sort of race, one like the aviation industry back in the 1920's and 1930's.
This seems to be more in line with the predictions of Heinlein where space travel was developed through private enterprise rather than governments.
The media is over dramatizing this for clicks. I watch the construction at Musk's spaceport in Boca Chica Texas every day. While the "Bond villain" headline comparison is a good one (they actually had this exact scenario in Moonraker), the real daily activity is totally the opposite. It's a bunch of Texas construction companies pouring concrete and doing steel work right in the open. It almost looks like a busy junkyard. It's the space race equivalent of restoring a car in your driveway. Bezos is much more secretive. Maybe that's because he's so far behind - who knows? But Musk's Starship has a really long way to go before humans fly on it. Right now it's the equivalent of a rocket powered railroad tank car.
'Every organization has at least 10% of their workforce that the organization would be better off replacing.'
That is correct...
I admire Musk for SpaceX far more than I do for Tesla, and I think SpaceX will far more impact on the future, too.
Achilles: "The people at Blue Origin said they preferred the job security there to Spacex. Apparently Spacex has constant productivity reviews and actually fires people."
Spacex has real deadlines with clear measurable objectives and each critical path milestone is dependent on multiple key workstreams. An unexplainable delay in any ripples thru.
Unlike the legacy space " players", Spacex is not a "jobs program" where more time is spent schmoozing Senators and the sluggish Bill Nelson who is in the back pocket of Old Space.
The reason Spacex won the HLS contract was due to the integrity of the now replaced (by Bill Nelson) previous interim director who was confronted with horrific submissions by Blue Origin, Dynetics and the National Team players.
Those idiots were told explicitly, no "cost plus" submissions.
What did they submit?
Cost plus, no penalties for failure to meet time/quality/performance targets, additional programmed costs, and on and in and on.
And why did Old Space players think they could get away with that?
They own Senators and Congresspersons.
But the submissions were so astonishingly embarrassing, NASA was forced to go with Spacex...even if they didnt want to.
Oh yeah, the Spacex bid was HALF of what Blue Origin demanded.
And Spacex plans for 10x the cargo capacity of "Sue" Origin.
Musk is a bit of cult leader amongst many of the yungins. They believe he's solving the world's biggest problems, so anyone that seems to be competing with Musk they perceive as a threat...
A bunch of new electric vehicles coming out right now. Headlines for that look just the same- 'Is Rivian a Tesla Killer?' ...and all...
Personally I like this colonize Mars thing. If those kinds of people leave it makes this world a better place. Good luck up there...
Sebastuan: "Where would Musk be without my tax $$?"
Where would the US be without Spacex?
Still resupplying the Space Station and launching satellites xxx qto orbit on Russki Soyuz and ChiCom rockets...at 4x or 8x the cost....along with security concerns.
Spacex alone has moved the US back to global lead in mass delivered to orbit.
And the US govt is accelerating and expanding the subsidy advantage to NON-Tesla built electric cars because Tesla is non-union and doesnt pay the bills of LLR Chuck's beloved pro-dem K Street lobbyists.
Recall the recent Dementia Boy "Electric Car Manufacturer" conference in DC where Tesla wasnt even invited.
Achilles said...
Every organization has at least 10% of their workforce that the organization would be better off replacing.
The trick is; figuring out who those 10% are
The other trick is: not losing Lots of the other 90% (by quitting, or by firing)
I have no doubt Musk will get to Mars. I just don't see the commercial reason to do so.
Sebastian said...
"Tesla is trying to replace the internal combustion vehicle by government fiat."
Where would Musk be without my tax $$?"
He would be somewhere else and someone else would have replaced Musk using your tax dollars. The government decided to create an electric vehicle market and he was the first ( but not only) one to make it somewhat commercial.
At the level of Bezos and Musk wealth, if the court throws out the case the loser should have to pay court costs.
Where would Musk be without my tax $$?
Well one answer could have been nude Jello wrestling on a yacht with supermodels the rest of his life.
Instead he chose to invest literally everything he owned (he was borrowing rent money at one point) which was about $200 million dollars, and working 80 hour weeks for months at a time, to create the two most innovative, productive and game changing companies in our lifetime.
Yes he has received government loans, and repaid them with interest. Yes he has received many government contracts, and provided better service at a cheaper price than both those before him, and those competing with him today. His companies have benefitted from government actions designed to spur efforts to move away from fossil fuels. These actions were all taken before he took over Tesla, and their precise purpose was to encourage people like Musk to form companies like Tesla.
I have never understood the irrational Musk hatred... would you honestly have preferred he went the dissolute drone route?
Musk is a bit of cult leader amongst many of the yungins. They believe he's solving the world's biggest problems, so anyone that seems to be competing with Musk they perceive as a threat...
I'm 56 and I have a serious bromance for Musk. If I was a woman I would be desperately trying to have his children. I don't believe in AGW and think Musk is actually wrong about it. I love Musk because he is creating the future I want to live in, and he's actually doing it.
Who exactly is supposed to be competing with Musk?
Who is building electric cars as good as a Tesla? Who is selling as many electric cars as Tesla? Who is building 21st century factories larger than any other factory in the world to build electric vehicles?
Who is delivering crews to the ISS? Who is bringing cargo back from the ISS to Earth? Who is dominating the domestic and international launch market? Who is re-using orbital class boosters? who is reusing cargo and crew capsules to the ISS?
Most of us would actually welcome some real competition for Musk instead of the constant lawfare he faces instead.
Althouse is out of her depth on this subject.
'Musk is a bit of cult leader amongst many of the yungins.'
I'm no Musk fanboi, but give the man his due...he gets shit done.
Just take a look at what he's doing with Starlink satellite internet.
'The trick is; figuring out who those 10% are...'
If you've ever worked in a big company, the bottom ten percent are practically self-identifying. Not much mystery who the layabouts are.
"It would have sounded like a couple of Bond villains competing for world domination."
More like George Jetson's boss Spacely vs. his eternal enemy Cogswell.
Bezos or Musk? Here's the difference.
Elon Musk is a visionary genius armed with talent, competence, and drive. He's the type of man we rarely see -- men like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and Thomas Alva Edison.
Jeff Bezos is a jaded dilettante, a spiritless dabbler who knows nothing about rockets but who owns a rocket company... of sorts, explaining much of Blue Origin's comically inept efforts to compete with SpaceX with actual hardware. Frustrated, resentful, and with nothing useful to show for his invested billions except a 15-minute thrill ride for the obscenely wealthy, Bezos strikes out at the serenely successful Musk with the plutocrat's weapons of last resort -- graft and frivolous lawsuits.
“Who is building electric cars as good as a Tesla? Who is selling as many electric cars as Tesla? Who is building 21st century factories larger than any other factory in the world to build electric vehicles?”
In some ways you’re proving my point- thanks! In fact there are many manufacturers delivering high quality evs - Kia, Ford, Volkswagen, Polestar, Mercedes, Rivian later this month. High build quality vehicles (I’d argue Tesla quality isn’t exactly great, but no matter). The point is EVs should not be viewed as competition for every other evs the way Tesla fanboys do, but rather we are beginning to see evs compete within traditional ICE vehicle categories with both ICE vehicles and other EVs…
I have an early order Rivian on order. I test drove Model S and X. For my needs nothing in Tesla’s current lineup competes with Rivian. R1T and R1S compete with Jeep, F150, Merdedes G-wagen. Someday maybe Cyber truck will be in that space but will face Rivian, Ford, Hummer, and a couple others if/when production starts…
Great that private enterprise, with all its efficiencies and innovations, is doing this. Horrifying that there are two men so obscenely wealthy that they can do this as a personal indulgence
Wrong. Blue Origin is Bezos's personal indulgence. SpaceX was always Musk's goal. PayPal and Tesla were the means to an end
Sebastuan: "Where would Musk be without my tax $$?"
A bit rich, considering the junta is attempting to pass a $2.2 trillion "infrastructure" bill.
Considering the size of the national debt, "your" tax $$ represents a fraction so small it would take the Hubble to find it.
Alarmingly, there are too many commenters here with apparently no perspective regarding the history of space flight engineering, as if rockets have always flown themselves back to their launching points to land gently on their tails like Robert Heinlein imagined in print, like George Pal and Walt Disney presented on television and movie screens in the 1950s.
NASA's partially-reusable Space Shuttle could deliver a kilogram to LEO for $54,500, and that was on a not-for-profit basis. Falcon 9 operates profitably at $2,720 per kg. A small improvement, wouldn't you sat, Althouse?
I do not understand Althouse's sourness over the extraordinary success of SpaceX, unless it is paleo-progressive resentment of an unapologetic capitalist showing the all-powerful gubmint rocket bureaucracy how it's done in spades. Nor do I grasp the reckless and ill-informed coupling of Bezos and Musk as if they are ethical Siamese twins joined at the hip. Musk blithely ignored the largely mythical Blue Origin corporation for years until its neurotically obsessed owner bribed the Democrats to hand him $10 billion taxpayer dollars to keep his stone age moon lander project limping along.
Another point to ponder: The headline cited comes from the Washington Post. Coinicidence or calculated yellow journalism?
Alarmingly, there are too many commenters here with apparently no perspective regarding the history of space flight engineering, as if rockets have always flown themselves back to their launching points to land gently on their tails like Robert Heinlein imagined in print, like George Pal and Walt Disney presented on television and movie screens in the 1950s.
NASA's partially-reusable Space Shuttle could deliver a kilogram to LEO for $54,500, and that was on a not-for-profit basis. Falcon 9 operates profitably at $2,720 per kg. A small improvement, wouldn't you sat, Althouse?
I do not understand Althouse's sourness over the extraordinary success of SpaceX, unless it is paleo-progressive resentment of an unapologetic capitalist showing the all-powerful gubmint rocket bureaucracy how it's done in spades. Nor do I grasp the reckless and ill-informed coupling of Bezos and Musk as if they are ethical Siamese twins joined at the hip. Musk blithely ignored the largely mythical Blue Origin corporation for years until its neurotically obsessed owner bribed the Democrats to hand him $10 billion taxpayer dollars to keep his stone age moon lander project limping along.
Another point to ponder: The headline cited comes from the Washington Post. Coinicidence or calculated yellow journalism?
Blogger Gahrie said..."I'm 56 and I have a serious bromance for Musk. If I was a woman I would be desperately trying to have his children."
What's stopping you? Apparently, all it takes to be a woman is to say that you are.
SpaceX has sent three crew launches in its Crew Dragon to the International Space Station in almost 1 1/2 years. Meanwhile, Boeing has had experience going back almost 60 years building spaceships for human space travel. Boeing’s entry for a crew vehicle still isn’t ready for prime time. For now, SpaceX hasn’t been around enough to know any better that NASA will reward them more money to cover cost overruns due to bureaucracy and complacency. Boeing learned how to play that game long ago, which partly explains why their vehicle hasn’t yet carried a crew into space. Hopefully, SpaceX won’t let inertia take over its company like has had happened with Boeing.
'Well one answer could have been nude Jello wrestling on a yacht with supermodels the rest of his life.'
Jeffrey Ross, when roasting Jerry Stiller (with Seinfeld conspicuously absent), explained that the star had a prior engagement “to fuck a model on a pile of cash.”
'Elon Musk is a visionary genius armed with talent, competence, and drive. He's the type of man we rarely see -- men like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and Thomas Alva Edison.'
Musk is the kind of immigrant we need, and an African-American to boot : )
"Horrifying that there are two men so obscenely wealthy that they can do this as a personal indulgence."
To be clear, it would only look like Bond villains from a 1960's only government can put rockets in space perspective. Of course if you are a Heinlein fan, you see 2 guys trying to be D. D. Harriman, with only one (Musk) really making it happen.
I saw Musk tweeted out a picture of his puppy today.
I have never understood the irrational Musk hatred... would you honestly have preferred he went the dissolute drone route?
**************
Millions, and I guess that includes Althouse, hate Musk's guts but tolerate or ignore the Joe Biden Crime Family and their rampant corruption and moral degeneracy.
As for:
Achilles: "The people at Blue Origin said they preferred the job security there to Spacex. Apparently Spacex has constant productivity reviews and actually fires people."
Well OF COURSE they love the job security----they are just variants of public sector employees. You don't have to actually produce anything, just show up. And THAT's why Blue Origin is so far behind. DERP.
But if you're a woman working in an Amazon distribution center, God Forbid that you come down with a UTI and have to go to the lady's room. THAT's a firing offense...prole.
Kubrick had a Pan Am space shuttle in 2001, but Pan Am went under about the time the Soviet Union did. So much for prognostication.
Pan Am got to be big because of government contracts, and the government's restrictions on American businesses had something to do with its decline. Could happen to Musk, too, sometime. Bezos bought the Post to prevent that from happening to him.
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