Zuckerberg has accrued over 20 billion dollars of value. He's 27. Elon started out by starting a company "to let people pay to sell junk on eBay" and he did alright.
First, Elon started zip2.com, which "enabled companies to post content on the Internet, such as maps and directory listings"- it was sold in 1999. The X.com (which later became PayPal) is a payment processing engine behind all kinds of things, including companies doing very productive stuff, not just selling junk on ebay. Note that unlike Facebook.com, PayPal.com is never blocked at workplaces, since it's not a productivity killer.
I think Mark will re-implement Hollywood in SF Bay Area, but will not do anything as productive as SpaceX or Tesla Motors.
If anything, it shows that monetary value is not 100% rationally assigned by the current sociopolitical system.
What a needlessly narrow-minded and judgmental post.
For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize, both online and off. We now have means to share and consume information about our acquaintances and friends that we never had before - and based on simple observation we know that people are eating this up. The demand for Zuckerberg's product is massive.
Impact? Being the man who invented Facebook isn't impactful?
We can spend all day spinning this - I can claim that the Dragon is a billionaire's toy, an elitist device which burns boatloads of cash each launch while others suffer through poverty, illness, and death.
But I won't, because that'd be stupid, because the value of any such venture is inherently many-faceted and difficult to ascertain. By your logic anybody who isn't actively curing cancer and malaria is just wasting his/her time.
>For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize
First off don't say "we" when you mean "you". I was socializing on the internet way before Facebook/www. Thinking that they "changed" the way we socialize is naive at best, they just changed the UI. In comparison to something as incredible as the dream to achieve space travel and invent new technology, you are really missing out.
> We now have means to share and consume information about our acquaintances and friends that we never had before
Being someone that was alive long before Facebook got big I can assure you this statement is wrong. Tons of ways to do that before Facebook came along, including other social websites (MySpace, LiveJournal, FriendFeed, etc.), web forums, Usenet forums, BBSes, etc. Yes Facebook was a little prettier and did something a little nicer with their UI and their demographic marketing than many alternatives. But they did not give us anything new we didn't have before. I still think it's pretty lame and not impressed with it. The biggest thing I'm impressed with is their ability to keep it relatively fast and responsive under huge traffic load. The rest is straight-forward CRUD profiles, web chat and image uploads. So everything they provided was and is a free, easily cloneable commodity in terms of functionality. I think they just happened to win the "network effect" lottery among the non-digerati, and got lucky with timing.
Again: I have major respect for Facebook architects/engineers for keeping that thing fast and up under such high and growing traffic. But the features? Meh.
> Impact? Being the man who invented Facebook isn't impactful?
I think calling that "invention" really strains the meaning of that word. Writing it, maybe. Inventing the light bulb, inventing a helicopter, now that's invention. Making a CRUD profile & chat website did not then and does not now require invention. Lots of coding, sure. Figuring out how to keep it simple and non ugly, useful, sure. Keeping it cool early by only allowing Harvard kids, then other Ivy League kids, then other colleges, etc. But is that invention? No. Creation? Yes.
> "Being someone that was alive long before Facebook got big I can assure you this statement is wrong."
Funny, you seem to know a lot about the experiences of myself and my friends - all of whom predate Facebook by a pretty wide margin.
This reminds me of the age-old and tired argument that Apple wasn't first to the smartphone game, as if that somehow robs their accomplishment of any weight. LJ never transcended being a niche online community, FriendFeed is a footnote, Friendster was well-known but not widely used... The only social network that had any real claim to popularity in your list is MySpace, and it was steamrolled by Facebook so quickly I'm sure their heads are still spinning.
Likewise, Nokia was first - but does it matter? "Smartphone" didn't enter the common vernacular until the iPhone. The fact that similar functionality (available with much poorer relative usability) existed prior to the game-changing product is supposed to prove... what? Remember "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."? The execution of an idea is as important (no, more important) than the idea itself, and is worthy of recognition. Similarly, Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but he certainly was the one who brought it to the masses - and that is well worth recognition and respect.
So yeah, you're right, niche proto-social-networks existed prior to Facebook. So what? Facebook was the first mass-market social network that had any significant traction, and it remains the king of the hill. It has changed the way people interact, even if it wasn't the first to come up with the idea of it.
What's with the blithe dismissals of Facebook and Zuck-hate? This isn't a zero-sum game - there is plenty of space for Musk and Zuckerberg to both do their thing, and impact the things they will.
You can list off a bunch of failed startups that predate Facebook, but you totally ignored AOL.
AOL in many ways was the Facebook of its time. In a lot of ways people had MORE interaction using AOL instant messenger (or ICQ) than people do using the Facebook wall posts and messages combined. The major difference between Facebook and AOL is that Facebook allows you to share photos. But given the bandwidth constraints in the 90s I don't think photo sharing was viable.
If AOL had survived the broadband explosion we might not even have Facebook today. People talk about how powerful Facebook and Twitter are becuase companies are willing to put their brand after them (i.e. facebook.com/brand or @brand on twitter). But there were plenty of advertisements where people said 'AOL Keword FooBarBrand' rather than their .com address.
This is in no way a 'I Loved AOL' post, but a lot of people really dismiss its significance because of its subsequent failure.
I think this all happens in Comparison. For example try comparing something like 'sharing photos' with 'going to space'.
Sharing photos might be difficult, and it is difficult to do that at scale. But space travel is a totally different beast.
Its almost like we are in the era of Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci now. I mean its just totally a different thing. Its a whole new world to explore. And that itself if far more exciting than 'sharing photos'.
Objectively everybody does a great job. But subjectively somebody is working for a greater purpose than the other.
Is it though? I'd argue that (in my value system) Bill Gates is doing something far more boring, but far more beneficial to the world - he's curing diseases. Not sci-fi diseases, old boring ones that have existed since the dawn of humanity.
The difficulty of a task doesn't seem to correlate well with its "worth" to society - however one wants to define it.
This is why I'm not going to automatically place Musk over Zuck, because fundamentally I don't see space exploration as "better for mankind" than, say, curing diseases, revolutionizing education, or changing how people socialize. Hell, where I am in my life right now, something that helps normal, every-day people on the ground is worth more than a techno-wizardry that, while difficult and monumentally expensive, provides few benefits to the everyman.
But space exploration and colonization is as important as finding cure for diseases considering our tendency for self destruction.
Currently all humans staying on earth currently is the equivalent of putting all eggs in one basket. Just as it is important to find cure for diseases, solve the problems of hunger and improve people's lives, space colonization is important too!
What do you think could happen to the earth that would make it less habitable than Mars within the next billion years? An asteroid impact 5 times the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs and it would still be a nicer place (assuming your not in the blast radius.) Add burning all fossil fuels, a nuclear war, a massive outbreak of Ebola, and it would still be easier to have a self sustaining habitat on earth than Mars.
I don't think there is anything really stopping them from merely investing like that right now. Sure, starting up that sort of thing yourself is probably something you should wait to do until after you've made good on your prior obligations, but how time consuming could writing a check be?
I don't see the point in this comment, or why it's getting so upvoted. We 1st worlders still live within market economies where people can build what they like and rise and fall at the peril of the consumer. Both of them have done this brilliantly so I ask, why so mad?
Tbh your comment just reminds me of the people on music boards who spend all their time arguing that music died after Led Zep....
The question is not, what would you do to make a living. The question is what would you do in your time if you had enough money not to go out and make a living. Many of us do what we do, because we need a monthly pay check to feed us, pay our bills and send our kids to school.
If you had 20 billion dollars, what would be your bigger priorities. Building and maintaining a Php site(which is important too, because that is what got the 20 billion dollars) or Space Travel?
The question is not, what would you do to make a living. The question is what would you do in your time if you had enough money not to go out and make a living.
I think this is completely wrong. The question is exactly the same if you're deciding what to do with your career or what to do with your fortune. Action is difficult, fantasizing about what you'd do if you were rich is easy.
Indeed if I had millions/billions to invest I'd rather throw it at Elon. Not only would I have a reasonable level of expectation of seeing an ROI, however long it might take, but also I could expect to see social return. Something that truly moves the human race forward. There are tons of teams that could make Instagram, Groupon, OMGPOP or Pinterest, etc. Very few that could do SpaceX. Bet on talent. Especially rarer talent with a track record.
I can't believe that the launch is scheduled for April 30th; in my mind, commercial spaceflight was at least another year away. Either way, if all goes well, I think this marks the beginning of yet another era, and the milestone is, quite frankly, amazing.
I'm surprised at the rate of progress too. NASA used to be able to make rapid progress like that, but I feel like - from my layman's perspective - they couldn't do that now. It would cost billions more than it cost SpaceX to start from nothing (well, not exactly, they had help from NASA, but still) and take years longer.
I know people who work at SpaceX. They recruit pretty heavily from CMU (where I am now). From what I have heard, this is why they get things done so quickly: 1) Elon Musk knows about every detail of the rocket's design. 2) They make almost all the parts in house (literally in the same factory). 3) The work ethic/culture at SpaceX is very high. If something needs to get done, Elon will make sure it gets done fast.
They somehow maintain a high rate of progress despite how huge the undertaking is.
SpaceX is innovating off of NASA's inventions so it has a smaller barrier to clear.
NASA is in charge of space exploration and space science with a budget that can really only handle one. In addition, politicians and not engineers run NASA.
NASA once had the job of putting man on the Moon and bringing them back before 1970. The mission is much broader now, the budgets much smaller and everything seems designed around generating as many jobs in as many places as technically possible (and frequently beyond that boundary). I'm not surprised at all.
I'm puzzled what you mean. Commercial spaceflight has been going on for decades. Commercial human spaceflight has not, but there are no humans on this flight either.
It is true that many commercial satellite launches have occured. SpaceX is the first company that has recovered a capsule after it has orbited. They are also the first commercial company that will dock with a manned space station.
First, the idea of access to orbital launch on the open market, for almost anyone with enough money to buy. That has been around for quite some time.
Second, the idea of a launch vehicle built on a company's sole initiative and designed to service the commercial market, in contrast to a launch vehicle built on a government contract that is later adapted to also suit commercial use. This is no small thing and it is something new that SpaceX has done (on this scale at least). This is the difference between selling flights on surplus B-17s on the market and building a 707.
Third, the idea of commercial manned spaceflight, which is not yet quite fully in existence despite some few early examples but which will likely have a big impact when it becomes more real.
I never implied that what SpaceX is doing isn't awesome (full disclosure: I'm moving there in 6 weeks! :), just that I didn't understand the parent comment that this particular flight is something groundbreaking.
Interesting tidbit from the announcement about this on SpaceX's website:
>In fact, Dragon has so much interior volume, that we could place an entire three-person Russian Soyuz capsule descent module inside Dragon’s pressure vessel.
They mention returning items from ISS. Does anyone know if this is the old standard method of using a parachute and dropping into the ocean for recovery?
Previous Dragon Capsule recovery (and it was only once before) was parachute to ocean landing. [1] So presumably to limit the number of things being tested on this flight to a reasonable number they won't try to return it to land.
I am very hopeful that these guys succeed, and will be impressed as hell. Elon is not kidding when he says it is 'tricky.' Although I think the speed thing is over blown (17,000 MPH, wow! except you're both going about 17,000 MPH and you're both going the same direction, so relative speed is more interesting) But you do have to navigate there, rendezvous, and dock.
If successful they will have duplicated everything in Gemini and next up will be the Mercury program (first manned missions) :-)
I think the reason they're saying it's a bit more tricky than people realise is because, even when dealing solely in terms of relative speed, you're dealing with orbits.
If you try to accelerate, you'll actually end up in a higher orbit. It would be like putting down the gas to overtake someone on the highway and end up flying above them and even if you let off the gas, you will slowly drift further away as you're now dealing with a small amount less gravity.
It's tricky, because the common person doesn't have any clue how to relate to three dimensional movement in an orbit.
One of the first programs I ever wrote was a BASIC game called 'orbit' which simulated docking with other space ships and satellites in orbit. No graphics other than things like closing speed and distance from target, sort of like the old Lunar program at the time.
One of the things that always got people thinking it was 'broken' was that you had to slow down to catch up, basically by slowing you moved to a lower orbit and moved faster relative to an object in a higher orbit, and then you went to a higher orbit to slow down (accelerating).
For now, at least. They have signaled the intention to use the launch abort rockets to make powered landings. I am not sure if they'd try to do it straight from atmospheric braking or if they want to use parachutes to slow down and then use the rockets to land.
In any case, it's very 60's sci-fi style. Quite cool.
By the way, currently it’s only possible to return up to 50kg of cargo from the ISS. After the Space Shuttle was retired, Soyuz became the only spacecraft that can actually return anything to Earth from the ISS and there is pretty much only space for three people and nothing else in that thing.
Dragon is supposed to bring back 600kg in its first test flight to the ISS, but it can bring back up to 3.000kg. That’s still not much compared to what the Space Shuttle could do (14.000kg), but it’s a lot more than what is currently possible.
So even if it takes another three years until the first manned flight, Dragon can be very useful as a cargo ship for the ISS (despite the fact that the ISS already has three cargo ships: the Russian Progress, the Japanese HTV and the European ATV – those three ships can deliver tons of cargo but they all can return nothing).
The ability to do about 4 Dragon flights to the ISS for the incremental cost of a single 2011 Shuttle launch does mean the raw down-mass capability is actually pretty comparable, though.
One thing, though, Dragon won’t deliver is volume. There was lots of space in the Space Shuttle. (But I just wanted to add that for completeness sake, not to claim that the Shuttle was super awesome.)
Yes, but that volume would not have been used for station maintenance missions. If you look at the manifests for the shuttle, they hardly ever used all that volume even for station construction.
I find your comment amusing in light of my particular frustration with the near anonymity of SpaceX in relation to its accomplishments, especially in addition to the nearly universally unfavorable press it gets over at AviationWeek.com. And never mind that Orbital is not "working on the same thing" by any reasonable understanding of the phrase.
Let's get one thing out of the way up front: SpaceX launched, orbited, reentered, and retrieved a fully reusable capsule, one with an ablative heat shield that can be used hundreds, if not thousands, of times over. Disregarding the reusable aspects of the design, they're in the company of 3 nations. Include the reusability aspect and they're in the company only of the United States and the former Soviet Union. I have a degree in engineering. I have engineering friends, some of whom work in aerospace companies. Until this recent PR push, I hadn't found one of them who'd even heard of SpaceX, to say nothing of their groundbreaking and historical flight and recovery of a capsule with private funds. If that's "all the press," then I have "all the press," too. Go ahead. Ask me how it feels to be so famous!
The little press that they do get within the ossified aerospace industry has been terrible. AvWeek recently ran a piece which was focused on how SpaceX had "lost some of its luster" (not a direct quote, but close) with the slip from February to April for the Space Station rendezvous launch, as if any government-run space technology was ever delivered on time. A while ago, they found some blow-hard "space policy expert" to opine about how space was hard and how it was absolutely obvious that SpaceX was over-promising and destined to radically under-deliver. They ran another piece about how congress was unhappy with COTS. Only recently did they have to give some ground with a piece about how commercial space was "already having benefits" now that the launch is so near, and I was overjoyed with schadenfreude when they had to provide neutral coverage of the uninteresting and everyday fact that Space Station astronauts were rehearsing for SpaceX's visit to the station. There's a reason, I'm sure, that SpaceX chose Muse's Uprising as the theme song for their animation about their plans for full reusability. It fits.
Further, Orbital's offering is not even close. Orbital's vehicle is not reusable. It burns up on reentry, and therefore has no capacity to bring cargo back from ISS. And their price point is nowhere near Musk's. In case you're keeping track--and I mean the hypothetical "you", I'm not pissed at you, Metapony--that's less for more. Less than SpaceX for more money. Furthermore, the floor on Orbital's costs is the same trifecta that's always been around in aerospace: expendability, costs of disparate components, and integration costs. I'd love to see a viable competitor to SpaceX, but Orbital isn't even close.
Make no mistake, the battle is not between "government" vehicles and private industry. There are no "government" vehicles: Every vehicle gets built by private contractors. The battle is actually between the established aerospace industry, built around expendables and cost-plus contracting, and SpaceX, an innovative and disruptive aerospace company based around competition, reusables, and fixed-price contracts, with Orbital taking up the rear with the worst aspects of both models.
I know. I come across as a strident cheerleader. I hope that has less to do with any inherent fanboyism in my makeup than it does with my absolute perplexity at and frustration with the bare fact that SpaceX has done unprecedented, amazing, historic things, and hardly anyone knows about them at all.
That mirrors my point of view (I'm in aerospace). Maybe interesting to add: Aerospace is one of the most conservative industries I know, to the brink of overconvidence and beyond. The main reason here are, for me:
1. A duopoly for big aircrafts by Boeing and Airbus (you have to look at the development and industrialisation nightmares of the B787 and the A380 to see where that got them)
2. National monopolies for military aircraft almost everywhere, meaning not pressure to deliver on-spec on-time in-budget since these contracts are basically subsidies
3. Protected space-flight markets, also to a high degree to military aspects
4. High entry barries, e.g. development costs, costs for market penetration, regulations (both civil and military), etc...
Given the above facts, it's clear that the big guys everywhere do everything to protect their market share against others like SpaceX, the chinese (commercial airliners) and the like. But a situation like that also means death to innovation, we are cooking in own juice (if you can say that in english...). The only thing the hold Boeings Lockheeds BAes and EADS grip on the industry are the above mentioned facts, hopfully that changes with the raise of the likes of Embraer, the chinese and (as I personally hope because I like the indesttuctable designs) the recovering russians, some competition can only help.
Another reason why aerospace is slow on innovation and radical design is also safety, something you cannot discard. When lifes are at stake, you don't take any unnecessary risk. First because you are most certainly not allowed too by regulations and also due to a culture of not taking unnecessary risks rooted in security issues. This was different in the past, but raisning costs a and a more risk aware (i'm not giong as far to say risk afraid) public changed that a lot. Again a quasi monoploy didn't help neither.
And as far as SpaceX is concerned: NASA open up a huge window of opportunity to disrupt space flight by retiering the shuttle which left almost overnight only the russians. And Elon Musk took that window, among others.
It's kind of like comparing SpaceX to Virgin Galactic.
Sure, both are likely to succeed within the year at their target goals, but it's apples and oranges.
I suspect that Virgin Galactic will eventually orbit, but I think their real money could be made in suborbital point-to-point, acting like an ultra-elite airliner, which they had (have?) as phase-2.
While Virgin will be testing that, the Dragon Heavy will likely be moving people into low earth orbit. Sometime after that, StratoLaunch might roll something onto a tarmac somewhere.
I don't think SpaceX is really seeking attention. They don't depend on consumers or the aerospace industry at large. Musk certainly doesn't strike me as the kind of person who craves attention. The interview on the Daily Show was the first I had ever seen with him.
They definitely do some amount of PR - in addition to Must going on Jon Stewart he also did a great interview with 60 Minutes earlier this month.
Although they don't directly need consumer support, getting your name out there helps with recruiting the best engineers. I know several people who were tops in their field and heard about SpaceX, dropped what they were doing and applied.
It also helps them with public support. It's very possible that the majors will come in and try to use lobbying to crush SpaceX. Having the public on your side will help SpaceX beat that back later.
Orbital has done a lot of awesome things. ORBCOMM was pretty amazing at the time -- they were just more on the government contract only side than SpaceX (although both are less so than Boeing or the other big aerospace contractors).
I'm just a software guy, not aerospace, so I'm surprised to hear SpaceX is not widely known in the field. From an outsider's perspective, it seems like they are. Thanks for sharing your perspective on it.
Impact. Matters.