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posted by takyon on Saturday January 12 2019, @10:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the fired-into-space dept.

SpaceX to lay off 10% of its Workforce:

SpaceX, citing a need to get "leaner," said Friday it will lay off more than 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.

[...] "To continue delivering for our customers and to succeed in developing interplanetary spacecraft and a global space-based internet, SpaceX must become a leaner company," the Hawthorne-based company said in a statement. "Either of these developments, even when attempted separately, have bankrupted other organizations. This means we must part ways with some talented and hardworking members of our team."

[...] SpaceX makes most of its money from commercial and national security satellite launches, as well as two NASA contracts, one a multibillion-dollar deal to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and the other up to $2.6 billion to develop a capsule that will deliver astronauts to the space station. The first launch of that capsule, without a crew, is planned for February.

The Elon Musk-led company has even more ambitious — and expensive — plans. Musk has said SpaceX will conduct a "hopper test" of its Mars spaceship prototype as early as next month. The production version of that spaceship and its rocket system is expected to cost billions.

Earlier this month, privately held SpaceX said it raised about $273 million in equity and other securities in an offering that sought to raise about $500 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is worth $31 billion, according to Equidate, which tracks private-company valuations.

In May, Shotwell told CNBC that the company is profitable and has had "many years" of profitability.

There's an old adage about making something: "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two." Is SpaceX trying to pick all three?

Related: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Fired Managers and Employees in June to Shake Up Starlink Project
Elon Musk's SpaceX Is Raising $500 Million in Funding; Now Valued at $30.5 Billion


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 13 2019, @04:54PM (2 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Sunday January 13 2019, @04:54PM (#785932)

    You're thinking of the boosters I think, which only has to deal with a fraction of orbital velocity (less than a third), not a reentry vehicle, which is what Starship will be. Coming from orbit you're doing about mach 23, hitting the air broadside like a brick to keep the superheated plasma shockwave in front of you as far away from your vehicle as possible, and doing your best to avoid laminar flow that would heat the back side of your vehicle as well. By the time you're down to mach 3 or 4, all the hard work has already been done.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday January 14 2019, @05:22PM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday January 14 2019, @05:22PM (#786500)

    I just verified on the last launch video: That first-stage entry/shield burn happened at 4500km/h (Mach 4 at ground level).

    I have not read anything anywhere suggesting that SpaceX is planning for Spaceship to re-enter in a different way, even if the speed will definitely make it quite different. The highly conductive steel and lack of tiles suggests they're planning to scale what works.

    I'll wait for Ars's Statistical to provide answers, as usual.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 14 2019, @10:56PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Monday January 14 2019, @10:56PM (#786683)

      Mach 4 is practically standing still in comparison - mach 24 (24,000km/h) involves 36x the kinetic energy in the approaching air molecules - you can't "just do what works" at low speed, because it simply doesn't work in with that much of a difference. And of course you're no longer dealing with air - you're dealing with plasma.

      As I mentioned, you *really* don't want that plasma to touch your spacecraft. And it's pretty much impossible to prevent that when you're shoving a long, thin vehicle through the air. That's why the Space Shuttle belly-flops during reentry instead of trying to fly - go nose-first and the laminar flow would reattach to the back end of the shuttle and quickly vaporize it. Even the heat shield isn't designed for direct contact with reentry plasma.

      The boosters only have to deal with heating from air friction - which is only a tiny fraction of the heat during reentry, where the vast majority comes from the plasma shockwave. Mach 4 has no such problem.

      The appropriate comparison would be to it's current reentry vehicles - the Dragons. All of which have nice thick heat shields that they use to avoid being vaporized by the plasma they create as they belly-flop into the atmosphere.

      All the SpaceX animations I've seen show Starship coming in broadside until its slowed down to below hypersonic speeds. The whole point of the mobile "wings/fins" is to stabilize that maneuver - they're not actually wings, fins, or any other sort of normal aerodynamic surface, as he has stated several times.

      Musk is probably talking about dumping the heat shield because

      1: Those things are *expensive*, fragile, and don't last all that long even under the best of conditions. Especially when you're talking about covering half a fair-sized grain silo, which then needs to be completely inspected before every flight, since even a small crack could mean a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
      2: They pretty much have to be black to radiate heat fast enough - but that means they also absorb pretty much all the heat coming at them from the plasma shockwave.
      3: A mirrored surface would instead reflect the heat from the plasma heat - thus eliminating the need to deal with the vast majority of reentry heat, and leaving only air friction
      4: Active cooling is completely adequate to the task of shedding the heat from air friction. It's even been considered for shedding the full heat of reentry, as in the Dyna-Soar mentioned in another comment.