SpaceX_Tech

Thanks again for the advice, I certainly value your point of view. This is the last time I'll post from this account, I'll go ahead and start a new one at some point.

I appreciate your sentiment in my starting a blog but I don't think I'd have the time to meaningfully contribute to it and I don't feel comfortable enough in my writing ability to do the kind of long form writing I feel such a topic deserves.

There are certainly many would-be astronauts here as well. Thanks for the kind words in support of the work we're doing.

To be honest, I hadn't considered the ramifications of using the company name as part of my username. You make a good point about the potential of being mistaken for representing the company in some official capacity and I will heed your advice and register under a different username.

I'm curious about the etiquette in regards to identifying myself as a SpaceX employee though. I originally joined to relay some of my personal experiences with the company, is it generally a bad idea to identify myself as an employee, or is the bigger issue in your opinion the use of the company name within my username?

Also, if I do identify myself as an employee, do you think it would be wise to maintain two separate accounts, one exclusively for discussing SpaceX/space related matters and another one for other possibly more controversial topics or is it no longer an issue as long as I have a more generic username?

I certainly understand your position and appreciate the advice.

I do work for SpaceX although I'm not in engineering or software dev. I work in the technician/skilled labor side of the house.

I don't think I've posted anything specifically discussing the merits of the NRA, although I have posted on the subject of gun control and self defense. In any case I'm not sure why discussing that topic and working at SpaceX would be mutually exclusive.

Obviously it should be said that I don't represent SpaceX and the views I express here are my own and not the company's.

Not sure why your comment was downvoted but this is true, there really isn't much open space around the SpaceX property.

I wish we had a campus like Raytheon or Northrop have in El Segundo/Redondo Beach. The 60's & 70's were certainly the high points in aerospace campus architecture here in SoCal.

Based on that FAA application it looks like someone will be losing their prime parking spot.

In all seriousness though, I'm not sure how I feel about this monument. It's going to be really crammed next to the main building and I don't think it will have a very strong visual presence with a giant grey wall directly in the background. There isn't really a good vantage point for viewing either. I suppose it will look ok from the opposite corner of Crenshaw.

Thanks again for the thoughtful and kind reply. Your dignified response is again a reminder of the crassness of my initial comment and the embarrassment I feel towards having made it.

I completely understand your unease with sharing such personal detail, I myself tried to make my post intentionally vague which results in much less valuable substance than what you have shared. Your experience is powerful and well told and although different in terms of the source of our childhood misery, I drew parallels with my own. I understand if you decide to delete it however.

I'm rather new to HN and wasn't aware of a comment length limit either, thanks for pointing it out.

I'm glad to hear that you and your father have made peace.

I look forward to reading your subsequent comments, and in particular I look forward to the next time we might disagree. I assure you I will put more care into crafting my response as I greatly value having someone who can challenge my views, even if that only serves in them being strengthened.

Enjoy the rest of your night.

Thank you for taking the time to respond and for sharing your experience. Prior to this post I commented that I regretted my initial response to you as being overly dismissive of your point of view. I had the opportunity to edit/delete it at that time but I figured I may as well let it stand and afford you an opportunity to respond. I echo the same sentiment here, it was poorly worded in addition to being a colossal mistake on my part to try and draw conclusions about your personal experience based on a single comment.

Interestingly enough, while we clearly differ on this issue we both seem to share some similarities in our childhood experiences. I suppose the lesson for me from all this is the understanding that while it may be convenient to assume that those who hold differing opinions from myself must have had vastly different experiences, this isn't necessarily the case. While we probably won't find much common ground on the issue at hand I think it's rewarding to engage in these discussions, my overly dismissive language notwithstanding. It's enlightening to know that even those with somewhat similar experiences can have vastly different viewpoints and reactions as a result of those experiences, this certainly makes for an interesting world.

I too tend to dislike speaking about my private life and I regret that my post resulted in you feeling the need to talk about yours, although I appreciate you taking the time to prove how misguided my initial post was. I'm not particularly good at expressing my views, whether written or spoken, and thus don't engage in these kind of discussions often. While its wonderful to be able to engage with others online, it is too easy to be dismissive or hostile to others in a way I would never be in person. I will certainly try and keep that in mind the next time I post.

I find your strong stance against violence in all its forms to be admirable. It's not something I find myself capable of accepting but as you said that is more of a reflection on me than you. Perhaps you are a better man than I.

In any case, I apologize for the content of my initial response. I'm embarrassed by my rush to judgement and hope that you find my apology sincere.

Great comment and it goes aptly with your username.

I understand this wasn't directed at me but seeing as I had a similar reaction I hope I can give you some explanation of my response.

Firstly however, I'd like to apologize for the tone of my response below. While I stand by my post's general idea I feel it was poorly worded and came out unnecessarily hostile and combative, along with overly dismissive of your point of view. I'm going to leave it up unedited if for no other reason than to serve as an example of how not to engage in these discussions. In particular, I really shouldn't have made any assumptions about your specific background and again, my apologies.

The exact reasons why I disagreed so strongly with your post are proving difficult for me to illustrate beyond what I've already written. In essence, by painting the act of self defense as being morally or ethically ambiguous, I feel that you are essentially dismissing the experiences that those like myself, who have had to endure violence first hand, have had. I fully accept that I may be misreading your intent here but it comes off as somehow equivocating a defensive response to violence with using violence to prey on others.

Its also upsetting to me because I run across similar sentiments in my daily life that I find troubling. While I consider myself fortunate to both work and socialize with people of many different classes and races I find certain attitudes held by most of those who had the luxury of middle-upper class upbringings regarding being poor to be problematic. I understand this may not be the case with you and I overreacted.

All too often however I come across people espousing views on what it's like to be poor or be surrounded by violence without ever having been poor or surrounded by violence. It comes off as dismissive of my experiences.

It also showcases the problem of racial and economic segregation that is becoming increasingly widespread in the US whereby the burden of being poor and living around violence is increasingly being cordoned off from the rest of society. To me this is expressed by views such as yours that hold self defense as morally ambiguous. It's telling that not a single person who I grew up around would ever consider their right to self defense, even if using deadly force, to be problematic. The only people who I've ever heard espouse these views have never encountered violence at all. I understand that this may not be you, and that there probably exist people who have been victims of violence and still view deadly force as unjust, I've just never met any myself and this surely distorts my perspective.

I'm unsure if this post makes a coherent argument that explains my views succinctly but I hope it helps.

Either way, sorry about the tone of my previous comment.

I'm going to flatly state that while I currently live in a relatively high crime area I do not carry any weapons, firearms or otherwise, on me at any time. I do not harbor any kind of action hero revenge fantasies and my first choice when ever I have been faced with the prospect of physical violence has been to try and deescalate the situation followed by attempting to flee.

I will also add that I spent a good part of my youth living in an area of Oakland, and before that Houston, that was brutalized by a bizarre concoction of gang violence and police corruption mixed with a healthy dose of community apathy.

With all that being said I find your comment extraordinarily naive, paternalistic and offensive. To suggest that citizens, especially those of communities that have been systematically disenfranchised both socially and economically, should feel shame in defending themselves from criminal elements that seek to prey on their condition is absurd.

I certainly don't celebrate the death of another human being and hope that we as a society can find non violent ways of addressing grievances, but to conflate self defense, even when it results in unfortunate death, as bloodlust is insulting.

I usually tend to refrain from drawing conclusions about a poster's personal background on the basis of comments since it's rife for misunderstanding but in this instance I find it hard to bite my tongue. You sound like the product of an extraordinarily privileged life. Perhaps not Gates or Zuckerberg levels of privilege, but privilege nonetheless. The type of privilege were you viewed the police as friends of the community, the type were you didn't have to fear being shot, or stabbed, or bludgeoned, or run over multiple times (something that actually happened to a childhood friend) by the gangs that controlled your neighborhood. The type of privilege were as a child you could be outside after sunset, the type were you didn't have to run from the bus stop straight home every afternoon to avoid being jumped.

The funny thing about privilege is that those who are its biggest beneficiaries are often the least aware if its existence. To suggest that those of us who didn't grow up with the privilege of safety from having physical violence visited upon us or our families and friends as a regular occurrence should view the idea of self defense, even when resulting in death, as being ethically or morally ambiguous represents an almost sociopathic level of delusion.

I agree with you that on the fundamental level I don’t like the idea of rights being perpetually limited on the basis of being a convicted felon. As far as I’m concerned once a person has served their sentence, including parole, they have paid their debt to society in full and shouldn’t be barred from exercising any rights that non felons enjoy. This isn’t limited solely to the right to bear arms but also the right to vote, which many states still bar for convicted felons. If we as a society are so uncomfortable with the people who have paid their debt that we deem they must be prevented from exercising their rights even after serving their sentence, then perhaps it’s time we take a hard look at the failings of our “corrections” system.

On a hypothetical level, even if I did support the current laws barring convicted felons of certain rights in perpetuity, I would still have a problem with the way this is being administered today. I’ve read some pretty damning reports on some of the discriminatory practices that continue at the institutional level within the broader criminal justice system which seem to primarily affect certain segments of our population. Poor people, particularly minorities and specifically black males, face some very specific challenges when it comes to things like selective enforcement, pretrial plea bargains, rates of conviction and length of sentencing. At this point I can’t really describe our justice system as anything but blatantly discriminatory.

Even in a more equitable and just system, I personally wouldn’t support the taking away of rights in perpetuity, and I certainly don’t support it when it seems to have such a deliberate and specific impact on certain groups.

I've also heard the argument that having a national registry makes the possibility of future mass confiscation much more palatable.

There are probably a good deal of people who wouldn't mind amending the Constitution to rid it of the Second Amendment but who still view the 4th Amendment favorably. It would be very difficult to enforce a policy of mass confiscation without the aid of a national registry that wouldn't be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Your question may be impossible to answer since I suspect that what is "profoundly important" varies enormously between individuals but I will try anyway.

Speaking for myself I believe there is something incredibly unique in the way humans devote incredible amounts of energy to aspects of life that aren't inherently necessary to survival but nonetheless add to the richness of our lives. Art and music are examples of things that while not required for life, certainly make life more interesting.

The human drive to explore the places beyond the horizon and to expand our knowledge are things I would certainly describe as of profound importance, even if they don't have immediate direct benefits, although often times they do.

In the end I think JFK put it best in his 1962 speech at Rice:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win…

They are extremely upfront about expectations.

Sadly, whenever these discussions about employees leaving SpaceX come up, some commenters invariably come to the false conclusion that anyone who leaves SpaceX is a loser or somehow couldn’t hack it here. This is obviously not true.

Priorities change and work being the number one or singular focus during one period of life doesn’t make it so perpetually. People get older/more mature and some decide they want to start a family, travel more, want to own a home (not an easy task even as a well paid engineer here in LA), or any number of other good reasons that may lead to leaving SpaceX. None of these reasons should reflect poorly on those who leave.

With that being said, I find it incredibly annoying when new employees come in, some with very impressive backgrounds, and within a few weeks start complaining about the work environment despite it being made abundantly clear to them at every point in the hiring process. I was first hired for a job consisting of extremely low skill manual labor and even for someone in my position it was made very clear what was expected of me from the very first phone screening.

SpaceX is the only aerospace job I've held so I can't speak from personal experience working at any competing companies but from what I hear you are right in that SpaceX tends to have a pretty negative reputation within the industry as far as work/pay are concerned. Interestingly, this tends to work in favor of SpaceX employees who leave the company. I've heard that while engineers from competitors often times see working here as undesirable, hiring managers are quite fond of ex-SpaceX employees, at least partially due to it being a difficult work environment. I've heard that at the very least, competency notwithstanding, having SpaceX on your resume shows you can handle long hours and stress.

I would also add that in general I think many people tend to think the grass is always greener on the other side. I’ve known both engineers and technicians who have moved on to “greener” pastures at more established aerospace/defense companies only to later tell me that they weren’t all that green afterall. I have a good friend who joined a large aero/defense conglomerate out of state to be closer to family and while the the pay pump was a nice feature at first, its luster wore off after a few weeks when he ran into some bureaucratic issues that he probably wouldn’t have had to worry about here. I also work closely with a fairly senior engineer who has a decade plus experience at JPL and Rocketdyne and flatly states that working here has rekindled his passion largely due to the relatively flat structure. He was absolutely worn out by all the middle managers he had to deal with previously. I think, and this is especially true at the more senior engineering levels, not necessarily for us lowly techs, having the ability to walk over to Elon or Tom Mueller and voice your concerns directly is pretty empowering for most and makes working here very unique in an industry that tends to put massive layers between engineers and management.

I’ll add a counter point so that I don’t come off sounding like a complete SpaceX shill and say that I also know people who have left and are very happy with their decision and their new workplaces, although many, in my experience most, still look back at their time here fondly.

I would also note that the space launch business inherently requires long hours due to its complexity and unpredictability. If you work in space launch, and are responsible for any flight critical operations, you will work the occasional 60, 70, or even 80 hour week, there is simply no way around it and it even happens at places like ULA and Rocketdyne.

This isn’t to excuse SpaceX’s sometimes poor planning and management which end up requiring more of these long weeks than should arguably be necessary, but sometimes it’s just a fact of life in this industry. Hopefully as the company matures hours and schedules continue to stabilize, it’s always frustrating to lose good people because they have to make the choice between spending time with family or work.

SpaceX’s reputation for not being an easy place to work is certainly deserved but from what I’ve seen management has been making a serious effort in trying to address issues of work/life balance. The situation today is much different than it was a few years ago in regards to hours worked and scheduling.

In my experience, it wasn’t so much the long hours that wore thin on employees but instead it was the unreliable scheduling that prevented many people from making plans to enjoy their limited time off. There has been progress made in this regard as we have grown and gotten a better handle on some of our critical processes.

I should add that much like with anything else it’s difficult to please everyone all the time and not all of these changes have been well received by everyone. Overtime work for hourly employees is much more regulated and carefully watched now than it was a few years ago and I fall into a camp that isn’t exactly pleased with this. While I think the new changes are better for the overall well being of most employees there are many of us who specifically prefer an environment that skews more heavily towards work in terms of work/life balance.

Pay also tends to be lower than the industry average, especially considering living expenses in LA/Socal, but from what I’ve seen while introductory pay is low it tends to ramp up rather quickly once you hit the 3-4 year mark and is much more aligned with competitors at that point. This probably is at least partially related to the relatively high turnover here which means promotions and advancement can come quickly if you can stick it out.

I should make clear that my experience is coming from the perspective of an hourly technician that is compensated for overtime, unlike the salaried engineers, although in talking with many during the course of my day they seem to have a similar experience.

I can imagine they are very popular in Marin and the peninsula. Surprisingly I've only seen one model X so far here in LA.

I didn't realize these modern diesels still sound terrible, are they really that bad?

Thanks for responding, you make some good points regarding the i3 looking like an electric car while the model S just looks like a normal car. The i3, along with maybe the Volt, are still for me the first cars to get the "electric car" look right. Slightly quirky but nothing comical like the earlier attempts, although I can see why not everyone likes this look.

I grew up in SF and still visit family a couple times a year and I'm always surprised that I don't see very many Tesla's in SF, at least in my area west of Twin Peaks. I've seen more i3's, I wonder if the smaller size is more attractive to SF residents. Meanwhile, whenever I spend time in Manhattan Beach I can barely cross the street without almost getting run over by a model S.

From my understanding the final assembly of components into the finished product is still the most delicate/demanding and is still primarily performed by humans.

What you say makes perfect sense that this is in many ways the part of the assembly process that would gain the most benefit from automation but is probably the most difficult to automate.

I'm really curious to see how fully automating this process would change the globalized manufacturing industry. Would Apple move more manufacturing stateside or would there be a new rush to move manufacturing to countries with the lowest energy costs and tax burden. And are these countries typically the same as those offering cheap labor right now.

Does anyone know how China stacks up in terms of costs once you remove the labor component? Are energy and taxes low as well? I imagine environmental/regulatory costs are quite low.

I believe Apple, unlike most companies that contract manufacturing to places like Foxconn, actually owns most, if not all, of the equipment inside the Foxconn facilities. If what I've read is correct, Apple is completely responsible for setting up the actual assembly lines as well. Foxconn essentially just provides the factory space and the labor.

I've also heard that Apple is the largest purchaser of CNC machining equipment in the entire world.

I'm curious to know how many years away we are from robotics being able to complete the final assembly of small electronics at the same speeds and low prices as humans and what affect this will have on countries like China that rely heavily on low cost factory labor.

This will probably be an unpopular opinion but I absolutely love the look of the i3 and don't understand the widespread derision it receives.

I'm a big fan of industrial design/architecture/automotive design and try to study it extensively, albeit at the hobbyist level. My all time favorite cars are probably the 1973 Porsche 2.7RS and the 1960 Aston Martin DB4GT Jet by Bertone. I only say this as proof that I usually have what most would consider fairly good taste in cars and yet the i3 might be one of my favorite sub $100k cars released in the last few years.

I admit that it tends to photographic poorly and BMW has a habit of painting them some very unflattering colors, including some really weird two tone colorways. The first time I saw the i3 in person it was painted a "unique" burnt orange/copper color and I thought it was hideous. Then when I finally saw one in person painted dark grey with nicer wheels my opinion completely changed.

I also really like its size. I work right next door to Tesla's design studio here in Hawthorne and I can barely cross the street without seeing a model S. While I like the overall body shape there are a number of things that I strongly dislike such as the chrome accents around the windows and much of the front fascia, not to mention the large size. The i3 seems much more forward thinking to me from a design perspective. I’ve never actually sat in or driven one though.

I’m curious if you or others wouldn’t mind sharing what you dislike about the i3, hopefully I haven’t completely lost my sense of style.

I suspect the person you replied to was talking about the new Gigafactory that is being built, which I believe will be primarily owned and operated by Tesla, although Panasonic is an investor.

Tesla does source its current batteries from Panasonic though.

Why? Do Apple and Google really have that adversarial a relationship? It seems like a small subset of their respective fans are the only ones that actually want a "war" between the two.

Apple is the most profitable company in the world and consistently takes almost all of the profit in the smartphone industry. They also make a large portion of the profits in the PC world despite their relatively meager market share. Does Apple really want to expand into the sub $200, or even $100, smartphone market? Unless they do, I don't even really see Google/Android as their competitor.

I know it can be short sighted to base things on personal anecdotes, but while I don't use an iPhone myself, almost all of my friends do and they extensively use Google products ranging from Gmail, Maps, Photos and search.

Apple seems to have the best of both worlds in the current situation. They dominate the high end profitable hardware market and their users still get to benefit from Google products if they so choose. I'm not convinced that Apple would be better off if Google disappeared. Replicating all those services will be expensive.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. You make an especially good point about being accountable when running a "public market" that I hadn't really considered.

That makes a lot of sense but just to play devil's advocate are we considering the OS/App market separate from the hardware market? If so, and considering Apple makes a not insignificant amount from the App Store and doesn't allow competing stores on iPhone hardware, wouldn't that be an example of trying to dominate another market?

Again, I don't want to come off as needlessly argumentative, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of this topic.

You make a very good point and I certainly don't think that IE being tightly coupled to the underlying OS would be good for browser competition. At the same time couldn't I argue that a company such as Apple having so much power over their suppliers due to their market position, and profitability, is also not good for overall competition?

It's certainly going to be difficult if not impossible for a new entrant in the smartphone world to out compete an incumbent like Apple when negotiating contracts with Foxconn.

As I said in my other comment in this thread, I'm having a hard time understanding why certain behaviors get labeled anticompetitive while other behaviors, that ultimately may be just as detrimental to competition, don't.

I admittedly don't have a very deep understanding of these issues and I am perfectly willing to admit I might be completely wrong but I would love to hear your and other readers' thoughts.

You bring up the exact point that I was just thinking about, namely why market share is used as a criteria for defining whether certain behaviors fall into the anticompetitive realm but profit share isn’t.

Apple taking 90% of overall worldwide smartphone profits may not be good for competition or the consumer, yet that isn’t regulated, not that I am suggesting that it should be. Apple obviously has enormous power due to its profitability that gives it a competitive advantage.

I guess the thing I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around is exactly when normal competitive practices become anticompetitive, requiring legal intervention from regulators, and why these seem to center solely around market share and not other things like profits.

Thanks for the info, very interesting and troubling.

I believe in most, if not all, species of octopus the male dies after mating and the female dies shortly after the eggs in her care hatch. Also depending on the species, anywhere from 20,000-200,000 eggs will hatch and I've read that only around 1% will make it to adulthood.

In captivity octopuses are considered relatively difficult to keep due to their sensitivity to water quality. They have a fairly narrow band of acceptable levels of pH, ammonia, nitrite, and salinity. Copper is pretty much Kryptonite to an octopus. I’m unsure what the potential is for large scale changes in oceanic chemistry but I imagine it would be devastating to octopuses, along with overfishing.

I’m actually curious how serious a threat overfishing is. Seeing as how difficult they are to contain I wonder if most commercially available octopus are specifically fished for or are just a byproduct of some other fishing and whether this has a large affect on their populations.

A number of years ago I kept two octopuses in captivity and I always enjoy reading articles like this, I wish more people took an interest in them and I’m glad to see the audience at HN does.

They really are remarkable animals and unbelievably inquisitive. Trying to keep them from escaping, even from a relatively small 250 gallon tank was always a challenge and I can only imagine how difficult it is to retrofit the larger tanks they inhabit at public aquariums to be escape proof.

They two I kept were incredibly tactile in their curiosity and loved exploring my arms/hands whenever I put them into their tank. They would readily eat small crabs and shrimp right from my fingers and seemed to like playing tug of war, clinging to my hand with a few tentacles and them some of the heavier rocks with the others. Lego blocks, clear acrylic piping, small plastic toys would keep them busy for hours on end.

Many people don’t realize this but they are unfortunately (or fortunately for humans) remarkably short lived. Most species live only for 1-1.5 years and even the Giant Pacific Octopus usually only lives for 3-5 years. I would always jokingly remark to friends that if they had a longer life span on the order of a decade or more, they probably would have invented some kind of breathing apparatus and conquered land long ago. They would probably have a much more advanced space program by now as well.