I think that what's most impressive is seeing a billionaire put his money where his mouth is. The rich can live a life with near zero risk and live in absolute luxury for a longer than average life span. Or you can do things like this.
I remember in the 1980s Branson flew almost entirely across the Atlantic by balloon only to crash off the coast of Ireland. Plus the powerboats, Breitling Orbiter and most bravely I think: appearing in drag to promote his wedding business.
I remember Brandson talking about this in a podcast (I believe it was 'how I built this', not sure though), he said it was his worst idea but the best name he ever had given to one of his companies. I must agree with that one!
He was talking in a press conference after Virgin Brides was already closed down. The journalist asked him why it failed, and he said “no customers”, which was pretty funny.
Thinking that was a good name is yet another terrible idea. It's going to put off a ton of potential customers, who will find it offensive.
It sounds like he thought it would be funny, and was willing to throw a few million dollars at trolling. Not hard for somebody who can throw more tens of millions at a joyride in a rocket.
We can fear machines and technology but we can master them, at least enough to be confident they will survive the Atlantic weather. The balloon broke on take off and yet Branson and Lindstrand believed in their journey because they believed in their tech. It then became a matter of finishing it off without anything else going wrong.
At the other end of the spectrum is the anxiety about what other people think and say about us and how well we will do when faced with a challenge or change we brought on ourselves, especially when we really stick our necks out on something completely new.
HN is full of people who are maestras and maestros of technology who are sticking their necks out in the capricious people-centric world of business. It’s a site built for entrepreneurs even if the majority of us visitors (myself included) are tech janitors.
And in terms of the transformation the most surprising part, I think, wasn’t the dress. It was the lipstick.
I think the biggest Steve's achievement was the non-stop flight around the globe in the plane, but balloons are also an important part of his life story.
definitely. he's got amazing personality. gem from wiki:
A series of disputes in the early 1990s caused tension between Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, which viewed Virgin as an emerging competitor. Virgin subsequently accused British Airways of poaching its passengers, hacking its computers, and leaking stories to the press that portrayed Virgin negatively. After the so-called campaign of "dirty tricks", British Airways settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson, a further £110,000 to his airline, and had to pay legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson distributed his compensation (the so-called "BA bonus") among his staff.
Millionaires don’t have enough money. Branson is a billionaire.
Most Millionaires do all kinds of interesting things, it’s just that those things are in the same realm that ordinary people can. Eg they go to Aspen and ski, which lots of non-millionaires do, but unlike the plebes they stay in a super high-end hotel or condo, or just buy a vacation home there if they visit often enough.
Being a millionaire, < 10M net worth, is not actually that rare or exceptional.
8% of American adults, according to another article on HN today.
Though it didn't break that down further by age. I suspect a good number of those are retirees with significant savings (and paid-off real estate) to be spent down over the next few decades.
Bringing SpaceX to the first spaceflight only took about $100M, firmly in the "millionaire" range. Falcon-1 was not capable of carrying a human to space though.
Still $100M is a literal order of magnitude away from a billionaire status, mentioned upthread.
In any case, a millionaire can technically have wealth spanning 3 orders of magnitude; no way this could be a homogeneous category regarding what's a "millionaire" is capable of financially.
Pretty much the only person who can throw $100M at a "fun" project that may never amount to anything more than a hobby is someone at the billionaire level.
Few hundred millionaires are passionate enough about something to spend their entire fortune on it.
Technically, my wife and I are millionaires. This is a combination of the (anticipated) value of our house, our pension funds and some investments. We are retired and living comfortably but within our means.
Our funds have to last for the rest of our lives. There is no way we could suddenly use our 'wealth' to fund a 'millionaire' project.
I have argued this point with my old married former union-employee relatives that see themselves as "poor". Combined they have a $6000/month pension. When I explain I will need to save $2M+ to achieve that income they suggest that I am just greedy/out-of-touch millionaire who should be giving more money away.
This math seems wrong. In particular, I can't tell whether your $6000/mo is meant to be interest: in which case you expect to be paid forever and die without ever touching the principal.
If you earn no interest and expect to spend $6000 a month forever without ever gaining any passive money accumulation on your principal, you'd go for 27 years before you'd spent your two million.
There are also many things you can do with your life if you have $2M (or indeed $1M) that aren't available to pensioners. I'll grant you, they've got some pretty sweet pensions: that seems unusual, but hey, collective bargaining gets better terms for workers and that certainly qualifies.
They're not poor unless they're catastrophically bad at money management, but you are indeed a little out of touch: the idea of living off the interest on your wealth is pretty insane and unattainable to any remotely normal person.
It's called safe withdrawal rate...and usually 4% is what people use. $2 million safe withdrawal rate = $6666 per month. Not sure why you are seem to be offended and saying they are out of touch, or insane and unattainable when this is the goal for many people who wish to, and are, living financially independently.
Also I'm not sure why you say someone with $2M can achieve something that someone with $6000 pension a month can't...you can definitely borrow against your pension and grab a large lump sump...
This is the clashing of two different life paths ideologies' e.g. the union/public service employee. Of course people will have opinions on this, because they will be somewhat resentful of those on the other side.
The elephant in the room is that say you have $2MM in the bank and are living off that interest, or are a retired union/public service worker and then you look at how long it took at how long it took to achieve your financial success.
If you save 1/2 of salary in VTI (say 100k-150k range) coming out of a bachelors degree and work for 10-15 years at one of the large tech companies you will have 1.5-2MM USD, which is easily enough to retire on. And you'll be like 32-37years old and still be able to climb Mt. Everest, hike the PCT or AT and probably still have your health.
However if you are a teacher starting out in California, that would be a 44-50k year range https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp which yes is really low. Then you work for 40 years and hopefully are able to make enough pension contributions to be able to retire at age 62 and have a decent pension of that 5-6k/mo. By this time lots of people are starting to have health issues and will not be able to go on the adventures that a 32-37y/o would be able to. Also you kinda have to work an extra 30 years.
TL;DR: Incentive structure for being a teacher is not really there, also benefits are not really there. Maybe Scandinavian countries have a better compensation and work life balance?
Incentive to work in tech industry or similar high-paying jobs is there, as financial independence is readily obtainable within 10-15 years.
It still quite hard to achieve FI early, even on a tech salary.
I can't speak for San Fran, but I'm on a pretty good (by UK standards) tech salary in London. The cost of living (rents mostly) still make putting a high % of salary away every month a challenge. If you have kids as well, it's almost a non-starter.
The marginal tax rate means the only mechanism to do this efficiently are via pension contributions (similar to a US 401k), and these are locked until age 55 (60 by the time i get there).
Financial independence in your 30s is an enormous privilege.
It’s [fire in 30s] doable in the United States in any major city if you follow relatively restrictive schedule and don’t have any kids, not exactly privilege just takes a good amount of discipline.
Also salary’s are much higher and taxes are a bit lower than uk/eu. Housing is not too expensive if you rent a room for a couple years, but this is different between a 22/yo and 35/yo.
US vs UK tech pay is an entirely different game though. I’m pretty sure there is a reason most of the FI early retire guys live in the US (heck mr money mustache moved here from Canada)
> the idea of living off the interest on your wealth is pretty insane and unattainable to any remotely normal person.
I'm not sure why you say that when this is now the dominant form of pension/retirement planning in countries like the US and the UK. People generally buy annuities with their pot, or keep it invested and go in to 'drawdown', living off the returns.
The couple with $6000/mo pension are probably guaranteed that income for life. It may even be inflation adjusted annually.
Someone aged around 60 who wants a inflation adjusted lifetime annuity here in the UK is going to start on around 2%/yr these days[0]. This isn't unreasonable given a 3% inflation expectation, 30 years of life expectancy, and 30 year UK gov gilts yielding just 1.2%[1]. So $6000/mo on equivalent terms could require a $3.6M pot
You can invest your lump sum more aggressively of course, but if you're not disciplined enough to keep withdrawals below a safe rate (widely believed to be 3-4% for a stock portfolio), and suffer a bad run of variance, you'll risk running out of money and dying in poverty.
If you have $1M and have it invested in a no-load S&P tracking fund (historically approx 9%, and hope you don't have a down year), then you'd have $90k/year income on the interest alone.
After taxes (long-term capital gains, let's assume the 15% or 20% bracket, unless Biden gets his wish to increase that), most likely around $13,500 (@ 15%) per year, that would be reduced to $76,500/year, which is $6,375/month.
On the other hand, if you have a "safe withdrawal rate", as fma suggested, (and which seems to be very wise to protect against down years which could permanently reduce your nest egg) then that income would be halved, requiring approximately double the initial investment to result in a $6k post-tax income.
And as far as it being "the idea of living off the interest on your wealth is pretty insane and unattainable", this is just categorically untrue; many mid- to upper-class families in the U.S. with two incomes make in the $300k to $1M range, so even if they only put away 4% to 10% in their 401(k) or other retirement plans for 30 years, they'd easily make that number.
Safe withdrawal rate accounts for inflation and taxation related effects, too.
If you have $1M returning 9% per year, and withdraw $90k/year, you're either going to be spending less in real money in each year -- as inflation reduces the value of $90k and the amount of tax increases each year-- or you're going to be withdrawing more each year and depleting the principal.
"to any remotely normal person'. How normal is this in the grand scheme of things? Roll a million-sided dice and select a random person: let's say, somewhere in the USA to steelman the argument. How often will you get a person in a two-income family where the incomes combine to the $300k and up range?
I'm not at all sure $300k will get you to that 'living on your interest' point in all places in the USA, either, and that makes it tougher on the argument. There are plenty of places where $300k will not let you put away a blessed thing in any retirement plan, and those are the places where people earn these 'insane' sums.
In San Francisco at least, if you make even 100k you can still make significant retirement contributions. I can’t really think of any place where you could not save up on 300k income.
If I were a millionaire, I would still be afraid to try out deep diving or rock climbing, even though I greatly enjoy reading about them or watching the videos. My experience is that I will panic in certain situations and that could easily be fatal.
Just yesterday we had a thread about the famous cave rescue here. Brrr, the very idea is attractive and repulsive at the same time.
Perhaps Branson has a lower than average threshold of risk aversion.
Deep scuba diving is quite safe as long as you don't push the limits. It's not even particularly expensive as long as you don't travel to luxury dive resorts.
Seriously, most billionaires are so fucking boring. Imagine all the interesting things you could do. Most of them just buy homes and yachts. Who’s spending billions on a future tech iron man suit or building a utopia under the sea? Not that those are worthwhile but it would at least be interesting.
That stuff is only interesting if you find it interesting.
I like the idea of an undersea utopia, but I don't think I'd enjoy the reality of funding and developing it enough to want to spend my fortune on it. It sounds like a lot of work and more than a full time job, you can't just throw $100M at your cause and expect it to be done in a way that meets your vision, you need to be there to oversee and guide it and make sure your money is being spent wisely. (a good example is Disney's EPCOT -- Disney's vision was to make it a real living city, after his death it was turned into just another theme park)
A home in the Mediterranean and a yacht sound much more inviting, not to mention less risky than living in an undersea habitat that I just built.
Do you happen to know most billionaires or something? Asking because this summary of "most of them just buy homes and yachts" sounds curiously like one of those straw man POVs.
It’s quite possible that billionaires are doing low-cost, low-profile activities that fly under the radar. But for the expensive ones that leave behind accessible evidence we see them owning sports teams, sailing and yachts and purchasing art.
Most Billionaires are only Billionaires because of the value of the company they own a huge number of shares in, and they’re busy running that company which consumes all their time and energy. They also can’t cash out their shares (or at least not most of them) without risk of losing control of their company, so they don’t actually cash in on their vast wealth. Instead they’re happy to be a Billionaire on paper and “merely” live as a Millionaire.
Edit since I’m getting downvoted: yes the ultra rich can and do live off debt with their stock as collateral, but that gets you to the “merely” living a luxury lifestyle point. It’s not a viable mechanism for funding SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, etc, which is the kind of “interesting stuff” this thread was talking about.
Not really. They just get loans at incredibly low interest rates, using their equity as collateral.
They can deduct dept/interest payments from taxes and never actually have to sell a lot of their stock. That way their wealth can accumulate and they don‘t really generate income. Almost like the tax code is skewed in their favor.
I’m not really familiar with US tax laws tbh. But even if you can’t you would only ever need to liquidate equity to pay the interest. Only those payouts would count as income.
The parent comment was complaining about unequal tax treatment, not about interest rates.
The interest rates aren't particularly important in this concept. Just that you have enough collateral so that you can life off the loan while the collateral appreciates in value, so that you're not forced to sell it.
Maybe they do, but those things are not very interesting for us, or not very showy.
(Also, a millionaire is technically someone with at least $1M net worth; thanks to inflation, this title is now more accessible than ever. Just owning a semi-decent house in the Valley affords you that.)
Just owning a semi-decent house in the Valley affords you that.
Of course, many of those people don't really own the house, the bank does... and for many of them, their million dollar equity in their house exists only on paper.
An average house in most Bay Area counties costs over $1,000,000. That’s even outside SF and Silicon Valley. Being a millionaire is hardly enough money to do interesting things that require intensive capital.
Land is expensive, not houses. Land is non depreciating, financed by loans, not substantially part of wealth. Houses are mostly under $300K depreciating consumables.
There's a joke that the quickest way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire with a rocket company. Musk certainly bucked the trend in that regard.
No they don't? Most people in tech don't live/work in SV, or even the United States. Even for those that do work in SV, most aren't working for FAANG or elsewhere for comparable comp.
Most self-made rich people get that way because they have a higher tolerance for risk than your average person.
(Also, in before "survivorship bias!!": yes, there are also many more risk takers who went broke - that doesn't change the fact that Branson/Bezos/Gates etc. have a higher tolerance for risk than most)
Without defining rich and “self-made” pretty tightly your statement is pretty weird. If someone with nothing risks $100 is that an indication of more or less risk tolerance than a billionaire risking 200 million?
I think someone with next-to-nothing risking everything demonstrates significantly more risk than a billionaire risking a fraction of his wealth. One person has everything to lose, and the other isn't really risking that much (I've personally risked more than 50% of my entire net worth on a single bet when I was already doing well - it's a ridiculously comfortable position to be in and doesn't really demonstrate anything other than privelege).
I think a more interesting question is comparing someone with $100 to someone with $1 billion risking their entire net worths - who has taken on more risk?
I see it differently, although without context we're really just projecting our own assumptions.
The poor person is likely to starve to death. I doubt the billionaire would ever experience that hardship even if he lost everything, he probably still has some lines of support. Hell, just his reputation alone can probably get him an enormous loan or job or something else that other people could only ever hope to have.
Masayoshi Son is famous for losing more money than anyone in history, and he goes out and raises the largest VC fund in history (which is a laughable failure) and is doing it again (apparently logic doesn't apply). Once you reach that status people will worship you even for your failures. Nobody ever pays attention to the person who is struggling just to get by.
This is actually _extremely_ unlikely in the US or Western Europe. Social safety nets do in fact exist, and while they have all sorts of problems they do generally prevent starvation to death. Now eating things that get you to ill health, that is much more believable.
Ok, dangerous jobs are overwhelming taken by poor(er) people.
The idea that rich people take more risks is laughable. Rich people simply gain more from having taken the same risk as a result of the compounding effect of capital investment.
>>The idea that rich people take more risks is laughable.
No one was arguing that. The point being made is that Branson is taking a significant risk given all he has to lose - which is far more than a non-wealthy person - if he were to die.
Pretty sure everybody who dies loses 'everything', for all practical purposes.
They lose the universe. I don't see a distinction, to the person. To the outside world it's bound to seem very different, but they're the ones left behind to care.
I would also answer the 'as a mega-rich person he has much more happiness and satisfaction to lose than a poor man who is just poor and wanting to die!' question by asking: how do you think these hyper-achievers get to where they are?
I think it's possible that the relative angst level doesn't change, either. It's just that the poor man punches the guy on the adjacent barstool and gets thrown in jail. The rich man punches a COUNTRY, or a class, or a demographic, and typically gets cheered for his trouble.
People lose everything when they die, but very wealthy's 'everything' is far more than the typical person's.
>>They lose the universe. I don't see a distinction, to the person.
One loses access to billions, and the other to access to thousands.
People who 'make it', to the degree Branson has, have far less need to take risks, because they have already achieved most if not all of their financial goals. Yes they still want to achieve more, but they are undoubtedly far more satisfied with their current life than a typical person, and could enjoy being at their station for years, immensely, due to the comforts, luxuries and experiences they can afford to partake in.
I think contrarianism, when taken to the extreme, like arguing the rich don't have more to lose than the poor, becomes unconstructive.
The ego gets wrapped up in arguing against some allegedly oppressive/elitist truism, and that leads to biased analysis that selectively examines the evidence to push the contrarian position.
Nobody becomes a Richard Branson, or an Elon Musk, or a Jeff Bezos, or a Mark Zuckerberg, because they have finite goals and they are satisfied.
I would argue that the rich on that scale have MORE dissatisfaction than the poor, otherwise they would have cashed out and retired quite happily. How dissatisfied do you have to be to leave the planet?
I don't think you understand entrepreneurs that well. They're a mixed blessing at best, but a worthwhile societal sparkplug if properly harnessed… and they are defined by a burning ambition and dissatisfaction.
I'll grant you they keep score and are very aware of the high value of what they've achieved (some are even driven to inflate this with obvious lies) but if you think that's the same thing as ease and satisfaction, you'd be mistaken.
Only one in a thousand people with this kind of burning ambition, become successful on the scale that the billionaires you listed have. They're aware of their good fortune, and they undoubtedly know what they have to lose from taking part in an experimental voyage to the edge of space.
I think a 70 year old has less to lose and more incentive to take a risk on things he really wants to do than a 57 year old. No matter how rich you are, you can't stop aging (yet).
And when you risk sudden catastrophic death, I'm not sure that the wealthy person really has more to lose than a poor person, we all only get one life. His heirs will be taken care of either way, how can his life be valued higher than, say, one of his pilots?
>>I think a 70 year old has less to lose and more incentive to take a risk on things he really wants to do than a 57 year old. No matter how rich you are, you can't stop aging (yet).
That is perhaps true, but I was just making a point about his wealth, and comparing him to another person who is the same in all respects but that.
>>And when you risk sudden catastrophic death, I'm not sure that the wealthy person really has more to lose than a poor person,
The life of a billionaire is incredible relative to the life of a poor person.
The life of a billionaire is incredible relative to the life of a poor person.
The point I was trying to make is that that's not necessarily true. There are many non-billionaires that have led incredible lives and have made a big impact in the world and there are billionaires whose biggest contribution to humanity is increasing their own wealth and power.
I was making a generalization, not implying this is a hard and fast rule. And I wasn't talkig about the positive social impact they have on the world. I was talking about they personally have to lose in terms of high quality living.
It matters to the risk/benefit calculations. Let's not kid ourselves to challenge some caricaturized narrative of a right-wing bogeyman, or reinforce some idealistic narrative about the worth of human life.
I mean this is not a debatable point. Studies on criminal behavior for example show that relative poverty massively increases the probability of risk-taking criminal behavior.
Jobs which pose high risk of serious injury and death also pay a premium for that risk, which shows there is an intimate relationship between resources available and willingness to take risks, which would typically make risk-taking less appealing to the wealthier party.
not everyone subscribes to this idea that rich people are worth more than poor people that you (apparently) believe in. so, no, it doesn't matter. perhaps it does to you, though.
I made no reference to how society should value people. I was referencing how much value people generally place on staying alive, and how personal wealth affects that.
People generally perceive themselves as having more to lose when they are rich than when they are poor, since people generally value wealth and the material comforts its affords them. Attacking me personally, by inferring sinister social views, for accurately describing reality is not a constructive way to engage with the world.
In context it should be pretty clear this is also about physical risk, not just financial. If the re-entry procedure failed again being a billionaire isn’t going to cushion the impact much.
Richard Branson can still live a life with near zero risk, in absolute luxury for longer than the average life span after doing this though.
He's still a Billionaire. He didn't "put his money where his mouth is", he bought a custom spaceship using a fraction of his enormous net worth, and rode it out of the atmosphere as a stunt. He hopes he can make a business out of it for other rich people who want to do the same.
This isn't inspiring. Virgin Galactic spacecraft are purely recreational. They offer zero scientific or business purposes outside of selling wealthy people tickets on a rare adventure to nowhere.
I am not sure about cost effectiveness of this. I may experience 10 episodes of 30 second zero-g in parabolic flight for equivalent of $3750. It is almost $6000 (5000 euro) for non-Russian citizens plus ticket to Moscow plus accommodation, but still. Compare with $100-250k for 3 minutes of continuous zero-g with Virgin Galactic.
The launch event was revealing in itself. From NASA to SpaceX to Virgin, there is a huge shift in the launch coverage. Today's event was for the large part an ad for future passengers and I suspect that it was due to the rather "routine-looking" take off and landing. Despite the fact that this was path-breaking, the natural theatre of a launch was missing and had to be created by artificial means with the colorful space suits, the music launch and so on. In a way, this is great. It makes it very likely that we will have thousands of "astronauts" in the not too distant future and scheduled flights to space.
Yeah this is an interesting take. I felt the same, the "theatre" was a bit (very?) awkward at times, but you're right that this is really a sign that that we're on the way to things like this becoming increasingly "routine".
Edit: I should add that I find any opportunity to hear Chris Hadfield talk about space is well worth the time.
Moore's law happens when the output of the system can be used to improve the system that produced the original output. In other words some recursion is required. It also requires that there is an economic need for more output.
So yes if somehow putting engineers and labs in space allows us to iterate faster or spaceship designs then the first requirement is achieved. Then there's the question if the masses want to travel to space. Unlikely unless it just so happens to speed travel and reduce cost for getting from Earth point A to Earth point B.
SpaceX has a pretty strong economic motivator in the form of Starlink. Starlink is also facilitating Starship launches by providing telemetry during launch (or at least that’s the goal).
Eventually, Mars (or other places like the Moon or asteroids) may become a base of operations for launch due to lower gravity. This could, in principle, make things like space based solar feasible. Such large structures would probably be best built by mechanized astronauts just like Starships on Earth. …and see experiments with EVA assembly of telescopes and other structures NASA did in the 1980s and 90s… orders of magnitude faster than space robotics, held back by insanely high cost of human spaceflight. So if you made human spaceflight cheap, that’d make large space structures cheap as well. Mars or the Moon or asteroids could provide lower cost and lower ecological footprint propellants, enabling more space travel and potentially reducing terrestrial high-impact industry.
Starlink has little chance of being the cash cow that the muskrats think. Look, it's low latency satellite internet. It's a giant "meh" for anyone not in very rural locations. That rural market exists, but is quite small — as you can easily see from the revenue of the 3-4 established providers in the field. Yeah, Starlink will differentiate itself by providing a low latency service, and the market for that might be slightly larger, but it'll never be enough to pay for the launches and equipment and then be the cash cow the muskrats dream about.
> rural market exists, but is quite small — as you can easily see from the revenue of the 3-4 established providers in the field
The existing providers suck. There are plenty of villas, chalets, et cetera in places where Starlink would be the winning offering. These may not represent a large number of people. But they do represent a lot of dollars.
This is before tapping the moving target market, e.g. yachts, planes, backpackers, et cetera.
There have been various analayses of starlink, indicating it’s transatlantic latency would be lower than terrestrial connectivity when the network is in certain conditions (I believe there is some routing algorithm decisions to be made on the optical link between satellites, and this depends on where each one is).
I don't live in a rural market, but my existing ISP is so unreliable that I'm on the waitlist for a Starlink terminal to use as a backup when my cable internet goes down.
Established providers' price tags are exorbitant (pun intended). Moving the price an order of magnitude lower will reach the audience two-three orders wider (it called demand elasticity).
> Moore's law happens when the output of the system can be used to improve the system that produced the original output.
This is a thing that possibly facilitates exponential progress, but it is by no means a prerequisite. I have a hard time believing that compute power has been the bottleneck in chip design for many years now.
Other current counterexamples include solar cells and batteries. They have been improving exponentially, but no recursion to speak of comes to mind.
My completely amateur understanding of chip manufacturing progress is that it is not bound by routing problems or similar (which I am guessing you are referring to), but by lithography physics, chemistry, etc. I might be wrong though, are you saying that faster chips are actually becoming possible because more compute power has become available through the previous generation of chips, at this point?
The lithography has obviously been much more salient, and still is, but both are limiting factors.
To draw a parallel: as the improvement of computing hardware performance slows down, one would expect more attention to be paid to software performance optimization, so that more of the potential of the hardware is actually used.
In the same vein, as lithography improvements slow down, one would expect more attention to be paid to e.g. the routing problem (but also placement of gates and buffers/repeaters, logic optimizations for timing closure, and others) so that more of the potential of the lithography is actually used.
So:
> are you saying that faster chips are actually becoming possible because more compute power has become available through the previous generation of chips, at this point?
Yes.
This is obvious when you look at it in the extreme: chips like the Intel 8080 were designed by hand. As in, the shapes to be created via lithography were drawn by hand. Doing this for a modern CPU core is plain impossible. We can only design those because older CPU cores already exist and can run automated tools that do this job for us.
It's less obvious but still true for generational improvements. The chip design problems are becoming computationally harder in each generation, for two main reasons. First, the designs are simply becoming bigger (more gates, more wires). Second, the design rules are becoming more complex.[0] If you kept the chips that you use to create the design constant, then each design generation would take more wall-time than the previous one to go through the automated design tools, until at some point everything just becomes infeasibly slow.
Using faster chips to run the physical design tools on allows the designs to be processed faster, which leads to a faster feedback loop with logic designers (the people who write Verilog), which then leads to a faster feedback loop with architects, which ultimately leads to faster/better designs for the next generation of chips. This may be surprising for software developers -- we get grumpy when our feedback loops take minutes. Chip designers have to deal with feedback loops that take days in some cases for the physical design.
[0] For example, at the lowest routing layers you can't just draw wires wherever you like, but have to satisfy some pretty byzantine rules about things like minimum metal area, distance to neighboring wires, allowed shapes of wires, allowed shapes of holes between wires, and so on. These rules exist because of limitations in the capabilities of the lithography: the process engineers are able to make features smaller, but at the cost of forbidding certain shapes that would cause problems for physical or chemical reasons.
> Moore's law happens when the output of the system can be used to improve the system that produced the original output.
Actually I’ve never understood how this was true for microchips. Anyone know? I understood it as the industry just Moore’s law for planning iterations?
At the very least when you design a new microprocessor you design and simulate it using software running on a computer. Then when that new processor releases, you build a computer with it and then you can simulate and design an even more powerful microprocessor. The tools and production equipment in the fab are also likely designed and partially simulated using CAD tools as well so there's an additional benefit there.
Many people would pass, including me and most of my friends, due to the environmental impact and radiation exposure.
It also seems like a dumb way to die if you aren't contributing to a mission in someway. It's cool to die as a researcher, explorer, or pioneer
like Branson. But as a popcorn eater who can afford to overpay for a roller coaster ride ?
On second thought, if the marketing was good and I had kids, I admit I be tempted.
SpaceX will be launching the Inspiration4 flight sometime this year. I believe that will be the first private orbital flight. (Without at least one government astronaut or cosmonaut on board.)
I think that what's rubbing so many people the wrong way in this thread isn't the technical accomplishment. That was incredible. On the other hand, the self-congratulatory rhetoric was thick. While I was watching it, I said to myself "their video probably isn't working because they knocked the antenna out of alignment when they pat themselves on the back so hard."
It didn't help that the narration was just awful. When the stream buffer finally started playing and we got a mashed up snippet of Branson talking, she (the narrator/commentator) commented that it was late because it was really far away... what!? I know it was off the top of her head but that's just stupid.
So: Congrats on the technical accomplishment, but the rest of the dog and pony show made it look like the worlds most expensive carnival ride.
But it is the most expensive carnival ride! What we saw today is the birth of space tourism. That’s what made the live stream so exciting. Right now it’s still expensive but with the super re-usable approach of Virgin Galactic costs will get lower and lower. In the future (years) it mit might only cost a few thousand bucks for a ride. That’s also why the live stream was so “commercial” - to show you the future where going to space (even if briefly) is nothing more than a plane ride with Dave and Mike as your pilots.
> Branson, in remarks from his Virgin Galactic flight on Sunday, said the spaceflight was the “complete experience of a lifetime” shortly after the spacecraft successfully took off over New Mexico.
The most striking thing about this is not the idea of suborbital flight (not new), nor the involvement of a private company (also not new), nor the idea of a spacecraft launching from a plane (also not new).
What's new and mind-blowing is that space travel can be an experience that people will pay for. You're not taking a suborbital flight, you're becoming an astronaut.
As the initial novelty of "being to space" wears off, there will be demand (and money) to fund ever more unusual space experiences.
At some point, it will become clear that there's not just one or two space travel companies, but a space travel industry.
The only people that can pay to be an "astronaut" atm are billionaires, or close to. Someday maybe it might be something ordinary people can do, long after I am dead. When Disney builds a park in orbit or on Mars and fills it up, then space travel is affordable (if you view Disney as affordable today!).
> What's new and mind-blowing is that space travel can be an experience that people will pay for. You're not taking a suborbital flight, you're becoming an astronaut.
This is like saying being a passenger on a plane makes me a pilot.
Yes, it was incredible, but I don't see how it pays off for the future. What we've got here is a tremendously expensive roller coaster with great view and zero-g in the middle. It doesn't have any practical purpose.
Don't forget, this is not just billionaires and their toys, it's about Democratizing Space Tourism[0]. You have to admire the billionaires who act as guinea pigs in these endeavors. Soon people with a lot less money than Branson/Bezos will be able to fly to space and see the curvature of the globe, all thanks to the initial experiments by explorers like Branson/Bezos.
> You have to admire the billionaires who act as guinea pigs in these endeavors
Or they could, you know, stop exploiting the working class to build their massive amounts of wealth and instead pay their workers properly, prevent wealth inequality, do something about climate change etc. etc.
I honestly find it so egregious that anyone could support this crap because "ooooh space!"
It’s a brand new industry that was created today. Sure, there are lots of problems to be solved in the world, but new industries are exciting and who knows what will come next.
I can tell you what comes next: yet more billionaires and wealth hoarding and still more problems in the world.
I guess my point is does the average person struggling to put food on the table really care that a new industry was 'created'? Is there a place in this industry for those people?
I think this touches a nerve though with the HN crowd, as this kind of argument tends to make them rankle
Anytime a new industry is created, jobs for average people are created. Many people say they are angry that average people are struggling to secure a tiny slice of a finite pie, while most of the pie is hoarded by billionaires. I prefer to believe that when a new industry is created, a new pie is created, and some average people will wind up earning a slice of that new pie. Since average people are struggling to get by, you can't expect them to create a new industry. While some rich people play golf all day, I'm glad to see that some on HN are cheering a billionaire who instead decided to put forth the effort to create a new industry.
Does the average person care? The New Mexico desert now has an employment center, one likely to grow substantially because of this achievement. The average people in that area are sure to see some benefits.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but why should space tourism be promoted and developed in the first place? Given the ongoing climate crisis is this responsible? I mean, what's the end game here? Having near space infested with tourists taking selfies and over-consuming like in pre-covid Venice [0]?
Astronauts and cosmonauts who have been on the ISS's famous globe window...it's not like they were overwhelmed or collapsed onto the ground crying because of it.
What makes our jaw drop is wired into our brain for evolutionary purposes.
A wonderful wheat field = means abundant food
An amazing lake/river = means abundant drinking water
An incredibly attractive woman = means possibility to pass down genes
If travelling at 600mph and 40000ft gets old so fast, I think so will the trip at 50 km or 100 or even 200.
Bezos and Branson are happy and pumped because they are the people behind the effort and managed to allocate raw materials, human resources, goodwill, money...in a way which made them succeed at something so hard as space travel.
But it's not unlike what the CEO of BioNtech and Moderna felt, or even Zuckerberg , Brin or Gates for their endevours.
> It's not like they were overwhelmed or collapsed onto the ground crying because of it.
Being able to see the curvature of the very planet you live on shouldn't have to be a a rare and expensive privilege. After all, you were born on this planet, and it would be nice to see roughly half of it in one glance from space. You don't know what that feels like if you haven't experienced it.
Can they scale this up to taking humans & large payloads to orbit? It seems hard to run this business sustainably on millionaire tourists, 4-minute science experiments and ads. Anyone have an idea of what their business plan is?
Today’s launch vehicle was SpaceShipTwo. The next model (SpaceShip III, revealed in March) is planned to be capable of flying London to Sydney in less than three hours.
That was the original concept, unfortunately the current SpaceShip III won't be capable of point-to-point transportation.
> "The current SpaceShip III is designed to provide just a few minutes of weightlessness and views for space tourists for Virgin Galactic, and is a production version of SpaceShipTwo, with improved maintenance and flight rate performance and does not have point to point transportation capabilities as previously envisioned in 2016."
Congrats to the team but what a rushed job.
The live stream was a disaster and I’m sure it had to do with Branson vs Bezos.
It was so amateur and commercial.
I bet Bezos will demand a far better demo of the new spaceport service.
At peak altitude when the video/audio link failed, the commentator, referring to the lack of comments from Branson:
“We’ll be sure to capture his magical words and share them with the world when they are available.”
Had a hard time keeping my breakfast down. Geez. Seems they should have purchased time on the Starlink sat network for comms.
This was followed by:
“Remember the day, remember where you are, remember who you shared this with, and remember the name Virgin Galactic, because today, space is Virgin territory.”
If over-hype leads to business success, I guess they are on their way.
The professional, highly trained pilot/astronauts were referred to as Dave and Mike. Every mention of Branson was Sir Richard Branson.
Amazing tech, but $250K for 6 minutes of weightlessness? Not exactly democratizing space. It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date.
> It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date.
I guess for many it was hard to see the payoff of "beep, beep" on October 4th, 1957. I likely wouldn't see its importance - by myself, but I've got good explanations. Now I see.
Virgin Galactic flight is lower than what Blue Origin promises to do in several days. Both of those systems are examples of pretty good engineering, and both promise even better performance in the future. I think VG's approach is overall better on the grounds of more inherent safety. And the safer the flights are, the easier it's to make them accessible to everybody - thus the path to the democratization.
The big investments are done today and last decades - remember SpaceShipOne? - but today we see another milestone reached, and even though it's $250K for 4 minutes (?) of weightlessness, it's way more than unavailability of the past. But we won't stop here, of course.
That exact design is a dead end but no breakthroughs are needed for orbital spaceflight. See what SpaceX is doing with reusable rockets, for instance. And Space Shuttle, although economically unsuccessful, showed that material and rocket science from 40 years ago made it physically possible.
I think the tilting tail and minimal thermal protection system concept will always remain suborbital. But there are reusable space glider concepts like X-37 and Dream Chaser.
Is it ever mentioned how much pollution is generated per flight? I can’t see suborbital space travel becoming common if each flight emits millions of pounds of GHG.
With the rise of environmental awareness and even talks of introducing environmental crimes, I hope these companies address these problems before becoming generally available to the public.
Whataboutism. A) cargo ships are also a problem, and B) a private vehicle carrying a half-dozen people creating “only” one tenth the pollution of a ship carrying hundreds of thousands of cargo goods for hundreds of thousands of people is not bragging rights.
The excitement and inspiration that something like Apollo or Falcon Heavy generate cannot be quantified. Many young people have chosen science career because of spaceflights they follow. That include climate and earth science.
To use as an analogy, can you measure the impact of Chopin or Mozart's music? Mozart made a lot of money performing at private events sponsored by the riches, as well as from lessons for their children.
I have nothing against private space exploration, I just don't see how this applies to this kind of space tourism.
They are not breaking any frontier or discovering anything, just using a huge amount of resources and energy to put very wealthy people in zero-g flights for x minutes.
I don't see how we can justify that given how unsustainable that industry is.
I don't know much about this project at all and that will be illustrated well with my following question. What are we talking about as far as going into space? This craft resembles a passenger plane more than a rocket.
It's a quick suborbital jaunt. Carried on another aircraft to 50,000ft, then on rocket power to (the edge of) space, and then back down after a couple minute in freefall. Glides and lands on runway.
Apogee between 50mi and 100km (which are two "lines" of where "space" begins.)
They idea is to have fast international flights by allowing the plane to go in the orbit for a short while and come down again. So instead of spreading 10 hours in a flight you may cut it down to 3
I thought the point of it was space tourism (eventually “affordable) and how inspiring it would be for more people to get to see the earth from that perspective.
No, that's just a side business at least for virgin. Their main focus was to make high speed flight internationally. After all Richard Branson already own an airline (Virgin)
Is it? I can’t find any mentions of that plan. This ship was designed for space tourism, the burn is so short it doesn’t really go much far - it even lands back on the same location it launched from.
On top of that, a seat will cost half a million dollars.
SpaceX and maybe Blue Origin can do that, but Virgin would need a different aircraft.
Space X and blue origin can not do that. Sure they can get a rocket up but you can't launch a giant rocket at Heathrow Airport. You can take off in an aircraft carrying a payload.
What space x proposed with their point to point listing cities such a Zürich Switzerland is insane. If you launch in the middle of Lake Zürich you will blow out every window in the city and probably permanently deathen part of the population. Zürich is a tiny city. Thinking there would be multiple flights like this per day when we can't eve deal with the plane noise is insane.
Your original reply was to this, and I'm commenting in this context:
> What are we talking about as far as going into space? This craft resembles a passenger plane more than a rocket.
Whatever plans they may have for international flights, they seem unrelated to the craft we saw today - the proposed design in the article you linked is for a new "conventional" supersonic plane, not going to orbit and back à la Starship with SpaceShipTwo.
Also, I thought Virgin Galactic was founded specifically with space tourism in mind, not transportation?
Looking at the vast majority of rich people out there, this is at least kinda inspiring.
Don't underestimate the motivational pull of such shows on kids. I'd rather the best brains of the coming generation to concentrate on space and aeronautics than on pushing even more intrusive ads on the rest of us.
I think intrusive ads / kids dreaming to become influencers and other bad things are just a temporary derailment, typical to current generations, and disappear as the internet related technologies and ecosystem become more mature and settled down. Future generations will be more inspired by space travel, like in the 50s/60s. There are already signs of this.
For that to happen, I believe the pictures must have been better. I watched the live stream and was quite underwhelmed to see how poor the footage was.
Nice to see someone doing something exciting and inspiring with their money. Much more inspiring than people whining about billionaires on social media.
your cynicism is outdone by a new method of getting into space for the general public, that will have implications for travel around the world, faster, cheaper and more energy efficient. try looking up sometime, instead of down.
Right, and billionaires have been able to hitch rides to space on Soyuzes for decades, now. This is the first time an American middle class person could save up the price of a median house and buy a ticket to space. (And some Virgin Galactic ticket holders did just that.)
Ironically, this is far more accessible than space has ever been. Hopefully it’s just a start. We want orbital flight and eventually flight to (and from) other celestial bodies to come down to this price (this is the goal for SpaceX’s Starship).
The global middle class(about 2 billion people) can afford to fly in an airplane once in a while, something only the rich could do 100 years ago. That's worth appreciating. Technology has never advanced symmetrically for everyone and it likely never will. The only recent tech I can think of that reached everyone rich and poor alike near simultaneously is smart phones.
Almost every major hard-tech innovation was once prohibitively expensive. Look at solar panels, cars, phones, computers, etc. The cost comes (way) down later on with economies of scale and perfection of the production process.
get over yourself. you think it’s going to be $250k in 10 years and the billions of people on the planet will not see benefit from the tech advances that come from that?
The Concorde was inflation adjusted $12,900 round trip and failed miserably.
It feels like every 10 years we bail out airlines when we hit a bad recession.
I would really question how much of a business model there will be for this at this price point once you don't make a headline by just taking a flight on it.
I can't wait for that new wave of rich people telling us how "earth is beautiful from above" and how us peasants should "stop making kids and eat burgers" that they can continue jumping in their little rocket and enjoy being above us all.
Branson got infinitesimally closer to the stars and supposedly achieved his dream, although the 50 years spent on other businesses would seem to indicate he took a rather circuitous route to that dream. His pyramid is made of assets and holdings, rather than the sandstone of the ancient Egyptians, but we shall see whose monument to narcissism outlasts the other.
I'll be interested to see if Branson stops there or tries to go for orbit.
The obvious long-term play would be a space hotel, because the Scaled craft is really just a fast car ride. And It's taken a very long time indeed to get that far.
Orbit is an order of magnitude more difficult, and a full-time space station at least one or two orders of magnitude more difficult than that.
It is not clear who this benefits. A lot of commentary is cheering on science which is noble, but what exactly does “faster flights around the world” really help?
I think most people can’t think of situation for the near future that a rocket would help solve. The other side is people wishing money was better spent on issues of the world.
I can’t help but admit it is a bit solution in search of a problem.
Yes, I felt better need to paint the rest of the picture. Essentially humanity is cheering on the equivalent of $0.25 kiddy rides outside of a grocery store for the wealthy.
I think you just described life (not that of any one individual, but all of it, the biological meaning).
PS: I usually hate snarky one-liners, especially on HN which is supposed to have more substance, but in this instance I stand by my one-liner because even after giving it some thought I think it's a valid reply. Asking for a reason is just useless after a few iterations.
The first time I noticed this was when I was still pretty young and watched one of those nature documentary movies (The Living Desert, possibly). When, completely by chance, conditions are right life "explodes". There is no reason apart from that it can. And then it all goes away (meaning everything dies!) when conditions are not good any more. Stuff (and life) just happens.
Imagine the heat waves when space travel becomes more accessible. 10 years ago I would have celebrated this because it is an incredible technical achievement. But today, I just have a hard time celebrating such flagrant acts of pollution.
Imagine this were the reaction when Kennedy proposed the USA should put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, "not because it is easy but because it is hard".
You're probably downvoted for invoking the Nazis but the sentiment holds and the question to be answered is what current generations would want to fight to protect. This used to be called "freedom" but that term has gotten a severe beating starting in the late 60's, especially in the USA. The end of the cold war also plays a big role here since it robbed "the west" of a clear direction by robbing it of its "enemy". After the demise of the Soviet Union those who fought its influence were left aimless while those who supported it were left (spiritually) homeless. The former group seems to be searching still while the latter group has proven to be more agile in (re)finding their cause, the results of which are showing more clearly by the day. This may eventually lead to the former group uniting around the cause of fighting the latter group, destabilising the country even more.
I'm sorry I don't see your point. When Kennedy proposed USA should put a man on the moon, fewer people were concerned about climate change than there are today.
How do you make sense of the intensifying forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, and someone burning fossil fuels to go to space?
People had another cause to worry over back in those days, this being the cold war between the west and the east. With the demise of the Soviet Union came the freedom (for some) and need (for others) to find new causes to fight for, climate change being one of them. The USA was hit by a number of record-setting heat waves in the 30's [1,2] which are probably best-known under the colloquial term "Dust Bowl" - the 1930s (the Dust Bowl years) are remembered as the driest and warmest decade for the United States, and the summer of 1936 featured the most widespread and destructive heat wave to occur in the Americas in centuries [3]. Even though many of the temperature records set in those years still stand [4] there was no talk about climate change because people were too busy trying to survive the dust bowl and the resulting economic effects while still reeling from the great depression which preceded it.
