this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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[–] apemint 2 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

He wants to keep the money despite his rocket programs literally blowing up in everyone’s faces

What are you yapping about?

  • SpaceX is the most prolific space company in recent history, performing a launch every 3 days on average.
  • Falcon 9 is the most reliable launch system in in world.
  • Besides the 60 year old Soyuz, Dragon is the only human certified spacecraft capable of delivering crews to and from the ISS.
  • Starship is the largest rocket prototype -and manmade object- to leave the atmosphere.

And they did all this in the last 10 years.

Shitting on SpaceX just because Elon's name is attached to it, -trendy as it may be right now- is dismissing the work of the engineers who made all this possible.

And no, I'm not sucking Elon's dick.

In fact, the only reason SpaceX works well is because, allegedly, there's a wall of people shielding the company from Elon's batshit insanity. If it wasn't for them, he would have ran it to the ground already.

[–] Eldritch 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

SpaceX in its short lifetime has had more catastrophic failures more often than the entire history of NASA. Had anything similar happened at NASA, they would have been closed down or had their budget slashed.

Also the incident with the rushed shodily-built Launchpad that disintegrated damaging properties all around is still being litigated against SpaceX.

We would have been better off funding NASA with a fraction of spacex's funding. And would have been safer as well. SpaceX has done nothing that NASA couldn't have done had we funded it.

[–] apemint -1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

SpaceX in its short lifetime has had more catastrophic failures more often than the entire history of NASA.

To build "cheap" prototypes and learn from their failure is their whole business model. And it's working. Their rockets don't fail on missions, they fail while testing.

SpaceX has done nothing that NASA couldn’t have done had we funded it.

I disagree. NASA is a government agency and by nature it's held down by bureaucracy and moves at a snail's place. There's no incentive for them to keep to a budget and timeline.

What NASA is really good at are robotics and observational science. I think they should be funded to put tech in space and on other celestial objects, and the dirty work of getting stuff off the ground should be delegated to private companies.

[–] Eldritch 1 points 13 minutes ago

To build "cheap" prototypes and learn from their failure is their whole business model. And it's working. Their rockets don't fail on missions, they fail while testing.

In what way couldn't NASA do the same if they were funded similarly. When it comes to large systems like this. National mail, healthcare, space access. Capitalism absolutely cannot be as efficient. Otherwise they would have replaced these systems outright and not sought to sabotage them. As I have globally.

I disagree. NASA is a government agency and by nature it's held down by bureaucracy and moves at a snail's place. There's no incentive for them to keep to a budget and timeline.

There's no nature about it. The US rocketed to a space powerhouse under bureaucracy and NASA. All that changed was the concentration of wealth and the realization how much more there is to be made by private control of space access. The wealthy paid representatives to kill it. Not bureaucracy. Bureaucracy can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. It's been the only thing keeping us from capitalistic fascism for decades. We're going to learn that the hard way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

All of that was paid for my tax dollars, and costs far more than what NASA would have paid to do it.

Do you think SpaceX operates an R&D division of astrophysicists to figure out how space travel even works?

[–] apemint -1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

All of that was paid for my tax dollar

Except it wasn't.

From wikipedia: "SpaceX developed Falcon 9 with private capital as well, but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated."

NASA payed them to transport cargo to the ISS. Both Falcon1 and Falcon9 were privately funded.

and costs far more than what NASA would have paid to do it.

You mean the NASA that's known for budget overruns? That estimated the shuttle program would cost $54M per flight that turned out to cost $409 million? (inflation adjusted)
The NASA that couldn't come up with a new launch system for 14 years after the shuttle program was cancelled?

Do you think SpaceX operates an R&D division of astrophysicists to figure out how space travel even works?

Do you think astrophysicists is the science of spaceflight? Well, it shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated.”

You understand that's a form of extended credit, right?

Which had the R&D cost built in.

You mean the NASA that’s known for budget overruns?

Yes, because with NASA, safety is first. Not so much with SpaceX, where they can grab a PS4 controller, and call it the "Flight control subsystem".

Do you think astrophysicists is the science of spaceflight? Well, it shows you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Yes, the physics of how objects move in space, relational to other objects, is basically the cornerstone of space flight. Let me guess? You think to travel somewhere, you just point in the direction, and turn on "thrust to 100%" huh? And you believe that 60 seconds is 60 seconds to a remote observer regardless of location in a gravity well, and velocity?