Good lord, everyone please learn a tiny bit about spacex and the state of the space industry instead of letting your (justified) hatred of Elon do the typing.
I dont see whynanyone’s surprised, anything Elon is touchung is tainted by association. It’s not rocket science.
You’re right, Elon Musk being associated with a company is negative. And what SpaceX has accomplished despite that association is truly impressive.
I think around here most people agree that billionaires don’t earn their billions, they reach that point having benefited from the efforts of thousands of workers. So why don’t we recognize those people’s work? Somehow, SpaceX has managed to avoid the meddling that we see from Musk in relation to Twitter and Tesla.
Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia’s soyuz to get us to and from the space station. We didn’t have anything that could launch people into orbit.
Before SpaceX we were launching single use rockets built by companies like United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was founded as a joint venture between defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing. (They’re still around and still for the most part suck)
And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive. NASA didn’t and still doesn’t really build their own rockets, they contract out, and the contracts had been cost-plus, meaning ULA got an agreed on profit plus expenses. So if the schedule slipped on development or development cost more than expected, they actually make more money. There wasn’t much of a private market in space.
With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components, re-established a U.S. sourced crew capsule, and using fixed price contracts they reduced the cost of launch by an order of magnitude. And by publishing fixed prices to get into space, they pretty much by themselves kicked off the private space economy. SpaceX launches more frequently than any other company, and more than any nation.
And they did all that with a better safety record than previous programs! I can’t speak to this particular explosion, but SpaceX has taken an approach where they create new designs quickly, and test them quickly with the potential for explosions, before they put humans at risk on a live launch.
Elon Musk didn’t do all that, the people at SpaceX did. And if anything I’m concerned about the point when he gets tired of fucking up twitter and tesla and turns his attention to SpaceX. I’m hoping the national security aspect of the company will mean responsible adults prevent him from interfering.
And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive.
As opposed to now…
With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components
Nobody had done that before? Wasn’t the promise that they would do few quick checks, refuel, and send it back up same day?
Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia’s soyuz to get us to and from the space station.
Nasa had do use Soyuz because crew dragon was late. SpaceX won the contract then underdelivered a late product. Basically exactly what ULA or Boeing would have done.
Wanna talk about Artemis?
Right, and that’s the joke. All that talent and progress is tainted by Elon’s actions.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for this comment if people would actually do this in reference to Space Billionaires. I’ve had far too many conversations online and elsewhere where the individual shits on NASA for space industry problems and worships Space Billionaires because [some convoluted “government bad rich entrepreneurs good” reason] and their problems aren’t really problems. I’m not saying you’re part of the billionaire sycophant club, but I’m not against musk’s well deserved criticism as he sacrifices people in his rush, and probably work quality suffers alongside them.
Is it ok to shit on NASA for dumping so much money into developing Starship?
Also the SLS doesn’t seem much better. But at least they’ve been around the moon on the SLS.
Personally I’d rather they work on developing spacecraft that can be launch on Falcon 9 or Falcon 9 Heavies, even if it meant multiple launches and assembling things at the ISS before going to the Moon and onwards. Doing this during the Apollo era was difficult because docking operations weren’t all that reliable and there was no ISS back then so giant rockets was the way to go. But things have changed and dumping insane amounts of money into building massive rockets seems like a waste of money and probably isn’t as safe as using proven rocket systems.
Also the SLS doesn’t seem much better.
Are you joking? The SLS is a pretty major step backward for American spaceflight. If we continue flying the SLS, and make all the launches we plan (spoiler alert, that isn’t going to happen) then the cost per launch could be as low as $2 billion. But more likely we will end the SLS program when it proves to be a never ending money sink, and with so much money put into development, we’ll end up with a per launch cost upwards of $5 billion. Meanwhile, for that price it can only manage to get 95 tons to low Earth orbit.
Compare this to the Saturn V, which could lift more and cost much less, even when adjusted for inflation. The Saturn V cost $185 million, or $1.23 billion adjusting for inflation. And it could put 141 tons into low Earth orbit.
To sum up, this new rocket is much less capable and much more expensive than what we were doing 55 years ago.
You could of course also compare this to what spaceX is doing… Their aim is to make a rocket of similar payload capability 100-150t, but with a per launch cost of about $100 million via reusability. That’s an order of magnitude of improvement, that’s huge.
Uh huh, totally not the drug addicted scammers fault that he made bullshit claim after bullshit claim, pushing engineers to make reckless decisions, totally not the owners fault.
I’ll grant you that SpaceX has, amongst others, a number of smart engineers, though smart is a relative term if you’re working for elon musk
You wouldn’t say this if you were following the industry at all. Please see my other comment in this thread. SpaceX is dominating, for good reason, and seemingly in spite of musk.
I’ve been against the space industry/NASA/etc’s bullshit love of Elon’s fucked up project ever since the idiot took over. If they can’t see how he has mismanaged every single thing he’s ever touched and pulled out of every single contract with them because of him, they have serious issues.
Maybe now NASA will come to their senses, kick SpaceX to the curb, and work with someone actually competent.
Please see my other comment in this same thread. It’s not like Tesla or Twitter where they’re clearing slipping and releasing bad product. Look at the actual accomplishments!
As much as we on lemmy might look down on consumers of conservative news, I’m really surprised by how similarly reflexive and uninformed a lot of the comments here are.
So that obliterated launchpad is just normal, then? That empty star ship launch that managed to tumble in space was normal? SpaceX alway cheering and laughing when rockets blow up is normal? SpaceX dominates because they receive our tax dollars. Without that, they’d be dead in the water long time ago
One only has to read any current news about how mismanaged SpaceX is and how many problems they are having to recant this “we love Elon and can’t imagine not having our dicks all the way up his ass” attitude about SpaceX or anything that incompetent, privileged little shit runs.
Cry harder. Without SpaceX the US space industry would be worse than Russia right now. SpaceX launches hundreds of rockets per year and saves NASA millions in launch costs, and can actually launch people into space, unlike Boeing
Relying on a company so unpredictable and full of problems and errors is worse than not going to space at all. Your unnatural love for that laughable idiot Musk is going to get astronauts killed.
