It’s not perfect, but capitalism is the best system we’ve got. It is only through competition on the free market that we would arrive at a space program this efficient and innovative. Imagine if the government tried to do this! They would’ve blown up a 100 rockets by now with nothing to show for it, and it would’ve cost tax payers billions of dollars. The innovation of SpaceX is humanity at it’s finest. For thousands of years we’ve looked up at the sky, and wondered what’s there, and now, thanks to the engineering chops of Elon Musk, it is within our grasp. Imagine that, sending a person to space. Maybe someday we’ll even be able to put someone on the moon!
Such a remarkable achievement! We should put capitalists on the Starship ASAP so they can enjoy the fruits of “their” labor!
this but unironically. send all the billionaires to mars!
I mean, is it necessary to have a destination? Just get them going and let them sort it out from there.
Ngl, had me in the first half.
Good gods! Captain, The ambient sarcasm readings are off the charts!
It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.
Not as we know it.
Not as we know it.
Star Trekkin’ Across The Universe…
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It’s not a big deal when you’re blowing up someone else’s money with no real accountability.
I mean… its a big deal if you’re anywhere near the launchpad. Or, in or around South Padre Island.
Also can’t help but notice that Starbase, Texas is practically hugging the US/Mexico border. Almost as though Abbott didn’t want this shit landing in his own backyard when it failed.
It also helps to be as far south as possible. You get to use more momentum to help get orbit, if I understand it correctly.
IIRC, that’s why NASA launches from Florida. That and the coast making launch failures safer.
(But I am not a physicist.)
Proximity to the equator and high elevation make for ideal launch sites. Then eastward facing, because you want to run counter to the earth’s spin as you launch and be out over open water if something fucks up. One reason why Kenya, Brazil, and Indonesia were floated as a high efficiency international spaceports decades ago, when efficiency was considered more important than inflating a billionaire’s ego.
I mean, SpaceX is a private company owned by Musk…
…That takes money from the tax payers in the forms of grants and contracts (that it has not fulfilled).
And?
“Look at what I can do” -Elon musk while throwing a Nazi salute
MAYBE if we Cut the FAA and OTHER Regulatory agencies it’ll not Explode next Time?
Musk is going to be PISSED when he finds out there is no bureau of physics he can subsume or destroy from within. I believe one Rush Stockton came to a similar conclusion, if he indeed had time for that conclusion to even form before perishing.
SpaceGateX
Can’t wait for the documentary
Elon should really pilot the next starship himself. Just put a small 1 person capsule on top (or maybe even 5 people so he can take some of his billionaire friends along) and connect a playstation controller to the engines. Stockton did it, and he made several succesful trips. What you do yourself, you do better!!
The next explosion will occur on the assembly line. Now I call that progress!
My feed rn:
I would ride a Honda rocket a hundred times before ever setting foot on anything developed by SpaceX
I imagine riding a rocket like final boss fight in Just Cause 2.
I imagine it more like Dr. Strangelove
reached an altitude of 890 feet
Kids science projects make reusable rockets that go higher.
It’s a test flight. Going higher was likely not the goal.
Whoa. a subpar Elon project? SAY IT ISN’T SO!
I hate the guy’s guts as much as anybody else, but he has kickstarted a space race, and an EV market. Credit where it’s due.
And yeah I know, rich daddy, no inventions, all evolutionary, etc. But here we are.
You do not hate the guy’s guts as much as anybody else, or as much as is reasonable. You do not in fact have to give it to the Nazi scum. Any success or credit is due to the employees of the companies the inept pathetic narcissistic pro-fascism scumfuck is undeservedly running, often on fire and into the ground. If the resources he’s hoarding would be allocated by a reasonable, competent and humanist entity, we would all be much better off. Musk would be better off the planet. Shame that he missed this flight.
Many miss that Musk’s companies don’t have any measure of success because of him, but instead have it despite him. A lot of intelligent people work for SpaceX and Tesla. Imagine what they could and would do if they didn’t have a petulant man-baby constantly interfering.
Definitely this is the same take as “well the Nazis did a bunch of medical research”
Give credit to his employees he’s done nothing.
kickstarted a space race
hah no
He’s just there to steal credit. Just like everything he’s been a part of.
What space race?
NASA us working on a shoestring budget and managed to run some very successful missions. The Artemis Program is/was very succesful, and what does NASA get?
Budget cuts. Money diverted to SpaceX who, under Elon, has yet to do a single succesful mission (the Dragon capsule and reusable rockets were both projects that Elon bought. Starship is the first project that Elon directed).
Are you out of your mind? SpaceX didn’t buy a single thing, they developed and tested existing ideas (the reusability at least). I mean the guy is a total douche and Nazi but why spread these lies about SpaceX? I agree though that America’s future in space shouldn’t rely on SpaceX due to their affinity to a Nazi, and more funding should be given to NASA and other commercial endeavours
This forum seems like Reddit sometimes but on the other end of the political spectrum
The US should not rely on private companies for stuff. It’s just insane to think it has come to America begging a person for global internet and to get into Space.
all evolutionary
???
He didn’t invent EVs, nor batteries, nor rockets, not even vertically landing rockets, but perfected and especially turned them onto massive success. Too bad he went full idiot.
We can’t even handle being a multi-country species, maybe Elon should dial back the sci-fi “multi-planet” miniseries playing in his head…
People really put the faith of the entire American space program on Elon. It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid.
It’s less that people are putting faith in Elon (sure, some fanatics might be), but it’s that everyone else is somehow even worse.
SpaceX is actually getting stuff to space, despite their prototypes blowing up. Hell, even if this Starship thing is a complete failure and never works, their existing rocket, the Falcon, is still far beyond any of the competition.
The SLS: $10 Billion and a decade late to develop a ship that recycles old Space shuttle parts, then costs $2-3 Billion per launch, and maybe can only launch one every 2 years.
ULA Vulcan: currently years late, still finding problems, and even after all that gets worked out, it can maybe do 6 launches a year?
SpaceX: 1-2 launches per week.
That’s not faith, that’s just facts. I would absolutely love to have somebody else step up and take SpaceX’s crown, but… there really isn’t anybody. Bezos’s Blue Origin may have the biggest chance, but they are more likely to act like ULA than SpaceX.
Let my try and distill that. SpaceX is capable of doing some good work, when Elon leaves them alone.
Remember, Starship is Elon’s napkin drawing idea of making a big cheap steel tube. Bigger and bader than everyone else! For a mission that doesn’t exist, which it’s not even designed properly for. Starship is 100% Elon’s blunder and he’s made so many insane promises for it that it’s dragging SpaceX down.
Starship is SpaceX’s Cybertruck.
Bezos seems pretty happy with space tourism he doesn’t wanna work for the government. Gotta kinda be sick to want to in the first place.
Falcon 9 has launched over 500 mission with a very high success rate. Of course the bulk of advancement should be coming from NASA and we need to spend more there, but SpaceX is putting up big numbers in successful payload lifts.
Boeing and someone else are trying too. Way behind Space X. So no, not “entire space program”…
Fuck all commercial dependency. Fully fund NASA, and let them like what they did back in the 60s, which no company could have done.
Stop relying on corporations to lead our space programs. It’s too important to leave to grifters and corner cutters.
NASA has always been dependent on commercial for profit entities as contractors. The Space Shuttle was developed by Rockwell International (which was later acquired by Boeing). The Apollo Program relied heavily on Boeing, Douglas Aircraft (which later merged into McDonnell Douglas, and then merged with Boeing), and North American Aviation (which later became Rockwell and was acquired by Boeing), and IBM. Lots of cutting edge stuff in that era happened from government contracts throwing money at private corporations.
That’s the whole military industrial complex Eisenhower was talking about.
The only difference with today is that space companies have other customers to choose from, not just NASA (or the Air Force/Space Force).
NASA ran the projects. They have specifications to contractors for manufacturing. That’s a far cry from farming out the entire process and renting space on a commercial rocket.
NASA funded SpaceX based on hitting milestones on their COTS program. Those were just as available to Boeing and Blue Origin, but they had less success meeting those milestones and making a profit under fixed price contracts (as opposed to the traditional cost plus contracts). It’s still NASA-defined standards, only with an offloading of the risk and uncertainty onto the private contractors, which was great for SpaceX and terrible for Boeing.
But ultimately it’s still just contracting.
Really interesting— I don’t follow this nearly enough, so thanks
If Starship wasn’t constantly exploding you might have a point. Seems as though that the reality is that they’re all pretty much at the same spot but Elon wants to pretend that they aren’t.
If you told me that I’d be cheering for space rockets exploding 10 years ago I would have called you crazy. Incredible how much damage that fiend has done to our society.
It’s incredible, isn’t it? I used to be so stoked on space exploration and all the science that goes with it. Still am, really, but my enthusiasm has cooled markedly once billionaires started throwing dick-shaped space missiles around for no other reason than being able to.
I think Honda has begun building spaceships/rockets too. Think they chose to build the type that don’t explode. link
Japanese cars are superior to American cars, why wouldn’t their rockets be?
Japanese cars are superior to American cars
I had a high school friend who went on to become an engineer at General Motors. One of his first projects for them was tearing down an Infiniti and a Lexus when those cars first came on the market. He said that at the time, GM cars typically had between 300 and 400 production defects of varying severity. When they took apart the Infiniti, they found 2 production defects; when they took apart the Lexus, they found 0.
I worked on the Lexus line in Georgetown, KY one summer between semesters. Their standards are insane. Worked the Toyota Camry line the summer before that.
On the Camry line, if they found a defect, they would correct it, then have a QC stand there and inspect every affected car for the next month.
I stood on the line with a screwdriver to check the tightness of a single screw on every sunroof in Camrys. It was so heavily coriographed, it was like a dance.
Definitely agreed on cars, but Japan’s last few moon missions had several catastrophic failures unfortunately.
I’ll have to read up on that. I didn’t know they had tried anything because of the whole can’t make missiles thing.
The front fell off.
it was towed out of the environment.
We shouldn’t be building rockets PERIOD. They cost too much and are eventually only going to serve trillionaires.
FIX SHIT ON THE GROUND FIRST
That said,
They did a test from 300 meters, sure it’s cool but I think they have a LONG way to go before they are competetive.
If you like SatNav, accurate weather tracking, and advanced intercontinental communication then ya like rockets ya dipshit.
While Id be the first to ban private rocket launches outright, we shouldn’t abandon the advances of the space age because of them.
We can do both? What’s a rocket scientist going to do about systemic oppression and the rise of fascism that excludes them from working on rockets still?
the thing is, when you build rockets, and they actually work, and put people on mars, you can reasonably demand that people who demand exponential growth actually go to mars, because earth is already full. this way, you can get rid of the billionaires.
How many times does this gotta happen before we start calling them missiles instead of rockets?
It’s certainly not Honda-level reliability.
Surely they will blame on immigrants too…
