NASA: launches new rocket successfully first try, pundits on social media are all about how inefficient and terrible NASA is
Space Karen: rocket explodes, pundits on social media are all congratulating it and celebrating the revolution
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
NASA: launches new rocket successfully first try, pundits on social media are all about how inefficient and terrible NASA is
Space Karen: rocket explodes, pundits on social media are all congratulating it and celebrating the revolution
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs i always teach my kids the principles of "do it properly (nasa), not quickly (spacex)"
Im going to add this to my arsenal of why it should be done like that.
Just before you "well, actually", both rockets are funded with tons of government money (SpaceX has NASA and military contracts, including a NASA contract for Spaceship for lunar landing) and they are both built by private companies.
@shontelle You realize that Starship is basically funded by NASA, right?
@thomasfuchs they killed nasa
@unikitty That's fair, though personally I really hate what they're doing with Starlink and night sky light pollution. I'd be inclined to be more lenient about it, but it's all haphazard and doesn't even work well.
@thomasfuchs I love to shit-talk Elno but if making rockets was all he did I would be much less annoyed by his antics.
@thomasfuchs
Beyond the stench of Musk, the whole 'ra ra capitalism' thing bugs tf out of me. 'OOoooh! Spacex is so brilliant and has made so much progress!' Riding on the shoulders of giants. Private industry never would have build rockets from the ground up. It's just the jackals claiming prize of the hard work our nation funded. It was private industry's greed that slowed NASA and now claims its work as their own.
@obscurestar Also, it's funded with $3 billion in taxpayer money through NASA contract :)
@mdm Judging from historical data, I'd be extremely careful and skeptical about any estimates about time and cost from SpaceX, who colonized Mars in 2016
@thomasfuchs Your take is funny -- I give you that. But even if the Starship somehow costs *100* times what SpaceX is estimating each launch could cost, it's still *1/20th* the cost of each launch of the SLS.
They are not the same.
@mdm Makes you think what could they do without the huge distraction that this guy is :)
@thomasfuchs Exactly -- SpaceX has stated sometimes that with volume, each launch of Starship could get as low as $1m for each launch.
I don't believe that at all, and that's why said "even at 100X what they estimate". Their current rates to launch a kg to space are something like 30X less than their nearest competitor.
Regardless of where the money comes from, the people at SpaceX (thousands of whom *aren't* Musk), have done amazing things to save the taxpayer money.
@mdm hopefully ?
@thomasfuchs Oh -- look at who the COO of SpaceX is -- it's *not* Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is just a guy who started the company, and then, smartly, handed off the running to other people.
Currently, like you say, he's just a distraction who shows up sometimes. Unlike Tesla, I believe Musk actually has very, very little to do with the daily runnings of SpaceX.
@vey981 there’s this whole notion of airliner-like space travel, which is kind of ridiculous given how rockets work
NASA used to build them fast like that until Apollo 1. Then things slowed up. Lessons learned and forgotten until space shuttle accidents reminded them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
@thomasfuchs I understand (and agree with) much of the criticism of Elon Musk. However, SpaceX has been an unqualified success. While NASA tends to “go slow and get it perfect” at great expense, SpaceX embraces iterative design where failures are expected and used to improve the final outcome. Each approach has merit, but my opinion is that SpaceX will get Starship working reliably and launching several times before even the third $4 billion dollar SLS launch.
@jmichaelsturm I give you that their launch business is doing well (mostly thanks to government money!) but not all rosy.
E.g. their Internet satellite constellation is a joke. Very expensive, doesn't work as advertised (often abysmal speeds) and it's unreliable; plus astronomy light pollution and risk of run-away space junk collision.
@jmichaelsturm I do sincerely hope that all these issues get resolved.
I have a feeling that it would be easier for them without Musk being so prominent in the company.
@thomasfuchs Very true about the public-private partnership that has greatly benefited SpaceX (although I would argue it also benefited the taxpayers). I am also concerned about the large constellations and their impact on astronomy! Great point.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.