Notices by HairyChris (hairychris@mastodon.world)

@cstross Ah, the joy of a massive $/lb rate to get crap into orbit!

@cstross Oh yes, for sure. Totally inefficient use of voulme ramps up the cost to orbit too!

And Starship? Yes, it's a chonker but I don't see it working ever. It's looking like NASA isn't going to give them any more cash...

@cstross Maybe, but the NASA funding for Spaceship's lunar stuff is dependent on them hitting some very precise targets (which SpaceX & Musk signed up to). They got ~$3bn and must have blown through most of that, with many more launches required.

They didn't hit LEO last time either.

I wonder how much cash SpaceX has, and whether it can fully self-fund Starship. Any engines used here can't be used for their commercial shipments.

Plus if Musk self-destructs the jury is out on everything.

@cstross Oh, as long as they focus on the commercial launches they should be OK. The fancy lunar/martian part of Starship won't work.

Twitter is on it's arse. Tesla is overvalued as an auto maker, and has lost it's edge in actual tech so there is going to be a reckoning there some point.

How SpaceX survives will be an interesting watch, especially wrt any projects strongly linked to Musk's over-promise-under-deliver technobabble schtick!