this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Certain things, yes. Certain other things, not at all.
As much as I hate Elon Musk the company he owns that does space stuff pretty rapidly got a whole lot of new rockets up and got them to land instead of crashing into the sea. The newest govt produced rocket, the SLS, was years late and billions of dollars over budget, and they expend the rockets.
spaceX did some cool stuff. That being said, fuck Elon Musk, he had nothing to do with any of its success.
Whenever people tout Space X as an exemplar of private efficiency my eyebrow twitches.
They wouldn’t exist if not for the billions spent through public funding of R&D at NASA.
Space X also can take risks governments can’t. Imagine if NASA blew up rockets as often as Space X? The Republicans would gut their funding even more then they already have.
Apolo program with 60s tech: we will send one rocket per mission to the moon, and it will work.
Brain dead idiots parroting off spaceX as some savior: it will only take at least 15 rocket launches per mission to the moon. We will use the worst trajectory possible because we sold the contract for the lander to a company who can't figure out low moon orbit. 2 years out and our rocket still blows up when attempting launches.
But sure spaceX is a marvel of private industry, shudders
The trajectory was chosen by NASA because the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket do not have enough efficiency to be on a low regular lunar orbit while landing and bringing back astronauts. This trajectory has nothing to do with SpaceX.
When comparing the one rocket to land on the moon to the 15 launches (thank you for writing launches and not rockets, as Destin Sandlin wrongly did) is because the mass delivered to the surface is gigantic compared to Apollo. Why? Because we do not want to say "we did it!" We want to say "we live there!".
Can people stop saying SpaceX rockets explode? They do not. Super rarely they have, but that's not something that happens on a regular basis and happens as rarely to all other companies. Explosions are either caused by landing first stages (nobody does that, the mission success, they are pushing the limits to reuse parts and they haven't exploded in a very long while, while adding capacity no other company has) and prototypes that are meant to rapidly test limits and new technology explode, that's actually the goal: push further, test, improve, nice on to next new system. It's just a completely different approach from other rocket companies. Instead of spending years and years in research and development, they spend months, test, boom, months, test, boom. What that brings is huge innovation.
When comparing SLS to Starship, check how long has SLS taken and how much it costs while looking at its capacity:
$24B for the first rocket, 4+ per next rocket
$20.4B for Orion
11 years to get the first rocket
16 years to get the first capsule
Can bring 690ft³ of payload
As of now, and evolving for Starship:
$7B cost, 4 from NASA for the first 2 missions
11 years for the first tests, still no rocket
Can bring 220,00lb and 35,000ft³ to the moon
And they still and up with a rocket NASA can continue to use at very low price (less than 25% than SLS per mission)
Sources are from Wikipedia articles for both starship and Orion as well as an article from the planetary society on the cost of SLS.
Nor did I say it did, I said some brain dead idiots sent the contract off to a company who designed a craft incapable of doing what we have done previously, congrats Lockheed for fucking up our next moon program. It's you who equated that to SpaceX lmaoo
I mean it really doesn't matter are you going to have astronauts just chilling for like a year in orbit waiting for those launches, racking up radiation? Saying the reason we need 15 launches for starship is specifically due to mass is such a cop-out. It's due to how limited the amount of fuel we can send up to refuel in orbit is, it's fucking stupid at our current level of space infrastructure. We still haven't even tested it, what we need another 4 decades for this terrible plan to come to fruition? Take note of what the Apolo engineers stated as far as stepping stones in development. If you take too big of leaps, you will not adequately be able to evaluate what when wrong if something does, take to small of steps and you will never reach the goal. We decided to take such massive leaps with no forethought on its efficiency.
No, that is precisely what occurred with starship. You can see the Shockwave from the explosion, which means you had the oxidizer mix with the propelent before exploding during the flip phase, that's a major fucking failure. It was not a rupture like previous issues nor was it terminated, it fucking exploded lmao. The worst part all that lovely telemetry that's gonna help them out gave zero indication of said catastrophic failure so that's gonna be such great info for them right? Just like the first test that failed when they knew the pad wouldn't be strong enough and caused damage to the rocket, meaning they got no actionable data?
Star ship has not been a proven concept and is still actively in development, these numbers mean nothing right now. With massive issues looming and 90% of what's needed not even tested yet but go ahead keep riding daddy musk as if he isn't killing good ideas with lofty moving goal posts and a complete lack of understanding for what's being developed.
It will never take 1 year for 15 launches... Also HLS will be ready before astronauts are sent to the lunar orbit.
You clearly don't and refuse to understand how SpaceX works. Your arguments show how little you understand any of it and using "lmao" at the end of your wrong arguments to prove how good they are is completely ridiculous.
I will watch your video because I'm always curious to understand other viewpoints and learn things, but I'm not planning on replying any further.
taking risks is exactly why they're more efficient. i wish the public sector could take as many risks without it turning into political circus, but that would never happen.
Yeah that's why we were supposed to have made it back to Mars this year with SpaceX right? Thats why it took them over 3 minutes to even realize their ship blew up most recently, but that telemetry that took 3minutes to realize a catastrophic failure occurred is really gonna make this great, right? That's why Apolo sent one rocket per mission to the moon and with that amazing SpaceX tech....we need to send at least 15 per mission? The public sector did take risks and by doing so in the past we got the Apolo program. Today we have constant failures by spaceX being touted as successful missions with about 10billion in public funding being evaporated. Now, it's more important that private business sells you on some bs hype train to rake in funds till they drop the next hype train without realizing their earlier goal and distracting you about it with leaks about hype train 3.
Where are the fully reusable falcon 9s? That second stage is still not reusable, the crew capsule will never be landing without parachutes now, and they still take about the same amount of time to turn around that the space shuttle did. SpaceX is objectively a failure, selling the next big thing as a means to hide what did not come to fruition. If you honestly think the new rocket is gonna be flying in under a decade or before spaceX goes bankrupt. You're an idiot.
Fully reusable falcon 9 have been scrapped a very long time ago because they realized it wasn't the right hardware for that. Starship will be and way way more capable. The test flight that exploded never intended to survive. Hoped? For sure. Intended? Absolutely not. It was a test prototype, not a rocket in the sense you make it.
Turnaround for space shuttle was 54 days at best before the explosion of challenger, 88 days since. Falcon 9 is down to 32 and keeps going down. 32 vs 88 is not almost the same. Second stage will never be reused neither will parachutes on Dragon landing. SpaceX wanted propulsion landing, NASA refused. One day they might change their mind (NASA) with starship.
You keep pointing at possibilities that might have been discussed or even said at some points, and I understand your frustration, but none of these were signed deals, they were possibilities or goals to try to achieve while developing the technology, then realising a better solution works (like catching the fairing halves vs. grabbing them from the ocean).
The timeline that's over confident is for the sales pitch, that's for sure.
I'm just gonna leave this here as you want to buy into all the bullshit surrounding starship lmao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5GevpAGDWE
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