And SpaceX as a whole. It’s entirely government funded anyway. Should have kept that money in NASA where it belonged. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to put it all right back.
not entirely government funded, but enough that, if they withdraw funding, it would totally collapse.
the entire argument that “private companies do it cheaper” is mostly because they cut corners, skirt regulations, and screw over employees to do business on the cheap. then, we find out there may be massive security breaches like, oh, chatting with Putin and god knows who else…
Part of the problem is nasa seems to be very risk adverse now. Letting private companies take the risk is one way to get around that. I’m just glad we don’t have to depend on russia to get to space or the iss.
Don’t forget potentially underpay people. I don’t believe that’s happening for SpaceX specifically, but it does for many other competitors to government jobs. Government jobs aren’t necessarily super high pay, but they usually have solid pay with excellent benefits, pension, and work/life balance.
So when jobs move from the public to private sector, it often comes at the cost of employees. And in some extreme cases, employees are paid so little that they have to rely on government benefits to get by, which is extremely dumb. That’s subsidizing the private sector.
We would’ve never gotten propulsive landing so quickly purely through NASA. See how far behind the SLS was. And SpaceX’s funding comes mostly from private equity.
Pretty sure they did ages ago, that was kinda the point of the space shuttel program. And thats just the most notable attempt, the DC-X is another example. Reusable rockets are just kinda inefficient for a lot of shit.
The DC-X/Delta Clipper was really cool, but the Space Shuttle was a design-by-committee safety and maintenance disaster. VentureStar didn’t go much better either, though that was mostly Lockheed.
NASA’s had the tech, the expertise, and the will for a while, but the political process was never going to give them permission to do anything more than slow-moving rehashes and incremental evolutions of old technology.
I mean please, forgive my imperfect analogy and call Edison an asshole, but for the love of all that is good don’t embarrass yourself by claiming electricity is useless.
Reread what I typed, reusablle rockets have their place but they can become rather inefficient or even outright wasteful depending on the circumstances. Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit, that means more fuel, more fuel means more weight. And sometimes it better to put that fuel and weight into putting more shit into orbit.
oh I know! It’s just that some humans throughout history had this insane amount of intelligence and creativity and they jumped our level of technology, and our understanding of the universe by decades, or arguably even more! It always blows my mind that there are people like that
And SpaceX as a whole. It’s entirely government funded anyway. Should have kept that money in NASA where it belonged. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to put it all right back.
(Also, archive link of top article here: https://archive.is/H6rzo )
not entirely government funded, but enough that, if they withdraw funding, it would totally collapse.
the entire argument that “private companies do it cheaper” is mostly because they cut corners, skirt regulations, and screw over employees to do business on the cheap. then, we find out there may be massive security breaches like, oh, chatting with Putin and god knows who else…
Part of the problem is nasa seems to be very risk adverse now. Letting private companies take the risk is one way to get around that. I’m just glad we don’t have to depend on russia to get to space or the iss.
Don’t forget potentially underpay people. I don’t believe that’s happening for SpaceX specifically, but it does for many other competitors to government jobs. Government jobs aren’t necessarily super high pay, but they usually have solid pay with excellent benefits, pension, and work/life balance.
So when jobs move from the public to private sector, it often comes at the cost of employees. And in some extreme cases, employees are paid so little that they have to rely on government benefits to get by, which is extremely dumb. That’s subsidizing the private sector.
From what I’ve heard it’s true. If you have a job offer from NASA and one from SpaceX, the NASA one is better.
We would’ve never gotten propulsive landing so quickly purely through NASA. See how far behind the SLS was. And SpaceX’s funding comes mostly from private equity.
NASA was never gonna figure out reusable rockets.
Pretty sure they did ages ago, that was kinda the point of the space shuttel program. And thats just the most notable attempt, the DC-X is another example. Reusable rockets are just kinda inefficient for a lot of shit.
The DC-X/Delta Clipper was really cool, but the Space Shuttle was a design-by-committee safety and maintenance disaster. VentureStar didn’t go much better either, though that was mostly Lockheed.
NASA’s had the tech, the expertise, and the will for a while, but the political process was never going to give them permission to do anything more than slow-moving rehashes and incremental evolutions of old technology.
Are you suggesting Falcon 9 is an inefficient rocket?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems
https://i.imgur.com/3wwQHqK.png
I mean please, forgive my imperfect analogy and call Edison an asshole, but for the love of all that is good don’t embarrass yourself by claiming electricity is useless.
Reread what I typed, reusablle rockets have their place but they can become rather inefficient or even outright wasteful depending on the circumstances. Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit, that means more fuel, more fuel means more weight. And sometimes it better to put that fuel and weight into putting more shit into orbit.
Von Braun came up with the concept for a reusable rocket in the 50s. Not being able to figure it out was not the issue.
Von Braun was a true genius!
And a horrible Nazi. Let’s not forget that. The U.S. tried to make everyone forget that.
But yes, he was a genius.
oh I know! It’s just that some humans throughout history had this insane amount of intelligence and creativity and they jumped our level of technology, and our understanding of the universe by decades, or arguably even more! It always blows my mind that there are people like that
You strike me as an academic that struggles to appreciate the value of applied physics and engineering.
Because Von Braun came up with the concept of the reusable rocket in the 50s?
Because Von Braun’s contribution was small in comparison to what SpaceX R&D contributed.
But that seems lost on you, it was certainly not obvious to you.