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Why are people impressed with SpaceX?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Not a fan, but it generally boils down not to where they can fly but how they differ in other aspects, mainly cost.
SpaceX is currently the world pioneer in heavy reusable rockets, which is another way to say they are the only ones to launch big stuff up there so cheap, and it gets even better.
They are essentially doing the good side of capitalism - making stuff cheaper - applied to space, one of the most expensive industries in the world.
I mean yeah, it's cheaper due to technological advancement, but I fail to see how that's an effect of capitalism. I'd argue similar developments would have been made even without capitalism. I just don't think we would have the desire to leave this place without capitalism, but that's besides the point.
It's not clear to me how SpaceX has managed to do things for cheaper. Are they cutting labor? QC?
They are able to reuse the rockets
Two things, mainly. They do a lot of the production steps in-house, as opposed to having a web of subcontractors (who have their own subcontractors)for each component. But the big thing is just efficiency of scale. Building and launching 100 rockets per year doesn't cost 100 times more than one launch per year.
They really haven't yet. The concept is that reusable rockets will be cheaper than soviet era single use rockets.. eventually.
On a surface level it makes sense, taking a rocket refurbishing it, and refueling sounds cheaper. But its not. Not yet anyways. Too complex and expensive presently.
Yeah but they're not and they don't. Downvote all you want (and you will) but I'm right
Thet didn't pioneer reusable rockets, that was done decades ago already, and they're not cheap either. They're expensive, and they're floating on government grants so that Elon musk can decide to absolutely obliterate a launch pad and pollute the kilometers wide surroundings.
SpaceX sull hasn't done anything hat wasn't done better long before. They do party hard reen a rocket of theirs explodes, which I never saw NASA do. Didn't watch NASA blow up launch pads because of their CEO either.
They managed to get their super duper new heavy rocket in an uncontrolled spin in low earth orbit! I'm sorry, Noy impressed by results that are less than half of what -again- NASA did in the 60' and 80' of the last century.
SpaceX might be much more if it drops it's current CEO
They did pioneer reusable orbital liquid fueled rockets, closest before that was the space shuttle's SRBs (solid fuel, dumped and fished out the ocean).
They are incredibly cheap to operate by rocket standards, the reason why they haven't lowered the pricetag is:
a. Would absolutely be an anti-trust against them if they didn't stay close to competitors (monopoly by simply being too good is a thing)
b. Capitalism baby, they have no real competitor so they can make a crazy profit (and because of point A they basically have to unless they want to be sued to oblivion).
Contracts* They have government contracts. Government requests a service, SpaceX provides the service, SpaceX gets paid, simple as that. They have gotten subsidies to expand Starlink, but every ISP gets that and even then they have been declined it countless times because AT&T, etc. have lobbied against them.
I'm sorry, what other rockets and space capsules can be reused? What other rocket can be returned directly on the launch pad?
Because they see milestones being completed in the testing program, it's about where it exploded (it was gonna explode either way, planned or unplanned).
NASA sent a 50m tall, 9m wide second stage that was designed to be fully reusable with full-flow staged engines and then transferred super-chilled fuel between tanks? Cool! Which system was that? Would love to read about it!
This is a very interesting argument. Like many people, I am not familiar with rocket building. Do you mind providing some sources so we can judge for ourselves?
Thanks in advance!
It's not like they hide and launch. As much as I would like to not have Musk as the CEO, the company itself is great despite Musk, so overall a win. Musk is just the idiot they need at the top. Others might be too risk adverse and just create NASA 2.0. We all know NASA sucks at flying anything.
In my opinion Space X is a great company and its engineers, just like Tesla, is what keeps them innovative rather than the racist idiot riding on their shoulders.... example Boeing. The engineers made great planes, the business assholes made great money. So if we can keep the idiot at the top making risky crazy promises and funneling money into the company, then the engineers will have great ideas to demonstrate and all the technicians and office workers and cleaning crew, all of them will have a job. Putting money into Tesla is basically pumping the economy. The results is currently a constellation of temporary Internet satellites. That's at least something.
You might check your research a bit, go beyond Facebook GeForce your “facts”
You've supported none of these hollow, false claims.
SpaceX is a hole where government subsidy goes to die without purpose. They said they'd fly multiple manned cargo missions to a city they'd built on a terraformed Mars by 2022. How we doing?
Instead, musk was just served a divorced, sexually assaulted a woman and tried to bribe her with a horse, publicly destroyed twitter for the Saudis and stuck his whole gender affirming surgery reshaped face into trump's sloppy, bediapered asshole on stage - all while giving him $50 million dollars a month to interfere with an American election and demonize immigrants... as an immigrant.
I might be wrong on the side of cost efficiency, this is just common perception and you can inform me, but where did I tell anything about Musk himself?
I do think he is an asshole, but this is irrelevant to the topic
musk is spacex is musk.
And "I might be wrong"after the fact is a pleasant way to say, "I completely pulled my previous assumption out of my ass while stating it plainly as fact"