Elon Musk has gone full antisemite, raising questions about the future of his companies and their relationships with commercial and government entities.
There is absolutely nothing these over-hyped “space” companies can do that the US couldn’t do far better and far cheaper through NASA itself - you know, just like they did when they sent astronauts to the moon?.
that’s a fair point but it was also politically necessary to spend half a billion or more per launch to “show the ruskies who the real superpower was” - and a lot of the tech was still being developed. now, 50 years on, the tech is much more established, materials science has matured, and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending and pork barrel politics - look towards the SLS program. vastly over budget with not much to show for it. rounding down, you could buy every single launch SpaceX has made this year and still have a few billion $$$ in spare change left over for the cost of SLS… and it’s flown, what? once?
There’s absolutely nothing “necessary” about a nationalist pissing contest between two vile empires. I know that’s an irrlevant tangent… but anyway.
and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
No, it isn’t. The US just did what it has always done… develop technology with public funds and then hand it off to the crony class to exploit for privatized profit at everyone else’s expense. Nothing about it is cheaper or more efficient - those are easily debunked myths.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending
Duh… that’s how space exploration happens - through gratuitous spending. Whose money do you think Phoney Stark is burning through? His own?
Getting NASA involved is going to lead to results other than merely corporate parasites getting rich off money that could have been far, far better spent - that’s pretty much it.
There’s absolutely nothing “necessary” about a nationalist pissing contest between two vile empires.
I dunno, I don’t think it was necessary, but I do think we got some pretty cool stuff out of it. Satellites are kind of neat, I like those, I like knowledge about space and radiation and stuff. I would also like healthcare, that’s probably a higher priority, but I would like to have both.
but I do think we got some pretty cool stuff out of it.
Do you know why the US had to create NASA? The US wanted to get into space - but the corporates weren’t interested. There was no profit in it. So Eisenhower had to wait until Sputnik was launched, and then used the media hysteria to push through massive state intervention to actually get it done - same way Roosevelt had to use WW2 to launch the massive state intervention that resulted in the GI Bill (without which the modern-day idea of a “middle-class” wouldn’t even exist). This was no obstacle for the USSR, of course - they just went ahead and did it.
Here’s the thing… nobody got any poorer because the US sent a bunch of flyboys to play tic-tac-toe on the moon. But the existence of people like Phony Stark does make us all poorer.
NASA’s first launch of the heavy lift Artemis, vs Space X’s Starship’s disaster of a “successful test” are different paths (and seems largely because the cut costs on protecting the lunch pad with water).
Falcon and all the previous space x rockets seem much less influenced by Musk than the Starship. Same as the Tesla Truck, I feel the Starship project is more vanity than engineering, and might not succeed the way Falcon etc. did.
There is absolutely nothing these over-hyped “space” companies can do that the US couldn’t do far better and far cheaper through NASA itself - you know, just like they did when they sent astronauts to the moon?.
that’s a fair point but it was also politically necessary to spend half a billion or more per launch to “show the ruskies who the real superpower was” - and a lot of the tech was still being developed. now, 50 years on, the tech is much more established, materials science has matured, and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending and pork barrel politics - look towards the SLS program. vastly over budget with not much to show for it. rounding down, you could buy every single launch SpaceX has made this year and still have a few billion $$$ in spare change left over for the cost of SLS… and it’s flown, what? once?
There’s absolutely nothing “necessary” about a nationalist pissing contest between two vile empires. I know that’s an irrlevant tangent… but anyway.
No, it isn’t. The US just did what it has always done… develop technology with public funds and then hand it off to the crony class to exploit for privatized profit at everyone else’s expense. Nothing about it is cheaper or more efficient - those are easily debunked myths.
Duh… that’s how space exploration happens - through gratuitous spending. Whose money do you think Phoney Stark is burning through? His own?
Getting NASA involved is going to lead to results other than merely corporate parasites getting rich off money that could have been far, far better spent - that’s pretty much it.
I dunno, I don’t think it was necessary, but I do think we got some pretty cool stuff out of it. Satellites are kind of neat, I like those, I like knowledge about space and radiation and stuff. I would also like healthcare, that’s probably a higher priority, but I would like to have both.
Do you know why the US had to create NASA? The US wanted to get into space - but the corporates weren’t interested. There was no profit in it. So Eisenhower had to wait until Sputnik was launched, and then used the media hysteria to push through massive state intervention to actually get it done - same way Roosevelt had to use WW2 to launch the massive state intervention that resulted in the GI Bill (without which the modern-day idea of a “middle-class” wouldn’t even exist). This was no obstacle for the USSR, of course - they just went ahead and did it.
Here’s the thing… nobody got any poorer because the US sent a bunch of flyboys to play tic-tac-toe on the moon. But the existence of people like Phony Stark does make us all poorer.
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NASA’s first launch of the heavy lift Artemis, vs Space X’s Starship’s disaster of a “successful test” are different paths (and seems largely because the cut costs on protecting the lunch pad with water).
Falcon and all the previous space x rockets seem much less influenced by Musk than the Starship. Same as the Tesla Truck, I feel the Starship project is more vanity than engineering, and might not succeed the way Falcon etc. did.
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Ah yeah, I’d forgotten about that one.