“Oh my god, Elon Musk’s companies make electric cars, therefore electric cars must be bad”.
Great logic man! Yep, hardware rich development programs and fixed price government contracting must also be bad because SpaceX has used them to lower launch costs for NASA by orders of magnitude.
Jesus fucking christ, the dumbass blind hate for SpaceX is fucking mind numbing.
Indeed, I’m surprised this dumb clickbait title didn’t literally include Elon Musk’s name like so many other “Elon Musk’s <Company Name> Does <Thing That’s Actually Normal But Sounds Bad>!” headlines.
Yes, Elon Musk has some awful views and does some awful things. Doesn’t mean everything he does is therefore bad. Henry Ford was a colossal antisemite, as another example, and did some really weird and awful things to his employees. Unfortunately some of the same personal characteristics that can lead people to be innovative industrialists can often also lead to them being assholes.
I mean to be fair I think they are probably the first (and maybe still the only?) company that tries to build rockets that can land back and be reused.
There’s others that are trying, Blue Origin has their New Shepherd rocket that is able to land, but it’s a suborbital tourism vehicle that’s basically just a toy. They’re working on a partly-reusable orbital launcher that’s like a souped up Falcon 9 but it’s still in development. Several other smaller startups are working on smaller Falcon-9-like launchers with expendable second stages, and China is building a straight up carbon-copy of the Falcon 9 and Starship. But SpaceX is the leader in this field and currently the only one who’s actually successful. Everyone is following in their wake at the moment.
This is literally the first one. There’s only been a single Starship explosion in the upper atmosphere.
And no, that leads to spending decades of time going down paths and intricately designing and simulating every possible detail of a system, only to build them, have something unexpected happen, and then realize that the team never considered X effect in Y, Z, etc conditions, and then have to spend years redesigning everything. (Not to mention that at the end of all that we still had two Space Shuttles explode in the upper atmosphere, but with crews on board).
Design it, build it, test it, and get immediate feedback on it, and then redesign it. One way or another, it almost always has to go through that cycle, and it’s a lot cheaper to do it upfront.
Are you joking? Well the answer is no, no the SLS is about 40 years behind as far as technology goes. It’s basically a shuttle derived launch vehicle, the boosters are similar to the shuttle side boosters and it uses 4 slightly updated RS-25s (the space shuttle main engines) in the center stage.
Except instead of getting with the times and attempting some reusability, it actually has less reusability than the shuttle had. They actually throw away all of those expensive high performance hydrolox engines on every launch.
Another one.
I mean I am not against rocket research, but isn’t there another way without destroying several millions worth if equipment?
There is, you can be billions over budget and years behind schedule like NASA
Keep licking them boots.
My god, the fucking dumbasses on here.
“Oh my god, Elon Musk’s companies make electric cars, therefore electric cars must be bad”.
Great logic man! Yep, hardware rich development programs and fixed price government contracting must also be bad because SpaceX has used them to lower launch costs for NASA by orders of magnitude.
Jesus fucking christ, the dumbass blind hate for SpaceX is fucking mind numbing.
Indeed, I’m surprised this dumb clickbait title didn’t literally include Elon Musk’s name like so many other “Elon Musk’s <Company Name> Does <Thing That’s Actually Normal But Sounds Bad>!” headlines.
Yes, Elon Musk has some awful views and does some awful things. Doesn’t mean everything he does is therefore bad. Henry Ford was a colossal antisemite, as another example, and did some really weird and awful things to his employees. Unfortunately some of the same personal characteristics that can lead people to be innovative industrialists can often also lead to them being assholes.
I mean, you’re the one licking the government boots here.
What’s that? I couldn’t hear you with elons dick in your mouth.
I mean to be fair I think they are probably the first (and maybe still the only?) company that tries to build rockets that can land back and be reused.
There’s others that are trying, Blue Origin has their New Shepherd rocket that is able to land, but it’s a suborbital tourism vehicle that’s basically just a toy. They’re working on a partly-reusable orbital launcher that’s like a souped up Falcon 9 but it’s still in development. Several other smaller startups are working on smaller Falcon-9-like launchers with expendable second stages, and China is building a straight up carbon-copy of the Falcon 9 and Starship. But SpaceX is the leader in this field and currently the only one who’s actually successful. Everyone is following in their wake at the moment.
This is literally the first one. There’s only been a single Starship explosion in the upper atmosphere.
And no, that leads to spending decades of time going down paths and intricately designing and simulating every possible detail of a system, only to build them, have something unexpected happen, and then realize that the team never considered X effect in Y, Z, etc conditions, and then have to spend years redesigning everything. (Not to mention that at the end of all that we still had two Space Shuttles explode in the upper atmosphere, but with crews on board).
Design it, build it, test it, and get immediate feedback on it, and then redesign it. One way or another, it almost always has to go through that cycle, and it’s a lot cheaper to do it upfront.
Sure, you can do it for real and destroy billions worth of equipment.
Shit happens in R&D. Some loss is expected.
This was last year during the first IFT.
Another one what? Did you only read the headline…?
Earth gravity is a bitch
Gravity and Inertia are harsh mistresses.
So is the moon according to Heinlein.
There is. The SLS. That is much more economical, right?
Indeed. And Boeing is the main contractor for it so you can be sure it won’t suffer any mishaps.
That sounds so futuristic.
As it’s NASA is it using technology decades more advanced than the competition?
Are you joking? Well the answer is no, no the SLS is about 40 years behind as far as technology goes. It’s basically a shuttle derived launch vehicle, the boosters are similar to the shuttle side boosters and it uses 4 slightly updated RS-25s (the space shuttle main engines) in the center stage.
Except instead of getting with the times and attempting some reusability, it actually has less reusability than the shuttle had. They actually throw away all of those expensive high performance hydrolox engines on every launch.
I was just leaning into the joke Diplo started.
Most people on Lemmy make their mind up on nothing except “Elon bad memes”
Yeah, the hivemind can get pretty tiresome.
Oh definitely. And an absolute steal at just 2.5 billion a pop.
That’s literally exactly what spaceX is developing, rockets you don’t have to blow up every flight.
Fully reusable rockets have never been done before, but they’re coming.