Technology

Musk is going to be PISSED when he finds out there is no bureau of physics he can subsume or destroy from within. I believe one Rush Stockton came to a similar conclusion, if he indeed had time for that conclusion to even form before perishing.

It's less that people are putting faith in Elon (sure, some fanatics might be), but it's that everyone else is somehow even worse.

SpaceX is actually getting stuff to space, despite their prototypes blowing up. Hell, even if this Starship thing is a complete failure and never works, their existing rocket, the Falcon, is still far beyond any of the competition.

The SLS: $10 Billion and a decade late to develop a ship that recycles old Space shuttle parts, then costs $2-3 Billion per launch, and maybe can only launch one every 2 years.

ULA Vulcan: currently years late, still finding problems, and even after all that gets worked out, it can maybe do 6 launches a year?

SpaceX: 1-2 launches per week.

That's not faith, that's just facts. I would absolutely love to have somebody else step up and take SpaceX's crown, but... there really isn't anybody. Bezos's Blue Origin may have the biggest chance, but they are more likely to act like ULA than SpaceX.

Falcon 9 has launched over 500 mission with a very high success rate. Of course the bulk of advancement should be coming from NASA and we need to spend more there, but SpaceX is putting up big numbers in successful payload lifts.

I would ride a Honda rocket a hundred times before ever setting foot on anything developed by SpaceX

The efficiency of this is amazing, instead of actually sending it up, and waiting for it to blow up, they have figured out how to blow it up on the ground BEFORE launch. This is the kind of efficiency we need in government programs.

Such a remarkable achievement! We should put capitalists on the Starship ASAP so they can enjoy the fruits of "their" labor!

Ngl, had me in the first half.

Good gods! Captain, The ambient sarcasm readings are off the charts!

Japanese cars are superior to American cars, why wouldn't their rockets be?

Elon is stupid, but I'm thinking he's not so stupid as to board one of his own rockets.

Well, now it's recycling, right?

As long as nobody was harmed they could blow up a hundred rockets for all I care. Maybe it'll even help with competition, like make other companies switch launch vehicles, so it might be a good thing (just not for them) lol

I feel bad for all the engineers etc who are working really hard on these projects, only to see their efforts tarnished by the flyblown image of the wanker who owns the company.

It's incredible, isn't it? I used to be so stoked on space exploration and all the science that goes with it. Still am, really, but my enthusiasm has cooled markedly once billionaires started throwing dick-shaped space missiles around for no other reason than being able to.

Honestly, rocket development has always been filled with explosions - the Saturn V had like 6 engine-out events during Apollo and the early Falcon 9 tests were just as explosive. what's different now is we get to see the failures in HD livestreams instead of classified footage that would've been buried in the 60s.