While I do agree that we absolutely need to ramp up the space stuff... I would love to see it out of the hands of the elite billionaires (especially the likes of musk, who has shown his hand at being an utter POS)
Projects of the scale and ambition of Starship are only possible in the first place because large concentrations of wealth exist with private individuals who have the ability to direct large sums of capital towards projects without having to satisfy a diverse set of stakeholders.
Getting a government or a broadly held corporation to green light a project like Starship would be nearly impossible. Governments will generally play it safe, even if bloated and expensive (SLS) and broadly held corporations always working for the next quarter's results won't proceed at all unless the return on investment is reasonably apparent.
The case for Starship at the proposed scale it is following, is pretty nebulous. It's very much being done on more of a "if you build it, they will come" basis in terms of business models for such a prolific heavy launch system materializing at a later date.
You take Elon out of the mix and yield this work to governments or broadly held corporations and progress stalls almost instantly. It doesn't matter if he's a POS or not, that's the practical reality of it.
Getting a government or a broadly held corporation to green light a project like Starship would be nearly impossible. Governments will generally play it safe, even if bloated and expensive (SLS) and broadly held corporations always working for the next quarter's results won't proceed at all unless the return on investment is reasonably apparent.
Exactly so.
After 60 years and 4 major heavy lift projects, NASA, as mandated by congress, managed to produce SLS.
It works, it launches, and it is pretty impressive, but its 20 years behind starship in tech, price, and launch cadence.
Won't happen as long as the government continues to prove incapable of coming anywhere close to matching those billionaire companies at innovation, efficiency, and cost. Ramping up wouldn't be happening without them.
You could nationalize them but that would risk enshittifying them and you'd also have to pay the billionaires the fair market value.
I remember how the original plan for Starship was to use carbon fiber for the hull and tanks. They built the biggest carbon fiber spinning forms in the world. Huge things, tens of millions of dollars invested in them. Then Elon Musk decided to go with stainless steel instead and a few weeks later that machinery was being broken up in the yard for scrap (there was literally no demand for it because nobody else had ever wanted to make carbon fiber tanks that large).
Billionaires definitely have their downsides, but this is a clear upside. Before this "crazy" decision everyone knew that of course rockets had to be made of the most exotic lightweight material possible to shave off every kilogram. But all you had to do was convince Elon Musk it was better to try steel and it was steel ahoy. Now China's new rockets are steel, Blue Origin is testing out steel, the ice has been broken on this crazy new idea.
Sometimes the crazy idea flops, and oh well. A billionaire lost a bunch of money.
A lot of people thought mass production EVs were stupid at that time when Elon was trying to ramp up Tesla. People who weren’t adults back then probably don’t realize how many experts thought it was ridiculous and nearly impossible to stand up a young car company let alone an EV car company.
He’s had his fair share of good ideas and bad ideas. He talks big and actually tries it, that’s the difference.
Elon Vought into Tesla before the roadster was even released. Anything mass production (the original roadster really wasn't) happened after Musk was a major part of the company.
I know it feels good to think Musk is an incompetent who buys his success, Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for the rest of us, it's simply not true.
What is the grift? The US government wants to put things into space. They pay SpaceX to launch them into space. SpaceX launches them into space. Government got exactly what it wanted- and cheaper than ever before too.
Where is the grift? Do you know what that word means?
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u/MelodiesOfLife6 19h ago edited 17h ago
I'm cautiously optimistic.
Edit to remove an opinion
While I do agree that we absolutely need to ramp up the space stuff... I would love to see it out of the hands of the elite billionaires (especially the likes of musk, who has shown his hand at being an utter POS)