this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Are you familiar with Wernher von Braun? He was a Nazi who ran Germany's V2 rocket program during World War II. He produced thousands of ballistic missiles intended to indiscriminately bombard British cities, they were unable to accurately target specific military sites so they were just aimed at civilian centers and let loose. Slave labor was used in their production, resulting in many thousands of innocent Jews and other concentration camp prisoners dying under hazardous conditions and bombardment of the manufacturing facilities.
After the war he went to work for NASA and was the principle designer behind the Saturn V that took humanity to the Moon. Should NASA have repudiated the Saturn V design and gone with a less capable vehicle? Should people be responding "Fuck Nazi propaganda" whenever the virtues of the Saturn V are mentioned? Or is it possible to separate the evaluation of the merits of a rocket from the evaluation of the rocket's designer?
Elon Musk is a shitty person. The Starship is a fantastic rocket. Both of these things can be simultaneously true.
Interesting tidbit about the V2: as far as I know it's the only weapons system that killed more people during the manufacturing process than it did in actual use. Casualties caused by V2 strikes are estimated to be around 9 000, but around 12 000 slave laborers died making them (see eg the wiki).
In any case, comparing von Braun to Musk is uncharitable towards von Braun: he actually did design rockets and knew what he was doing, where Musk is just a bigoted windbag that emits money. But I do tend to agree with your sentiment though: SpaceX has good designs, but that's completely separate from Musk being a human turd (and his only part in it is the part where he emits money.)
Death of the ~~author~~ ~~engineer~~ venture capitalist?