this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
1275 points (91.5% liked)
Memes
45661 readers
1005 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Whenever people tout Space X as an exemplar of private efficiency my eyebrow twitches.
They wouldn’t exist if not for the billions spent through public funding of R&D at NASA.
Space X also can take risks governments can’t. Imagine if NASA blew up rockets as often as Space X? The Republicans would gut their funding even more then they already have.
Apolo program with 60s tech: we will send one rocket per mission to the moon, and it will work.
Brain dead idiots parroting off spaceX as some savior: it will only take at least 15 rocket launches per mission to the moon. We will use the worst trajectory possible because we sold the contract for the lander to a company who can't figure out low moon orbit. 2 years out and our rocket still blows up when attempting launches.
But sure spaceX is a marvel of private industry, shudders
The trajectory was chosen by NASA because the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket do not have enough efficiency to be on a low regular lunar orbit while landing and bringing back astronauts. This trajectory has nothing to do with SpaceX.
When comparing the one rocket to land on the moon to the 15 launches (thank you for writing launches and not rockets, as Destin Sandlin wrongly did) is because the mass delivered to the surface is gigantic compared to Apollo. Why? Because we do not want to say "we did it!" We want to say "we live there!".
Can people stop saying SpaceX rockets explode? They do not. Super rarely they have, but that's not something that happens on a regular basis and happens as rarely to all other companies. Explosions are either caused by landing first stages (nobody does that, the mission success, they are pushing the limits to reuse parts and they haven't exploded in a very long while, while adding capacity no other company has) and prototypes that are meant to rapidly test limits and new technology explode, that's actually the goal: push further, test, improve, nice on to next new system. It's just a completely different approach from other rocket companies. Instead of spending years and years in research and development, they spend months, test, boom, months, test, boom. What that brings is huge innovation.
When comparing SLS to Starship, check how long has SLS taken and how much it costs while looking at its capacity:
$24B for the first rocket, 4+ per next rocket
$20.4B for Orion
11 years to get the first rocket
16 years to get the first capsule
Can bring 690ft³ of payload
As of now, and evolving for Starship:
$7B cost, 4 from NASA for the first 2 missions
11 years for the first tests, still no rocket
Can bring 220,00lb and 35,000ft³ to the moon
And they still and up with a rocket NASA can continue to use at very low price (less than 25% than SLS per mission)
Nor did I say it did, I said some brain dead idiots sent the contract off to a company who designed a craft incapable of doing what we have done previously, congrats Lockheed for fucking up our next moon program. It's you who equated that to SpaceX lmaoo
I mean it really doesn't matter are you going to have astronauts just chilling for like a year in orbit waiting for those launches, racking up radiation? Saying the reason we need 15 launches for starship is specifically due to mass is such a cop-out. It's due to how limited the amount of fuel we can send up to refuel in orbit is, it's fucking stupid at our current level of space infrastructure. We still haven't even tested it, what we need another 4 decades for this terrible plan to come to fruition? Take note of what the Apolo engineers stated as far as stepping stones in development. If you take too big of leaps, you will not adequately be able to evaluate what when wrong if something does, take to small of steps and you will never reach the goal. We decided to take such massive leaps with no forethought on its efficiency.
No, that is precisely what occurred with starship. You can see the Shockwave from the explosion, which means you had the oxidizer mix with the propelent before exploding during the flip phase, that's a major fucking failure. It was not a rupture like previous issues nor was it terminated, it fucking exploded lmao. The worst part all that lovely telemetry that's gonna help them out gave zero indication of said catastrophic failure so that's gonna be such great info for them right? Just like the first test that failed when they knew the pad wouldn't be strong enough and caused damage to the rocket, meaning they got no actionable data?
Star ship has not been a proven concept and is still actively in development, these numbers mean nothing right now. With massive issues looming and 90% of what's needed not even tested yet but go ahead keep riding daddy musk as if he isn't killing good ideas with lofty moving goal posts and a complete lack of understanding for what's being developed.
It will never take 1 year for 15 launches... Also HLS will be ready before astronauts are sent to the lunar orbit.
You clearly don't and refuse to understand how SpaceX works. Your arguments show how little you understand any of it and using "lmao" at the end of your wrong arguments to prove how good they are is completely ridiculous.
I will watch your video because I'm always curious to understand other viewpoints and learn things, but I'm not planning on replying any further.