Two of your team members are Elon
Gwen Shotwell actually. Honestly fantastic name.
If you’re going to hate Elon Musk it might be a good idea to work out what companies he actually is and isn’t CEO first
Why is SpaceX on that I mean I know “musk bad”, but seriously they’re doing well. Just put Boeing on there again this time for Starliner.
I first thought it was the Starliner. Then the group would have been “full of technical issues”.
They are not doing well, they take tax payer money and blow them up, literally.
They are paid both taxpayer and private money to put things, including people now, safely into orbit. A thing they do frequently and reliably, without any explosions. Yes, their dramatically destructive development method of launching unproven prototypes and pushing them to the limit does seem wasteful, but it actually has allowed their engineers to very effectively identify the weak points in their systems and remove or compensate for them, resulting in designs that are redundant only where needed, but still reliable. Despite a lot of competition from international and the older American aerospace companies, they remain one of the most cost effective and reliable options for space launches in the game.
Now, I’m all for some Musk mocking these days after how much of a jackass he’s revealed himself to be, and I am now convinced that Space-X succeeded in spite of him, but it is successful.
I would think that best musk debunker is thunderfoot, have a look at his videos and you will see musks snake oil https://youtu.be/F3JTafTEDv0?si=i9pbP4GyVq3f6FIV
You mean like Bikini Atoll?
What a dumb take.
It is and it isn’t. If NASA sent up rockets like them, blew them up, and said “that’s what we wanted to happen!”, at the same tax dollar spent ratio, there would be congressional hearings and massive outrage.
When you build new things they necessarily blow up during the development process. NASA is hobbled by a flat budget so they can’t afford to blow anything up. So they can’t build anything new, which is why SLS is a bunch of old parts scrapped together.
SLS is a bunch of old parts scrapped together.
True. But those old parts scrapped together is what makes SLS beautiful. :P
Still gotta find a fourth member
Had a 5th member lined up but then there was a tragic and completely unexpected incident and now there’s an opening.
God damnit Boeing what did we say about silencing teammates
Top left: An aerospace conglomerate with an all-consuming focus on short-term profits, leading to endemic problems. The featured product being the 787, a functional and popular airliner which had numerous problems related to excessive outsourcing. Some safety concerns about newly delivered planes of this type, due to the company’s endemic problems. As an airline, I would prefer to buy Airbus. And as a passenger, I would avoid the 737 Max totally and all Boeings for the first years of service.
Top right: A major electric car company with major leadership problems. The featured product is an automobile which compares disfavourably to other electric pickup trucks in most conventional metrics. As a consumer, I would look at alternatives.
Bottom left: Someone thought they could build a submarine.
Bottom right: The world’s leading space launch company. Also the world’s leading satellite internet company. The featured product is the Falcon 9, a large rocket capable of sending a large payload into orbit or beyond. The first stage can then land and be reused. Some concerns about the leadership of the company, and the side effects of their failure tolerant testing. As a for-profit company, I would have no other choice in launch providers. As a consumer, I could be in a situation where they are the the only real provider of internet access.
A very diverse “team”. Assembled by someone with a different perspective than my own.
gotta wait for Bezos to catch up with the shenanigans.
Doesn’t he have a wierd pissing at work thing and have cameras in delivery trucks that penalize you when you yawn? I’d say rhe fuckin billionaire is qualified to fuck right off.
i forgot bezos doesn’t own blue orgin anymore
the expandables
There was an idea, Musk doesn’t know this, called the Unforced Errors. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable deathtraps, see if they could become something less. See if they could fail together when we needed them to to lose the battles we never could.
Is the the “GTFO this planet and let everything else fall apart” team?
Oh come on. SpaceX is doing way better than Boeing atm.
Yeah honestly space x is rocking it because of the immense talent of the team that exists there. They do over 100 successful launches per year now. It has transformed the space industry as humanity has ever known it. That’s fucking cool.
Yeah too bad it’s led by Musk. Luckily he’s still too distracted with ruining Twitter
Imma be honest, I deem Tesla successful. At start, their mission was to get EVs started up and going. And they fucking did. After showing how much can EVs achieve, they forced whole world to shift focus - they succeeded. As of what happens with the company now…I don’t care. They did hella lot of good for everyone, now they can fall off. Would prefer if Musk fucked off instead and let them cook, but eh.
I disagree. EVs needed more battery development which occurred largely independently of Tesla, and instead they just reaped the reward of other people’s labour.
You can’t deny the impact that they had on propping up EVs as desireable, though. There wouldn’t be so many Teslas on the road if the opposite was true.
Technology wise, true. But it’s not about technology. Tesla pushed for EVs to become mainstream. They made them wanted by people. Up to that, automakers ignored that tech fully, cause money was with ICE.
They did a lot of good for whom? A lot of things are successful and shit, that’s not a metric.
So skibidi no cap
One of these things is not like the others. Falcon 9 is the most successful and impressive rocket ever built.
Related, but I’d say Falcon Heavy is. Especially if you add in the dual booster landings.
One of these things is not like the others. Falcon 9 have liked anyone yet.
Replace Falcon with Starliner. Boeing is big enough to fuck up twice.
Did you mean Starship? That thing has like a 50% chance of exploding on landing last I knew
On the last test flight a few weeks ago both the booster and ship did powered soft landings in the ocean (even with the ship’s flap melting a bit)
Pretty sure they meant Boeing Starliner, which is currently docked to the ISS but whose return to earth is delayed because of several hydrogen leaks and faulty manoeuvring thrusters. They’ve tested the thrusters since docking and only 4 of the 5 worked.
SpaceX Starship on the other hand is a test vehicle. It’s not meant to explode of course but these things are expected from time to time. SpaceX go for more of a “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” approach. It looks like they don’t know what they’re doing but they really do, Falcon9 is the most successful rocket ever built after all
The return is delayed because they decided to run a lot of extra experiments on their experimental capsule.
I’m not saying it’s not fucked-up. The extra experiments are all because there’s a lot of stuff that must be fixed or else they’ll get a really pissed-off customer. But it’s not just stuck there because it can’t return.
They lose the ability to claim experimental when it has passengers (and in my opinion also since it is not doing anything particularly innovative… It is “just” a capsule). We dont risk astronauts like that. Spaceflight is risky enough as is.
And the traditional space companies (like boeing) spend so long on design and engineering and testing specifically so that things go mostly right the first time. This is now the third launch and its still having issues despite now risking crew. And that is with several years between launches. Its not a good look for boeing here if they cant get this capsule absolutely rock solid.
This is now the third launch
Wait, what?
No, sorry, I wasn’t talking about this one, that apparently I completely missed on the news.
Starship’s last launch had two soft landings, they were just over the water which leads to exploding. That’s as good as can be expected.
Starship is in testing. Where other space companies spend years to decades testing their designs in simulations, wind- and plasma tunnels with gigantic costs (Blue Origin is developing New Glenn since at least 2013), SpaceX is building test articles and just fly them. Those test articles are not the final version of the rocket and they are not meant to complete an entire flight flawlessly. They are akin to alpha builds in software development, designed to test features, not to be a finished product.
The last launch really was incredible. It managed to land relatively softly and pull off all of the flips while it’s fins were literally falling apart. Obviously the fins weren’t supposed to be falling apart, but it’s crazy that it still landed.
It’s still in testing though, there are people literally stranded in space right now thanks to starliner. What do you consider a bigger fuck up?
Jfc You’re dumb.
Tbf, starship isn’t finished yet, if it were pretending to be a product ready for public use and was blowing up customer’s payloads, that’d be a fair point, but if you’re developing something by just flying it knowing it will probably fail, and then fixing whatever causes the failures so that it gets farther next time, until it eventually goes all the way, then being criticized for the test flights failing isn’t really fair unless you aren’t making any progress with them, which starship seems to have been making.
The last 2 launches have gotten to (near) orbit just fine, although I think the payload door failed on one of them iirc. If they were carrying payloads they probably would have been able to deliver them (I don’t think they have made payload fairings for things other than starlink yet though)
Put Google’s AI projects in the 4th box
Musk is a pissbaby, but I’ll whiteknight spacex until they blow up a tourist.
Blowing up rockets over protected swamplands and failing at things NASA learned decades ago isn’t enough for you?
Somehow Ive missed hearing about either of these
I first heard a full breakdown of the environmental regulatory aspects of SpaceX’s operations in Tech Wont Save Us ep. 186 from September of last year. Definitely worth the listen (every episode of that show is worth the listen, in fact).
The launch site is bordered entirely by wildlife refuges and state parklands. The reason they blew up that rocket a while ago on 4/20 was because they didn’t want to get approval to dig a flame trench due to tight environmental restrictions in the area. Trenches that NASA realized were necessary over 50 years ago.
Here’s some articles if you don’t want to take my word for it:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/05/texas-spacex-elon-musk-environment-wildlife
Protected swamplands??
The Boca Chica test site in Texas is built immediately adjacent to a protected wildlife preserve. This is the site where SpaceX has been working on the Starship launch vehicle.
The second part about failing is extreme hyperbole. SpaceX is the most successful launch company in human history by any reasonable metric. I’d argue Musks distance from the company in recent years has helped.
That seems like a failure of the government to allow them to operate there.
They avoided this by just not performing contracted missions
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-dearmoon-crew-reacts-private-mission-canceled
Probably for the better
Oh, that sucks. I hadn’t heard about that cancellation. Still, SpaceX set an unreasonable timeline and expectations of the client, and that should have consequences.
It’s my main issue I have with the whole topic. Starting in 2017 or so, there were so many idiotic promises regarding space travel and all, this one included. Oh yeah and we’ll colonize Mars btw. Like what are you people on? And now SpaceX is even behind on the contractual obligations to NASA, Artemis will not bring astronauts into moon’s orbit this year. Now while do acknowledge that space travel is really hard, this was achieved almost 60 years ago already. What was promised does in no way match reality. Going to Mars was always unrealistic, but to me it feels like progress on ambitious yet achievable goals is worse than 60 years ago.
They’re still doing Polaris missions though right?
I guess? The comment I replied to said “tourist” though and Polaris is with a professional crew.
This wasn’t a SpaceX decision though. The guy who contracted them is the one who cancelled the mission. Mostly because the rocket is not ready yet and he was sick of waiting.
The mission was contracted for 2023, which already passed. I know SpaceX didn’t cancel it (why would they of they can just move the date into the future indefinitely) and that’s why I said they didn’t perform it. But the result is the same and the reaction of the client understandable. Any sane party will cancel a contract when they see that the other party is unable to fulfill their offer.
Surely the fault lies with the client who decided to sign a contract, fully understanding that it was all theoretical and based entirely on future projections, that may or may not be accurate.
It’s not like he was lied to and thought that the ship already existed, or was only a couple of months away from completion.
Yeah, when I miss the deadline, it’s also not my decision to “cancel the project”.
Why whiteknight them at all?
Let them stand and and fall on their own merits
EDIT: lol @ the downvotes with no comments!
I promise I didn’t downvote hahaha
It’s fine it you downvote, but just tell me why you disagree with me on this topic.
Well I don’t really simp for spacex, I’m just a fan of their rockets. I think they’re really cool. I was just being dramatic :p
A team for what? Causing the apocalypse?
Replace spacex with blueorigin and I’m there.
No, Starliner
Nah, the VSS Enterprise