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Not sure why SpaceX is in this group, except “cause musk”, since they’re objectively the best rocket company out there.
The rest are obvious, but the Falcon 9 is the cheapest, and most reliable rocket.
While Falcon 9 is a dependable rocket…
- One has never been turned around as re-usable in anywhere near 24 or 72 hours as Musk claimed they would be, fastest turn around to date is I think 3 weeks, roughly in line with faster Space Shuttle turn around times. No where near ‘rapid’.
EDIT: My turnaround times for the Space Shuttle were off, fastest was 55 days and its more like 3 months in average. The point I was attempting to illustrate, which is Rapid Reusability Is A Huge Element To Making The Cost Effectiveness Gains Promised, And SpaceX Is Still Off By An Order Of Magnitude, Over A Decade Into The Falcon Program.
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The cost to launch a Falcon 9 has never dropped to around 5 million dollars, as Musk claimed they would be. Even accounting for inflation, launches average around ten times the cost Musk said they would be. Musk is charging the government around 90 million per launch: Soyuz was the only option, so the Russians could overcharge a bit for ISS launches, now the Russians are not an option, and Musk is similarly overcharging.
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Starship/BFR is woefully behind the schedule for accomplishments that Musk claimed it would reach in his hype shows, woefully behind schedule for the NASA contract.
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Starship/BFR has cost taxpayers billions of dollars and so far has a proven payload capacity of 0, would require 12 to 16 launches to accomplish what a single Saturn V could do, has not demonstrated the capacity to refuel in orbit, is not human rated, and is now just being moved back to Starship 2 and 3, with Musk now claiming Starship 1 actually has half the orbital cargo capacity he has up to recently claimed it has.
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For comparison, the Saturn project had a development time similar to how long BFR/Starship has… never once failed, proved it could do what it needed to in 67, 7 years after development began.
(They also had computers maybe a little bit more or less powerful than a ti-83 and had to basically invent a huge chunk of computer science)
Starship/BFR development has been a shit show.
Dear Moon is cancelled.
Remember when the repulsive landing Dragon Capsule was going to land humans on Mars?
Remember when we were going to have multiple Starships starting a Martian colony by now?
SpaceX in general has gotten high on their own supply over the last 10 years and has made all sorts of lofty claims about lowering launch costs, rapid reusability, rockets for military asset deployment to anywhere on Earth, rockets as basically super fast commercial airliner travel, all of which have driven massive public hype and investor confidence, and then these claims are just forgotten about when it becomes apparent just how difficult these are to achieve, or in some cases, laughably, obviously unworkable with even a modicum of thought.
The truth of the matter, as proven by Musk’s handling of his other companies, is that Musk just says things, “We can do this now!”, when in reality he’s basically had a napkin drawing plan a month ago, calls this prototyping, and now its a month later, and he emailed somebody and said ‘Make this happen’ with no further explanation, thus the project is now in development.
Seems like you’re comparing SpaceX to Elons promises, not against the rest of the space industry. They’re still much better than all the rest, even if they don’t quite meet Elons promises.
How is it so much better than SLS/Artemis?
Even ignoring all the other aspects of one working and the other not; The big one is even with the musk grift the cost to taxpayers is orders of magnitude different.
SLS is Over US$2 billion excluding development (estimate) per launch. While Space X just upped their cost estimates in 2022 to $67 million per launch.
You are not comparing apples to apples though. How much did SpaceX’s cost to develop?
SLS cost to develop so far: US$23.8 billion nominal
Falcon 9 cost to develop
so far(note this was for falcon 9 1.0)(estimate): US$300 millionOnce again, not even close.
For more fun I started to look at some of the other development costs of Space X rockets.
Starship (the big spender) : $5 billion to $10 billion
Falcon Heavy : Over $500 Million
Falcon 9 : $300 Million
Falcon 1: $100 Million
Like I dislike the kirkland brand Dr.evil as much as the next dood, but I think boeing might just have a spending issue.
You’re not arguing in good faith. First of all, that’s what NASA paid, not the total development cost. Way, way more of the costs were paid by investor money. Secondly, falcon 9 is not the nearest equivalent to SLS - that’s starship. There’s a huge, huge difference.
Are you serious? Most observers shake their head at SLS. Best result for everyone on its maiden flight would have been blowing up at Max-Q. Then congress could admit it’s a failure and move on.
A big part of that is money. The competition is either less wealthy Musks or notoriously underfunded government agencies.
Are you saying SpaceX is selling launches at a loss? I don’t think musk is paying for SpaceX launches with Tesla money.
Not necessarily, although I wouldn’t be too surprised, scientific endeavors tend to operate at a loss. I’m just saying that Musk’s funding gave SpaceX a jumpstart on the competition. Someone like NASA isn’t going to be able to keep up when their budget is consistently getting cut and Musk is rolling around in more money than anyone could ever spend.
So then if you want to move that goalpost again at least move it to a comparison that makes sense. SpaceX and Blue Origin are both Billionaire funded launch providers. Even though SpaceX now operates from their launch sales.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has a complete lack of real world launch vehicles to send viable payloads. The best they’ve shown is a handful of tourism rides on New Shepard. And massive delays on the new engines for New Glenn and other rockets, which are finally starting to be delivered to customers massively delayed, but still no New Glenn rocket anywhere near being launched.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has a complete lack of real world launch vehicles to send viable payloads.
Do they really need to? Vulcan seems like it will be a fine rocket. And the vulcan engine is the same as new glenn engine
Edit: Okay well it seems New Glenn is planned to be a lot more powerful, containing 7 BE-4’s rather than 2 for Vulcan.
Musk is SpaceX.
He’s the frontman, even if Shotwell is the CEO now she’s made some of the absurd claims I’ve referenced.
And SpaceX as a company, its developed products, fall laughably short of its promises, of its marketing.
The rest of the Space industry, generally, is no where near as bombastic and obviously full of shit, instead preferring to develop and operate without grandiose media/public performances.
There is a saying in business: Under-Promise, Over-Perform, or Over-Deliver.
SpaceX does the opposite of this.
Yeah but that doesn’t mean SpaceX isn’t a fantastic rocket company. Why is over promising an issue? It’s still fantastically cheap and capable. You aren’t buying rocket launches, and the people who are are looking at the current performance, not future projections.
Like it or not, the industry would still be worse off without the idiotic claims. The idiotic claims pushed the industry forward. You want to make a bulleted list of all the things you dislike or you perceive as failures and drawbacks, fine, go ahead. There are just as many positive bullet lists that could be made.
Or one could interpret them as fraudulent claims for the purpose of soliciting funding, you know, like Full Self Driving.
Ah yes, ‘I lied and the industry got better, I should do more of it’
The fucking fanboys are high on Elon’s farts…
That saying does not seem to belong to business.
Musk is gross and SpaceX has some questionable marketing claims that you’ve identified, but I don’t see how anyone could claim that anything about the company’s products are a shitshow.
Falcon 9 has radically changed the economics of the space industry, and has no competition to force lower prices.
Starship has had a very successful testing campaign, and operates within a different development paradigm than Saturn. They’ve shown more progress on more technology in the last year than almost any rocket ever. It won’t be long before Starship has demonstrated all the capabilities you mentioned. While the price tag is large in absolute terms, it will be very cheap relative to the competition.
Dear Moon was not canceled by SpaceX, and no one who follows the industry has ever believed Musk’s timelines.
I guess I’m confused, because everything I know about Starship points towards it being one of the most incredible engineering accomplishments ever. There are lots of other problems with SpaceX’s leadership, environmental impact, and work culture, but aren’t the products inspiring?
Some people just cant separate the musk from the accomplishments. Or they read headlines about costs and historical comparisons without actually thinking about how apples to oranges they are. The vitriol over musk which is well deserved has really fucked with the space industry’s image. And considering how fucked the image already was (not hated, but jaded and perceived as a waste of money), its a shame.
It would be interesting if starship actually succeeds. It initially did not seem like something that would work
I specifically said Starship development has been a shitshow.
I would not characterize all of SpaceX as a shit show, more like vastly under delivering compared to what was promised.
They say it themselves: SpaceX specializes in turning the impossible into merely late.
When Starship was announced, people were saying it wouldn’t fly with so many engines because the Russians tried and failed with their N1 rocket. Now that it did fly, it’s that the heat shield will never work.
Are they late compared to what they announced? Absolutely. Are they still faster than anyone else? Look at Blue Origin and you have your answer.
Yeah, it’s honestly impressive how it works at all. Like, look at the sheer scale! How does it even stand?
3 weeks, roughly in line with faster Space Shuttle turn around times
The shortest shuttle turnaround time was 55 days. Almost three times as much as Falcon 9. The fastest post-Challenger turnaround time was 88 days, I believe. After Columbia, the fastest turnaround was around 5 months.
NASA claimed that the shuttle could achieve a turnaround time of two weeks (page IX). It looks like SpaceX is not the only one setting unrealistic timelines?
Ah, an actual correction!
Thank you, I’ll edit the the original post.
They don’t have rapid reusability because it doesn’t matter to them, they have enough rockets that they can work on multiple at the same time to get the same effect
Dear Moon is cancelled.
Looked this up. The guy says he cancelled it because it was delayed too long. Pretty much shows they didn’t have the patience needed for spaceflight in the first place.
bUt aLl tHe sTaRsHiPs eXpLoDeD!!!
How dare you! … use sarcasm without the /s, people are getting confused!
How’s Mars? No?
Moon? No?
Anything past lower orbit? No?Okay.
They’re the only ones who are seriously trying. And Falcon 9 is better than anything else by a very wide margin.
I make the best chocolate-chiken ice-cream by a wide margin.
They’re the one eyed man who is king in the country of the blind. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are the leaders in their industry.
The main issue with spacex is that they use taxpayer money to build infrastructure, research, and in many other ways fund a company who’s accomplishments will never be shared with the world unless there is a price sticker on it.
Can you describe “the list”?
The Soyuz is cheaper. Roscosmos is an objectively better rocket company.
…buddy…
Roscosmos hasn’t innovated anything in about 2 decades
Roscosmos doesn’t consider clearing the launch tower to be a success. There is value in continuing to use proven technology.
Youre comparing a testing goal to an operational goal? How the hell is that even relevant?
We’d all still be using steam engines with your logic, because the moment a gasoline engine blew up in testing we shoulda just given up! And jet engines for aircraft? What a waste of time!
C’mon. You gotta be smarter than that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-10
Falcon 9 never had an abort with crew onboard, while Soyuz has.
Eh? Both the Soyuz and Falcon 9 are proven spacecraft. That one abort was a fluke and the crew survived without injury. I’m sure they’ve put in some effort to make sure that abort won’t happen again.
clearing the launch tower during a test launch with an experimental rocket that has no payload and no humans aboard is success
managing to get into the right orbit without aborting using a rocket that’s launched since the 60s and is lit with giant matchsticks is success
You, an idiot: “these are comparable”
Also, the first one is reusable.
From looking up the numbers, it seems like a soyuz launch under the cheapest circumstances can get decently cheaper than a falcon 9 launch, however, it also carries significantly less payload mass, so the actual cost per mass to orbit is lower for falcon 9, which makes the comparison a bit like comparing a van to a semi truck; if you want to move something small enough to fit in the van, without any other cargo to fill the space, then the van makes sense. But if you’re running a logistics network and have enough cargo to fill whatever vehicle you’re using, the bigger truck is going to be cheaper to use.
As far as them being a better rocket company though, Roscosmos has just been operating a group of designs that are quite ancient in terms of rockets, especially the soyuz which is an evolution on an original design that literally predates Sputnik. They’re not bad rockets per se, but Roscosmos didn’t develop them and they don’t seem to be innovating much beyond them, and so are quickly becoming out of date as more groups work on things like rocket reusability. SpaceX by contrast has been quite innovative in the space especially with regards to reuse, and has such a high capacity that one satellite constellation it owns accounts for a majority of operational satellites at the moment.
SpaceX has Gwynne Shotwell who actually is the reason to find SpaceX interesting. She is so powerful that she can overcome Musk’s perpetually increasingly unstable drag coefficient.
Good name.
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Ooh, so SpaceX is basically thanks to her
They also socially engineered ways to keep that dipshit Musk away from the projects and sabotaging them all. “Here is a shiny sprocket that we are too dumb to figure out, need you to help us!”, and that idiot gets to play smart and leaves the real work alone.
One of these things is not like the others. Falcon 9 is the most successful and impressive rocket ever built.
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
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
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.
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.
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)
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?
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)
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.
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.
Jfc You’re dumb.
Put Google’s AI projects in the 4th box
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.
Musk is a pissbaby, but I’ll whiteknight spacex until they blow up a tourist.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Replace spacex with blueorigin and I’m there.
No, Starliner
Nah, the VSS Enterprise
Space x doesn’t belong there
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.
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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
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?
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.
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.
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.
They did a lot of good for whom? A lot of things are successful and shit, that’s not a metric.
You son of a bitch, I’m out.
Muskians are having fits in the comments
Imagine simping over a Nazi worshipper like Musk who isn’t qualified to run a McDonalds.
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
No one cared when Astra’s first three attempts (with a much less ambitious design) recently failed to reach orbit. Of course, launching rockets is hard and SpaceX’s first, less ambitious rocket also failed on its first three attempts. I’m sure other manufacturers have had their own share of problems. IMO people mostly think worse of spacex because it gets more publicity, but some degree of failure is always to be expected with new ventures in commercial rocketry.
There’s 2 main reasons spacex gets shit. First one is Musk. Second one is the weird competitive thing SpaceX fanbois do where they criticise the shit out of all other rocket manufacturers and endlessly praise everything spaceX do.
3rd SpaceX is a private company getting public (national) funding and taking away from NASA (a national institution)
Same for Boeing, Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman and the like. Why are they getting a pass?
I don’t think Boeing is getting a pass. If anything, its become an even bigger laughing stock than SpaceX.
As to the rest, most people forget they even exist. What has Rocketdyne even received credit for of late, ffs? What has Lockhead, for that matter?
Space Launch System (SLS) is a joint project of Roketdyne, Boeing and
LockheedNorthrop Grumman. My issue is that Boeing is not getting enough shit and the other two are not even known.edit, got Northrop and lockeed mixed up.
Maybe don’t take away NASA funding and give it to any of them?
Yeah, but NASA does not actually make rockets anymore. All of these companies get money from NASA not instead of NASA.
Maybe they should?
Agreed.
A great deal of the problem with the modern rocket industry is that it has been commercialized.
Indian and Chinese public sector agencies don’t need to run around sucking off donors for money or inventing new ways to generate profit on taxpayer expense. They can operate at-cost with a consistent budget and aim at targets set by experts in the field rather than investors with the biggest wallets. Consequently, they’re putting up better and more efficient spacecraft - India put its Mangalyaan probe into orbit around Mars for a measly $75M, China’s the only country left with a nationally independent space station - than anyone in the private sector has managed to date.
Back when NASA wasn’t an entirely owned and operates subsidiary of Boeing, it was able to go toe-to-toe with the USSR. But now the pursuit of quarterly profits is dissolving the western space industry to the point where we can’t even get people off the ISS without Russia’s help.
musk’s dragging it down with his constant bullshit.
That’s true in general for everything he touches, but rockets are designed to overcome a lot of drag :)
That sub still brings a smile to my face.
Yeah, I don’t know why everyone was so mean to it
Poor little guy was under a lot of pressure
the expandables
