Do you think this kind of thing is worrying or not?

  • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I don’t see this as a bad thing, maybe china landing people on the moon before us will light a fire on both sides of the aisle to stop fucking around with commercial space contracts.

    Over-reliance on SpaceX is causing the same problems to Artemis that over-reliance on Boeing caused the SLS program. A year and a half behind schedule, blown their entire budget on a meme rocket that only potentially lifts half the tonnage promised.

    • EasternLettuce@lemm.ee
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      18 hours ago

      Hard to describe starship as a meme rocket when nasa has given Boeing et al carte blanche for an ineffective and outdated launch system

    • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Hard disagree. SpaceX has been pushing the envelope into reusable rocketry like nothing that’s ever been seen before. They delivered their crew capsule years before Boeing, and Boeing’s is still far from operational. If you ask me, the cost-plus contracts given to companies like Boeing are the real problem, and contributed to the SLS delays. That rocket will cost us billions of dollars per launch. Compare that to a few Falcon Heavy launches and see whose budget is overblown. At least with the fixed-price contracts given to SpaceX and Blue Origin, the taxpayer isn’t on the hook for any delays or cost overruns. Plus, they’re the only ones seriously building human-rated lunar landers. Yeah, I wish our space companies weren’t in the hands of egotistical billionaires, but that is the world we live in.

      • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        The falcon rockets are fine but SpaceX has been raising prices on their launches since they won the majority of the contracts.

        It used to cost 20 million a seat on the Soyuz until Russia became the sole provider of crewed launches, then they raised the price to about 80 million a seat.

        Along comes musk and promises 20 million a seat and low and behold after the contracts are fulfilled they raise the price to 80 million as well.

        SpaceX is falling into the same rut every company that becomes a monopoly enters into, and Starship is Musk’s personal meme rocket the taxpayer has already shelled out 4 billion for, and there’s not even a launch with a working payload.

        SpaceX looks cool flashy as shit but they over-promise and under-deliver at the same rate Tesla does. Early success giving way to overconfidence and an inability to deliver on their lofty promises.

    • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      we are about to reelect the orange baboon, again. we are no where, going no where. it’s a complete disaster. there is nothing good about china gaining dominion over near space.