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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

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Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#891

Post by boxed »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #147
boxed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to keep two things in your mind at the same time: Elon Musk sometimes say things that are true. Elon Must sometimes say things that are not true. In this case, it's the first one.

Considering their contract just went back up for grabs I’m not sure how true that statement is. > you need to keep two things in your mind at the same time This was unnecessary and patronizing.

> Considering their contract just went back up for grabs I’m not sure how true that statement is.

SpaceX is far and away the most credible contractor. And it's not even close.

> This was unnecessary and patronizing

And yet, you said something that was uninformed AGAIN just after I pointed out how uninformed that take was. Doubling down on the mistake is even MORE reason for me to keep reminding you to keep the two things in view at the same time.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#892

Post by Symmetry »

shdh wrote: post #579
jjk166 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stainless steel was a questionable choice for starship. If the pros outweigh the cons, which is yet to be seen, it will be mostly due to the peculiarities of Starship's other design choices. In general it's a terrible choice for rockets. I'm not saying Boeing would do a better job, but any actual engineer doing a ground up redesign starting today would definitely go with carbon fiber.

They did experiment with carbon fiber if I recall correctly Stainless steel is much more cost effective

Partially it was that stainless steel was cheaper. A bigger issue was that making large carbon fiber structures takes much larger than with steel and so it would really have eaten into their iteration time. But also while the strength to weight savings from carbon fiber are a big deal at regular temperatures the heating from Starship reentry erased that.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#893

Post by dotnet00 »

exasperaited wrote: post #836
allenrb wrote: post #373

There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive: 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. 2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the secon…

But also 5. The owner of SpaceX threatens to cancel projects when he gets into social media spats with the president he thought he'd bought, or his NASA chief I don't understand why anyone tolerates a man like Musk having material control over state projects.

Kind of overlooks the fact that the guys he's threatening are also the same, having threatened to cancel SpaceX's contracts because Musk dared disagree with them (and we have all seen how rarely he does that).

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#894

Post by marcellus23 »

excalibur wrote: post #607
UltraSane wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending humans to the moon is just burning money though. It isn't useful at all.

That does seem to be the trend these days. See: AI proliferation, cryptocurrency.

> That does seem to be the trend these days

These days? The space race was 50 years ago.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#895

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

the_other wrote: post #852
roody15 wrote: post #848

This makes me think of Intels decline over the last decade or so. It feels to me like a canary in a coal mine. Perhaps of a failing in the US system as a whole. It is possible we are not quite the world leader we once were, despite bailouts, despite legislation like the CHIPS act, despite a CEO dedicated to a roadmap to regain technical superiority … maybe we cannot win this race. Have we reached a point where managi…

> where wealth inequality has reached a point of a new feudal like caste system This is a global problem, not limited to the US. It's also the end-state of capitalism because having (access to) more money makes it easier to have access to more money, and money drives everything else. > where our institutions now function to primarily manage and preserve an unhealthy society that is primarily exploitative and does not…

The postwar US at least reined in inequality through the New Deal. That has been progressively abandoned since the 1980s.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#896

Post by boxed »

askl wrote: post #36
boxed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to keep two things in your mind at the same time: Elon Musk sometimes say things that are true. Elon Must sometimes say things that are not true. In this case, it's the first one.

> Elon Musk sometimes say things that are true. Has this ever happened in the last 10 years?

Come now. Are you really saying that this is a lie:

> The nice thing is, if you’ve got friends in different cities and they’re playing the same game, you can both go online at the same time and play the game together even though you’re in different cities.

Of course he says true things. And on purpose too! (Unlike Trump :P)

https://www.rev.com/transcripts/elon-musk-interview-with-don...

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#897

Post by verzali »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #167
verzali wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in the original schedule on HLS Starship was supposed to have done the prop transfer in Q4 2022, an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2024, and the actual thing in Q1 2025. Of course that was always wishful thinking. I'm sure SpaceX has their "real" schedule somewhere, and maybe NASA has one too (at least from what I've heard, it is likely they have an unofficial idea of it somewhere).

> in the original schedule on HLS Starship was supposed to have done the prop transfer in Q4 2022, an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2024, and the actual thing in Q1 2025 Now do Orion and ML2. Artemis is behind schedule. Nobody debates that. Currently, the bottleneck is with Orion. SpaceX just massively de-risked the Starship platform with IFT-11. If IFT-12 validates Block 3, we should wait until the end of 2026 before…

Why? The question is whether Starship is on schedule or not. Orion or ML2 aren't holding back Starship. Waiting until the end of 2026 does nothing with regards to the initial schedule.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#898

Post by philipallstar »

ByteDrifter wrote: post #132

This reminds me of the Space Shuttle era. Back then, relying too much on a single vendor and working under tight timelines led to repeated delays and safety risks. SpaceX is incredibly capable, but past experience shows it's always safer to have alternatives.

Compared to the institutional players who get money for doing almost nothing, SpaceX is still definitely the alternative.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#899

Post by 508LoopDetected »

robocat wrote: post #720
zm262 wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to avoid "China can do this feat but US is no longer capable"

Small sample, but in New Orleans, the US isn't even capable of maintenance. I'm a tourist at the moment and everything looks like it is falling apart. The existing roading infrastructure is crumbling (apparently there's an Instagram about the worst examples). Everywhere I've driven, the roads are worse than earthquake hit Christchurch. Yet there is so much amazing old infrastructure that reeks of massive past investm…

New Orleans is built on top of a fishbowl-shaped sponge, as far as its foundational land is concerned. Road repair costs reflect this, but of course the other side of the coin is the decades worth of local government corruption here that makes any major progressive infrastructure changes feel like a perpetual pipe dream. At the same time though, it's one of the most beautiful cities in the country for endless historical + cultural reasons. You could say New Orleans is a highly concentrated gumbo of both the "good" and "bad" of some uniquely American ingredients. I love it here and hate it here; I get jealous when I visit other cities, but then I greatly miss home. Weird place.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#900

Post by brightball »

heavyset_go wrote: post #482
brightball wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the trolling equivalent of "embrace, extend, extinguish." They are mocking the people who believe it by amplifying it, making Trump 2028 merch, etc.

That's what they said about the "Mass Deportations Now" signs at the RNC 2024 campaign events.

No, they pretty openly campaigned on that.

Trump was shot while the slide showing the illegal border crossing chart under the Biden admin and talking about how much work it was going to be to send everyone back.

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