/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.14855053]

What did they actually accomplish?

Explain it to me like I'm 5.

[Anonymous No.14855082]

They've delivered cargo to the ISS, and launched the Starlink internet satellites. Those are the only real tangible things.
It's highly unlikely that they're going to send humans to Mars, that's more of a meme intended to keep Elon's fans hooked

[Anonymous No.14855089]

>>14855082
>Those are the only real tangible things.
They lowered the cost of mass to orbit by a factor of almost ten and where the first ones to use reusable boosters.

You niggers from reddit are disingenuous subhumans.

[Anonymous No.14855099]

>>14855089
>They lowered the cost of mass to orbit by a factor of almost ten
Wasn't the 9/10 covered for by government handouts?

[Anonymous No.14855101]

SpaceX has made Boeing look retarded, by providing a way to launch astronauts that is much cheaper and actually works. The majority of satellites in space are now SpaceX Starlink sats. They are by far the cheapest launcher for most other stuff as well; they charge the military half of what ULA does for a GPS launch, for example.

And their biggest accomplishment is showing that yes, you can reuse stuff for space launches, and optimize for lower costs. SpaceX routinely resuses the first stages of their current rockets, while everyone else tosses their's into the ocean (or random Chinese village). And rather than optimize for launching cheaply, pretty much every other launcher company has been optimizing for milking money out of the government.

[Anonymous No.14855102]

>>14855053
Aggressive technological development fueled by intense self criticism and a worker base that is actually fulfilled by hard work instead of a paycheck.

>t. actually works there

[Anonymous No.14855110]

>>14855099
That is a pretty bad take. SpaceX's internal price to launch must be pretty low, otherwise they would not be able launch as many Starlink sats as they have. And while SpaceX does charge the government more than commercial customers, that is due to all the bureaucratic shenanigans that come with government contracts. And the prices SpaceX does charge the Feds is still much cheaper than other companies; $71 million for a GPS launch vs $175 million for ULA to launch the same kind of satellite, as an example.

[Anonymous No.14855162]

>>14855099
What handouts? SpaceX has only ever gotten 5.6 million USD in subsidies in total. The government are just one of their customers.

[Anonymous No.14855171]

>>14855053
Nothing NASA couldn't have accomplished had they just continued being their Cold War selves. In fact, you can even think of them as an arm of NASA.

[Anonymous No.14855201]

>>14855171
Nah you've got it all wrong. Literally every project had to be approved by congress and you think a bunch of retarded politicians are going to consistently make good decisions and quickly so? Private is so vastly superior to dealing with the retarded apes in washington.

[Anonymous No.14855230]

>>14855053
Largest orbital launcher by far ~50% of the total in a "mature market" that everyone thought as "not longer open to newcomers". So, they customers "voted" with their own money.

Also, all tech is own by one company of one country, they are fast and efficient developing new things and improving old. It's the only company that showed better efficiency developing and using rockets/vehicles of know tech. Everyone else developed rockets that in the end were barely better, sometimes worse (H-II) and more expensive than older designs.

[Anonymous No.14855476]

>>14855201
To add to that, every member of congress tries to bring jobs to their district. So for large projects that NASA does many Congress members will demand that something gets made in their district. So NASA has to juggle hundreds of contractors, many selected for location rather than merit. That makes changing stuff & fixing issues difficult, to say the least.

[Anonymous No.14855503]

>>14855476
For example, here's a list of every contractor involved in SLS and Orion organized by state.

I hate the government so much.

[Anonymous No.14855507]

>>14855102
Can you give me a recommendation to Mr Musk dear anon?

[Anonymous No.14855933]

>>14855101
>The majority of satellites in space are now SpaceX Starlink sats
Too bad you can actually have a decent internet connection with other internet sat providers that need 2 or 3 satellites and don't risk a kessler syndrome

[Anonymous No.14856017]

>>14855933
Wrong
Starlink is the only game in town for satellite internet. I use it personally so I know. I can watch 4k videos and play online games with no lag issues. You can't even load YouTube on Hughesnet.

[Anonymous No.14856020]

>>14856017
Monopoly incoming.

[Anonymous No.14856028]

>>14856020
Good. Fuck all the other ISPs. Don't want to run Fiber to my little town? Good, fuck off. Luv me Stahrlank. H8 the ground based jew.

[Anonymous No.14856219]

>>14856028
I hate to say it, but it will initially be a monopoly well-deserved. I know they have plans to update the quality of the satellites in the future, but I hope they continue to innovate in the decades to come. I don't want them to mimic the ground jew.

[Anonymous No.14856274]

>>14855933
Lmao you are actually comparing old sat internet to starlink, you shouldn’t be allowed to comment on items you know nothing about.

[Anonymous No.14856374]

>>14855162
Elon bitch literally whined the government wouldn’t get him approximately a billion in subsidies

[Anonymous No.14856380]

>>14856374
>government creates rural high speed program
>promises subsidies to ISPs that can bring it
>elon makes worldwide high speed internet
>government: mmm that doesn't count

[Anonymous No.14856385]

>>14856380
Elon bitch just wants handouts while telling me that if I get handouts it makes me lazy fuck him pull his shitalites up into space by his bootstrapsn

[Anonymous No.14856409]

Being able to profit off of space shit successfully enough to be able to establish a foothold in the industry?
It's kind of a dumb question. Like asking what Walmart has accomplished. SpaceX isn't a national space agency fighting for global acclaim or to push the forefront of science. Sure, attempting to do that is a nice side objective. But the actual goal of SpaceX is to profit off of the things it does and as long as it can do that it's accomplishing what the people running it actually want it to do.

[Anonymous No.14856427]

>>14856409
They exist to be welfare queens

[Anonymous No.14856458]

>>14856020
Well, yeah, when one company has such a gigantic technological advantage (much cheaper rockets in this case) no one else is really going to be able to compete. Though Amazon is going to try, with their Kupier network, and the Chinese are planning on their own LEO com sat constellations.

Of course, nothing is physically stopping other companies from building their own cheaper rockets; Hughsnet's parent company could have easily started doing reusable rocket R&D 20 years ago, and would have likely had an easier time attracting investments & talented engineers than Ol'Musky did at the time. But they lacked the vision to do so. And of course, Amazon is closely tied with the rocket company Blue Origin, which also has been attempting to build their own cheaper rockets. They have just been doing a shit job at it; despite being two years older than SpaceX, and by most estimates spending MORE on R&D than SpaceX, they have yet to do more than sub orbital joyrides. As for why Blue Origin has been so much worse than SpaceX, well anyone want to take a crack at that?

[Anonymous No.14856469]

>>14856427
>meanwhile... at NASA

[Anonymous No.14856475]

>>14856458
Blue Origin is afraid of failure. SpaceX embraces it. They show off their failures in spectacular YouTube montages. They were 1 Falcon 9 failure away from bankruptcy at one point but still they pushed. Now we have reusable rockets.

[Anonymous No.14856479]

>>14856385
Look at it this way - you run a business. The government has decided to give handouts to your competitors handouts, but not you, despite your company providing a service that does exactly what the government wants subsidized. Wouldn't you bitch about it too?

[Anonymous No.14856484]

>>14856479
SpaceX won out in the contract war for a government project so of course they were the ones that got money. This happens all the time from local governments having garbage disposal companies duke it out to see who gets paid to collect trash all the way to arms manufacturers submitting pitches to the US army for the design and manufacturing rights for the next generation of rifles. Typically the losing company throwing a shitfit and trying to get lawyers involved is seen as a dick move.

[Anonymous No.14856487]

>>14856484
Dude. SpaceX is last for every Government space dollar. It all goes to Boeing when they don't even have a spaceship. SpaceX gets the dribbles of cum off the chins of the major military players and they do miracles with that money.

[Anonymous No.14856490]

>>14856385
I work for Windstream, a rural ISP that is hated by 99% of our customers. We only survive because of subsidies from the Universal Access Fund. Our competitors like Lumen (CenturyLink) and Frontier are pretty much in the same boat. We get billions in subsidies for providing terrible aDSL service to rural homes. Why wouldn't anyone else who provides this service get the same subsidies for providing equal or better service?

[Anonymous No.14856498]

>>14856490
Fucking this. I could set up a Starlink receiver in the middle of some of these towns supplying to every house by Cat5 and it would be an improvement over these rogue ISPs.

[Anonymous No.14856576]

>>14856385
Redditors are so obsessed with justifying their immense hate boner thar they forget logic lmao

[Anonymous No.14856640]

>>14855053
Best medium LV by a mile, proven capsule, largest satellite fleet operator by a mile.
It's not bad for 20 years but also not as great as many like to claim, remember NASA went from the X-15 to the moon landing in the same timespan but with orders of magnitude more money.

With their first big accomplishment, reusable first stages, they have changed rocketry globally. No one is going to start a clean sheet design today without seriously looking into reusability.
If they can get reusable second stages that will be just as big and will again change the game.

[Anonymous No.14857658]

>>14856640
We should at the very least be considering the idea of parking the 2nd stages in a big group that can be tapped down the line for construction projects in orbit.

[Anonymous No.14857817]

>>14856385
What are you doing that makes you deserve handouts?

[Anonymous No.14858026]

>>14855089
>n word
Grow up.

[Anonymous No.14858664]

>>14855099
You mean paid contracts with expected mission outcomes you stupid nigger.

[Anonymous No.14859206]

>>14855053
>Explain it to me like I'm 5.
go back to >>>/r/eddit