This wouldn’t be a problem if we still had NASA doing the shuttle program, or some continuation of it, rather than outsourcing our spacecraft to the cutthroat lowest-bidder private sector. Is it really any surprise that SpaceX and Boeing are blowing up on the launchpads and having quality control issues when their sole objective is to make money? If we nationalized these initiatives again and cancelled the private contracts with these crooks, there would be no incentive for profiteering and corners would not get cut as often as they do now.
Sure, it would be a big cost to the taxpayer once again, but I think I’d rather have a reliable space program and like 2% less military budget to fund it, I think we’ll manage somehow without producing more tanks and planes that nobody is asking for.
Also, not defending the Musk shitstain, but focusing on “blowing up launch pads” tells me you probably know very little about the Space industry or development.
Let me know how that interview goes, because if the rocket you developed and spent billions of dollars building explodes at launch, you’re going to be looking for a new line of work.
I’m sure the next aeronautics company will totally understand. Mondays, am I right?
See, I’m not trying to be a jerk, but you keep showing more and more that you’re not following what’s happening in the launch business at all.
So for coming up on 10 years now, SpaceX has been absolutely kicking everyone’s ass. China is now coming up on being second.
They’re following processes of rapid iteration. During design, they build quickly (and relatively cheaply). They launch frequently. Those launches may not go perfectly. Sometimes they explode. But they get a LOT of data. This helps them iterate quickly.
This is different from what Boeing, Blue Origin, etc have been doing (and at different points, at NASA’s direction) - the “try to build it slow but steady, and perfect the first time” method. Guess what? That has been working horribly. It takes way way longer, costs way way more, etc. And they’ve left the door open for SpaceX to take over. They’re quickly becoming the ONLY game in town. And neither they nor, say, Blue Origin have really been focused that much on profit.
Rapid Iteration is also what we did early on in the space program. A lot of stuff failed (blew up) but we were making REALLY rapid progress.
Now - once the rockets go into production, they absolutely CAN’T blow up. ESPECIALLY with people inside. That’s a totally different thing.
SpaceX just lost had their first operation failure in like a decade. After hundreds of successful launches. It’s the best record I believe any rocket series has ever had.
You also picked tbe Shuttle as an example of things working well. It’s ironic - that’s specifically when everything started turning to shit - massive cost overruns, massive, years-long project delays. The delays for manned spaceflight, for launch systems, were a brand new thing starting with STS.
Blowing shit up is absolutely a valid part of the learning/development phase of rocket design.
Okay, you’ve made some pretty salient points. I’m not too proud to admit that my understanding of the topic is limited. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me more on the subject.
This wouldn’t be a problem if we still had NASA doing the shuttle program, or some continuation of it, rather than outsourcing our spacecraft to the cutthroat lowest-bidder private sector.
While I like the sentiment, you should know that you are absolutely, completely, 100% wrong.
The space shuttle was the deadliest spacecraft in human history, not just in the US, but in the entire world. And mind you, NASA spacecrafts are all also quite literally built from parts delivered by the lowest bidder.
For the record Boeing sucks and is doing a pretty crappy job right now, but regardless, it would be safer to launch on the Starliner 20 times in a row than to ride in the space shuttle once. At least the Starliner has a launch escape system.
To be fair to the shuttle though, it is objectively cool. While not a good way to get to space, that thing was awesome in every sense! I truly wish I had gotten to see it launch in person. Also the RS-25, the main engine, is a pretty badass rocket engine, there was so much about that vehicle that was great, it’s a shame that it never quite fulfilled its promise.
I followed the Space Shuttle program pretty heavily as a kid and got to see a few launches from the Cape.
Truly loved the innovative look and the futuristic (lol, at the time) feel.
In retrospect, it was a good try with bad funding, and an exceptionally expensive satellite positioner that never lived up to its promised turn around time.
Fair point, I don’t want to fixate on that one aspect of the colossal technical challenge that is getting spacecraft into orbit, but I’m still of the opinion that a nationalized and fully government-funded space program will always yield better results than a privatized one because there is no profit-taking incentive.
There is a reason we moved this to the private sector. Govt bureaucrats can’t get out of their own way and every project triples in cost, with no single person calling the shots to get the job done. Govt cannot keep up with the pace we need.
Boeing is hot garbage.
SpaceX has a shit face, but they are incredibly competent and effective at iterating their way to space.
NASA in-house projects were historically expensive because they took the approach that they were building single-digit numbers of everything – very nearly every vehicle was bespoke, essentially – and because failure was a death sentence politically, they couldn’t blow things up and iterate quickly. Everything had to be studied and reviewed and re-reviewed and then non-destructively tested and retested and integration tested and dry rehearsed and wet rehearsed and debriefed and revised and retested and etc. ad infinitum. That’s arguably what you want in something like a billion dollar space telescope that you only need one of and has to work right the first time, but the lesson of SpaceX is that as long as you aren’t afraid of failure you can start cheap and cheerful, make mistakes, and learn more from those mistakes than you would from packing a dozen layers of bureaucracy into a QC program and have them all spitball hypothetical failure modes for months.
Boeing, ULA and the rest of the old space crew are so used to doing things the old way that they struggle culturally to make the adaptations needed to compete with SpaceX on price, and then in Boeing’s case the MBAs also decided that if they stopped doing all that pesky engineering analysis and QA/QC work they could spend all that labor cost on stock buybacks instead.
This wouldn’t be a problem if we still had NASA doing the shuttle program, or some continuation of it, rather than outsourcing our spacecraft to the cutthroat lowest-bidder private sector. Is it really any surprise that SpaceX and Boeing are blowing up on the launchpads and having quality control issues when their sole objective is to make money? If we nationalized these initiatives again and cancelled the private contracts with these crooks, there would be no incentive for profiteering and corners would not get cut as often as they do now.
Sure, it would be a big cost to the taxpayer once again, but I think I’d rather have a reliable space program and like 2% less military budget to fund it, I think we’ll manage somehow without producing more tanks and planes that nobody is asking for.
Who do you think built the shuttle…?
Also, not defending the Musk shitstain, but focusing on “blowing up launch pads” tells me you probably know very little about the Space industry or development.
That wasn’t the focus of my post, but are you suggesting that there is a nonzero number of rocket explosions that would be considered acceptable?
I don’t need to be Elon Musk, or even know much about the space industry or development to know that the target number should always be zero.
…yes? During development specifically. Of course there is.
Let me know how that interview goes, because if the rocket you developed and spent billions of dollars building explodes at launch, you’re going to be looking for a new line of work.
I’m sure the next aeronautics company will totally understand. Mondays, am I right?
See, I’m not trying to be a jerk, but you keep showing more and more that you’re not following what’s happening in the launch business at all.
So for coming up on 10 years now, SpaceX has been absolutely kicking everyone’s ass. China is now coming up on being second.
They’re following processes of rapid iteration. During design, they build quickly (and relatively cheaply). They launch frequently. Those launches may not go perfectly. Sometimes they explode. But they get a LOT of data. This helps them iterate quickly.
This is different from what Boeing, Blue Origin, etc have been doing (and at different points, at NASA’s direction) - the “try to build it slow but steady, and perfect the first time” method. Guess what? That has been working horribly. It takes way way longer, costs way way more, etc. And they’ve left the door open for SpaceX to take over. They’re quickly becoming the ONLY game in town. And neither they nor, say, Blue Origin have really been focused that much on profit.
Rapid Iteration is also what we did early on in the space program. A lot of stuff failed (blew up) but we were making REALLY rapid progress.
Now - once the rockets go into production, they absolutely CAN’T blow up. ESPECIALLY with people inside. That’s a totally different thing.
SpaceX just lost had their first operation failure in like a decade. After hundreds of successful launches. It’s the best record I believe any rocket series has ever had.
You also picked tbe Shuttle as an example of things working well. It’s ironic - that’s specifically when everything started turning to shit - massive cost overruns, massive, years-long project delays. The delays for manned spaceflight, for launch systems, were a brand new thing starting with STS.
Blowing shit up is absolutely a valid part of the learning/development phase of rocket design.
Okay, you’ve made some pretty salient points. I’m not too proud to admit that my understanding of the topic is limited. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me more on the subject.
Man, this has been a nice day full of niceness. It’s just…nice.
Have a good weekend, furbag. You’re a classy dude/ette.
While I like the sentiment, you should know that you are absolutely, completely, 100% wrong.
The space shuttle was the deadliest spacecraft in human history, not just in the US, but in the entire world. And mind you, NASA spacecrafts are all also quite literally built from parts delivered by the lowest bidder.
For the record Boeing sucks and is doing a pretty crappy job right now, but regardless, it would be safer to launch on the Starliner 20 times in a row than to ride in the space shuttle once. At least the Starliner has a launch escape system.
To be fair to the shuttle though, it is objectively cool. While not a good way to get to space, that thing was awesome in every sense! I truly wish I had gotten to see it launch in person. Also the RS-25, the main engine, is a pretty badass rocket engine, there was so much about that vehicle that was great, it’s a shame that it never quite fulfilled its promise.
I followed the Space Shuttle program pretty heavily as a kid and got to see a few launches from the Cape.
Truly loved the innovative look and the futuristic (lol, at the time) feel.
In retrospect, it was a good try with bad funding, and an exceptionally expensive satellite positioner that never lived up to its promised turn around time.
I loved it, but it kind of was an objective flop.
NASA blew up a fair few rockets, and lost two shuttles, so that’s not necessarily the better option.
Fair point, I don’t want to fixate on that one aspect of the colossal technical challenge that is getting spacecraft into orbit, but I’m still of the opinion that a nationalized and fully government-funded space program will always yield better results than a privatized one because there is no profit-taking incentive.
There is a reason we moved this to the private sector. Govt bureaucrats can’t get out of their own way and every project triples in cost, with no single person calling the shots to get the job done. Govt cannot keep up with the pace we need.
Boeing is hot garbage.
SpaceX has a shit face, but they are incredibly competent and effective at iterating their way to space.
NASA in-house projects were historically expensive because they took the approach that they were building single-digit numbers of everything – very nearly every vehicle was bespoke, essentially – and because failure was a death sentence politically, they couldn’t blow things up and iterate quickly. Everything had to be studied and reviewed and re-reviewed and then non-destructively tested and retested and integration tested and dry rehearsed and wet rehearsed and debriefed and revised and retested and etc. ad infinitum. That’s arguably what you want in something like a billion dollar space telescope that you only need one of and has to work right the first time, but the lesson of SpaceX is that as long as you aren’t afraid of failure you can start cheap and cheerful, make mistakes, and learn more from those mistakes than you would from packing a dozen layers of bureaucracy into a QC program and have them all spitball hypothetical failure modes for months.
Boeing, ULA and the rest of the old space crew are so used to doing things the old way that they struggle culturally to make the adaptations needed to compete with SpaceX on price, and then in Boeing’s case the MBAs also decided that if they stopped doing all that pesky engineering analysis and QA/QC work they could spend all that labor cost on stock buybacks instead.