I now have the Street Fighter voice in my head going:

"Honda Wins!"

For the killjoy that will come pointing out that SpaceX is at another level of development etc., yes, I know that.
Japan also has a constitution written by the US that doesn't permit them to have long-range missiles.

Break out the marshmallows

Musk's starships are blowing up like his reputation

Fuck all commercial dependency. Fully fund NASA, and let them like what they did back in the 60s, which no company could have done.

Stop relying on corporations to lead our space programs. It's too important to leave to grifters and corner cutters.

If Starship wasn't constantly exploding you might have a point. Seems as though that the reality is that they're all pretty much at the same spot but Elon wants to pretend that they aren't.

Thank you!

NASA has always been dependent on commercial for profit entities as contractors. The Space Shuttle was developed by Rockwell International (which was later acquired by Boeing). The Apollo Program relied heavily on Boeing, Douglas Aircraft (which later merged into McDonnell Douglas, and then merged with Boeing), and North American Aviation (which later became Rockwell and was acquired by Boeing), and IBM. Lots of cutting edge stuff in that era happened from government contracts throwing money at private corporations.

That's the whole military industrial complex Eisenhower was talking about.

The only difference with today is that space companies have other customers to choose from, not just NASA (or the Air Force/Space Force).

Honestly, rocket development has always been filled with explosions - the Saturn V had like 6 engine-out events during Apollo and the early Falcon 9 tests were just as explosive. what's different now is we get to see the failures in HD livestreams instead of classified footage that would've been buried in the 60s.

I dunno, what does burnt Spock smell like?

We shouldn’t be building rockets PERIOD. They cost too much and are eventually only going to serve trillionaires.

FIX SHIT ON THE GROUND FIRST

That said,

They did a test from 300 meters, sure it’s cool but I think they have a LONG way to go before they are competetive.

but is it significant harm, compared to other things?

i mean, every company harms the environment somewhat. streets pollute the environment through their presence. oil refineries leak huge amounts of methane into the air. factories often produce toxic chemicals as by-products.

Falcon 9 has launched over 500 mission with a very high success rate. Of course the bulk of advancement should be coming from NASA and we need to spend more there, but SpaceX is putting up big numbers in successful payload lifts.

Damn, looks like I didn’t get my wish: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/19193050

For a couple of minutes.

My feed rn:

It's less that people are putting faith in Elon (sure, some fanatics might be), but it's that everyone else is somehow even worse.

SpaceX is actually getting stuff to space, despite their prototypes blowing up. Hell, even if this Starship thing is a complete failure and never works, their existing rocket, the Falcon, is still far beyond any of the competition.

The SLS: $10 Billion and a decade late to develop a ship that recycles old Space shuttle parts, then costs $2-3 Billion per launch, and maybe can only launch one every 2 years.

ULA Vulcan: currently years late, still finding problems, and even after all that gets worked out, it can maybe do 6 launches a year?

SpaceX: 1-2 launches per week.

That's not faith, that's just facts. I would absolutely love to have somebody else step up and take SpaceX's crown, but... there really isn't anybody. Bezos's Blue Origin may have the biggest chance, but they are more likely to act like ULA than SpaceX.

If you like SatNav, accurate weather tracking, and advanced intercontinental communication then ya like rockets ya dipshit.

While Id be the first to ban private rocket launches outright, we shouldn't abandon the advances of the space age because of them.

NASA ran the projects. They have specifications to contractors for manufacturing. That's a far cry from farming out the entire process and renting space on a commercial rocket.

I mean, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't want to risk death. He knows it's not risk-free.