In the meantime Arianespace divided by 3 their number of rocket launches
I’m a Rocket Lab fan. Tons of innovation, slower progress due to not having the richest man behind, but on track to launch a reusable medium rocket, FULLY reusable and with a sensible guy at the helm.
I wish rocket lab the best and hope that one day they can have a competing heavy lift/human certified spacecraft.
However, it’s nigh impossible to ignore how much SpaceX alone has reshaped the space industry and is basically forcing everybody else to step up.
Agree, say what you want but spaceX is in a league of their own currently. Especially with the recent starship heavy booster catch, the biggest rocket ever launched caught mid air! They’re on track for a human space landing.
You taking neutron? That still has a disposable upper stage.
The best thing for humanity now would be for multiple people to develop reusable spacecraft. For greater chance that someone will land on a new innovation.
And they’re on track for ~130 this year.
SpaceX launched about 429,125 kg of spacecraft upmass in Q1, followed by CASC with about 29,426 kg
Smaller satellites (<1,200 kg) represented 96% of spacecraft launched in Q1, 76% of total upmass
So the way I’m personally reading this is 2/3 of this is starlink launches
And launching space junk and making viewing the stars less and less clear at an historic rate.
People pay good money for that ‘junk’. A quality internet connection basically anywhere in the world, including at sea and in very remote areas, is far from junk.
Stop supporting Elon.
I’ll definitely boycott SpaceX now (puts “activist” in bio)
All these pro SpaceX news is coming out before the election and after everyone was making fun of Musk on stage.
The people posting these images are either astroturfers or fell victim to astroturfers.
SpaceX is more than just Elon.
As with X, I’ll support it as soon as he’s out.
Thankfully SpaceX is MORE than just Elon. Unlike Twitter, where he’s removed everyone and turned it to slop. He makes no money from it, so why shouldn’t he fuck with it?
SpaceX actually makes money. Elon won’t fuck it up. (Or he will, but atleast we will have learned an insane amount of things thanks to them.)
I’m sure it makes money and he may not F it up, but that’s not the point. The point is that Elon has turned into the douche of the century along with his butt-buddy Trump.
I’m all for giving Nasa the light of day again, but from what I can tell, “Its not in the American interests” to give Nasa a good budget.
Yeah yeah yeah they overspend, are bad at budgeting, and have issues. But im quite stubborn, space science and research is priceless in my book.
So, if SpaceX is owned by a shit bag narcissist, but atleast space research is advancing? Well, that’s fine with me. I feel very happy for all the jobs and scientists and aerospace engineers who have a job thanks to SpaceX.
Ya, it’s also massive ecological damage so we can all go “ooooh ahhh!”
Go complain about fast fashion and other disposable junk. Space technology is one of the most important aspects of our future. I don’t see the logic behind people complaining about these rockets, is it because they’re in the media spotlight?
Other industries that don’t provide any meaningful value do orders of magnitude more damage.
All industries destroying the planet are responsible including fast fashion, rockets are not allowed to harm people because “they’re important”. Important to what? Important to profits, important to american military and cultural hedgemony, important to innovation of more unnecessary products to sell to even further degrade the ecosystem?
No you go fanboy over fascist rocket boy.
I assume you meant the opposite of what you wrote. Your question was answered in my previous comment.
You think we should just stop all industries then?
Do you like modern tech? Do you like the chips in your device you’re using to comment right now? You can thank the space industry. Without Apollo we would still be 30 years behind in integrated circuit technology.
If I was given the choice by a genie, on the one side you have your laptop, Lemmy, car, etc, but millions of people an animals suffer, or on the other hand, our tech evolves more slowly and sustainably, I’d choose the latter every time.
I’ll take being 30 years behind and still have <insert any species we’ve driven extinct>. An entitlement to the lives and well being of others for the sake of “progress” is pretty sick.
The suffering doesn’t just go away because we don’t have modern tech.
In fact, suffering increases a whole lot because medical and agricultural tech is still tech, not to mention how much life-saving and quality improvement is brought in by communications technology. Some people really think you can just click the “medical” tab in Civilization and guarantee only the benefits of the one technology you like.
Pointless reply, not all suffering has the same cause of course, but most of the unnecessary suffering (i.e. that suffering of all sentient beings on top that which occurs due to the nature of life itself) is caused by human activity, specifically where selfish individuals have felt entitled to cause suffering in others, destroy ecosystems, extinct species, and oppress peoples in pursuit of their goals.
The world is not ours to consume.
But a very small portion of human activity is developing chips or launching rockets. Most of it is manufacturing disposable junk or building roads/buildings.
With ISRO coming on strong, and Russia alienating most of the world, I’m fascinated by what this could turn into in the next couple years
Damn, the absolute collapse of the European space industry…
The chart says companies/space agency, so I am assuming that NASA stopped launching rockets? It sounds concerning to put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
Kind of the opposite - instead of the one rocket program NASA could have done, we have ULA, Blue Origin, and SpaceX. There’s multiple baskets now