I can’t believe how little news coverage there has been about this. Seeing that thing land was probably the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.
Didn’t help that Elon announced the Robotaxi just before. That thing sucked away all his headlines, and none of them were positive about that stupid thing.
SpaceX seems to be the Musk company that’s most able to manage its idiot CEO, but they still can’t rid themselves completely of his antics.
It’s difficult for the average person to really understand why this is a major innovation. Showed this to my parents and my dad’s comment was “haven’t they already done this?”. If you don’t realize it’s a different rocket it does look basically the same as what they’ve been doing for years now.
I know they market mars hard, but the more relevant thing this is enabling is the starships that will be used for the NASA Artemis missions and upcoming moon base efforts. Those missions are going to need a few heavy flights each for the lander and a re-fueling ship, in addition to the SLS + Orion capsule for the actual astronauts.
Still wish the money was being invested in NASA to do themselves, and that it was being done without all the waste and environment destruction SpaceX so enjoys, but this is still a big deal to ensure Artemis happens.
The problem with NASA isn’t money. It’s having to play pork barrel politics where every state gets to do a little something in order for it all to work. In theory, deriving SLS from old shuttle hardware should have been quick and easy. In practice, its budget is ridiculous compared to what’s been put into Starship.
The real problem is that SpaceX is quickly becoming the only game in town. The ULA can’t match the Falcon 9 on cost, and they have the stench of Boeing around it. Blue Origin is standing in a corner and appears to be wanking itself. Virgin Galactic is only interested in space tourisim. There are some smaller up and coming companies, but few that are beyond basic R&D. NASA is giving ULA money just so SpaceX doesn’t become a de facto monopoly, but it’s not looking good.
Curious, how is SpaceX being wasteful? Aren’t they operating significantly more efficiently than NASA has in the last like half century? Even if you’re counting material waste, they’re hardly the worst offenders; have you seen the plastics industry? Let alone consumer packaging
NASA does a hell of a lot more work than just build rockets lol. SpaceX and all the other private space companies focus on a few of the wide array of programs and services NASA does. They certinally have some poor decisions in their history (as does every space program of the 20th century) but comparing SpaceX’s spending with an appropriate context of NASA’s spending is ludicrous. Its not something you can just put into numbers and any comparisons I’ve seen thus far have been wildly skewed in SpaceX’s favor for marketing reasons.
NASA (and ESA, RosCosmos, others) funding provided decades of R&D SpaceX uses to build its products with and the university curriculums all the engineers at SpaceX learned at.
Also, we dont know how a NASA that wasnt so de-funded since the 80s would have operated, but it’s well established that the budget cuts and uncertainty those created have been a major factor in its ability to build new programs like Artemis, Orion, SLS, etc. in a manner that would be efficient. SLS was bogged down for years waiting for congressional approval that was repeatedly blocked or maliciously modified last minute by congressional and senate republicans, a form of efficiency knee-capping that the agency never faced in the Apollo or Space Shuttle days.
have you seen the plastics industry? Let alone consumer packaging
Not an apples to apples comparison. Check out the many lawsuits and reported criticism of the more careless Starship test flights
