Musk is a fucking anti American liability. How the fuck does he have access to military contracts
Money
Well, despite its owner, SpaceX is actually doing cool and useful stuff. Nobody else bothered with the reusable rocket thing until they made it happen. Starship is on the way to becoming the world’s first 100% reusable orbital transport system, propulsively landing the second stage as well as the first. Soon as they get those toasty melty flaps figured out.
It just sucks that he’s in control of it.
Maybe NASA would have bothered if its funding hadn’t been cut again and again and again…
I actually prefer NASA to focus on science engineering. There’s a need for private launch capabilities anyway and this way NASA can focus on what they do best.
What’s the need for private launch capabilities? Private = capitalist. I don’t see much good in capitalist ventures.
Because there’s a need for private satellites? Should NASA use limited resources for that?
The airspace is a public asset though. Letting capitalists exploit it for profit isn’t going to end well, if the rest of the environment is anything to go by.
NASA farms these out to outside companies to build anyway, as seen with the latest Boeing space fiasco, so I don’t necessarily believe this to be true. These defense contractors seem to be interested in little more than milking the US government for all they’re worth.
Sure, because they don’t have any budget themselves…
They have a $25B yearly budget.
What is SpaceX spending on R&D? From what I’ve read, Starship is estimated to cost $10B for development and their R&D budget for 2023 was $1.5B. If NASA was going to build something similar themselves, they’ve had nearly 70 years and hundreds of billions to accomplish it.
In reality their budget goes toward companies like Boeing, Northrop Grummon, and Lockheed Martin, who then pocket it and build substandard equipment. This is all public information so I can’t imagine why people are downvoting other than being extremely emotional for some inexplicable reason.
You are omitting the lede. Public appetite for failure on tax payer funds is near zero. That increases time, complexity, and cost for launches (with or without humans aboard).
Which can be a failure in itself when you spend 10 years and tens of billions building something “perfectly” only for it to break on its maiden voyage. That makes you wonder what was the point of doing everything so methodically when they could have taken a more efficient and iterative approach.
What spacecraft do you think they built themselves, without big contractors doing mos5 of the work…?
SpaceX broke the decades-long practice of costs-plus contracts for lump sum contracts from DOD. DOD wanted to offer them the same costs-plus contract style they give to other defense contractors and SpaceX turned that down and demanded lump sum on delivery.
People forget Musk isn’t actually technically smart, he’s just good at buying into and investing in already good ideas using money he got by playing the capital machine (and his parents south africa money).
He didn’t found PayPal; he merged another company with them and capitalized on their already good idea.
He didn’t found Tesla, he invested in them and then drove the original founders out.
He did admittedly create SpaceX, but only by bringing on good engineers from the start after failing to buy ICBM’s from Russia. Yes, he tried that… spaceX has been successful only because he gave them the runway to let engineers work right.The cult of personality is insane, he’s just another average investor bro who got lucky in the crazy growth of the 90’s/00s.
Tres comas, indeed.
A glorious Silicon Valley reference.
Sure would be too bad if someone decided to federalize SpaceX… sure would…
Oh yes. Surely the federal government could manage it better than Musk. Think of the progress we could have if NASA were running SpaceX instead.
Musk isn’t managing SpaceX… and why would the government do such a terrible job? Or is this one of those libertarian “government is always bad” things? Because NASA has a pretty good track record.
I’m hoping reusables becomes so standard Musks company isn’t needed anymore.
But that’ll be a long ways off. I agree SpaceX basically revitalized the industry.
asks the same question ☞ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/26/elon-musk-us-national-security
Money
“Free Speech Absolutist.”
So that’s what $45B worth of free speech looks like.
Don’t be ridiculous and mean.
It was $44 billion.
Whenever the right says “free speech”, they mean “speech controlled by us”.
For anyone on this thread who doesn’t know who Ken Klip is, please check out his free Substack (and subscribe if you can). I wasn’t on Twitter very long (maybe 1.5 years before Elmong took over) but one of the people I value that I ran into on that platform is Ken Klippenstein and I’ve been following him since. He’s amazing at filing thousands of FOIA requests and doing the digging into them that no mainstream journalist does anymore. He also recently quit The Intercept because they were enshittifying far more than he was comfortable with, which for a writer is a huge thing to leave the umbrella of a company like that and a paycheck behind. Writers going out on their own in this climate is the only way we’ll stay even remotely unfucked in the post-information (or misinformation) age.
Klip fuckin rules. Please give him some due.
To quote a commenter on Ars:
“Freedom of speech for me, not for thee”
That sums it up quite accuratly.
44… plus Fallout cost
I just can’t take all this free speech that’s happening right now
Someone trying to invoke good old Barbara Streisand?
Matching suits and ties. How fucking weird.
The ties don’t exactly match. The orange one made sure his tie was the longest and stupidest looking.
I hope he eventually dyes his hair the same color, too.
Either one of them. It would be weird either way.
It would make trump look a tiny bit more normal I think.
What a twat.
FB is also threatening bans for posting any links to it.
Anyone have a working link to it?
Here’s a better link that actually works
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier
No idea where the other person got their API link
Is JD Vance required to wear the same outfit as Trump, except with a shorter, less girthy tie?
Free speech absolutist
They’re fucking, aren’t they?
Musk and Vance?
Nah, Vance needs more cushion for the pushin’.
… the general population, yes.
Wait… That couch fucking muppet wears same tie?
