Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

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factory safety levels 2x+ those of the competition

This is objectively not true. Tesla's Fremont factory leads the nation in terms of safety complaints and safety violations.

highest safety ratings, ever, across multiple models of cars

This is not true. NHTSA has awarded many cars 5 star ratings (i.e., their highest rating). Multiple car makers have multiple lines of 5-star rated vehicles.

And in fact...Tesla lost those 5-star ratings this year. https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-agency-briefed-tesla-r...

as well as another company that’s safely sent multiple sets of astronauts to & from space @ something like 1/10th the old cost & in a much more comfortable setting

Dragon costs $55 million/seat, for 3 seats vs $64m/seat for 7 seats for the Space Shuttle. Given inflation, Dragon is actually more expensive than the Space Shuttle, for less capacity. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/10/spacex-crew-3-astronaut-laun..., https://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shutt...

And Dragon is so comfortable that the toilet didn't work and they had to break out the diapers for the first time in decades.

I think inflation works the other way, i.e. 64 million$ from decade ago would be like 80 million $ now.

Dragon can carry 7, though 4 is the max for NASA flights. Also, if you think a Shuttle mission only cost $500M, you're off by a factor of 2-3.

If you disagree with NASA's estimates for how much a Shuttle mission cost, you should take that up with NASA.

I'm not the one claiming a cheaper price. According to the Planetary Society, it cost $49B to develop and launch the first Shuttle mission (in 2020 dollars).[1]

According to Pielke and Byerly [2]:

The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010 (see 'A costly enterprise'). The agency launched 131 flights; two ended in tragedy with the loss of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. During the operational years from 1982 to 2010, the average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion. Over the life of the programme, this increases to about $1.5 billion per launch (R. A. Pielke Space Policy 10, 78–80; 1994).

This is in 2010 dollars, but it doesn't even require adjusting for inflation to see the cost is far higher than your reporting. Each seat cost over $214M in 2010 dollars. Just for giggles, inflation since 2010 would bump that cost up to 272M per seat.

It's fair to criticize Musk for toxic work environments at Tesla, and for generally being a Twitter douche. But SpaceX has been an extraordinary success.

1. https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/sts-program-developme... 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d

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