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Comment by ruivil7 | Hacker News Reader

Back a few years ago. This was the starship that in 2024 would reach Mars with humans, with so much space taken by crew and materials, and almost no fuel, and "10 times cheaper". And currently is an empty shell. Nice fireworks and show, but no meaningful payload yet. Not even LO. And this will be ready for 2026 artemis mission?

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I’m not a big fan of Elon Musk, but this is just the typical executive talking up their product and to some extent being overly optimistic about timelines. You’d think with the quantity of software engineers in HN this would be obvious, but the (rightful IMO) disdain for Elon Musk is resetting people’s brains.

Guy is a serial liar and you are making excuses on his behalf.

He is a serial liar, but we can also actually see the engineering progress which is remarkable regardless of his overinflated timelines.

His lying doesn't change the incredible work by those engineers and other employees of SpaceX.

What does he have to do with the incredible work though ? Shit posting his way to mars ?

I hope you’re as vocal about your higher ups.

The taxpayer is paying for these lies

If you think delays in aerospace constitute "lies," you're not going to have a good time following any aerospace company. Unexpected delays are par for the course.

If you think these are mere delays, then I have a bridge to sell to you

In about two years, when these things will be launching hundreds of starlink satellites like clockwork, you’ll just move the goalposts and find something else to criticise.

I’m saying this with confidence because it’s the established history of SpaceX critics. Everything from reusable rockets, space internet, full-flow staged combustion, etc.. has had its naysayers that all shut up and found something new to critique once SpaceX showed it was possible and even profitable.

At this stage you may as well just come out and say “I don’t like Elon”.

I don't like Elon.

I'm not going to look up the original context of Elon's alleged lies, but from what's written here they just sound like long term project goals rather than formal lies (implying things like malicious intent or fraud).

If anything, maybe the only reason he didn't meet those goals is due to his social media addiction.

You say that as if other (presumably non-"addicted") company leadership has achieved similar goals.

The reality is that other companies consider SpaceX's goals so preposterously unattainable that they don't even try.

Or to put it another way,

  > At SpaceX we specialize in converting things from "impossible" to "late."

I’m still waiting for the concert hall with glass ceiling in starship and the restaurants and zero-g games that serve 100 people, shouldn’t they have landed on mars by now? I think it will be more than 2 years before I start moving goalposts

Do you get equally upset when a concept car isn’t something you can buy at the local dealer the very next year?

Why are you so upset by the aspirations of others?

I don't think that's a useful framing.

If not SpaceX, it would be all NASA. NASA lies about their budget all the time, with massive overruns. For example, the Artemis overrun exceeds the entire cost of Starship development so far [1].

[1] https://www.space.com/nasa-sls-megarocket-cost-delays-report

Not to mention that each Artemis launch is of the same order of magnitude cost as the entire Starship program. Each engine is about the same cost as Falcon 9 launch!

The taxpayer pays for all the lies.

There's nothing typical about this kind of blatantly lying. It's a character trait of Musk, which should be a reason to be fired immediately as CEO in a sound free market operating on trust and transparency. We should not normalize this.

Your mom experiences much better vastly different than mine. Trust and transparency is not something we have in the current “free market”. Musk is neither the first nor the last lying executive.

Ask NASA about MSR

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