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Comment by porphyra | Hacker News Reader

Let's not forget that right now it seems that only SpaceX is putting in the "monumental efforts" to advance the "pioneeribg industry", being responsible for the vast majority of launches, the only safe crewed spacecraft, as well as pushing the frontier of space travel with ambitious new projects such as Starship.

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Just last year NASA launched the largest ever interplanetary space-craft, and hopefully the first craft to approach and conduct scientific studies on Europa. SpaceX is almost entirely focused on getting humans into space - which is great - but NASA's work is not to be discounted.

The Europa Clipper is really cool. I think the Cassini Huygens that launched in 1997 has greater mass though.

SpaceX isn't entirely focused on getting humans to space since they launch the vast majority of satellites thanks to great innovations in reducing the cost of launches, such as reusable rockets. But there are some competitor launch vehicles coming soon that could be interesting as well.

Europa Clipper is 6.1T whilst Huygens was 5.6T: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heaviest_spacecraft . Also worth mentioning that Jupiter is much further away on average.

I got my numbers mixed up --- you're right, the Europa Clipper is bigger by all metrics.

NASA didn't launch it? it was on a falcon heavy

NASA built the probe, but SpaceX launched it. [1] I don't think you were suggesting otherwise, but somebody who did not know as much would probably misunderstand what you're saying.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper#Launch_2

Thanks, you're right I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

This is simply not true. SpaceX is today one of many space companies pushing the boundaries.

There is also Rocket Lab, Stoke Space and Blue Origin.

Does that justify blatant lies?

I'm worried spacex will end up a bit like Tesla, largely abandoned for Musk to go off on some political weirdness.

Doubt it. Musk only owns something like ~15% of Tesla, and owns about 50% of spacex. He knows tesla is overvalued immensely and wants to deeply integrate himself with government to make sure spacex becomes the de facto space org. for the United States (possibly).

What "blatant lies" though? The question hasn't really been answered. The user wrote:

>Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points

I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.

I didn't personally use the word "blatant", but when I said "lying" I was referring to claims that:

* The Biden administration either forgot about or deliberately chose to leave astronauts in space for political reasons.

* Trump's request accelerated the decision to bring the astronauts home.

"Monumental efforts" was a more general comment about the space industry, including the activities of both NASA and SpaceX. Bringing astronauts home from space when equipment has gone faulty is a challenge I do not envy whatsoever. For Trump to claim credit in the venture is bordering on obscene.

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