8,010 karma · joined July 30, 2021
It's rich seeing all this unearned bluster about having the lead due to SpaceX, when SpaceX had to drag America kicking and screaming into that position.
Though "zero points" is also probably a bit too harsh. I think Americans should be proud of their peoples' past accomplishments, but should recognize that they're distinct from their own accomplishments and kind of irrelevant to the current race.
The current space race is really just about the US trying to show that it isn't in decline, that it's still more capable than a rising China. So, "my grandfather was alive when America set foot on the Moon, so we've already won!" is kind of a sad statement.
Supposedly, as of a week ago, LM sees at least some possible routes to having Orion without SLS to not outright give up on the idea, but doesn't have specifics for now: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/once-unthinkable-nasa-...
I'm not seeing what makes SpaceX government funded beyond just that it provides services to the government? The same as any other launch provider would be doing? At this point the vast majority of SpaceX's activity, and likely cashflow, is from its mostly self-funded Starlink.
SpaceX won the original HLS contract because their design actually had hardware in testing, actually met NASA's payload, landing area and testing requirements, had a clear path to commercialization and was willing to cover most of the cost themselves, as otherwise NASA wouldn't have been able to choose anyone given the limited funding allocated by Congress.
Shuttle's heatshield would've been much less dangerous if it wasn't facing a giant ice and insulation covered external tank (like, if it was mounted on top of a booster), but the Air Force's demand for crossrange forced giant wings, which forced the lower mounting position.
They could've iterated on heat shield designs, particularly with attachment mechanisms, but every mission had to carry people, so you couldn't risk it, and anyway, the industry culture was already set in the "even the simplest things must cost large amounts of money and time" stage.
One of the key points that I feel a lot of people miss is that Starship is pretty much the first program actually doing the flight testing needed to understand the engineering requirements for an efficient fully reusable heatshield. They don't have much prior art to look at for tile spacing, mounting mechanisms, metal tiles or transpiration cooling. The fundamental materials haven't changed a lot, but we can see over test flights that SpaceX are figuring things out.
In the early days they used to lose tiles all the time, even after just pressure testing IIRC. Nowadays they may barely lose any tiles on static fire tests. Similarly, tile loss on reentry has decreased greatly, and we've gone from seeing plasma leaving the fins barely attached, to the latest test, where the fins were pretty much fully intact.
IIRC they managed to extort additional money out of NASA for Starliner too (despite it being fixed price), for that exact reason.
SpaceX hasn't fallen to such tactics yet, but, agreed, it'll be too late to start on setting up competitors when SpaceX eventually does fall to that level (Boeing wasn't always so bad after all).
Maybe also seriously threaten Boeing with cancelations and restrictions for their constant failures and corruption. We've had the espionage scandal that forced the formation of ULA, SLS's extreme delays and overruns, supressing Vulcan's capabilities to prevent it from impinging on SLS's blank check, Starliner's inability to deliver (and at this point it seems unlikely the station will be around long enough for their 6 flights), and the scandal that caused their disqualification from the original HLS bid.
Starship is being painted as the sole blocker in Artemis, but I can't think of any component of Artemis that has any contractors delivering competently and on-time.
We still haven't heard anything about the status of the EVA suits, which the US has an even worse track record on than rockets. My understanding is that they haven't been able to build and bring a new suit into use, for 25+ years now, and not due to a lack of spending.
I don't think it's going to take them a decade, but they probably won't be ready within Trump's term, and I think that's the real reason for this latest push.
I too had the pleasure of interning under some former Bell Labs employees, it really was a great experience.
Of course China has copied foreign technologies, I didn't say they haven't. My point is that you guys love to hang on to that as an excuse to dismiss everything from China even when they're obviously plenty capable of doing R&D in many fields, even with it having gotten its start off "stolen" IP.
America "stole" plenty of rocket technology from Germany, yet it's well understood that they eventually innovated on it and made it their own. But somehow whenever China's involved, you guys come out with your unsubtle bigotry.
The mechanism exists so good landlords (who take the responsibility of having a tenant seriously) aren't scammed out by bad renters, but, it seems like most landlords aren't that way, instead utilizing every tool available to maximize their property value and minimize the ability for renters to own their own properties, regardless of the social harm they cause.
The cases of abuse are so egregious precisely because most people were just normal well meaning people doing their best to meet their obligations.
On one hand, you did agree to the payment schedule when you signed the lease, but on the other hand, tacking on fees to someone who is already struggling to pay, to support mainly parasites responsible for creating a lot of the issues facing young people, is also not great.
If we find definitive proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, I wonder how many will decide that it's okay to do anything regardless of its effect on our ability to continue existing.
Even if we view the current situation as temporary and it goes away in 4 years, the knowledge that a large chunk of the population is just looking for an excuse to harass immigrants and destroy their life regardless of citizenship status, pulls America down to the level of many other places, which maybe have similar issues but do much better on other things.
IIRC we would've actually had audio to accompany video of the skycrane landing, but the mic had an issue at that time.
Some of them are probably old enough to have been screwing over NASA since the end of Apollo.
How is it gross for the IRS to know that when you have to tell them anyway to get the associated tax adjustment?
You'd just report it the year that it starts to apply, and then your future filings would have that accounted for.
She's been leaning very hard into clickbait and the shitty science journalist tactic of titles that obfuscate the lack of credibility of a claim, which is certainly unbecoming of a "real" scientist (mostly why I don't follow her content the way I do, say, PBS Space Time), I don't know if I'd say that's a conspiracy theory style portrayal though.