this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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So I've heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I'm scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.

I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.

Is it because it's not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they're like "Yea yea but this is different it's crazy bro"

Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 weeks ago (10 children)

Imagine you want to build a cabin in a very remote place in Alaska.

Getting there is quite difficult, you did it a few times in the 60's but the path is so bad that you had to throw the truck away each time (around $45,000 per trip, for the truck + gas)

You are still planning to build your cabin but having to buy a new truck for each trip is not great, plus the fact that only one company can make this SLS truck so you can't get more than once a year.

Building a cabin in these circumstances is close to impossible.

Now SpaceX makes a new Starship truck that can go all the way AND be reused. The trip from the hardware store to the build site now only costs you around $100 for the gas plus truck expenses AND you can now do the trip to the hardware store multiple times a day !

Now building the cabin becomes way more accessible.

Replace the Alaskan cabin with a scientific base on the moon or Mars and multiply the amounts by 100,000 and you have an approximation of the situation

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 weeks ago (8 children)

NASA could have done this if they had the budget. Instead we'd rather give huge tax cuts to billionaires so they can build a private sector NASA to charge NASA exorbitant sums to use their private vehicles. It's the most asinine and innefficient way of going about it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 weeks ago (5 children)

No, NASA has the budget. They already spent $50 billion on the development of SLS and Orion, Starship development cost is estimated to be around $10 billion.

So in theory with the money they spent on SLS they could have built 5 starship program.

The problem is that NASA has to follow political interests, sometimes the political interests align with technical interest and we get great things like the Apollo program.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

That's a good point.

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