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Elon Musk says SpaceX will decommission Dragon spacecraft after Trump threat (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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KEY POINTS

Elon Musk said SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” because of threats by Donald Trump to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
Musk’s announcement on his social media site X escalated a war of words with Trump that began after the Tesla CEO criticized the major tax bill being pushed by the Republican president.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule brought two NASA astronauts back to Earth in March after they were stranded for months at the International Space Station by a Boeing Starliner capsule.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Going to Mars is a fucking great idea.

And frankly SpaceXs rapid testing isn’t a big deal. It’s lead to decent results.

Musks sucks, but SpaceX isn’t why.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Deliberately burning up a viable planet and blowing all your resources to go to a dead planet is fucking stupid on every level and every metric. Absolutely indefensible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

fred randall already went to mars

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What about Fred Durst?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

fred randall > fred durst

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What results?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Falcon9 bring the cost of launching something to LEO down by an order of magnitude?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Soooooo... Kind of...

I didn't check the cargo numbers but for Crewed missions we have some nice estimates from the OIG in 2024 based on the crew program development costs and the built-in 6 flight missions we got for the contracts:

-SpaceX Dragon ~ 55 million/seat

-Boeing Starliner ~ 90 million/seat

-Russia Soyuz ~ 86 million/seat

-Space Shuttle ~ 87 million/seat (adjusted for inflation)

Soyuz was ~ 20 million a seat in 2007, 2013 it was ~ 55 million a seat, and 2014-2018 it was 62 million a seat, now it's that 86 number.

Funny thing is happening at SpaceX recently, namely NASA used up all 6 flights that were 55 million a seat, so they needed to extend for flights 7-9 and 10-14

In February 2022 NASA Extended their contract with SpaceX for flights 7-9 at around 258 million per flight (so ~64.5 million per seat) and again in June 2022 for flights 10-14 at 288 million per flight (so ~72 million per seat)

So SpaceX came out of the gate with their handfuls of investor cash and subsidized the original contracts, but they're likely rapidly increasing prices now that they've burned through most of that runway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I wasnt really thinking about crewed mission tbh, more the cost per tonne which Space X certainly brought down dramatically (though not quite by an order of magnitude).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Plus without SpaceX, our only ride to space would be the Soyuz

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Ariane would like a word.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Ariane has an astronaut ferry and reentry vehicle? That's news to me. Also: they're more than 2x as expensive per kg to orbit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I'm not aware of any human rated spacecraft being launched with Ariane. I know there were some concepts for at least Ariane 5, and it would be cool for Europe to be independent on this.