this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
916 points (96.9% liked)
Enough Musk Spam
2215 readers
2 users here now
For those that have had enough of the Elon Musk worship online.
No flaming, baiting, etc. This community is intended for those opposed to the influx of Elon Musk-related advertising online. Coming here to defend Musk or his companies will not get you banned, but it likely will result in downvotes. Please use the reporting feature if you see a rule violation.
Opinions from all sides of the political spectrum are welcome here. However, we kindly ask that off-topic political discussion be kept to a minimum, so as to focus on the goal of this sub. This community is minimally moderated, so discussion and the power of upvotes/downvotes are allowed, provided lemmy.world rules are not broken.
Post links to instances of obvious Elon Musk fanboy brigading in default subreddits, lemmy/kbin communities/instances, astroturfing from Tesla/SpaceX/etc., or any articles critical of Musk, his ideas, unrealistic promises and timelines, or the working conditions at his companies.
Tesla-specific discussion can be posted here as well as our sister community /c/RealTesla.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Very rich (hah) for a guy who uses government funds to build his explodey space rockets.
Not the greatest example, imo.
SpaceX has been very consistent in delivering on its government contracts with far more cost efficiency than any of its competitors.
The most glaring example is the Commercial Crew Program. They were given far less money than Boeing, and it looks like they might end up being the sole US provider of commercial crew to the ISS.
Starship HLS (moon lander starship) is government funded, but core Starship is not, it's financed with private equity - so the rocket explosions haven't been on the taxpayers' dime.
That all said, Elon doesn't really run SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell does - which is probably the smartest business decision Elon has ever made.
"Better than Boeing" is very low bar, ATM. But SpaceX technology appears to be lagging India - which put a probe into Marsian orbit for $75M a full ten years ago - and Russians - whose Soyuz rocket continues to provide the cheapest LEO lift at $3800/kg.
SpaceX is in the traditional American contractor model of Late and Overbudget. What's more they don't pay their bills on time.
As an American firm, they're the best of the worst. Intentionally, they're experimenting with interesting techniques, but they aren't outcompeting their global peers.
What's that got to do with anything? SpaceX isn't traded and doesn't pay dividends.
The company is impressive technically, I guess? I don't know really. Like I wrote before, Shotwell is running it, not Mr ego personified, so maybe the shine hasn't worn off like it did for Tesla and Twitter for some people?
I like what they've achieved, I think that it will motivate for ULA and Boeing to 'do better' and they've proved its possible to succeed at a number of rocket technologies that had been previously written off, like cost effective reusability and full flow staged combustion.
That said, I'm not going to be upset if ULA pulls ahead of them, or if Rocket Lab has a huge win, or if ArianeSpace decides that it's time to stop sitting on their hands. I'm a fan of space technology, and I don't particularly care which company advances the cause.
*Edit: motivate not moticate