• zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I don’t get why people get so fucking hanged up on the Starship looks unless you are very unfamiliar with space history in general

    American LEO space technology has been languishing for decades as we turned the industry over to the private sector. NASA is far more focused on autonomous extra-orbital exploration, which is why they've got a helicopter cruising around Mars and Elon doesn't.

    Most people don't know anything about space technology, extra-terrestrial economics, or the various incentives that are driving the different players in space travel R&D. They just know we landed on the moon in the 60s and haven't been back in 50 years. Also, we have a space station for some reason. And we don't do space shuttle launches anymore (and thank god for that, given their "Oops! Explosion!" failure rate).

    We had flying space cones and cigars, stop complaining about the flying grain silo IMO. Out of all the things to criticize Elon/SpaceX, focus on the stuff that matters instead of aesthetics.

    I mostly make fun of Musk for all the explosions.

    He talks a big game, but when you have Unlimited Money you can get away with trying all sorts of bad ideas and even make a few of them work.

    As China's space industry gets off the ground, I'll be curious to see how quickly we get left in the dust. The latest episode of "Congressional Dish" already shows American military experts freaking out over Chinese anti-satellite spacecraft. How long until Musk's SpaceX tech is ham-handedly weaponized, I wonder?