[ceejayoz]

Just because "reusable rockets" got laughed at by the existing space industry doesn't mean every laughable idea is secretly feasible.

"My new database will make building a Dyson sphere easy" is a slightly... loftier claim than "we can probably land rockets and reuse them".

[iamcurious]

I see what you mean, but I wasn't referring to Space X accomplishments but its ambitions.

The "we can probably land rockets and reuse them" is what it delivered so far, the claimed ambitions (laughable or not) are about making humanity interplanetary.

[ceejayoz]

The number of steps between "I wrote a quirky database" and "I built a Dyson sphere" are substantially more numerous than there are between "I got reusable rocketry working cost-effectively" and "I used those rockets to put people on Mars".

[lostmsu]

While I agree with you on the guesstimate, surely you can't exactly know the number of steps in question.

[ncmncm]

Ambitions are free. Capability is expensive. Achievements are valuable. Ambitions do not predict achievement.

[macspoofing]

>just because "reusable rockets" got laughed at by the existing space industry …

Were they laughed at? After all, the Space Shuttle was around for decades. It turned out that reusable rockets were not cost effective nor particularly safe. Space X has yet to show reusability is viable.

[ceejayoz]

> Space X has yet to show reusability is viable.

This is a bizarre assertion. It's clearly viable; no other American launcher can currently carry crew, they gobbled up 60% of the global commercial launch market by 2017, and they're undercutting everyone on price very successfully.

[grandrew]

I'd say what this all proves is that a free market and private sector is much better at those things than a communist'y government-run project.