[alienicecream]

The guys who've blown up a billion dollars of tax payer money because rather than carefully design it to work the first time, they slap something together and let it fail to 'iterate'? It sounds like it's same guys working at both companies.

[luuurker]

I'm not sure if SpaceX's approach to development is a problem. We don't have to like it, but they develop faster and cheaper than the competition... and as proven by Falcon 9, Dragon, etc, it works. The competitors designing it "carefully" are often slow and still have failures[0] while costing more.

I'm not going to say that the SpaceX approach doesn't have disadvantages or that everyone should use it because I don't believe that, but it works for them, even if you get to see more failures (and I understand that many have a fear of public failure, but not everyone is like that).

Their money comes from the same sources as the other space companies: public and private investment/contracts. If a different company takes twice as long and charges twice as much for the service and SpaceX does it faster while charging less for the same service, then if I was a tax payer, I wouldn't care much about the way they develop and test their rockets.

It's important to not allow our views about Musk to cloud our view about what some of his companies are doing. Cybertruck seems to be a bad product. Falcon 9, Starlink, etc, are good products. It is what it is.

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[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/ula-continues-invest...

[gravescale]

Loath as I am to say, but the SLS has a program cost over $20 billion and has launched only once to date (it did work, to be fair). Every single one they launch will be a one-way trip, so it's going to be a long time, if ever, until they can even get the per-launch cost down to under a billion.

Starship/Super Heavy "only" cost 5 billion as a program and also has 1 successful flight (and two Earth-shattering kabooms). So far, they're the economical ones by quite some margin.

It's not like Northrop Grumman and Boeing are known for being parsimonious with their money.

[colordrops]

Why are you loath to say it?

[gravescale]

Because I'm very much not the type to simp after people like Elon Musk and put them on some pedestal of genius, which is what, due to the wierd meme shit surrounding him, praise tends to sound like. Also it is sad that NASA is being worn like a meat-suit by the MIC, but that really isn't a new thing, and its almost its true purpose really.

But the engineers and even the managers at SpaceX really have done something very special.

And the engineers at NASA too, for that matter - nailing it on the first go is bloody hard and a great technical feat. It's also extremely expensive, but the spec is the spec.

[ToValueFunfetti]

James Webb alone cost NASA $10 billion, with $4.5 billion in overruns. It took 30 years to design and construct. Carefully designing things to work the first time is expensive and slow; blowing up a billion dollars is the more effective use of money here.

[mavhc]

Less than a billion, maybe $100 million per test launch

[bmitc]

That doesn't compute at all.

[swores]

Their point is that if you "waste" $1B as many as nine times with exploding rockets and it leads to working, good rockets, then its economically better than spending $10B to get it right the first time with no explosions.

Of course there's also environmental harm from exploded rockets, and the potential to never find success before running out of money, but as long as they succeed in getting it working perfectly before they've spent as much as it would cost to be confident of it working on the first launch, they'll be happy.

[ToValueFunfetti]

By all means, demonstrate that. I love to change my mind, but I still need more than an assertion that I'm wrong to do so.

[bmitc]

They're just completely different projects that are not comparable. The Webb telescope had no choice but to work.

The SpaceX team has a choice, and they choose "fail fast". There's a gradient that SpaceX can sit on for their development, and for a suite of companies owned by Musk, people would like to see less fail fast and often.

[arandomusername]

It's not tax payer money, it's spacex's money.

Please enlighten us how they are designing the rockets wrongly.

[piva00]

> It's not tax payer money, it's spacex's money.

Some US$ 18 billion came from tax payer though.

[stetrain]

Right, but they only received that money by delivering completed milestones and missions. They didn't get money to blow things up with no results.

[arandomusername]

When McDonalds spends money, do you complain they are spending your money?

US government paid SpaceX for services rendered. It's economy 101.

[piva00]

If I have agency over the spending of course I won't complain, when tax money is allocated then I'm feel pretty free to complain :) I don't live in the USA though so don't have a horse in the race.

[toomuchtodo]

And it was better spent at SpaceX than the usual cost plus defense industry players.

[luuurker]

What's the difference between SpaceX and all the other big US space companies?

They all receive government contracts/investment/subsidies (or whatever you want to call it). Why is this specific company being singled out?

[estebank]

% of income attributable to the public coffers.

[BurningFrog]

That money is from selling goods and services to the government on a commercial market.

[tekla]

You do understand that private companies wish to get paid for goods and services provided to the govt?

[rpmisms]

They make cheaper rockets than anyone else, can reuse them, and can land them. This indictment is a failure.