[themafia]

> they've produced the cheapest way

Were we struggling to do this before? Was the overall percentage reduction in costs? Was some other achievement held back because we couldn't accomplish this? What is now enabled?

> to get any payload into space.

A limited set of payloads into space. No vehicle can get "any payload" to space at a fixed price.

> The benefits are easy to miss,

You've listed a bunch of reasons to publish papers. What is the actual ground level change that's occurred? Are those antibiotics produced? Do they actually work just as predicted? Why is that first world problems are exclusively listed but basic problems like world hunger are never even approached?

> or wouldn't have within our lifetimes.

And your life, your actual life, benefits, how?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Were we struggling to do this before?

We literally couldn't.

> Was the overall percentage reduction in costs?

Starship will bill NASA 1/20th what SLS does.

> What is now enabled?

LEO. Artemis. Out of all of these companies, being confused about SpaceX is super weird.

[duttish]

If SpaceX was only Starlink or only Starlink and rockets it would be an horrible circumvention of the rules.

But now he's also trying to get the indexes to pay for the giant cash fire called X.ai and the far right huddle Twitter too.

I have zero interest in owning anything of either of those companies.

[alpha_squared]

Granted, I only skimmed some high-line numbers, but isn't their only profitable project Starlink? SpaceX is functionally a satellite internet company that happens to make rockets.

[JumpCrisscross]

> isn't their only profitable project Starlink? SpaceX is functionally a satellite internet company that happens to make rockets

Yes. The thing that’s going public is almost entirely an AI play.

[HWR_14]

They seems to have decent revenue leasing compute to Anthropic.

[tech_ken]

> Starship will bill NASA 1/20th what SLS does

Is that before or after the program achieves profitability?

[harimau777]

I think you missed the core of their question: What has actually gotten better in practical terms for the average American?

[JumpCrisscross]

> What has actually gotten better in practical terms for the average American?

Starlink has made connectivity cheaper and more available. Earth imaging has made various food production processes more efficient. Weather forecasts have become more accurate.

If you’ve genuinely missed the massive economy that LEO has become, it will be a fun thing to catch up on.

[autoexec]

> Starlink has made connectivity cheaper and more available.

Yeah that's working out great for the average American isn't it (https://natlawreview.com/press-releases/2026-consumer-trust-...)

> Earth imaging has made various food production processes more efficient.

I'm not even going to bother sourcing the fact that food prices have only massively gone up negating any gains in productivity. The average American struggling to buy basics like eggs and meat aren't feasting on more efficient food production.

> Weather forecasts have become more accurate.

I'm sure the growing homeless population is happy to know they can better predict the weather they'll be sleeping in.

This is all totally worth supporting a nazi billionaire

[JumpCrisscross]

> that's working out great for the average American isn't it

Yeah. It did. My neighbour’s rates went up. He switched to Starlink.

> not even going to bother sourcing the fact that food prices have only massively gone up negating

This is like arguing fertilisers are useless because prices went up.

> homeless population

Not super relevant!

> all totally worth supporting a nazi billionaire

Nobody said that. But it doesn’t mean the benefits go away.

[dh2022]

weather forecasts is really good right now (in my experience forecast for rain/cloud cover/wind speed at hour granularity is amazingly good) and earth imaging for food production has been done for decades. I do not think SpaceX has improved nor will improve on these.

SpaceX’s main customer is Starlink. With that in mind: if Starlink takes over all the ISPs in the world its market value should be comparable to Comcast - $89 Billion.

[usef-]

Do we apply a bar this high for any other company/job/business? Saving gov/tax money aka "billing NASA 1/20th what SLS does" doesn't count as worth it to you?

Reusing rockets reliably rather than "throwing them away" is a great achievement and I'm surprised people have to justify it on HN

[mandeepj]

> Reusing rockets reliably rather than "throwing them away" is a great achievement and I'm surprised people have to justify it on HN

You can milk a cow only a set number of times!

[usef-]

Yes, because you're not designing the cow. Progress on rocketry (and reusability) is not completed, btw, there's a lot still to improve.

[airstrike]

Stock prices indicate the present value of all future dividends, so it's not about what has happened but about the risk-adjusted expected value of all which is to come.

What probability you assign to arrive at that expected value and how you adjust for risk is on you.