Sfdebris.net

It's not really a matter of travel it's more about infrastructure.

Fuzzy Necromancer wrote: ↑Mon Dec 20, 2021 4:31 am The technology produced in the space program

...could be produced by any applied research program, and would be more efficiently produced without being attached to a space program.

The projects that have produced the greatest scientific results are precisely the ones NASA isn't all that interested in. It's just wasting time and money. We need more unmanned probes, maybe even remote-controlled ones directed from Earth. We do not need more humans in space.

Frustration wrote: ↑Mon Dec 20, 2021 11:16 pm

Fuzzy Necromancer wrote: ↑Mon Dec 20, 2021 4:31 am The technology produced in the space program

...could be produced by any applied research program, and would be more efficiently produced without being attached to a space program.

The projects that have produced the greatest scientific results are precisely the ones NASA isn't all that interested in. It's just wasting time and money. We need more unmanned probes, maybe even remote-controlled ones directed from Earth. We do not need more humans in space.

Yeah why can't NASA use it resources for good like other government departments, so some random senator can have a desk as valuable as a house.

The stupid waste in one government department is no excuse for stupid waste in another. At least I've never encountered anyone trying to claim that $900 toilet seats are a boon to mankind.

You've never sat on one of those seats, have you?

And the ultimate goal of any space program should be, to get mankind off this planet.

Oh, that could be done... by launching everyone directly into space.

Perhaps you should rethink the goal you set for a space program to find one slightly less... genocidal.

Is it genocidal if they are not dead.

Wait - so the best clearspira can do is find a 2 months-old article from such a reputed source as Austin American-Statesman where Elon Musk (being the slave-driver he is) sent a scary email to his employees to work harder on those engines he needs ready in order to explode them on his sub-orbital flight? Cool. SpaceX must be doing great.

Sue Origin asking 28 mil. for a flight doesn't surprise me one bit. Now that Bezos had all his lawsuits against NASA and SpaceX crushed he sure needs to find some way to get his cash back.

Overall - I'd say SpaceX is doing well and I look forward to more explosions of Starship this year. Seriously - doing a suborbital flight without even trying to break the sound barrier first - sounds to me like a kid who launched his first paper plane and now feels ready to fly across Atlantic. Par for the course for Elon. He's a visionary but so was Gene Roddenberry and we all know how Star Trek episodes looked whenever he personally supervised them.

Personally I'm looking forward to Neutron. Peter Beck ate his humble pie (or in this case - hat) and it's awesome to see Rocket Lab develop a reusable medium LV competition to SpaceX cause neither SLS nor Sue Origin look like credible competitors right now and SpaceX sure could use one to allow them to reign Musk in and maybe have him shift his attention to his glorified tunnel-digging when he gets bored with space.

He's not even a visionary. He buys ideas and then pretends he invented them.

So like Thomas Edison