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Tesla proved rich people buy rich people things. SpaceX proved government budgets aren't scrutinized enough. Not particularly shocking.

nickik 5y ago
What an idiotic thing to say. This is just pure 'I don't like this person so I'm gone shit on everything he does' syndrome. Rich people buy rich people things, yes, and it matter if its a gas car or an electric. And it matter if the battery industry was transformed by that. And it matters that the image of electric cars was transformed. It matters that the largest fast charging network in the world was financed by this. SpaceX proved that they could make things the government already does massively cheaper. Literally read any report from NASA or GAO. NASA own evaluation showed that the 300M SpaceX spend on the initial Falcon 9 would have cost 3 billion if done by the government. Since SpaceX join the race military launches have come down in price by sometimes multiple 100 million $. ULA even outside of the 300M$+ launch prices, received an extra 900M every year. Literally everything the government is buying from SpaceX could literally not be done cheaper by any other government, foreign or domestic or company foreign or domestic. When SpaceX got started the commercial launch market was basically 0% US launchers, SpaceX alone changed that to depending on you calculate 50-90% of the commercial market now. There is seriously not a single argument you can make about SpaceX other then simply arguing the government should be doing spaceflight at all. Everything we know about government internals suggest that both NASA and DoD are beyond happy with SpaceX.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  >NASA own evaluation showed that the 300M SpaceX spend on the initial Falcon 9 would have cost 3 billion if done by the government. interesting, can you cite that?
  - jakeva 5y ago
    This is the citation used by Wikipedia https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf
    - SavantIdiot 5y ago
      3x more expensive (0.44B vs 1.2B) for NASA to do it. Slide #3 states NASA did not perform a detailed analysis of the estimates, but NASA concluded the number of employees, layers of management, and infrastructure were the key differences. And slide 6 almost sounds like NASA is saying "NASA shouldn't do this." Makes sense. They should use their budget and more comprehensiive oversight for zanier stuff, IMHO. Speaking of oversight, I also doubt SpaceX will be grilled anywhere near as severely as NASA when a death does occur, Elon has been upfront that this is risky stuff.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  > This is just pure 'I don't like this person so I'm gone shit on everything he does' syndrome. That's odd, I didn't say a single word about whether or not I liked Elon. Did you mean to reply to my post or someone else's?
- Talanes 5y ago
  All of your points about government budget bloat only seem to support >SpaceX proved government budgets aren't scrutinized enough.
robryan 5y ago
SpaceX is saving the US government heaps of money. Sure you could argue about spending on things in the first place. Assuming though we are talking about who to award to contracts to though they have saved heaps on just giving the extra work to ULA/ Boeing and other traditional aerospace companies. They have also created a competitor that will drive down prices on all space contracts.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  I did argue exactly this, one hour before you commented. See my peer post down the thread.

nickik 5y ago

What an idiotic thing to say. This is just pure 'I don't like this person so I'm gone shit on everything he does' syndrome. Rich people buy rich people things, yes, and it matter if its a gas car or an electric. And it matter if the battery industry was transformed by that. And it matters that the image of electric cars was transformed. It matters that the largest fast charging network in the world was financed by this. SpaceX proved that they could make things the government already does massively cheaper. Literally read any report from NASA or GAO. NASA own evaluation showed that the 300M SpaceX spend on the initial Falcon 9 would have cost 3 billion if done by the government. Since SpaceX join the race military launches have come down in price by sometimes multiple 100 million $. ULA even outside of the 300M$+ launch prices, received an extra 900M every year. Literally everything the government is buying from SpaceX could literally not be done cheaper by any other government, foreign or domestic or company foreign or domestic. When SpaceX got started the commercial launch market was basically 0% US launchers, SpaceX alone changed that to depending on you calculate 50-90% of the commercial market now. There is seriously not a single argument you can make about SpaceX other then simply arguing the government should be doing spaceflight at all. Everything we know about government internals suggest that both NASA and DoD are beyond happy with SpaceX.

TchoBeer 5y ago
>NASA own evaluation showed that the 300M SpaceX spend on the initial Falcon 9 would have cost 3 billion if done by the government. interesting, can you cite that?
- jakeva 5y ago
  This is the citation used by Wikipedia https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    3x more expensive (0.44B vs 1.2B) for NASA to do it. Slide #3 states NASA did not perform a detailed analysis of the estimates, but NASA concluded the number of employees, layers of management, and infrastructure were the key differences. And slide 6 almost sounds like NASA is saying "NASA shouldn't do this." Makes sense. They should use their budget and more comprehensiive oversight for zanier stuff, IMHO. Speaking of oversight, I also doubt SpaceX will be grilled anywhere near as severely as NASA when a death does occur, Elon has been upfront that this is risky stuff.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> This is just pure 'I don't like this person so I'm gone shit on everything he does' syndrome. That's odd, I didn't say a single word about whether or not I liked Elon. Did you mean to reply to my post or someone else's?
Talanes 5y ago
All of your points about government budget bloat only seem to support >SpaceX proved government budgets aren't scrutinized enough.

robryan 5y ago

SpaceX is saving the US government heaps of money. Sure you could argue about spending on things in the first place. Assuming though we are talking about who to award to contracts to though they have saved heaps on just giving the extra work to ULA/ Boeing and other traditional aerospace companies. They have also created a competitor that will drive down prices on all space contracts.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
I did argue exactly this, one hour before you commented. See my peer post down the thread.