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> would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars. This type of false equivalence and

> would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars. This type of false equivalence and extreme hyperbole is why it polarizes people. The preferred terms of the conversation are so insane as to invite that specific outcome. > affecting their precious telescopes You also seem to feel entitled to adopt the position of a rank bully. Where does this entitlement come from? While reflecting on that, you might find a more charitable and honest answer as to the sources of polarization on this topic. > We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter. We'll have the future with or without Space X. This type of angry hype and blind argumentation simply underscore the above points.

somenameforme 3y ago
Meaningful progress in space exploration and rocketry, prior to SpaceX, was negligible. There was no real motivation to try to lower prices, let alone meaningfully advance technologies, for aerospace companies headed by MBAs and motivated exclusively by profit, all with a defacto monopoly in launches. And there's every reason to think that without SpaceX we would still be on that trajectory. As for the future... SpaceX has certainly inspired a large number of companies looking to try to emulate it success, but none have really managed to achieve anything comparable to increasingly dated SpaceX tech at this point, let alone where SpaceX is taking us with technologies like the Starship. So with this I think there's also a reasonable fear that without SpaceX we'd relapse back into the past since 1972, in terms of space progress - which is to say near zero. One really cannot overstate the impact that SpaceX has had on space in the past, is continuing to have on space in the present, and will almost certainly continue to have in the future. That people want SpaceX to fail, and imperil all of this, just because they don't like somebody they don't even know, is such a terrible reflection on the state and motivations of society today.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Space exploration, sending vehicles to asteroids and meteors, Mars...., did just fine without SpaceX. Maybe SpaceX made the launches for those a tad cheaper, but launch costs are far from the most important cost factor for those missions. Which leaves rockertry. Reusable rockets are quite an achievement, sure. So far the real world impact is limited to satellite internet, which is not available globally yet. Starship still has to be launched successfully to count as rocketry advancement.
  - emilecantin 3y ago
    Launch costs are absolutely an important factor that makes everything space-related extremely expensive. When it costs $1B to launch something, you have to make damn sure you're not launching a dud. That, in turn, makes building the thing even more expensive because you need triple and quadruple redundancies on everything, and everything needs to be tested a bazillion times. When a launch is "only" $50M, you can get away with much fewer redundancies, less testing making the thing you launch much cheaper. And yeah, the first large-scale change we've seen from it is vastly better / cheaper satellite internet, but there will be others. Axiom space is a good example; a private company sending astronauts on missions.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      There's also the issue that the cheaper something gets, the more potential it has for uses that simply didn't exist before. Take airflight. Imagine planes/flights were about 2 orders of magnitude more expensive than they are today. So many things we take for granted in society would simply no longer exist. Air shipping - gone, trans-Atlantic vacations - gone (or spend a month both ways on a ship), even military air forces would probably no longer exist - kind of weird when a new jet starts costing in the ballpark of an aircraft carrier. Try to imagine society without affordable airflight. It'd be so different that it's literally difficult to even begin to imagine all of the implications. And the same thing will be true of affordable spaceflight, but to a far greater scale. One of the most simplistic and "boring" examples of this would be material scarcity - gone. There are asteroids idling around, in reachable distance, with metals and other elements amounting to trillions of dollars on value. Of course the first mega-load coming back will completely crash the market, but that's entirely the point. What we view as scarce no longer will be, thanks simply to lowering the cost of spaceflight. Get it low enough and you could even conceivably create a world where various highly polluting industries could simply be off-planeted, with the resultant products being shipped back. And I'm actively avoiding anything remotely sci-fi. These are the boring, almost certain things, and they alone already are making the future look utterly alien, based on nothing but cheaper spaceflight.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
ETH_start 3y ago
>>We'll have the future with or without Space X. This type of angry hype and blind argumentation simply underscore the above points. It's not hype. The progress made by SpaceX is demonstrable and profound. Do you want the future of permanent settles on other celestial bodies in 200 years, or within our lifetimes? Because the latter will almost certainly require SpaceX achieving its long-term goals. The grievances raised against both Musk and SpaceX are petty next to what humanity stands to gain if SpaceX is successful.
- troyvit 3y ago
  Totally true that their progress is demonstrable and profound. It's just that the GP did such a dismal job expressing it. That's where the "angry hype" and "blind argumentation" bit came from.

somenameforme 3y ago

Meaningful progress in space exploration and rocketry, prior to SpaceX, was negligible. There was no real motivation to try to lower prices, let alone meaningfully advance technologies, for aerospace companies headed by MBAs and motivated exclusively by profit, all with a defacto monopoly in launches. And there's every reason to think that without SpaceX we would still be on that trajectory. As for the future... SpaceX has certainly inspired a large number of companies looking to try to emulate it success, but none have really managed to achieve anything comparable to increasingly dated SpaceX tech at this point, let alone where SpaceX is taking us with technologies like the Starship. So with this I think there's also a reasonable fear that without SpaceX we'd relapse back into the past since 1972, in terms of space progress - which is to say near zero. One really cannot overstate the impact that SpaceX has had on space in the past, is continuing to have on space in the present, and will almost certainly continue to have in the future. That people want SpaceX to fail, and imperil all of this, just because they don't like somebody they don't even know, is such a terrible reflection on the state and motivations of society today.

hef19898 3y ago
Space exploration, sending vehicles to asteroids and meteors, Mars...., did just fine without SpaceX. Maybe SpaceX made the launches for those a tad cheaper, but launch costs are far from the most important cost factor for those missions. Which leaves rockertry. Reusable rockets are quite an achievement, sure. So far the real world impact is limited to satellite internet, which is not available globally yet. Starship still has to be launched successfully to count as rocketry advancement.
- emilecantin 3y ago
  Launch costs are absolutely an important factor that makes everything space-related extremely expensive. When it costs $1B to launch something, you have to make damn sure you're not launching a dud. That, in turn, makes building the thing even more expensive because you need triple and quadruple redundancies on everything, and everything needs to be tested a bazillion times. When a launch is "only" $50M, you can get away with much fewer redundancies, less testing making the thing you launch much cheaper. And yeah, the first large-scale change we've seen from it is vastly better / cheaper satellite internet, but there will be others. Axiom space is a good example; a private company sending astronauts on missions.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    There's also the issue that the cheaper something gets, the more potential it has for uses that simply didn't exist before. Take airflight. Imagine planes/flights were about 2 orders of magnitude more expensive than they are today. So many things we take for granted in society would simply no longer exist. Air shipping - gone, trans-Atlantic vacations - gone (or spend a month both ways on a ship), even military air forces would probably no longer exist - kind of weird when a new jet starts costing in the ballpark of an aircraft carrier. Try to imagine society without affordable airflight. It'd be so different that it's literally difficult to even begin to imagine all of the implications. And the same thing will be true of affordable spaceflight, but to a far greater scale. One of the most simplistic and "boring" examples of this would be material scarcity - gone. There are asteroids idling around, in reachable distance, with metals and other elements amounting to trillions of dollars on value. Of course the first mega-load coming back will completely crash the market, but that's entirely the point. What we view as scarce no longer will be, thanks simply to lowering the cost of spaceflight. Get it low enough and you could even conceivably create a world where various highly polluting industries could simply be off-planeted, with the resultant products being shipped back. And I'm actively avoiding anything remotely sci-fi. These are the boring, almost certain things, and they alone already are making the future look utterly alien, based on nothing but cheaper spaceflight.
- somenameforme 3y ago

ETH_start 3y ago

>>We'll have the future with or without Space X. This type of angry hype and blind argumentation simply underscore the above points. It's not hype. The progress made by SpaceX is demonstrable and profound. Do you want the future of permanent settles on other celestial bodies in 200 years, or within our lifetimes? Because the latter will almost certainly require SpaceX achieving its long-term goals. The grievances raised against both Musk and SpaceX are petty next to what humanity stands to gain if SpaceX is successful.

troyvit 3y ago
Totally true that their progress is demonstrable and profound. It's just that the GP did such a dismal job expressing it. That's where the "angry hype" and "blind argumentation" bit came from.