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That's because SpaceX is run with the goal of building actual space transit capabilities, not milking the taxpayer and distributing pork to as many politically

by api 2y ago

That's because SpaceX is run with the goal of building actual space transit capabilities, not milking the taxpayer and distributing pork to as many politically influential districts as possible. Until SpaceX and post-Apollo most of the space program was really a pork distribution system and a way to keep certain high-skill labor areas 'hot' in case we need them again. It wasn't a serious effort to learn about the universe or build a real presence in space. Some of that did happen but it happened almost as a side effect. Edit: Honestly I think SpaceX is just a decent aerospace company. They've appeared superhuman by contrast with companies like Boeing that have done nothing to innovate in the sector since the 1970s. When the comparison is with people completely asleep at the wheel, mere competence looks striking.

xattt 2y ago
I don’t see downsides of keeping skilled labour “hot”. One indirect benefit of domestic manufacturing is that it gives blue collar workers a sense of productivity and involvement in society. Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings, and a fairly compensated workforce is less likely to feel stagnant in their stage of life, and less likely to be radicalized. Edit: it seems there is a distinction between how you keep the labour hot - meaningful long-term missions; or a half-assed approach.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  The downside to keeping skilled labour 'hot' are many. First of all, if you have skilled labor, instead of of keeping them 'hot' actually 'eat' them. Ok, the analogy breaks down. But why keep them 'hot' just have them build actually useful stuff instead. Its not like there is a lack of useful things they could be doing. And second giving people bullshit useless projects like SLS, does not actually keep them 'hot'. Its more like warmed up Pizza. The people and more importantly organization lose the actual ability to do things quickly at reasonable prices. Somehow it seems acceptable that SLS will cost more then 30 billion $ in development cost and 2-4 more billion $ per launch. Not to mention the time. Don't misunderstand political pork as actually strategic workforce development or long term government policy. That just what you personally wish it to be, not what it actually is.
  - skummetmaelk 2y ago
    Which other useful things can they do? Spend their lives building advertising services or playing zero-sum games in financial markets?
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      The whole time when SpaceX didn't exist and NASA invested money in nonsense they could have invented reusable rockets, LEO constellations, nuclear reactors the list goes on. I really don't have a clue what your issue is. There is literally no problem with not having enough ideas that are cool that NASA can work on.
    - thmsths 2y ago
      Building rockets and probes for a reasonable price and in a reasonable amount of time. SLS was initially billed as "a simple project to reuse a bunch of parts from the Space Shuttle" and yet it's over a decade old, 20 billions in cost and has not launched even once. So we get no real innovation (as I said previously it's just reusing fairly old technologies), it's not cheap and it's not fast. As for keeping the specialists hot; surely there are better ways to do it. It feels like saying let's keep digging ditches and filling them back up to keep our ditch diggers in shape.
      - xattt 2y ago
        This is essentially why roads are full of potholes.
        panick21_ 2y ago
        No it isn't. The roads are full of plotholes because of totally broken local accounting, zoning and tax laws. Go read some 'Strong Towns' stuff if you want to know why roads have potholes.
- adolph 2y ago
  While “keeping skill labor “hot”’ sounds great in theory, the practical example of US space industry pre-SpaceX leads me to grant greater weight to “not actually great.”
  - fooker 2y ago
    Skilled labor is somewhat transferable. Who do you think are making the shells being shipped out to Ukraine ?
    - elif 2y ago
      Palmer lucky (oculus) is mostly sending drones with grenades. I think those are probably most of the kills tbh, and (according to my friend who works there) it is a very young, fresh, startup approach and not at all like the traditional defense industry.
thrance 2y ago
NASA is a scientific institution, it will lose money. But in the end, it enables private companies like SpaceX to be successful. More generally, no private company would be able to fund fundamental research and turn a profit. Apple used DARPA tech to make the iphone, Pfizer used decades of public research on mRNA to make the covid vaccine and SpaceX uses NASA's engineering expertise to get its rockets to orbit. Also, SpaceX gets billions of dollars from the US government annually.
- delfinom 2y ago
  NASA is scientific yes. But it's just as impacted by the defense industry's corruption of the US government where politicians go out of their way to interfere with procurement to funnel it to their donors and the cost of massively bloated projects which further harms the science they can do and harms competition.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  > NASA is a scientific institution Why are they designing rockets then? Has very little to do with science. Nobody denies that NASA should 'lose' money you are literally arguing a straw man. The question is 'what should NASA spend its money on'. And wasting 80+ billion $ on a completely broken architecture that makes no sense what so ever seem to most people like a bad idea. People actually WANT NASA to actually do more science, and actually advanced tech development. Personally I think NASA should be building things like nuclear reactors for space, or mars, moon missions. They should work on super-advanced engines. On chemical systems to make water on Mars. There are lots of things NASA could do that there simply isn't another way to do it. What NASA should be doing is reinvesting in 70s technology that is completely useless and out-dated for purely political reasons. I don't fucking understand why everybody who criticizes NASA is attacked with 'you hate science' when this is not actually what people are complaining about. Its just kneejerk defense of all that is wrong with NASA and congress.
- adventured 2y ago
  > More generally, no private company would be able to fund fundamental research and turn a profit. I have to imagine you mean turn a profit directly on the research itself (isolated down to the cost per specific item of research). Because obviously big tech can quite trivially fund fundamental research at an enormous scale as they see fit while printing their traditional gigantic profits. Apple + Microsoft + Facebook + Amazon + Nvidia + Google = over half a trillion dollars in annual operating income (around $126 billion in op income last quarter). They could fund NASA (~$25 billion) and would never really notice it. It'd take about four to six months of further op income growth by those six companies and NASA's budget would be covered in perpetuity.

by api 2y ago

xattt 2y ago

I don’t see downsides of keeping skilled labour “hot”. One indirect benefit of domestic manufacturing is that it gives blue collar workers a sense of productivity and involvement in society. Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings, and a fairly compensated workforce is less likely to feel stagnant in their stage of life, and less likely to be radicalized. Edit: it seems there is a distinction between how you keep the labour hot - meaningful long-term missions; or a half-assed approach.

panick21_ 2y ago
The downside to keeping skilled labour 'hot' are many. First of all, if you have skilled labor, instead of of keeping them 'hot' actually 'eat' them. Ok, the analogy breaks down. But why keep them 'hot' just have them build actually useful stuff instead. Its not like there is a lack of useful things they could be doing. And second giving people bullshit useless projects like SLS, does not actually keep them 'hot'. Its more like warmed up Pizza. The people and more importantly organization lose the actual ability to do things quickly at reasonable prices. Somehow it seems acceptable that SLS will cost more then 30 billion $ in development cost and 2-4 more billion $ per launch. Not to mention the time. Don't misunderstand political pork as actually strategic workforce development or long term government policy. That just what you personally wish it to be, not what it actually is.
- skummetmaelk 2y ago
  Which other useful things can they do? Spend their lives building advertising services or playing zero-sum games in financial markets?
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    The whole time when SpaceX didn't exist and NASA invested money in nonsense they could have invented reusable rockets, LEO constellations, nuclear reactors the list goes on. I really don't have a clue what your issue is. There is literally no problem with not having enough ideas that are cool that NASA can work on.
  - thmsths 2y ago
    Building rockets and probes for a reasonable price and in a reasonable amount of time. SLS was initially billed as "a simple project to reuse a bunch of parts from the Space Shuttle" and yet it's over a decade old, 20 billions in cost and has not launched even once. So we get no real innovation (as I said previously it's just reusing fairly old technologies), it's not cheap and it's not fast. As for keeping the specialists hot; surely there are better ways to do it. It feels like saying let's keep digging ditches and filling them back up to keep our ditch diggers in shape.
    - xattt 2y ago
      This is essentially why roads are full of potholes.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        No it isn't. The roads are full of plotholes because of totally broken local accounting, zoning and tax laws. Go read some 'Strong Towns' stuff if you want to know why roads have potholes.
adolph 2y ago
While “keeping skill labor “hot”’ sounds great in theory, the practical example of US space industry pre-SpaceX leads me to grant greater weight to “not actually great.”
- fooker 2y ago
  Skilled labor is somewhat transferable. Who do you think are making the shells being shipped out to Ukraine ?
  - elif 2y ago
    Palmer lucky (oculus) is mostly sending drones with grenades. I think those are probably most of the kills tbh, and (according to my friend who works there) it is a very young, fresh, startup approach and not at all like the traditional defense industry.

thrance 2y ago

NASA is a scientific institution, it will lose money. But in the end, it enables private companies like SpaceX to be successful. More generally, no private company would be able to fund fundamental research and turn a profit. Apple used DARPA tech to make the iphone, Pfizer used decades of public research on mRNA to make the covid vaccine and SpaceX uses NASA's engineering expertise to get its rockets to orbit. Also, SpaceX gets billions of dollars from the US government annually.

delfinom 2y ago
NASA is scientific yes. But it's just as impacted by the defense industry's corruption of the US government where politicians go out of their way to interfere with procurement to funnel it to their donors and the cost of massively bloated projects which further harms the science they can do and harms competition.
panick21_ 2y ago
> NASA is a scientific institution Why are they designing rockets then? Has very little to do with science. Nobody denies that NASA should 'lose' money you are literally arguing a straw man. The question is 'what should NASA spend its money on'. And wasting 80+ billion $ on a completely broken architecture that makes no sense what so ever seem to most people like a bad idea. People actually WANT NASA to actually do more science, and actually advanced tech development. Personally I think NASA should be building things like nuclear reactors for space, or mars, moon missions. They should work on super-advanced engines. On chemical systems to make water on Mars. There are lots of things NASA could do that there simply isn't another way to do it. What NASA should be doing is reinvesting in 70s technology that is completely useless and out-dated for purely political reasons. I don't fucking understand why everybody who criticizes NASA is attacked with 'you hate science' when this is not actually what people are complaining about. Its just kneejerk defense of all that is wrong with NASA and congress.
adventured 2y ago
> More generally, no private company would be able to fund fundamental research and turn a profit. I have to imagine you mean turn a profit directly on the research itself (isolated down to the cost per specific item of research). Because obviously big tech can quite trivially fund fundamental research at an enormous scale as they see fit while printing their traditional gigantic profits. Apple + Microsoft + Facebook + Amazon + Nvidia + Google = over half a trillion dollars in annual operating income (around $126 billion in op income last quarter). They could fund NASA (~$25 billion) and would never really notice it. It'd take about four to six months of further op income growth by those six companies and NASA's budget would be covered in perpetuity.