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this doesn't even scratch the surface. Slow motion cameras and real time sensors for debugging hardware issues, computer simulations, 3d printing. Apollo progr

this doesn't even scratch the surface. Slow motion cameras and real time sensors for debugging hardware issues, computer simulations, 3d printing. Apollo program directors would advocate to start a nuclear war with ussr if they could get hands on that kind of tech. But also NASA landed two SUVs on mars first try, using skycrane, Full remote. they developed and built mars helicopter/drone (rip). First try. But spaceX gets the glory because... break things??

saberience 2y ago
This seems like a fairly disingenuous comment. SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before, and done it faster and at a lower budget than anyone has done before. Every other national space agency and private company had both infinitely more money, time, and engineers than SpaceX did (when founded) yet they were making zero progress on reusable rockets, cheap super heavy lift capacity to orbit, and America had no way of taking their own astronauts to the space station! Musk (hate him or love him) founded a company from nothing which has exceeded the capabilities of nasa and the us government, the European space agency, and the russian space agency, as well as ULA, Boeing, Lockheed etc. They have the first rocket ever made which can take payloads to orbit and then be reused. They have the most cost effective rocket ever made for taking loads to orbit. They have reused rockets up to 20 times! They have build the most powerful rocket ever built which is fully reusable. They have built the most efficient and powerful rocket engines ever built before. And they have done it all incredibly quickly starting from nothing. Oh and they also built a massive internet constellation providing fast and cheap satellite internet to the whole world, saving countless lives and also helping stimulate economies across the world as well as enabling more remote work etc. So much of what they have done was considered impossible or not economical or not practical or so difficult other countries or companies didn’t even TRY. So yes. Given their success it’s worth trying to understand their development methodology, which is iterate fast and fail lots and learn lots. Given how much they’ve kicked the shit out of the SLS program in capability and budget and also how they’ve crushed Blue Origin (which started earlier with more budget) who both operate in a more old fashioned way, I would certainly say it’s important to acknowledge they may be doing something right!
- me_me_me 2y ago
  > SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before Such as?
  - jbgt 2y ago
    Landing boosters, reducing costs etc etc
    - me_me_me 2y ago
      Is that it? Landing boosters is not saving money as of now. Because a rocket engine is not a rental bike. Hmmm I wonder if there was a tech that recovered a spacecraft and tried to reuse it to cut costs... hmmm... no, nothing comes to mind Also SpaceX is charging Nasa more than russians did when they had monopoly over space flights.
      - inemesitaffia 2y ago
        Landing boosters saves money and helps with cadence. SpaceX is charging NASA less. Even Boeing is charging NASA less than Russia.
  - jve 2y ago
    Maybe this will help you see it: https://x.com/dpoddolphinpro/status/1874191808751972447 https://x.com/dpoddolphinpro/status/1874191808751972447 The whole world combined VS SpaceX has less mass to orbit. Either whole nations are not interested in that much mass to orbit or they don't have the capability. Or financial means/incentive to compete against that commercial entity. But they do and at least in China they start to work on reusable rockets and ULA is for sale because they don't have one.
    - me_me_me 2y ago
      I guess that's an 'achievement'?
drillsteps5 2y ago
Apollo program was a major achievement, probably the largest in the history of humanity as of yet. But SpaceX definitely should get a credit for "breaking things", or for running agile dev cycle with hardware ("hardware heavy"). Let's just strap engines to a fuel tank and try to fly it. Let's just build a body by welding steel plates together and see what happens. Let's just launch this thing to 20 miles and see if we can make it aerobrake and land it with the engines. Iterate by learning and constantly improving. Nobody done it at that scale as of yet. (Which of course is only possible if you have the Founding Father with a few billion $$ just laying around)
ceejayoz 2y ago
> But also NASA landed two SUVs on mars first try, using skycrane, Full remote. they developed and built mars helicopter/drone (rip). First try. But spaceX gets the glory because... break things?? NASA lost a good number of probes in the process of getting the expertise to do that. And likely quite a few test devices in building out the skycrane.
- me_me_me 2y ago
  citation needed You cant be making shit up and equating a test to blowing up 7 rockets
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander
    - me_me_me 2y ago
      wtf does that have to do with Curiosity program? All of these are 2+ decades old. Besides, you make it as if SpaceX couldn't learn from nasa mistakes, not to mention core team of SpaceX are ex-nasa already. what kind of elon musk logic is that?
      - ricardobeat 2y ago
        > wtf does that have to do with Curiosity program? All of these are 2+ decades old. That’s 20 years of learning how to design and land things on mars. They wouldn’t have been able to build Curiosity without the past experiences. The Curiosity program itself started in 2002, just a couple years after the missions above. What people say is that knowledge in the field is extremely hard to transfer, and easily lost. As an example, apparently we are completely unable to rebuild the Space Shuttle and Saturn rocket, even though technology is vastly more advanced today. Each vehicle really is a “program” including all its people and supply chain. This is also something SpaceX is trying to change by building actual production lines for their engines and bodies, not one-off builds.
Albatross9237 2y ago
SpaceX getting credit for innovating in their own way doesn't mean NASA doesn't get credit for all the great things it has done.
templeOSdotcom 2y ago
SpaceX is a boon to NASA. NASA does great work but as they are a government entity they move at a slower pace.

saberience 2y ago

This seems like a fairly disingenuous comment. SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before, and done it faster and at a lower budget than anyone has done before. Every other national space agency and private company had both infinitely more money, time, and engineers than SpaceX did (when founded) yet they were making zero progress on reusable rockets, cheap super heavy lift capacity to orbit, and America had no way of taking their own astronauts to the space station! Musk (hate him or love him) founded a company from nothing which has exceeded the capabilities of nasa and the us government, the European space agency, and the russian space agency, as well as ULA, Boeing, Lockheed etc. They have the first rocket ever made which can take payloads to orbit and then be reused. They have the most cost effective rocket ever made for taking loads to orbit. They have reused rockets up to 20 times! They have build the most powerful rocket ever built which is fully reusable. They have built the most efficient and powerful rocket engines ever built before. And they have done it all incredibly quickly starting from nothing. Oh and they also built a massive internet constellation providing fast and cheap satellite internet to the whole world, saving countless lives and also helping stimulate economies across the world as well as enabling more remote work etc. So much of what they have done was considered impossible or not economical or not practical or so difficult other countries or companies didn’t even TRY. So yes. Given their success it’s worth trying to understand their development methodology, which is iterate fast and fail lots and learn lots. Given how much they’ve kicked the shit out of the SLS program in capability and budget and also how they’ve crushed Blue Origin (which started earlier with more budget) who both operate in a more old fashioned way, I would certainly say it’s important to acknowledge they may be doing something right!

me_me_me 2y ago
> SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before Such as?
- jbgt 2y ago
  Landing boosters, reducing costs etc etc
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    Is that it? Landing boosters is not saving money as of now. Because a rocket engine is not a rental bike. Hmmm I wonder if there was a tech that recovered a spacecraft and tried to reuse it to cut costs... hmmm... no, nothing comes to mind Also SpaceX is charging Nasa more than russians did when they had monopoly over space flights.
    - inemesitaffia 2y ago
      Landing boosters saves money and helps with cadence. SpaceX is charging NASA less. Even Boeing is charging NASA less than Russia.
- jve 2y ago
  Maybe this will help you see it: https://x.com/dpoddolphinpro/status/1874191808751972447 https://x.com/dpoddolphinpro/status/1874191808751972447 The whole world combined VS SpaceX has less mass to orbit. Either whole nations are not interested in that much mass to orbit or they don't have the capability. Or financial means/incentive to compete against that commercial entity. But they do and at least in China they start to work on reusable rockets and ULA is for sale because they don't have one.
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    I guess that's an 'achievement'?

drillsteps5 2y ago

Apollo program was a major achievement, probably the largest in the history of humanity as of yet. But SpaceX definitely should get a credit for "breaking things", or for running agile dev cycle with hardware ("hardware heavy"). Let's just strap engines to a fuel tank and try to fly it. Let's just build a body by welding steel plates together and see what happens. Let's just launch this thing to 20 miles and see if we can make it aerobrake and land it with the engines. Iterate by learning and constantly improving. Nobody done it at that scale as of yet. (Which of course is only possible if you have the Founding Father with a few billion $$ just laying around)

ceejayoz 2y ago

> But also NASA landed two SUVs on mars first try, using skycrane, Full remote. they developed and built mars helicopter/drone (rip). First try. But spaceX gets the glory because... break things?? NASA lost a good number of probes in the process of getting the expertise to do that. And likely quite a few test devices in building out the skycrane.

me_me_me 2y ago
citation needed You cant be making shit up and equating a test to blowing up 7 rockets
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    wtf does that have to do with Curiosity program? All of these are 2+ decades old. Besides, you make it as if SpaceX couldn't learn from nasa mistakes, not to mention core team of SpaceX are ex-nasa already. what kind of elon musk logic is that?
    - ricardobeat 2y ago
      > wtf does that have to do with Curiosity program? All of these are 2+ decades old. That’s 20 years of learning how to design and land things on mars. They wouldn’t have been able to build Curiosity without the past experiences. The Curiosity program itself started in 2002, just a couple years after the missions above. What people say is that knowledge in the field is extremely hard to transfer, and easily lost. As an example, apparently we are completely unable to rebuild the Space Shuttle and Saturn rocket, even though technology is vastly more advanced today. Each vehicle really is a “program” including all its people and supply chain. This is also something SpaceX is trying to change by building actual production lines for their engines and bodies, not one-off builds.

Albatross9237 2y ago

SpaceX getting credit for innovating in their own way doesn't mean NASA doesn't get credit for all the great things it has done.

templeOSdotcom 2y ago

SpaceX is a boon to NASA. NASA does great work but as they are a government entity they move at a slower pace.