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SpaceX has hints of monopoly, has shown consistent innovation, and has an ambitious long term vision. Boeing lacks all of the above, so it's apples and oranges
by spongebobstoes 10mo ago
SpaceX has hints of monopoly, has shown consistent innovation, and has an ambitious long term vision. Boeing lacks all of the above, so it's apples and oranges
- FatherOfCurses 10mo agoBoeing has an over 100 year history of consistently delivering products at all levels of its industry. SpaceX has .... good vibes?
- misiti3780 10mo agoSuni Williams and Butch Wilmore beg to differ.
- MetaWhirledPeas 10mo ago> Boeing has an over 100 year history of consistently delivering products Like Starliner? > SpaceX has .... good vibes? ...if by "good vibes" you mean: - 138 rocket launches last year - Global low-latency internet
- delichon 10mo agoI'm using their services to chat with you right now. You are correct, it's all done with good electromagnetic vibrations.
- bigyabai 10mo agoMy experience was less good. Starlink suffered from intermittent outages, and enough bitrate jitter to make video calling a distraction. Latency was good but still higher than advertised, and the average download speed felt noticeably slower than wired broadband. It wasn't uncommon to see 50% dropped packets while playing a game or watching live content, which is more than I saw with Hughesnet. It's preferable to 3G or being stranded in the woods, but there are definitely points where I wondered if a 4G LTE hotspot would have been faster for home internet.
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoIs satellite internet advertised as being more capable than a 4G LTE hotspot? From my understanding, physics would not allow that (for a decent, not oversubscribed 4G LTE mobile connection and backhaul). But those parameters exist for satellite internet, too.
- pixl97 10mo agoI mean anecdotes aren't great for sweeping generalizations. When I'm taking vacation at my sister's ranch teams calls work just fine with my customers, so ones mileage may vary.
- ragebol 10mo agoAnd recently went off a cliff. Have you heard about the 737 MAX, with not one but 2 crashes due to problems with it's control system?
- standardUser 10mo agoIt's about growth potential. Boeing has all the excitement of a utility company, just with bigger publicity problems. SpaceX has the potential to forge whole new industries. If you're bullish on space tourism or asteroid mining, SpaceX is the best bet on the table right now.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> If you're bullish on space tourism or asteroid mining You don't need either of these to justify the thesis. Just LEO constellations.
- standardUser 10mo agoChina's building two, so that advantage will be fleeting.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> China's building two, so that advantage will be fleeting Monopoly may be fleeting. Advantage, no. Again, we're looking at a decade plus of SpaceX having a decided advantage in putting mass in orbit. That could mean more capability, more capacity, faster deployment of new technology or even more margin (since you can go cheap on station keeping).
- psunavy03 10mo agoStarliner leaving astronauts stranded after first not making it to the space station. 737 MAX crashing and killing people due to slapped-together flight control integration. 737 MAX having windows blow out due to sheer manufacturing incompetence. KC-46 deliveries being rejected due to literal tools being found in fuel tanks. Boeing HAD an over 100 year history of delivering. You can build a thousand bridges. No one's calling you a bridgebuilder after you shag just one sheep.
- DarmokJalad1701 10mo agoAh yes. One of them got $2.6B for six flights. The other one got $4.2B for six flights. One of them flew six flights successfully, got contract extended further to 14 flights for a total of 4.93 billion. They also flew other paying customers seven times. In that time, the second one flew once with astronauts, and had so many problems that they ended up coming home on the first guy's spacecraft. I will let you figure out who is who. Consistent delivery at all levels indeed.
- dzhiurgis 10mo agoHey but someone is getting a sweet pay because unions. Spending taxpayer money towards lazy union worker > good. Spending less money towards hardworking non-union worker that actually delivers something > bad. Funny world we live in.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- danny_codes 10mo agoI don’t know about that. Europe and China are both working on reusable rockets. Blue Origin is doing the same. Access to space is a national security thing so all big countries will fund their own alternatives. Assuming the US continues to alienate its allies, I assume spaceX will be limited to the domestic market in 5-10 years. Why buy from the US when you can buy from more reliable players
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> Europe and China are both working on reusable rockets. Blue Origin is doing the same China and Blue Origin are Europe may be funding the research, but Arianespace ensures it's more than a decade away from matching today's Falcon Heavy. > Assuming the US continues to alienate its allies, I assume spaceX will be limited to the domestic market in 5-10 years. Why buy from the US when you can buy from more reliable players Because it's cheaper and more frequent.
- general1465 10mo ago> Because it's cheaper and more frequent. The thing is that you can't put a price tag on national security. For example Ukraine got F16s. Good plane. However after a spat between Zelensky a Trump, Ukrainian F16 got no new updates to their jammers, which temporarily degraded the plane performance and Ukrainians needed to pull them out of frontlines. Sometimes it is just better to fly on a plane which is not the top performer, but which you can control and manufacture or which a neighbor with same geopolitical problems like you can control and manufacture - i.e. Swedish SAAB JAS39 Same with space launches. Furthermore SpaceX is US company, so US government will want to know everything about the payload, probably down to the schematics and software, which is a big no-no for national security, but even for IP protection - what is stopping US government to supplying your IP to your US competitor? Nothing.
- moogly 10mo agoJAS 39 Gripen is using a US engine with export controls, so they could stop that too if they wanted to... https://en.defence-ua.com/news/gripen_still_relies_on_us_engine_but_sweden_offers_it_to_portugal_as_f_35_alternative-14155.html https://en.defence-ua.com/news/gripen_still_relies_on_us_eng...
- diamond559 10mo agoFanboy detected. The only thing they are consistent on is blowing up taxpayer bought rockets.
- thinkcontext 10mo agoI have criticized Musk plenty and have been skeptical of the Starship timelines from the beginning, however, SpaceX has launched over 150 times this year. That's more than the entire rest of the world. Surely they must be doing something right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_in_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_in_spaceflight
- diamond559 10mo agoThose are routine satellite launches that we've been able to do for decades, all for their not as good as fiber internet.
- thinkcontext 10mo ago> routine satellite launches The launching is routine, the landing and being able to turn around the same booster again in a few weeks is a capability no one else has. Their ability to launch so often came in handy over the past few years when other providers faltered. They were able to, on short notice, take over launches from Ariane 6, Vulcan, and Antares because of development delays and Soyuz because of political problems. No other medium launch provider can fit a launch in on short notice, they need years of lead time for one, let alone multiple. For SpaceX they just bump a Starlink payload a few months from now and replace it with the new one. > all for their not as good as fiber internet Starlink is making money. Its not just stealing market share from the incumbents but its significantly expanded the market.
- diamond559 10mo agoIt's not making money though, it's being propped up by fascist governments and VC's. It's laggy, more expensive internet that goes out w/ every solar flare, nobody I know even would think about using it for daily use and don't even lie to me and say you have a "friend" who loves it or that same old bs.