4 ms·

Aerospace industry has a long history of missing lower cost/kg to orbit. I'm extremely suspicious of $500/kg, which is about a third of today's cost.

modeless 11mo ago
OTOH SpaceX has a pretty good history of undercutting the industry on cost. If Starship full reusability works I would be very surprised if it only lowered launch costs by a factor of three. Of course it's not guaranteed to work, but clearly SpaceX's orbital datacenter plans are predicated on Starship working.
- ted_dunning 11mo ago
  SpaceX has never met any milestone that Elon has ever set.
  - modeless 11mo ago
    OTOH they have achieved many things that experienced people said were impossible or would never make financial sense.
    - DonHopkins 11mo ago
      OTOH they have a huge batshit crazy fanbase of boot lickers who are so gullible they'll believe and parrot anything Elon says.
      - matheusmoreira 11mo ago
        SpaceX created reusable rockets that can fly back to the launch platforms and land gracefully. Hard to blame people for becoming fans. Before them stuff like this only existed in kerbal and sci-fi.
        exmadscientist 11mo ago
        Becoming a fan of someone or something is great! Accepting everything they then do, forever, even when it's obviously nonsense, is what gets you called a "huge batshit crazy fanbase of boot lickers". This "idea" is great party conversation. It's probably doing a great job of shoving around the Overton window, too (perhaps the real goal here?). It's, uh, not realistic, and anyone who is seriously "all in" on it (you're allowed to consider it and to dream, that's not the same as being all in) is not worth taking seriously no matter how much of the oxygen in the room they're using up.
  - rockemsockem 11mo ago
    Never on time, but always eventually.
  - baq 11mo ago
    ...on time. the first booster landing after delivering a payload to orbit was quite something and made a serious stir in the industry.

modeless 11mo ago

OTOH SpaceX has a pretty good history of undercutting the industry on cost. If Starship full reusability works I would be very surprised if it only lowered launch costs by a factor of three. Of course it's not guaranteed to work, but clearly SpaceX's orbital datacenter plans are predicated on Starship working.

ted_dunning 11mo ago
SpaceX has never met any milestone that Elon has ever set.
- modeless 11mo ago
  OTOH they have achieved many things that experienced people said were impossible or would never make financial sense.
  - DonHopkins 11mo ago
    OTOH they have a huge batshit crazy fanbase of boot lickers who are so gullible they'll believe and parrot anything Elon says.
    - matheusmoreira 11mo ago
      SpaceX created reusable rockets that can fly back to the launch platforms and land gracefully. Hard to blame people for becoming fans. Before them stuff like this only existed in kerbal and sci-fi.
      - exmadscientist 11mo ago
        Becoming a fan of someone or something is great! Accepting everything they then do, forever, even when it's obviously nonsense, is what gets you called a "huge batshit crazy fanbase of boot lickers". This "idea" is great party conversation. It's probably doing a great job of shoving around the Overton window, too (perhaps the real goal here?). It's, uh, not realistic, and anyone who is seriously "all in" on it (you're allowed to consider it and to dream, that's not the same as being all in) is not worth taking seriously no matter how much of the oxygen in the room they're using up.
- rockemsockem 11mo ago
  Never on time, but always eventually.
- baq 11mo ago
  ...on time. the first booster landing after delivering a payload to orbit was quite something and made a serious stir in the industry.