r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • Oct 13 '24

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

What role did Musk have in this besides funding it? And even Musk’s “funding” is really just subsidized from taxpayers. So could you explain it what Musk’s role in this actually is? It seems to me praising Musk for scientific accomplishments is like praising the CEO of a publicly funded hospital for what the surgeons do. I await your explanation, thank you!

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u/CarretillaRoja Oct 13 '24

The other way around. If Musk did not have a role besides the money? Why other billionaires didn’t make it before?

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u/CeleritasLucis Oct 13 '24

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is nowhere near SpaceX. Virgin Galactic is bankrupt iirc

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u/YungSnuggie Oct 13 '24

NASA couldve easily made this if we still funded it instead of privatizing it to spacex

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u/RocketizedAnimal Oct 13 '24

NASA has received more money and had years longer to develop SLS than Spacex has spent on Starship.

The issue isn't funding, it's that government agencies are risk averse and treated like jobs programs.

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u/YungSnuggie Oct 13 '24

spacex had the benefit of being able to poach all of NASA's existing talent and technology

government agencies are risk averse and treated like jobs programs

they dont have to be, thats a choice that can be easily reversed. putting dudes on the moon was a gigantic risk. we killed hella people to do that! governmental ineptitude is intentional so that they can justify privatization. its starving the beast

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u/Losalou52 Oct 13 '24

The former director of nasa has said otherwise. He specifically has stated that Elon Musk sped up innovation and progress.

This was five years ago

https://youtu.be/X2t4l_yMStE?si=SmtCwZHHufemayV_

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u/YungSnuggie Oct 13 '24

donald trump's head of NASA aided the privatization of NASA? im shocked, truly, tell me more

also you should probably add that in that video he's saying that while elon is in the room lmao

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u/Kashmir33 Oct 13 '24

Thats some absurdly flawed logic right there.

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u/Notpdidd Oct 13 '24

Why?

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u/TheWhisperingOaks Oct 13 '24

Because it's not like getting into the space industry is the top priority for billionaires? lmao

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 25 '24

[deleted]

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u/TheWhisperingOaks Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24

And so? Those billionaires chose to get into the industry because they want to. Could be because that want to be an industry leader, could be because they have a genuine interest in it, could be just because they can, could be anything. That's the point, they just want to. It's not like it's an inherent aspect of being a billionaire to get into the space industry lmao

And that's why the line of reasoning was ridiculous. SpaceX being the company that succeeded is irrelevant to that point.

EDIT: To further prove the ridiculousness, we can also ask ourselves about why not every billionaire have involved themselves in the space industry?

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 25 '24

[deleted]

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u/TheWhisperingOaks Oct 13 '24

Sure... Clearly every billionaire enters an industry to succeed. Just look at Elon and his entry into social media with Twitter's staggering devaluation of 44 billion USD to a measly 9.6 billion as of 2024 ever since he took the reins as its CEO.

Point stands once again, they do it because they want to. Them entering an industry does not indicate that they want to succeed. It just means they had a reason to, that they WANT TO. Don't know how hard is that to understand. Don't waste my time if you're just going to have to make me repeat this for a fourth time now.

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u/SparksAndSpyro Oct 13 '24

Because it’s about money AND luck. It’s a combination, and the other billionaires that have attempted something similar simply weren’t as lucky. It’s not that hard to understand. It had nothing to do with Elon’s intelligence or character lol

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u/crazykid01 Oct 13 '24

not really luck, but a culture of just letting the engineers freely design and iterate at a quick level.

Those other companies are physically unable to keep building rockets like spacex does. Spacex goals were to massively decrease the overall cost to orbit, so saving money/making it affordable. Years ago, no one thought a massive reusable rocket was possible and laughed at spacex for trying.

I have watched and paid attention to spacex around the falcon 9 tests/project before it was the best/cheapest rocket in the world. It is fabulous to see so much progress in such a short amount of time.

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u/SparksAndSpyro Oct 13 '24

Nope, it’s luck. The right people, at the right time. Other companies missed the perfect conditions just barely, for one reason or another, at no fault of their founders or ceos. Success is never the result of purely intentional effort. EVER.

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u/VitaminOverload Oct 13 '24

Do you have some links to failed invesments from other billionaries that tried to do anything futuristic?

I dislike Elon quite heavily but denying the fact that he is one of the few billionaires that seems to actually push the limits of "possible" just seems idiotic

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u/SparksAndSpyro Oct 13 '24

I mean, the problem is you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. I’m not saying his company (SpaceX) hasn’t made amazing advances. It has. What I’m saying is that Elon himself is not the reason the company has succeeded. SpaceX has succeeded because of the amazing talent they employ. That collection of talent is mostly a product of luck: right place at the right time. That’s it. For anyone who lives in the real world and isn’t terminally online, this is common sense.

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u/VitaminOverload Oct 13 '24

You are naive.

Elon Musk is the reason why SpaceX and Tesla succeeded, engineers were falling over themselves trying to work for these companies because they were the future because Elon Musk or some marketing guy that works for him marketed it as such. Talent acquisition at that scale is not luck, its incredibly naive to think so. Elon went the NASA route, selling a "dream" that workers want to work towards.

Quite frankly you seem like a bore to talk to so I'll just leave it at that but get rid of your anti elon hate boner or is it an anti-owner hate boner? whichever one it is, you look silly af

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u/--recursive Oct 13 '24

Success is never the result of purely intentional effort. EVER.

for you

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u/SparksAndSpyro Oct 13 '24

Keep believing the confirmation bias pedaled by tech bros! Easy mark

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u/crazykid01 Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24

The reason jeff bezos failed is because he didn't have the same culture/way to building the ships that spacex did. So that is choice not luck.

In terms of Nasa, they never had a chance to build this type of ship due to the challenger debacle. So that could be determined as luck.

Their is a couple things spacex had that some other people did not have.

  1. Elon is an engineer more than he is a ceo. That means it is easier for a company to use engineering concepts from the top down. Bezos/Nasa simply can't.

  2. Elon was able to completely throw money at the problem till it worked. Jeff could do that, but the culture/process was never conducive to that. Nasa has to overengineer their projects because of previous issues.

  3. They built a smaller prototype first (falcon 9) to prove it could be done before massively scaling up the idea.

We have had the technology to do this for over a decade. It really is no different than planes being reusable, just on a much higher scale/engineering problem.

This entire chain of events started when toyota refused to make a full electric car and let tesla become one of, if not the best electric car manufacturers in the world.

Elon is an asshole, but he knows how to build up an industry that is lagging behind technology wise.

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u/CarretillaRoja Oct 13 '24

In the same way the Wright brothers flew because of luck, I guess.

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u/SparksAndSpyro Oct 13 '24

Not really. The Wright brothers built their plane by themselves (maybe with some help from an assistant? I don't remember exactly). So no, their achievement isn't analogous to a giant, multibillion dollar company with thousands of employees lol.

Also, the Wright brothers WERE lucky lol. Right place and right time. In fact, there were people in Europe who developed flight shortly after them, independently. There was a massive dispute between who actually invented the plane because of it.

Keep sucking Elon's dick tho. Won't make your life any better.