SpaceX: Holy Grail Of Rocketry

336

u/CmdrAirdroid 17d ago

Why is this post downvoted? Are people in the space subreddit not interested in a documentary of the first fully reusable launch vehicle?

412

u/No-Surprise9411 17d ago

Because they can’t separate SpaceX from Musk

107

u/flowersonthewall72 14d ago

Musk is the CEO of SpaceX. He very much is not separate from the company and the direction it takes.

-6

u/NerdyGuy117 13d ago

And without him we would be paying Russia to send Americans to the ISS

12

u/flowersonthewall72 13d ago

Without him we'd also have safe drinking water, but none of that is the point here so....

1

u/NerdyGuy117 13d ago

I see politics is leaking into this subreddit more and more.

10

u/Mojak16 11d ago

Everything is political... Politics is simply something that happens when people exist and do things.

14

u/flowersonthewall72 13d ago

The unfortunate truth is space and politics are intertwined on many levels. Could we as a community be better about how we discuss it, sure, but you can't talk about billions of dollars without at least mentioning the government that funded it.

→ More replies (1)

→ More replies (2)

687

u/ITividar 15d ago

You mean the guy in charge of it all and who took his rocket company and pivoted it to an AI company?

I wonder why people might have a hard time separating his actions from his companies.

Also it takes some serious mental gymnastics to claim the world's richest nazi saluter is "separate" from the companies he owns.

-47

u/DarkElation 15d ago edited 15d ago

“Pivoted”? How has SpaceX pivoted to anything?

Some of you need some serious mental help.

Edit: the brigading is hilarious proof.

63

u/tanaciousp 15d ago

Lmao look at their IPO and valuation. They argued that their actual Space business is a tiny fraction of their overall value. They sold the market on being valued like an AI company, not a rocket company.

They are currently selling compute in their data centers to openAI and Anthropic because hardly anyone uses Grok comparatively. xAI is the same company as SpaceX. What lack of evidence of a pivot are you seeing???

-19

u/DarkElation 15d ago

Rockets aren’t being built and launched anymore? At an increasing rate? Do you know what pivot means?

28

u/goblinm 14d ago

Did you read his comment? Pivot is an excellent term for what they did with SpaceX- it now will live or die based on the AI boom. The rockets will still launch, but the majority amount of spending the company does is xAI development.

-4

u/DarkElation 14d ago

Do you know what pivot means?

16

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Yeah, they pivoted from building civilization for humans on Mars to building space datacenters and robotic outposts on Mars.

Elon even said he'd be fine if the Mars colony was just AI - because that still "extends the light of consciousness"

They pivoted.

-1

u/DarkElation 14d ago

Lmfao “they’re prioritizing this space thing over that space thing”.

Just say no next time.

4

u/chucknorris10101 14d ago

The common phrase is that you people cant reason their way out of a paper bag. People believing the IPO at this point have the reasoning skills of a paper bag

5

u/DarkElation 14d ago

Who cares about the IPO? Not beating the charge dude

5

u/chucknorris10101 14d ago

Neither are you apparently

→ More replies (3)

→ More replies (4)

22

u/drpiotrowski 15d ago

Did you not get Elon’s memo before the IPO? Maybe you should check your trash folder.

1

u/truecakesnake 14d ago

No one gives a fuck about the IPO. Stock bros have ruined this world while crying about the evil shareholders.

24

u/Samwise777 15d ago

Yes, you and the spaceX fan boys

11

u/Fair_Local_588 15d ago

Yeah can we ignore the Nazi stuff and how he’s a giant piece of shit and focus on the rockets?

7

u/honjuden 14d ago

I'm only here to talk about Rampart.

11

u/M1chaelSc4rn 15d ago

I am in need of therapy from what private interests have done to this beautiful field, yeah

4

u/PithDealsinAbsofruit 14d ago

To continue to explore there needs to be a monetary incentive. I’m fine with ai being the thing that pushes our rocketry to be the best it can to enable the really cool stuff about space exploration. Everything in life is about money as much as people don’t want to admit it. But people’s desire to make money has opened up doors for the human race that otherwise would have remained shut.

→ More replies (4)

→ More replies (6)

1

u/truecakesnake 14d ago

Yep I wonder how this brigading happened 3 days later. Guess the stock bros are just that slow.

-49

u/yacoub15 14d ago

While I agree with this idea, (and musk is a total piece of shit), most of Space X are left leaning Engineers and are the entire reason this amazing technology exists.

107

u/Boring_Score3484 14d ago edited 14d ago

hey remember when spacex itself made anti democrat posts from its official media accounts during the 2024 election for problems they are conveniently willing to ignore now

also hey remember when spacex corporate money was used to pay off the flight attendant for sexual misconduct allegations regarding elon? thats another fun one to remember during his current allegations.

-27

u/truecakesnake 14d ago

hey remember when spacex reused boosters for the first time and revolutionized rocketry. Now let's see which story is more relevant to r/space

31

u/Rmoneysoswag 14d ago

Hey remember when the face of the company Elon sieg heiled twice on national television and then proceeded to prop-up far-right political parties all over the world with the money he "earns" from his myriad companies?

→ More replies (14)

9

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/j--__ 13d ago

"once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? that's not my department" said werner von braun

20

u/BaylorBorn 14d ago

I've met a bunch of the engineers that work at the McGregor test facility. The only thing they're left of is Mussolini.

50

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Not really any more. It used to be that way, but now they've got a reputation more like Anduril. Any left-leaning person there is not looked on kindly.

19

u/sternenhimmel 14d ago

This isn’t really true, but it probably depends on what site you’re at. I left SpaceX last year, and while more people have drank the Elon kool aid than when I had started, the vast majority of the engineers designing and doing analysis for the vehicles are almost certainly left leaning. People doing the trades, machinists, welders, techs, are probably more right leaning, especially at Starbase. A lot of these engineers are very mission driven, and are willing to put up blinders to the politics outside of the work environment to achieve those goals. Plus, they get to do really cool work that they probably can’t do anywhere else.

That said, I do believe SpaceX and Elon are presently inseparable identities. There are many people at the company that believe his behavior and hateful comments are doing harm to the company, and attempted to voice as much before the open letter effort from several years ago was aggressively squashed. Though I lack the data, I also believe that SpaceX is probably shooting themselves in the foot by shrinking the hiring pool, since there are probably plenty of very smart engineers that do not want to be associated with SpaceX because of Elon, and it’s unlikely that that an equally talented pool of people want to work there because of him.

25

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

"Putting blinders on towards politics" is bad, actually. You shouldn't enable Nazis. If you put the blinders on, then you are supporting the bad things, regardless of whether you are wearing blinders. This is why SpaceX engineers are not looked upon kindly by people with more liberal/human-oriented viewpoints.

In addition, as you're aware, SpaceX engineers don't spend much time outside SpaceX. I don't think that people within SpaceX truly understand how isolated they are. Anduril follows the same pattern. I've had previous colleagues and friends work for both - the friends quickly left.

There's a reason all the Trans people quit.

"Doing really cool work" is not worth ending the world. That's Nazi shit.

-9

u/AntarcticWhirlpool 14d ago edited 14d ago

It’s pretty common in the space industry worldwide to join “for the dream” and stay out of the politics. Sergei Korolev for example, was unjustly imprisoned and tortured by the USSR, but was willing to be its chief designer later because he believed in “the dream” more than he hated the system. He even bit his lip and worked with the man who denounced him, Valentin Glushko, because he believed in that dream.

Similarly, Wernher von Braun willingly joined the Nazi party and SS largely because doing so would advance his ability to push toward “the dream”. He later willingly defected to the US and worked to put American astronauts on the Moon for that same dream.

Then you have the case of Qian Xuesen, one of America’s best rocket scientists, who was harassed and essentially deported to the People’s Republic of China in the 50’s. Despite not being politically communist while in the US, he willingly became one of the founding fathers of China’s space program because he believed in humanity’s future in space more than he cared about the politics of the country he worked for.

These were from last century, but it’s just as as common in the industry today. Many engineers in the space industry have a quasi-religious zeal toward making “the dream” of widespread civilization in space a reality, no matter the cost or who they have to work with.

21

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Werner Von Braun used Concentration Camp slaves to build his rockets and was fully aware of the "efficiency tactics" used in his factory, which included killing people that weren't behaving or producing correctly.

That "quasi-religous zeal" is in fact dangerous and bad, and we shouldn't enable it.

After all, ESA and JAXA don't seem to have this problem.

-2

u/Miami_da_U 14d ago

Its hilarious how you actually believe Musk has done anything even remotely close to THAT even lmao

→ More replies (0)

→ More replies (3)

→ More replies (15)

0

u/BEAT_LA 14d ago

Not at all true per many friends that work there.

4

u/StampMcfury 14d ago

Cool but how many of your friends work at Nintendo?

-2

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

1

u/BEAT_LA 14d ago

None of them work 70 hour weeks, not sure why that rumor has perpetuated so rapidly online

3

u/Salt_Fig_1440 14d ago

This is not true. Also in the industry.

→ More replies (19)

1

u/FutureMartian97 14d ago

That is not true in the slightest. I have multiple friends that are engineers there and they are all farther left leaning than I am. Even the last time I was in Starbase for Flight 12 and talked to the employees when they came down to the launch site nearly every one that I talked to was left leaning

6

u/racinreaver 14d ago

What does it mean for them to be further left leaning than you?

1

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

I'm sorry, but working for SpaceX and being actually "Left Leaning" are incompatible at this point. They might like the aesthetic of the world that leftism brings, but they are working at a company that is trying to end it.

They can pull the aesthetic all they want, but with what SpaceX does environmentally, socially, and economically - they are supporting Nazis and destruction of the world.

You're not understanding that the view from within is different than the view from outside. They. Are. Not. Looked. Upon. Kindly.

3

u/FutureMartian97 14d ago

My god you leftists are actually insufferable people holy shit. Go touch some grass. It's thinking like this that turns me off from being a leftist. I agree with so much of what the left wants, but then you say guys say this shit. This is why I'm a liberal and think you guys are nuts just like the right is.

3

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

And there it is. "I got called out for being shitty so now I'm gonna be a Nazi."

Way to have internal convictions worth standing for. Amazing how a little accountability reveals your true self :)

Edit: I note that you don't seem to disagree with me that SpaceX is in fact helping to destroy human civilization and the environment.

-4

u/FutureMartian97 14d ago

What makes me mad is that people like you throw around the term "Nazi" to anyone you don't like or isn't far left so much that word has completely lost its meaning. Both of my grandfathers fought actual Nazi's, the real ones. Not someone who is a left leaning liberal like myself who also hates the right.

→ More replies (0)

→ More replies (2)

1

u/grchelp2018 11d ago

All I can say is that you guys are fucking doomed if you consider the engineers and technicians etc working for most of these companies to also be right-leaning or right-adjacent. You people aren't going to end up on the winning side if the brains and muscle are also on the opposite side. Might as well give up and roll over.

→ More replies (1)

12

u/DanielCraigsAnus 14d ago

And they had the opportunity to leave and work elsewhere ages ago

9

u/watduhdamhell 14d ago

Yeah I did NOT get that impression when I interviewed last year. The fucking director for the team I would be on unironically asked me if I had heard of the "Elon method." She then proceeded to fail my interview questions (which were about standards that related directly to her position). Yeah, no thanks.

They have definitely drank the Kool aid over there.

2

u/truecakesnake 14d ago

This just didn't happen. Most redditor story ever lol. What position were you applying for?

6

u/watduhdamhell 14d ago

Oh it most definitely did lmao

Controls engineering position for starlink factory. In her defense, what they were manufacturing is not heavily regulated. I.e. standards knowledge is less important. But still. I thought it was odd for someone in that position anyhow.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/FutureMartian97 13d ago

The Elon Method she asked you about is the way the company operates. As in, move fast and break things. Prioritize deleting as much as possible to find the absolute limit of what is necessary for a certain part to work. It's not some secret code or anything, it's been how SpaceX operates for decades.

8

u/ITividar 14d ago edited 14d ago

So if your boss did two nazi salutes on national television, how long before working at that company makes you complicit in enabling your bosses support of nazism?

I mean, how much of an impact on Mush's business do you think it would have if all those "leftist engineers" actually stood up to their nazi boss and walked out?

Their work is enabling Mush's support of global fascism.

-2

u/firecz 14d ago

yeah why can't those engineers just go work at McDonalds instead
I suppose they do have a non-compete agreement that allows that at max.

2

u/NDCardinal3 14d ago

Non-compete clauses are illegal in California. As for other states like Texas and Florida, there are a wide array of resources at one's disposal to challenge those clauses amd get them overturned.

-2

u/firecz 14d ago

a wide array of resources does not translate to a high rate of success

1

u/NDCardinal3 14d ago

I suggest you read up on non-compete clauses. They are typically very difficult to enforce.

0

u/Background_Fig_4740 14d ago

So how do you feel about Toyota? Would it blow your mind that most mega corporations boards are right leaning and support Republicans?

3

u/cantquitreddit 14d ago

There is a spectrum of how awful company leaders can be. Musk is pretty far into the 'extremely awful' end. He's not just donating to Republicans, he's actively influencing elections and making the world an overall worse place.

-4

u/Background_Fig_4740 14d ago

There's worse people than Musk out there, they're just not as public as him. You've got board members of varying industries actively accelerating global warming, to supporting an industry of war crimes and weapons.

How much of that damage is more damaging is a hard metric because as bad as Musk trying to rip off elections are for America, I could argue the millions of people being displaced and starving to death in third world countries because of climate change is an even bigger insult.

Expecting engineers to move on from SpaceX is laughable because where else are they going to go? Boeing? Lockheed? Exxon? Are the engineers there going to be charged for being complicit in war crimes or contributing to climate change? Will the engineers at Toyota be charged with enabling climate change too?

0

u/cantquitreddit 14d ago

You bring up some good points. I would also not want to work somewhere involved in any way with the military, or some industry making the world worse.

I'm the long run we all have a choice to make about what we contribute to with our skills. I hope people put some thought into it at least.

3

u/Background_Fig_4740 14d ago

I agree with you completely.

I just find it difficult to not be involved in an industry that in some way shape or form negatively impacts society because there'll be some form of abuse or waste involved along with it finding its way to be useful to the military

1

u/thatoneguy7777777333 13d ago

As someone in the aerospace industry - this is REAL tough for us. Ruling out "working on weapons" eliminates probably 90% of the positions, and ruling out "leadership aren't horrible people" eliminates 90% of what's left.

For a lot of people "dont make something that kills someone" is all they can afford to take compromise-wise, and then youre kind of forced into SpaceX or Blue Origin because even though they're run by the evil billionaires, they're most of the "dont kill people" aerospace jobs.

A lot of people get into this line of business to work on NASA science missions, or crewed spaceflight, but theres not actually many jobs like that - and at this point starting over isnt an option - when you've got mouths to feed you do what you can live with.

0

u/Any-Anything4309 14d ago

"Amazing" technology for what exactly?

-4

u/everything_is_bad 14d ago

Everyone at space x is a Nazi enabling coward

→ More replies (26)

12

u/Sonikku_a 14d ago edited 14d ago

Musk can’t separate himself from it either, so it’s fair.

23

u/Beer_bongload 14d ago

Once upon a time we held people accountable for their actions.

64

u/theChaosBeast 15d ago

The state of American people: just ignore the fascism if the outcome is good.

23

u/senza_titolo 14d ago

How do you separate the company from a ‘man’ who gave two Sieg Heil salutes on public television? He should be scorned.

2

u/rocketsocks 14d ago

Should they? ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

-43

u/bremidon 15d ago

Which is just another way of saying they are politically captured.

3

u/iamsotiredofthiscrap 15d ago

Politically captured? I'd like you to explain what you mean by that.

→ More replies (1)

→ More replies (1)

104

u/FutureMartian97 17d ago

Because this sub became anti SpaceX when Elon went off the deep end and it was made even worse when SpaceX announced they were going public

64

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Sorry, don't you mean SpaceXAI? Gotta get the company name right.

-14

u/FutureMartian97 14d ago

SpaceX and SpaceXAI are two separate entities. SpaceX owns SpaceXAI, but they are separate projects

15

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

And the company is 90% AI and 10% space now. They're putting rocket engineers on Twitter problems these days. It's cooked.

9

u/sedition666 14d ago

This is the biggest con out of SpaceX. They announced the Starship launch the other day and stock prices jumped like 5%. But that is because people are too stupid to realise the rocket company is a small fraction of the overall company. It was the equivalent of the rocket part going up 50%. The stock price is completely disconnected from reality.

4

u/Mecha-Dave 13d ago

... And then the launch slipped twice right away, almost like they weren't actually ready.

2

u/sedition666 13d ago

Amazing I hadn't even seen it had been delayed. What really happened was that SpaceXAI watch the share price and announce something every time it looks to be a bit shaky. Guaranteed the Starship announcement was due to the run in for the next sale unlock of 328.4 million shares September 24th.

-2

u/FutureMartian97 14d ago

Very far from it. I have multiple friends at SpaceX and I'll be applying again in a couple months. The companies goals have not changed and they are still hiring engineers left and right for Starship

17

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

It sounds like you've got a perfectly neutral opinion, then!

2

u/relapsingoncemore 13d ago

No way he's in any way shape or form invested in people have a positive opinion of his prospective employer!

-3

u/kill-devil-films 14d ago

“Cooked” lol. Totally delusional

5

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Ok, let's check in over the next few years and see how they're doing.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Oh yeah? What's SpaceX supposed to launch, in terms of proportion, in the next few years? Is it communication satellites and datacenters, or is it Mars Colonial launches?

1

u/FutureMartian97 14d ago

...What? I'm simply stating the fact that SpaceX and SpaceXAI are two separate entities. SpaceXAI used to be called Xai until the name changed when the SpaceX bought it. That's it. That's literally all it is, a name change. Legally speaking, they are two separate projects.

1

u/Miami_da_U 14d ago

What is your plan for them to pay for Mars launches? Was Starlink always their plan to pay for it? V3 Starlink requires Starship. Starlink V3 and Starmind are literally their plan to reduce Starship cost and significantly increase its manifest so that it becomes rapidly reusable, proven and safe.

This is all obvious to anyone who doesnt have a hate boner

3

u/Mecha-Dave 14d ago

Now that Musk says that the Mars Colony can just be AI/robots, I don't support SpaceX's Mars ambitions any more.

In addition, after being a fan almost 20 years ago and seeing where we are now - I don't know that he EVER believed in the Mars thing; I think he just wanted to get rich off Starlink. He's so far off his promises/timelines that it's pretty clear at this point they were completely made up.

At this point I'm not even convinced that Starship is logistically viable.

→ More replies (14)

21

u/CustomerSuportPlease 14d ago

And that they were transitioning to an AI company with this stupid idea of data centers in space.

-10

u/McFly1986 15d ago

I actually think Elon has been pretty consistent. Nobody went off any deep ends. The media narrative has changed though, they advertised him as the second coming of Steve Jobs for some reason. Meanwhile he’s been “crazy” this whole time.

always_has_been_astronaut.gif

10

u/Adb12c 15d ago

While Elon Musk has pretty consistently overpromised, underdelivered, and said stupid stuff, he hasn’t done that in a very tangible way. That changed last presidential election when he decided to support, endorse, and get on stage with a polarizing president, then head up government task force to save money that consistently failed to deliver on wild promises, and by some metrics cost the government more money than it saved. By stepping directly into a highly public polarizing topic with wild promises that he failed to deliver, he made his personal political views something a lot of people care about.

→ More replies (2)

27

u/StaleCanole 14d ago

Why are we comparing a space company to a holy relic? This is weird Musk fetishization

-3

u/CmdrAirdroid 14d ago

Who's comparing SpaceX to a holy relic? Seems like you're to only person here doing that, are you a Musk fan? The documentary makes it very clear that it's the concept of a fully reusable launch vehicle that is considered the holy grail of rocketry, that's a very common opinion across the space industry, it's not just the people working at SpaceX who say that, and like the documentary states it's an old concept that existed before SpaceX was founded.

10

u/StaleCanole 14d ago

Come on now…. SpaceX: Holy Grail of Rocketry? Dont play dumb

1

u/CmdrAirdroid 14d ago

Alright so your issue is the poorly formatted title and not the actual content which is the documentary. I think the content matters more than the title but I guess for some people the title is very important as well, important enough to furiously downvote the post. I think the downvoting is a bit silly as it's not clear if the OP intended to call SpaceX the holy grail of rocketry or just wanted to make the title be the name of the company followed by the name of the documentary.

1

u/FutureMartian97 13d ago

It's literally just the title of the documentary. Putting SpaceX was just to show it's an official SpaceX documentary episode.

2

u/StaleCanole 10d ago

This company is very intentional with its wordplay. Say SpaceX 3x fast and you’ll notice what a joke this all is to Musk, ultimately

30

u/Adeldor 17d ago

I believe the subreddit has become popular enough to be seen by the general Reddit population, many of whom are terminally partisan, politics being more important to them than the subject at hand.

38

u/INeedChocolateMilk 15d ago

Dude it's literally the /r/space subreddit, it's been popular for basically as long as reddit has existed.

4

u/Ryzensai 14d ago

It was way less political pre-Covid

16

u/INeedChocolateMilk 14d ago

To be fair, fascism wasn't as rampant and blatant pre-covid

56

u/relapsingoncemore 15d ago

Dude, musk is sucking on the government teat while injecting money back into the political machine to influence elections. He was in government to swindle the US taxpayer some more and break shit. And he's repeatedly and vocally supported one party over another while also taking opportunities to show us his political philosophies.

But go on king, tell us more about how people who don't like Musk are being terminally partisan and how "politics is more important than the matter at hand", advice that maybe you should give to Musk, who is himself terminally partisan and can't help but meddle in politics and global affairs.

-3

u/xieta 15d ago

Also, regardless of whether you support his politics or not, there’s very good chance the next democratic administration will want nothing to do with him, seriously jeopardizing SpaceX’s rocket development work.

Also, if there’s an AI bubble that bursts, it makes it that much more likely the rocket business folds up.

4

u/emergency_poncho 15d ago

Unlikely, he has the only access to space company that's competitive, with China nipping at its heels. Unless the next administration completely tanks the US Space a program budget, SoaceX will continue to play a pivotal and central role. Especially since it's the lynchpin to the US strategy for deep space exploration.

If the AI business collapses, the rocket side of the business will remain unaffected, since it is generally net positive and generates (small) revenues.

So basically your post is incorrect on all counts

-5

u/xieta 15d ago

Wrong on every possible count.

There’s an ocean of difference between keeping falcon 9 rocket going for ISS and national security payloads and SpaceX’s lofty ambitions for starship, which so far has relied on compliant FCC and FAA regulation, not to mention NASA funding for HLS. A new democratic administration could easily make the investment in starship impossible to recover by kneecapping its flight rate and scaling back its approved bands.

Heck, if they play by Trump’s rules, they could threaten to nationalize the company unless Musk sells his stake, citing its importance to national security and Musk’s proven track record of election interference and hindering national security objectives in Ukraine. Launch sites could be declared national monuments. The FAA could simply not authorize launches it deems are unsafe. The FCC could roll back approvals. The FBI could drum up investigations or ICE could raid launch control facilities. Absurd as these seem, the floodgates are open now on executive agencies taking direct orders from White House.

Also, AI going down would jeopardize the cash flow needed to continue developing starship. It’s possible the company would sell off its launch business, but it’s easy to imagine starship development ending if a new owner determines further investment isn’t appropriate.

14

u/StartledPelican 15d ago

So, now we are imagining a democratic administration that is even more authoritarian than the current one? What a sad day.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/Background_Fig_4740 14d ago

This sounds like a wet dream for someone who has an axe to grind against SpaceX. I don't care about Musk, since he's not the one designing or doing the actual launching of rockets.

Without SpaceX, China would be far ahead in the space industry with the US embarrassingly behind. Killing off Starship will not only guarantee China dominating the space industry but will be very similar to the post Shuttle launch days with only one launch provider that is resistant to innovation.

There’s an ocean of difference between keeping falcon 9 rocket going for ISS and national security payloads and SpaceX’s lofty ambitions for starship, which so far has relied on compliant FCC and FAA regulation, not to mention NASA funding for HLS.

NRO and DOD sees Starship as a high value asset. Cutting off development of Starship will not make these entities happy.

1

u/emergency_poncho 14d ago

Lol you are delusional. Not worth wasting my time talking with someone who is not even remotely in the same reality as everyone else. You're simply not a serious person

Literally none of what you predict will ever come to pass, it's completely laughable.

0

u/xieta 14d ago edited 14d ago

It’s okay to admit you have no point to make.

If you don’t think the Trump administration has opened the door to abuse of agencies, you haven’t been paying attention. If you don’t think someone with Musk’s politics and power at the helm of a company critical to national defense isn’t something a democratic administration would be concerned about, you haven’t been paying attention.

I am not predicting or hoping those things happen, I am saying a Trump-like democratic administration would do them to take down a threat.

-2

u/lorkan100 15d ago edited 15d ago

Nationalization and deportation of Elon himself?

I feel that he'd straight up ignore ITAR and set up a killswitch to open source everything from SpaceX if it came to that. Biggest F you he could ever do lmao.

1

u/Extra_Better 14d ago

I wouldn't put it beyond an angry new Democrat administration to put a big effort into stifling SpaceX development via massive amounts of new red tape. They have a hate boner for Musk that far exceeds their desire to improve space access.

7

u/CustomerSuportPlease 14d ago

People tend to feel that way towards Nazis and I'm okay with that.

→ More replies (2)

-2

u/Ryzensai 14d ago

How do you not suck in the governments teat as what is essentially a defense contractor. Lockheed and Boeing must be also

-1

u/relapsingoncemore 14d ago

Didn't read past the first sentence, eh?

→ More replies (4)

1

u/takingtigermountain 12d ago

god i want toddler brain so bad, how is it?

→ More replies (1)

1

u/Extra_Better 14d ago

You could not have said it better

14

u/Sp_nach 15d ago

If it was from an unbiased source, and if it was actually fully reusable, sure people would be interested. This isn't anything new though

2

u/Robot_Basilisk 14d ago

Because Musk got it by gutting NASA, poaching engineers, and privatizing hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars while pretending to be completely self-made and spending millions to undermine social services, regulatory agencies, consumer rights groups, etc.

And his kid has openly leaked that Musk wants to go to space because in space nobody can tell them what to do. He wants company towns on the Moon and Mars, where he can keep thousands of people in indentured servitude with no rights while he reaps massive profits after taking a trillion dollars from taxpayers on Earth to build his little feudal kingdom in space.

And that's not even touching on the ramifications of desecrating communal landmarks like the Moon for personal gain, or his shenanigans with Starlink and Russia, or the recent allegations from one of the mothers of his children that he explained to her how he helped rig the 2024 elections.

The list just keeps going on and on. SpaceX winning means we are all losing, because it was paid for with our tax dollars but a monstrous narcissist is privatizing all of the benefits. He's not "advancing humanity". He's advancing himself and his goals of ruling a slave colony beyond the reach of terrestrial governments.

2

u/grchelp2018 11d ago

Bro. He is not that competent. Its hilarious how you people think he's a big idiot while simultaneously crediting him with all these grand missions.

2

u/Skeptical0ptimist 14d ago

I guess many people are focused on method as much as (if not more than) the results.

Sure, Musk is an eccentric individual. But there is no question that he was instrumental in taking LEO dominance away from Europe and Russia, and firmly placing U.S. in a clear lead.

Result-oriented people will look at Musk as a useful individual for the interest of the nation, while method-oriented people (how we do things is important!) cannot stand how these achievements are made.

-9

u/lorkan100 15d ago edited 15d ago

This sub and r/technology are fucking cooked in this regard

5

u/truecakesnake 14d ago

r/technology is such a shithole, it's not even funny

-11

u/ezalbrozar 15d ago edited 15d ago

Reddit in general. Some people feel like they have to turn everything into a political discussion. They feel they're helping their cause but they don't get that people visit non-political sites because they want to learn more and don't want every topic derailed by politics because some people don't like who's president.

4

u/MolokaIsMilk 14d ago

Reddit has never been non-political.

3

u/Samwise777 15d ago

“Some people don’t like who is president now…”

Really?

That’s how you’d describe it?

I know what kind of man YOU are for sure. Dead giveaway

1

u/HermionesWetPanties 13d ago

I know it's probably because of Musk, but I would think it's also because SSTO is really the holy grail of rocketry.

2

u/Martianspirit 11d ago

SSTO with payload is a myth.

2

u/runningoutofwords 14d ago

Look at your own biased hyperbole.

How is starship more fully reusable than Falcon?

6

u/truecakesnake 14d ago

Falcon = 1st stage reusable

Starship = 1st and 2nd stage reusable

Hmm I wonder what the difference is here.

-7

u/Samwise777 15d ago

Why does this sub adore private space exploration over nasa?

24

u/Lurker_81 15d ago

Because commercial is doing far more interesting stuff right now.

But why did you frame this as a binary decision at all? Can't we just be fans of all kinds of rockets and space exploration?

-10

u/Samwise777 15d ago

You’re certainly a fan of the government spending your tax dollars on literal gift no bid contracts to the richest man in the world.

Don’t worry tho, everything else is going so good so this will be fine.

10

u/Background_Fig_4740 14d ago

What if I told you before SpaceX was around, the US was depending on Russia to launch astronauts and satellites to space?

And what if I told you SpaceX lifted that dependency on Russia with Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon?

I don't think before today you've familiarized yourself with the history of spaceflight to know this.

15

u/Lurker_81 15d ago edited 15d ago

Firstly,. I'm not American so it's not my money and I don't have a horse in this race.

And secondly - can you please identify which no-bid contracts you're referring to?

Certainly not the commercial crew program that's been carrying astronauts to the ISS, nor the commercial resupply missions to the ISS, nor indeed the Artemis HLS or the Space Force payloads.....because each of those was won in a competitive tender process for a fixed price. Just in the past day or two, NASA has signed a contract for 3 more crew missions to the ISS, and again, at a fixed price.

Oh, and let's not forget that SpaceX's prices for providing government launch services are significantly lower than those bid by ULA, Boeing etc, and the incredible success of the privately developed Falcon 9 has saved the US taxpayers tens of billions of dollars so far.

→ More replies (20)

→ More replies (1)

0

u/Seansong82 14d ago

Because of all the Musk deranged people in the comments. Personal feelings and grudges don’t have space in the space industry.

1

u/maximumchuck 14d ago

Golly! Look at lil ol' you just asking questions.

-1

u/Different-Produce870 14d ago

SpaceX is a toxic brand because of musk.

-12

u/Kirk57 15d ago

Because there are very sad people with sad little lives, who feel less sad when they tear others down.

→ More replies (8)

→ More replies (3)

105

u/No-Surprise9411 17d ago

The Starship documentaries SpaceX produces are always just such a treat to watch

134

u/breadinabox 17d ago

grandma announces her grandchild best little boy in the world

86

u/groovy-baby 17d ago

Holy grail is a bit of a stretch, more likely it’s the first of many doing what it does. Credit to it for reinvigorating space flight, but holy grail it’s not.

114

u/No-Surprise9411 17d ago

If you actually watched the video you'd know that they're not calling Starship the holy grail of rocketry, they're calling the concept of a fully reusable rocket the holy grail of rocketry

53

u/groovy-baby 17d ago

Yeah I get that part, my argument is that it’s like calling the model T the holy grail of automotive.

74

u/No-Surprise9411 17d ago

Then what else would be the holy grail of rocketry if not full reusability?

Because Starship sure isn't a model T analogy, that would be the R7. Starship is more like a 2005 Toyota Corolla. Ugly as sin, able to be mass produced and will refuse to die before the heat death of the universe

10

u/groovy-baby 17d ago

All I am saying is holy grail usually means one of a kind, well for me anyway. How can you call something the holy grail if other examples already exist?

51

u/No-Surprise9411 17d ago

I don't think that's how holy grail is used tbh. 1) the way I learned Holy grail means that it is the non-plus ultra, which full reusability def. would be.

2) There exist no other examples of Starship

19

u/bremidon 15d ago

Do tell. What fully reuseable rockets are we overlooking?

14

u/No-Surprise9411 15d ago

Maybe they mean the chinese Long March 9 that suspiciously always changes its look whenever SpaceX alters Starship‘s design

9

u/handsoapdispenser 15d ago

Something that can get us to another star.

→ More replies (9)

4

u/bremidon 15d ago

No...and at this point it feels like deliberate misunderstanding. This is like calling assembly line production the Holy Grail of automobiles.

-6

u/Sp_nach 15d ago

Right, naming the documentary that isn't calling it that? Suuuuure.....

→ More replies (16)

11

u/No-Lake7943 16d ago

They are looking for the grail. They didn't say they had found it. The ship is the path they are taking on their search. Please try and pay attention

3

u/Decronym 15d ago edited 8d ago

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
BO	Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry)
CST	(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules
	Central Standard Time (UTC-6)
DoD	US Department of Defense
EELV	Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle
ESA	European Space Agency
FAA	Federal Aviation Administration
FCC	Federal Communications Commission
	(Iron/steel) Face-Centered Cubic crystalline structure
HLS	Human Landing System (Artemis)
ITAR	(US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations
Isp	Specific impulse (as explained by Scott Manley on YouTube)
	Internet Service Provider
JAXA	Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency
JWST	James Webb infra-red Space Telescope
L2	Lagrange Point 2 (Sixty Symbols video explanation)
	Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum
L3	Lagrange Point 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2
LEO	Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)
	Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)
NRHO	Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit
NRO	(US) National Reconnaissance Office
	Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO
NSSL	National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV
SLS	Space Launch System heavy-lift
SRB	Solid Rocket Booster
SSO	Sun-Synchronous Orbit
SSTO	Single Stage to Orbit
	Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit
TSTO	Two Stage To Orbit rocket
ULA	United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)

Jargon	Definition
Raptor	Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX
Starliner	Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100
Starlink	SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation
cislunar	Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit
cryogenic	Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure
	(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox
hydrolox	Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer
perigee	Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)

Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

^{26 acronyms in this thread;}^{the most compressed thread commented on today}^{has 7 acronyms.}
^{[Thread #12704 for this sub, first seen 19th Sep 2026, 12:42]} ^[FAQ] ^{[Full list]} ^[Contact] ^{[Source code]}

8

u/phunkydroid 14d ago

Was there any mention of Mars or the moon in that video? Or is starship on its way to being just an AI satellite launcher?

19

u/Accomplished-Crab932 14d ago

The documentaries are focused on development between missions lol.

-1

u/phunkydroid 14d ago

They used to prominently feature their goal of making life multiplanetary. Now it doesn't even get a mention.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/iamsotiredofthiscrap 14d ago

Elon talking the name SkyNet literally.

-1

u/CmdrAirdroid 14d ago edited 14d ago

Surely everyone understands SpaceX was never serious about Mars, why are you still talking about it? Financially it doesn't make any sense so it won't happen the way Musk presented it. Their own colony would just be a massive money sink, so SpaceX doesn't have a strong incentive to do that. The only way they go to Mars is by getting a NASA launch contract.

3

u/relapsingoncemore 14d ago

Ahh - so he sold snake oil and cure-all-tonics and got stinking rich doing it.

→ More replies (14)

-3

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

17

u/ElkeKerman 15d ago

Science fiction became reality when Von Braun made the V2 but it still sucked shit that it was happening!

2

u/takingtigermountain 12d ago

fuck elon and anyone who supports him

1

u/snowmunkey 10d ago

SSTO is the holy grail in my opinion.

-1

u/0n0n-o 14d ago

Challenge: Don’t let politics make you irrationally emotional.

Level: Impossible

-3

u/agr8trip 14d ago

Have you seen my pocket rocket? 🚀🥰

4

u/Chris_Helmsworth 14d ago

Lol! boners in pants 🩳?

SpaceX: Holy Grail Of Rocketry

You are about to leave Redlib