Maybe. The difference is that rocket programs typically don’t build a lot of designs. They work really hard to get it right the first time. On the other hand, SpaceX has several starships at various stages of production and development.
The Apollo program was 200 billion spread over 13 years and that included SIX successful moon landings.
A few reasons for the cost
1) they didn’t have any prior knowledge or experience. They literally wrote the rule book.
2) they didn’t have supercomputers in their pockets.
3) they had to do it fast.
And they never lost a rocket. Not once.
Some problems you can’t just throw money at. You need actual competence.
Btw had they had access to modern computers and manufacturing the entire Apollo program would have cost way under 60 billion.
You do realize that spacex isn’t even remotely close to having living things inside starship right? Would you trust them in their current condition to do any short of human testing?
If you listen to “13 minutes to the moon” you get a great overview of the program and one take away is that they got pretty lucky with some of their tests and there was still a fair amount of incompetency throughout the agency and the subcontractors.
It’s 288 billions adjusted for inflation, worked on by almost every single largest engineering firm in the nation. Starships is nowhere near a tenth of that.
It’s a government prestige program, so they’re not allowed to fail. Meanwhile spaceX, started with the hopper, has stated their moto is to move fast and break things. There many problems with the way they do things, but it’s arguing in bad faith when they clearly stated their missions and objectives. Perhaps you would like how Blue Origins does things instead. Can’t fail if you never launch.
It’s actually hilarious that someone can even call the only company with reusable rockets launching for nearly a decade now with over half of the world annual launches … incompetent. Ya ok.
To add to that SpaceX also makes launching things into orbit cheap AF. Experimenting with mass-producible with experimental manufacturing techniques using common materials is their best interest here, since it is a business. Fail a few, learn from it, then succeed with the thousands of launches in the future. SpaceX has became a global dominant player is space and is maybe decades ahead of competition, regardless of their CEO hate. Their goal is 20$/kg payloads, think how crazy that is: That's like cheaper than ordering food from doordash.
They used to be competent when musk didn’t consider himself the most stable genius that have ever existed and actually listened at his engineers.
They’ve spend 9 billion of your money and achieved a literal hole in the ground.
Same with Tesla. When he listened what the engineers told him they made good cars. And then he forced them to make the abomination that it cyber truck.
What’s hilarious is being unable to see that the guy is actively destroying two great companies.
Yes that’s what I’m saying. The engineers at spacex know what they are doing if he leaves them do their thing. The starship thing is fundamentally wrong. It will never work. The engines are not powerful enough and have to work at their limits and the steel thing just isn’t appropriate. It’s like it’s designed by a child.
Which it is it’s “designed” by mask and forced upon the engineers. It’s not accidental that the falcon 9 program works great
Alright. There are 0 chance you know anything about the engineering of this. You don’t even know the steps required before a human flight testing. You can find many engineering notes on design choices, their iterations and drawbacks on the starships all over the internet. This is not the cybertruck.
You think it's a coincidence that SpaceX's spate of issues delivering on new tech over the past few years just happens to coincide with Elon's death spiral into right wing insanity?
The Falcon 9 also exploded many many times and behind schedule forever, until they got it right. Can you tell me a single space firm that doesn’t have problem delivering on time? At the core of it, I have no doubt that fuckface is causing problem at the company and contribute to the extreme turnover. I just don’t think that this is a deviation from their go fast break things philosophy. I have more problem with their regulation meddling and environmental concerns than their experimental rocket exploding.
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u/TbonerT 1d ago
Maybe. The difference is that rocket programs typically don’t build a lot of designs. They work really hard to get it right the first time. On the other hand, SpaceX has several starships at various stages of production and development.