Putting all eggs in one basket? That's not very smart, giving one player all the balls in the game. Otherwise it's called monopoly, in a market some like to think as "free" and "competitional". How about we look at Artemis/anythingelse and try to make it efficient instead?
That would kill one of the largest projects SpaceX is currently working on.
Additionally, SLS has successfully demonstrated their part of the Artemis program with the Artemis I launch. SpaceX has not completed a full mission for its part in Artemis III which has now been delayed and caused NASA to start implementing plan B for Artemis V and beyond missions.
It is theoretically possible that Blue Origin will land on the moon before SpaceX if Starship cannot work out all the issues in the next 2 years.
Blue Origin has successfully completed 24 launches to Space as of December 2023. To say they have never been to space is to not pay attention.
While SpaceX is far and away the leader in private space companies, with significantly higher total number of launches and innovations compared to Blue Origin, it is still possible for them to fail to execute this one specific mission before Blue Origin’s. They should not rest on their laurels because they have completed hundreds of launches. The specifics of Artemis III require SpaceX to execute several launches of systems that have never been to space, and complete maneuvers in space refueling that have never been done before. If successful it will be a huge milestone in human space missions, let alone private space operations. They can fail to do this and because of delays from NASA and other partners could possibly have this mission completed after Blue Origin’s.
Just to be clear, Artemis III was delayed first due to the legal challenge from Blue Origin, then again due to issues with the Orion capsule. SpaceX almost certainly wouldn't have been able to meet the original deadlines, but to their luck the other contributors don't have an easy time either.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. SpaceX's leadership from Gwynne Shotwell has been truly excellent. I've also heard that many other leaders have had to be quite influential in order to steer the company in a productive direction while receiving constant dictats from a major shareholder. I've heard the Starlink group is perhaps a bit of a difficult area where that shareholder has too much influence and that it lacks leadership, but other than that the company sounds well run.
Indeed, the industry was a stalled car if anything. You have what I call "professional professionals" that were running the show and saying things while doing nothing.
It’s an essential tenet of right-wing authoritarian leadership to cultivate the idea that communist reporters are out to get you and doing their best to make sure nobody hears about your heroic deeds. From Brazil to Hungary, Moscow to Silicon Valley, they all do this.
You can be Time’s Man of the Year and have Walter Isaacson write your bestseller hagiography, yet still have a persecution complex.
Even Italy’s Berlusconi liked to play this card even though he owned the media.
”The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune. He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable.”
Yeah, Time's author was hyperbolic and colorful, but in both directions. He wasn't eating out of Musk's palm:
"This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars."
This supports my point because both Hitler and Stalin received unduly favorable media attention in the 1930s, yet claimed the Western media as their enemy.
He’s getting downvoted because people are reading his comment as “thanks Elon Musk, our conservative hero” rather than “thanks Gwynne Shotwell.” I don’t know how he meant it.
I think it's important that we have strong leadership figures. They are both good leaders, whether they are conservative or not is irrelevant. I would love to think people can rise above that everything boils down to political associations(even the ones that only exist in their own head).
You mean the "major shareholder" who intervened in the Starlink division when progress was going nowhere, and suddenly progress was going somewhere?
On that note, it's funny how some people attribute results to different people depending on whether the results are good or bad, with no consistency at all regarding their responsibility.
Day-to-day leadership is performed by Gwynne. Musk is founder, majority shareholder, CTO and CEO. According to Musk himself, he spends the majority of his time at SpaceX as engineer, letting Gwynne lead the company.
Looking at the past half-ish century of space launch, good leadership* seems to be the by-far scarcest resource.
It's also possible that honeybadger1 only wanted to make a brief comment. Vs. writing an essay about the myriad causal factors and millions of people who played at least some small role in SpaceX's success.
*Using a "good" != "profit maximizing" convention.
The progress is driven by the willingness of SpaceX to constantly run at a loss, and take in more cash to incinerate on the regular. This allows it to run bleeding edge but money-losing programs that that other companies considered but rejected. This was also Tesla's model.
SpaceX has had 34, THIRTY FOUR, funding rounds. Usually 3-4 per year. They cannot operate except this way. Most investors and boards would balk at this mode of operation.
It's not good leadership, though. It's easy to spend money that others aren't willing to spend to achieve results that that other companies aren't willing to pay the price for. Progress while being capital efficient is true leadership.
Wait what? It’s not good leadership because they’re burning lots of cash? How are those two related?
That’s only makes sense in a world where SpaceX stockholders have mandated SpaceX operate at a profit. I don’t think that’s what’s happening—investors know they’re putting money into a highly risky R&D project that could take years to pay off, if ever.
So far they’ve gotten Falcon, Starlink, and Starship out of the deal. I’d say it takes pretty good leadership to achieve those results.
Meanwhile NASA’s Artemus is expected to cost $93b and so far they’ve only had one launch.
Well the worst case is a cascade of collisions if everyone gives up trying to avoid debris. But it'd only leave low earth orbit unusable, othernorbits would be still usable.
Journalists irritate me greatly when they specify imperial units yet don't always bother to give the metric equivalents. For example 10 million pounds is about 4,500 tons, or roughly 4,500,000 kg. Metric units makes far more sense anyway.
Would you enable an algorithm built into the browser, or extension, that standardizes the units to your preference, but lets you see the original value with a click?
I'm hoping we see an ecosystem of such services emerge.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadTry a Google search for "Senate Launch System", or "Space Policy Directive 1".
Every mission in the past had a fallback contractor for all components.
For Artemis due to political pressure they dropped all fallback options and use spaceX as only contractor! crazy but thats how corruption works
This is the reason Blue Origin sued some years back.
Additionally, SLS has successfully demonstrated their part of the Artemis program with the Artemis I launch. SpaceX has not completed a full mission for its part in Artemis III which has now been delayed and caused NASA to start implementing plan B for Artemis V and beyond missions.
It is theoretically possible that Blue Origin will land on the moon before SpaceX if Starship cannot work out all the issues in the next 2 years.
While SpaceX is far and away the leader in private space companies, with significantly higher total number of launches and innovations compared to Blue Origin, it is still possible for them to fail to execute this one specific mission before Blue Origin’s. They should not rest on their laurels because they have completed hundreds of launches. The specifics of Artemis III require SpaceX to execute several launches of systems that have never been to space, and complete maneuvers in space refueling that have never been done before. If successful it will be a huge milestone in human space missions, let alone private space operations. They can fail to do this and because of delays from NASA and other partners could possibly have this mission completed after Blue Origin’s.
Where spaceX has a team set up to deal with musk's bs idea to cordon others from his 'aura' when he shows up.
huh? All media is eating out of his palm, painting him as genius inventor that will save the earth.
You can be Time’s Man of the Year and have Walter Isaacson write your bestseller hagiography, yet still have a persecution complex.
Even Italy’s Berlusconi liked to play this card even though he owned the media.
Here's what the NYT said about that "hagiography":
> Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur depicts a mercurial “man-child” with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/books/review/elon-musk-wa...
https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
This was the dominant storyline in 2010-2021 until he shot his foot off with the Twitter purchase.
"This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars."
So were you in 2006.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-worker-died-sa...
i.e csb
On that note, it's funny how some people attribute results to different people depending on whether the results are good or bad, with no consistency at all regarding their responsibility.
Day-to-day leadership is performed by Gwynne. Musk is founder, majority shareholder, CTO and CEO. According to Musk himself, he spends the majority of his time at SpaceX as engineer, letting Gwynne lead the company.
It's also possible that honeybadger1 only wanted to make a brief comment. Vs. writing an essay about the myriad causal factors and millions of people who played at least some small role in SpaceX's success.
*Using a "good" != "profit maximizing" convention.
SpaceX has had 34, THIRTY FOUR, funding rounds. Usually 3-4 per year. They cannot operate except this way. Most investors and boards would balk at this mode of operation.
It's not good leadership, though. It's easy to spend money that others aren't willing to spend to achieve results that that other companies aren't willing to pay the price for. Progress while being capital efficient is true leadership.
That’s only makes sense in a world where SpaceX stockholders have mandated SpaceX operate at a profit. I don’t think that’s what’s happening—investors know they’re putting money into a highly risky R&D project that could take years to pay off, if ever.
So far they’ve gotten Falcon, Starlink, and Starship out of the deal. I’d say it takes pretty good leadership to achieve those results.
Meanwhile NASA’s Artemus is expected to cost $93b and so far they’ve only had one launch.
What could go wrong? Launch baby launch...
I'm hoping we see an ecosystem of such services emerge.