KEY POINTS
- Elon Musk said SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” because of threats by Donald Trump to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
- Musk’s announcement on his social media site X escalated a war of words with Trump that began after the Tesla CEO criticized the major tax bill being pushed by the Republican president.
- A SpaceX Dragon capsule brought two NASA astronauts back to Earth in March after they were stranded for months at the International Space Station by a Boeing Starliner capsule.
What’s the threat here? If you don’t give me money then I won’t spend it?
Do it, bring back NASA into full force and increase their budget.
I suspect Trump will more likely move more of the R&D under the auspices of the USSF (ie the Space Force). He can’t claim to have “created” NASA, but the space force is his baby.
Dominance of this country is being fought over by a couple of petty 12 year old tyrants. It’s like a version of that Twilight Zone where the powerful kid is surrounded by people trying not to upset him, except the kids are drug-addled and senile.
Why do I feel like the entire government is based off a 2yo building a house of cards with his bully from school.
Because you have a firm grasp of reality?
And this is why billionaires should not control vital resources
But they always do.
I’m okay if billionaires exist, but their political and economic power should be somehow kept in check
Money is political and economic power. You CANNOT have one without the other.
doesn’t need to be
go get money out of politics
remove citizens united and all that
That won’t end corruption
There is no magic system that will allow us all to live in a world where we don’t have to be ever vigilant against corruption. That will ALWAYS be the price of freedom. FOREVER. But we can make it easier on ourselves. Good laws can’t solve all our problems, but they can keep them manageable.
Good laws, like capping personal wealth?
then work harder against corruption
by removing billionaires
by making sure they cant spend their money on stuff their not supposed to, like buying politicians
Nope. No one person ever needs anything near that amount of money.
Agreed. No one should have that much wealth. Saying it is fine is like saying cancer is fine for a body.
I’m okay with billionaires if the government provides a UBI of ten million a year. A hundred years of UBI seems like a fair amount for someone to own if they worked really hard and inherited a nice house. Houses are one of the only things I think should be inherited.
The same spacex that hasn’t had a launch since trump took office?
The SpaceX that got 3 billion dollars to get us to Mars and didn’t get beyond blowing up a banana over the Indian ocean, that one yes
I think I’d laugh myself unconscious if Trump nationalized Space X.
I have said before I will eat both of my socks if a SpaceX rocket and ship fly humans to the moon and safely return by 2030.
I will also eat both of my socks if a two bit mob boss turned fascist nationalizes any significant corporate or industrial anything.
Fascists don’t outright nationalize shit, because if they did, the entire oligarch class that is a huge part of their support base would turn on them instantly.
Fascists make deals with, facilitate, get kick backs from corporate oligarchs.
They essentially never seize their assets outright, because that would undermine the entire capitalist system that the corpos rely on, and support fascists so that they will keep getting tax breaks and grants and other government subsidies.
Ah but you’re basing this analysis on competent historical fascists
Find me a fascist movement/party/figure that’s formally controlled a state for more than 20 years, that’s outlasted its big special leader boy… you know, a ‘competent’ one.
Mussolini’s lasted 21 years, and he was waaaay younger than Trump when he started.
… Are you going to call Mussolini ‘competent’?
Fascists are definitionally incompetent and irrational, they are literally anti-Truth with a capital T, the philosophical, as close to objective and reasonable ‘truth’ we can get.
But, they are also very well definable by understanding that if they fuck with the money too hard, the money will fuck them back.
You’re almost certainly right, but since the situation is already off the rails, I just figured I’d throw nationalization out there for laughs.
I’ve been saying for years that it needs to be nationalized. And this is a really good time to do so; Elon is showing that him being in charge is a national security risk.
But Trump 100% doesn’t have the guts to do it.
That’s the CO part of the TACO
Trump would rather just give the ISS transport job back to his bff putin
Not likely, Trump is pro privatization.
nationalise, and then privatise?
Claim Musk is a dangerous foreign influence and force a sale like for Tiktok
SNASA is that you?
Lil NASA X
Gaddammit that’s annoyingly good.
The IP trace shows it’s coming from the SMoon!!!
He’ll just flog it to someone more compliant.
Yeah, I doubt he could manage that.
WE’RE NOT GOING TO MARS, YOU FUCKING NAZI ASSCLOWN. IT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA.
NASA HAS LAUNCHED MANY ROCKETS FOR MANY DECADES. YOU BLOW SHIT UP BECAUSE YOU THINK THE RULES OF PHYSICS AND MECHANICS DONT APPLY TO YOU.
EVERYTHING WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU WERE DEPORTED TO A BLACK SITE.
FUCK YOU, ELMO
Going to Mars is a fucking great idea.
And frankly SpaceXs rapid testing isn’t a big deal. It’s lead to decent results.
Musks sucks, but SpaceX isn’t why.
Deliberately burning up a viable planet and blowing all your resources to go to a dead planet is fucking stupid on every level and every metric. Absolutely indefensible.
fred randall already went to mars
What about Fred Durst?
fred randall > fred durst
What results?
Falcon9 bring the cost of launching something to LEO down by an order of magnitude?
Plus without SpaceX, our only ride to space would be the Soyuz
Ariane would like a word.
I’m not aware of any human rated spacecraft being launched with Ariane. I know there were some concepts for at least Ariane 5, and it would be cool for Europe to be independent on this.
Ariane has an astronaut ferry and reentry vehicle? That’s news to me. Also: they’re more than 2x as expensive per kg to orbit.
Soooooo… Kind of…
I didn’t check the cargo numbers but for Crewed missions we have some nice estimates from the OIG in 2024 based on the crew program development costs and the built-in 6 flight missions we got for the contracts:
-SpaceX Dragon ~ 55 million/seat
-Boeing Starliner ~ 90 million/seat
-Russia Soyuz ~ 86 million/seat
-Space Shuttle ~ 87 million/seat (adjusted for inflation)
Soyuz was ~ 20 million a seat in 2007, 2013 it was ~ 55 million a seat, and 2014-2018 it was 62 million a seat, now it’s that 86 number.
Funny thing is happening at SpaceX recently, namely NASA used up all 6 flights that were 55 million a seat, so they needed to extend for flights 7-9 and 10-14
In February 2022 NASA Extended their contract with SpaceX for flights 7-9 at around 258 million per flight (so ~64.5 million per seat) and again in June 2022 for flights 10-14 at 288 million per flight (so ~72 million per seat)
So SpaceX came out of the gate with their handfuls of investor cash and subsidized the original contracts, but they’re likely rapidly increasing prices now that they’ve burned through most of that runway.
I wasnt really thinking about crewed mission tbh, more the cost per tonne which Space X certainly brought down dramatically (though not quite by an order of magnitude).
Nobody is going to Mars in our lifetimes
Eh, depending how old you are. I can believe somebody is going to Mars in ~50 years.
It is the end of manned space flight for the USA. Thanks MAGAts.
Blue Origin will have us doing it again. They truly are the tortoise of the race.
Yeah, let’s get the other billionaire idiot on the payroll so he can get Katy Perry to the ISS.
That would be some fireworks
Make 'em go, “Ah, ah, ah”
Blue Origin has used FAR less government money than SpaceX. That’s one of the reason they sell those trips. You have to pay for things somehow.
I mean, SpaceX has a lot more government contacts, because you know, they have working orbital vehicles…
Edit: I deleted my other post because I was mostly wrong. I didn’t realize New Glen has actually launched once. Good on them for achieving orbit.
They had way more government funding to get to the point Blue Origin is at. I’m not just talking about right now. That would be silly.
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Hell, even astra got their thing to orbit. I think. Then their stock crashed even harder.
Oops, yes they have gotten to orbit. All while using less seed money from the government. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-massive-new-glenn-rocket-into-orbit-on-1st-flight-video
Right. They built their rockets on Amazon wage theft and stock profits. Totally different than stealing directly from tax payers.
EDIT: Wage theft.
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Now, now, those were the ways of Reddit. I’d like to think we conduct ourselves better than that on Lemmy.
I’m not denying that.
Have they even achieved orbit?
Yes, NG-1 was orbital
You were down voted, but you’re correct. I had to look that up. Pretty cool, on their first attempt too. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-massive-new-glenn-rocket-into-orbit-on-1st-flight-video
Not yet
Edit: Turns out I was wrong. Their craft that was supposed to make it to orbit made it on its first attempt. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-massive-new-glenn-rocket-into-orbit-on-1st-flight-video
That’s a load bearing “yet”
Oops, I was wrong. They made it on their first attempt at it. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-massive-new-glenn-rocket-into-orbit-on-1st-flight-video
Damn that made me laugh.
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Lol, they’re the stuffed tortoise of the race.
Is he promising to leave the former US?
By launching it?
What if this is some 4d chess move to give more funding to NASA?
Didn’t they just cut a shitload from nasa like 2 days ago?
Yep, but when did Elon started turning on Trump? Not sure about the timeline of these events
You mean… By Musk? Yikes… Does anyone have to answer that? Are you new to this reality?
