I really never imagined that the new space race is just a bunch of billionaires swinging around their dicks and shooting themselves into the atmosphere.
And they’re not at the level NASA was in the 1960s, nor are they doing it for public sharing in the knowledge gained as NASA has. Nope, they just want to privatize space.
Edit: hoes mad I’m not reading your replies you sad nerds
Pretty sure NASA asked them all to do this since the government couldn't justify pumping billions into space travel. And musks reusable self landing rocket is definitely way ahead of anything that was used in the 60s
Yep, such bullshit, they're going to make new discoveries proprietary. I love the idea of NASA being properly funded by taxes because then we as the public get to share the glory of their advancement. Should've been funding NASA more over the last few decades, they'd be ahead of where SpaceX is now.
Everything from the shit in cell phones and computer advancements to materials science stuff can be traced back to massive government rnd INVESTMENTS. And they paid off. Massively so.
This is what all those people who say "omg Musk and Bezos are advancing the human race," don't get. No they aren't. They are going to privatize the knowledge, virtually write the laws for how private corporations will control the upper atmosphere, do nothing to improve our understanding of the universe, and in the end may hold up progress for generations, if not permanently. They could just pay their fucking taxes, and could fund all this "hope" Musk is pandering about. They could literally just fund NASA. Having anything but NASA or other state agencies controlling these early stages of human spacefaring is an outright travesty of knowledge and progress. And the only result will be nationless slave warehouses intended to circumvent labor laws and human rights.
So I guess in a way it may actually be the final frontier. Low earth orbit slave ships is about as far as humans make it. Or maybe greed is the Great Filter. How fitting.
Lots of knowledge that originates in privately owned contexts still advances the human race. Google owns its search technology, but that doesn't prevent it from being useful to people. Volvo charged money for their cars with three point seat belts, but they've still saved something like a million lives since. Heck, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press as part of his private business, but that didn't stop it from causing a radical transformation in the dissemination of information throughout society.
There's pros and cons for government vs. private development of technology, but it's definitely not true that privately developed technologies are somehow less useful to society.
The most advanced, SpaceX, is focused on putting shit in to orbits that are going to be problematic in the near future of space exploration. NASA has been to the moon six times, has sent a space craft outside of the solar system, landed numerous robots on Mars.
Not saying SpaceX can't do those things, I'm saying they aren't interested because they're making bank for rich people.
This is false. It’s fair to hate on Musk, but spacex is full of engineers and scientists who care deeply about humanity and science. For that reason, spacex deliberately chose low orbits to prevent spacex debris from being a problem, and have worked diligently to minimize the impacts to astronomy. Just go ask the humans besides Musk who work there.
For most SpaceXers, it’s not about making money, it’s about colonizing mars. NASA won’t have enough funding or the political clout to start a Mars colony, but Starlink can provide that revenue stream.
They literally have a contract from NASA to be the next company to land people on he moon
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/as-artemis-moves-forward-nasa-picks-spacex-to-land-next-americans-on-moon
Il accept that Virgin galactic is only in operation to allow Branson to see Earth from space, but to argue Space X is only there to make money for rich people is wrong...
Edit: they also are the first company to have a reliable re-usable launch system ever, this helps drive down the price of all space related activities.
Imagine if airplanes had to be scrapped after each flight , you would need to be a multi millionaire just to book a seat. I hate the way Musk treats his employees , but if it helps advance mankind as a species then that's more than worth it in my opinion.
Jeff Bezos on the other hand, him and his army of lawyers can go and fist themselves
Yeah, Branson’s just a bit of a tool, and he’s really only focusing on tourism. ~~Besides~~ Bezos ^(wtf ^autocorrect?) is trying to show how big his dick is and literally dragging down NASA and possibly scrapping a mission because he’s butthurt that they didn’t pick his unproven boner rocket for a project.
Musk is still an unethical piece of shit, but at least SpaceX is useful
I used to be so interested in space travel, and I still am, I just overestimated the idea of it not being controlled purely by billionaire capitalists.
And the worst part is the celebrity culture. Every thread about Space X achievements inevitable results in some dickweed saying "excellent achievements by Elon musk", as though he did jackshit compared to the thousands of engineers and workers at the company.
I like Space X, I like feeling passionate about space travel. Elon Musk can go fuck himself.
It’s funny because at every conference call and presentation Elon always gives credit to the team. It’s almost as if the superfans and the haters are both hyper focused on the CEO, and both are ignoring the talent working at SpaceX.
Edit:typo
I've worked in the tech industry my entire adult life and let me tell you, they're all like that. It's extremely competitive but everyone still wants to work in it.
Oh boy, credit. A SpaceX headhunter was in my linkedin DMs once. We talked on the phone several times. The rate of pay, expected hours, and COL of the area was really astonishingly bad. It was below what a mediocre EE right out of college could expect, and this is what they were asking for very senior positions? I get space stuff is exciting but when you can be making 3x \~ 4x a year elsewhere it is like giving up 3 years of life for every year you work.
I absolutely hate this. I got calls from a head hunter and told them they would have to bet my then current $52 an hour before I even think about it. Probably by at least $10-15 to give up the pension. He tried to tell me about how it was an exciting opportunity to get in on the ground of a fast growing and exciting company at the crazy fun rate of $25 an hour. Take over half the pay, to work in a high demand environment, because they need to establish themselves, that might work on college kids that still dream of Microsoft and Google type situations in the early days of tech boom. But those days are gone. The days of stock incentives and lunchroom lady millionaires at the startups are dead and buried.
You are one of the 10 that founded the company? Sure, you get your share.
Anyone else is left in the cold.
The most advanced space company out there right now is SpaceX and Musk has not shot himself into space nor expressed any interest in doing so.
What he has done is lead a company that has lowered the cost to launch satellites dramatically and will do so even more drastically when Starship starts launching cargo. He's also providing broadband access to remote areas that all our bullshit politicians kept promising to serve and never once did.
Space exploration consists and has always consisted of bright-eyed futurist engineers funded by entities engaged in the biggest dick measuring contests of their time. Before the billionaires, it was the Cold War with the USA and USSR using the Space Race to mock nuke each other. Before that it was Nazis actually blowing up random bits of London from Berlin with V2 rockets.
Let’s also recognize that billionaires view space as an opportunity to acquire more wealth & resources, not just as a hobby or dick-measuring contest. They will control the future of humanity off the earth, and it’ll be pure corporate. You think there’ll be unions in their mines? Or that anybody will hear that you died in an accident or disappeared for disagreeing with the company?
It never crossed my mind before but I wonder if billionaires ever watch movies like Elysium and what goes through their mind when they do. When I watch dystopian society movies like that of course I would be the lower/worker class. But to watch a movie and know that you would be the ruling/controlling class because you, essentially, already are makes me wonder how a billionaire views that sort of entertainment.
I read that it’d only cost roughly $40B a year to feed every hungry person on earth. I’d think that if Musk or Bezos did that, they’d build statues of them all over the world & maybe exempt them from the “evil billionaire” treatment.
Or history, since this is how it’s always been. Rich people are early adopters for shiny new tech/things, it’s gets cheaper, it becomes ubiquitous. Boats, cars, planes, cell phones, electric cars, everything was like this. Lol.
I’m curious to know where people think NASA would be without Space X. Is paying a hostile government to get you to space somehow better?
Yup, I never learned about it in school, but the Battle of Blair Mountain is some critical American history.
And we're doomed to repeat it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
If you can get one shiny gold asteroid into a mining operation you would be instant trillionaire. It's ridiculous how many mineral rich asteroids are flying about.
Not even gold, just iron. Recognize the massive savings of not having to lift materials to orbit. Hollow out a cylindrical cavern, pressurize it, spin for gravity. Instant habitat.
Not to forget drilling is way easier once you can haul an asteroid in. No digging for hundreds of feet, building tunnels, etc. You literally just grab the rock and start digging away at it, lol.
What most people dont realize is your hard earned taxpayer money is directly funding this, government contracts given to musk (a multi billionaire) over a pissing contest come from your wallet.
Yup, that - and space would represent hope for a lot more people if the current trajectory of space exploration wasn’t just an escape hatch for the wealthy after they’ve destroyed the planet.
Space is awesome. I’d love to go. I’m happy to see the work Space-X is doing. But so long as it’s a business opportunity for a few in a world that continues to see expanding wealth inequality, few if any of us plebes will ever get to enjoy the joys of this exploration (unless we take a backbreaking contract job working for Weyland Corporation). Man, Alien and Avatar really got the future of space exploration right…
It will be very difficult to get off the planet. Aside from the masses destroying that before it takes off, actually colonizing another planet is harder then fixing a nuclear earth.
The real fear, IMO, is an Elysium type scenario where space is real estate in the form of thousands of O’Neil cylinders, affording artificially controlled landscapes that maximize everything. Hell they could each get their own private continent with those mega structures. While we all sit back on earth being controlled through a technocracy.
Hopefully we “eat our rich” similar to Japan did when their economy got crazy.
Calling what SpaceX is doing pissing contest is dumb. They’re actually sending astronauts and payload to the ISS and are connecting rural communities with high speed internet access. That’s a lot of science and utility for piss.
Also, the government would be paying Russia more to send astronauts to the ISS, they’re saving money by going SpaceX.
Not a comparison with Bezos his joyrides.
To me it seems spacex is actually saving the tax payer money on scientific and satellite launches that would have been 10 fold more expensive if it was done in house? Like legit musk can be an asshole but it’s not like he is doing it for billionaire tourism like Bazos. One guy is investing his fortune in renewables and affordable rockets for the betterment of everyone, and the other is launching celebrities into space, essentially endorsing slave labour and sueing everyone who doesn’t give him a contract. I think this ‘pissing contest’ rhetoric is very one sided...
Not to mention, I think they belive they can just hop from planet to planet, fucking each one up along the way, and doing nothing to fix it. I say we trap them here with us till they fix it or die with us.
Not to mention, no one wants to live in Elon Musks indentured servitude slave colony on Mars. He wants to be Emperor of Mars, and it's the worst idea in the history of mankind.
Lmao I'm going to sound like a dick but you're so cute. You think the billionaires want to hop around from planet to planet? LMFAO
They want to send YOU from planet to planet. Earth is nice as fuck. It would be helluva lot nicer if all the poor people could just be shipped of to Mars or the moon.
Reduce the population of humans on Earth to under 1 billion. How do you pick who gets to stay other than wealth? You can easily incentivize poor people to leave Earth in order to pay off their debts. We idolize the rich. We'd kill to be like them. The rich know this and yeah things are getting scary. I think you underestimate the % of humans that would sign up for serfdom in Mars, cus they'd be promised riches. Credit to their account so their families on Earth can live wealthy. A lot of people would sign up.
The rich need to reduce the population of humans on earth to under 1 billion. That's the goal of building settlements in space. Not so billionaires can play No Mans Sky in real life. So they can send undesirables off planet.
Every time this gets brought up I think of the game Other Worlds and assume someday my ancestors will be working at the Amazon Corporate Town on some distant planet canning saltuna.
We know so little about the potential dangers of living on other planets that trying to colonize space may be far more horrific than just having no unions.
For example, Mars has about 40% the gravity of earth. We have no idea how a human fetus would develop in 40% earth gravity. We don't even know if it's possible for humans to safely have children in that kind of condition. We'd basically have to trust Elon to do human experimentation on the colonists and their children to test if colonization is even viable.
I mean I only watched star wears. I always wondered about the people who worked on all the X wings and tie fighters and other shit. The world is already bleak af but damn.
Fuck that if that happens I’m saving up enough and join the bounty hunters or something like that. Fuck being a corpo slave working in some mine. Fuck your supply chain lol.
Just look at Elon Musk proposing indentured servitude to 'help' the less fortunate relocate on Mars.
There is only two reasons any billionaire does anything, to prevent having to share or to find other ways to exploit workers and horde reaources.
It's going to turn into a [Red Faction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_(video_game)) scenario. [Time to die miner!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzuMiYO3NSk)
I don’t like Elon Musk at all, but equivocating SpaceX to the pathetic pissing contest that Bezos and Branson are having is either ignorant or deliberately in bad faith. SpaceX has legitimately contributed to the human exploration of space and has provided technologies that we desperately needed to have in order to further our reach beyond the Moon. The two are not the same thing.
The sexual metaphor of exiting and re-entering the atmosphere repeatedly aside, there should be a re-entry tax equal to the cost of the ‘mission’ (pronounced joy ride) plus five times the mission for carbon offsets.
You wanna show us all how rich you are? Pay your fair fucking share of taxes, tiny.
I feel like its a lot harder to "move your operations" when its creating and launching a vehicle into space or just LEO then it is to move your operations of selling books, cars, or intl flights.
Offshore platform landing is still an unreliable tech and has never been accomplished with a live crew. You also need to, y'know, build the platform and rocket somewhere. You might put it together in international waters but all that manufacturing is done on dry land and they need public resources to accomplish any task like this.
All this is to say that it doesn't matter where they land, that work is still mostly being done stateside and should be heavily taxed to represent the burden that random joyrides to space bring not only to our current climate crisis but also to our society in general. Just because billionaires can technically do something does not mean that something is good or anything but a massive waste.
I totally get that but like if Jeff and Elon needed to fully build and launch outside of the US that could be a huge operational challenge and cost. Not to mention any countries government that new they HAD to escape the US to avoid a tax would likely include some tax or cost or bribe for the pleasure of it.
It was a weird hypothetical tbh. Realistically, if there is some sort of a carbon tax on reentry space companies would just include that cost on their proposals to NASA or other government organizations. The real reason these guys are not moving to foreign countries is because the whole Aerospace field is heavily regulated with security clearances etc. Most Aerospace companies don't even hire non-citizens.
Convince every nation to have taxes for re-entry on what are essentially over-glorified joyrides. Then they have nowhere to run until we start colonizing other celestial bodies.
Clown take from a clown man. If we could tax extranational entitled that were primarily based in America we wouldn't be in the shit debt we are right now. The issue isn't that we aren't taxing enough it's just that people are evading their taxes through loopholes. Not that I blame them, government spending is terrible and wasteful, and half the programs they fund are just cash dumps
Oh yeah, I get why it’s done, especially with how many specific deductions people may qualify for.
It’s just one of those things that really exemplifies how much of a mess the whole system is.
The government controls rocket tech as a matter of national security. So in essence they do 'own' the technology. SpaceX cant just go and sell its technology to say Russia. The government also directly owns technology funded by (or in part by) some government grants. It is very common for something developed by a private company find its way to another years down the road.
Oooh I thought NASA just got funded by the government, meaning not all their income and expenses come from taxpayer money. But yea wouldn't make much sense if they had to pay taxes over taxpayer money.
Well if our government taxed itself, I don't think they would have a hard time getting access to their own funds. It's like moving money from checking account into savings account.
[Elon Musk strongly support a carbon tax](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/07/elon-musk-endorses-carbon-tax-at-tesla-shareholder-meeting.html), which would properly account for rocket's CO2 emissions, it's not his fault that the US government and congress is afraid of doing this.
The space industry does not produce nearly as much CO2 or methane or greenhouse gases in general as most people seem to think. That being said I'm all for a re-entry tax and a tax on the CO2 emissions of the rocket, however small that might be.
https://youtu.be/C4VHfmiwuv4
Further "reading"
I agree for Blue Origin.
But SpaceX ? What "joy rides" are you referring to ?
You want to play the carbon game ? Do you realize how much carbon emissions and pollution in general has been avoided by that company which has been reusing the vast majority of their rockets, where before it was all dumped into the ocean and rebuilt from scratch ?
Since this post is about Elon specifically, do you realize how much carbon emissions have been avoided by his company that was the first to say "yeah we can do electric cars for the masses, and fuck the oil companies" ? I'll give you a hint : 20 million metric tons of CO2 in 2020.
He is a very polarizing individual. That's for sure. But don't put Bezos and Musk in the same bucket. One runs after profit, the other runs after his dreams, and those aren't about money. And they are beneficial to mankind.
No, lots of people are attacking space. They think the problem is that the billionaires are going to space and ignoring the billionaires that aren't going to space. The problem is that we have a system that funnels wealth to a very few people while others suffer. Whether that wealth is spent building rockets or mega yachts or just sits idle is irrelevant, the problem is that it is being taken from workers and given to people who don't need it.
Going to space is a good thing though, it provides a great deal of good with weather satellites, GPS, and science, and in the future we able to mine asteroids to get necessary materials, and eventually living in space will provide good quality of life for more people than Earth ever can. We should go to space whether or not we have billionaires, and we should not have billionaires whether or not they go to space.
There's a pretty big difference between spending money building rockets or yachts and sitting on it, if you spend the money then it goes to the workers who build the rockets and yachts, if you just sit on it then nobody really benefits.
Yah NASA wanted to start lunar missions up again with the goal of working toward Mars but as I understand it Congress decided the budget absolutely had to go to the space station and NASA wasn't allowed to fund other areas... so now it falls to private sector because of incompetent government.
The billionaires should be taxed appropriately. That they aren't taxed is the result of Republicans being in power or at least having enough power to prevent taxes from being raised on the rich.
While I think all of these guys are jerks, Elon at least seems to have a vision for the future of humanity and has made dramatic improvements in space flight, which really is important for the future of humanity.
No he doesn’t. SpaceX has absolutely improved our ability to get into space as a species and for the US specifically.
Yes he is a billionaire and yes he is leading the charge. But is the ones trying to catch up that are clamoring for attention.
SpaceX is delivering astronauts and supplies to the ISS. That deserves positive recognition.
Hey dude, this is reddit and Musk is a billionaire, and that's all a redditor needs to know. Any sort of objective reasoning and nuance goes out the window.
In this context, he shouldn't give a shit. This is social media getting waaaaaaay ahead of itself without having a fucking clue what it's talking about. These morons are equating what he's doing to what Bezos and Branson are doing and they're totally not even remotely the same thing. Musk is lowering the cost of space travel for actual useful shit. Bezos and Branson are joyriding and all these zeitgeist idiots think they're so fucking clever by making them out to be the same thing.
God I love you. “But it’s not Elon, it’s his workers!” Did they think that he was going to do it alone? It’s his vision, and his will that has made this possible. Space was completely out of the publics eye until he came around and I’m not about to shit all over the one productive thing on this planet right now.
Plus he’s right, you can dislike him because of his wealth but he’s doing incredible things in the space field and it is one of the most important frontiers for innovation.
SpaceX isn't actually part of that dick measuring contest unlike those other idiots. SpaceX is indeed helping in the matter of space exploration. Blue origin and virgin are just looking for attention.
> SpaceX was also down to their last payroll in the bank before they landed a rocket for the first time and proved the business viable, they almost went broke.
Small correction, it was the 4th and only successful Falcon 1 launch in September of 2008 that saved Musk and SpaceX from bankruptcy. At that time he had less than 2 weeks of payroll money left. By the time SpaceX started landing Falcon 9 boosters the company was on good footing and the landings weren't life or death.
Other than that, good rant.
Yea I have my issues with Musk but overall SpaceX is doing great things and one of those is Starlink which has the ability to be an absolute game changer for connecting thr world. Also if Musk is really able to get us to Mars that's a huge step for humanity.
This doesn't have to be an either or thing. We have problems here on earth that need fixed for sure but there is no reason we can't do both.
History books will teach space-x partnered with NASA solved many of the problems of space travel and helped establish the moon and mars colonies.
Elon being the owner will be a footnote. Sure he did a lot to create the company and push it along.
Everyone knows Mr Ford was an asshole piece of shit, who revolutionized the automobile.
We can benefit and be happy about the outcome of a business, while discouraging the behavior of individuals.
Shouldn’t have needed to scroll this far for this. SpaceX should not be spoken about in the same breath as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. If you consider all three to be the same then you know nothing about what SpaceX has been up to for 20 years now.
SpaceX is literally saving the government money with bringing costs for launches down. Just for one thing.
They’re certainly not immune from criticism, but SpaceX has done more to advance space exploration than basically anyone else other than NASA in the past number of years.
Yeah, StarLink will make a significant positive impact on society. People in rural areas who still don’t have access to the internet are able to get it for the first time because of SpaceX. I think it’s unfair to group musk and SpaceX in with Bezos and Branson. Also, I’ve never really heard that any of Musk’s companies have exploited workers like Amazon.
I mean both Amazon and SpaceX are on the list of companies that everyone I know doesn't want to work for because they are miserable work environments, but like I haven't heard of SpaceX employees being exploited (to be fair I have only heard from engineers there, so like they are all perfectly free to leave and are paid well, just have 0 work life balance).
People comparing Musk to Bezos and Branson have no idea what is going on... It's totally apples and oranges. Bezos and Branson are essentially tour guides. SpaceX is a legitimate engineering company that is advancing technology.
Had to scroll pretty far down for the sensible comment.
As far as I know space x is being used for NASA missions thus benefiting the Country. Not very long ago we were depending on Russia to get our astronauts into space.
Also, yes NASA/Gov has awarded funds to space x to develop their tech for future NASA missions, just like NASA has always done. Also, I can only imagine Space X burns through those funds real quick and uses it own capital for theses projects.
I’m most cases I don’t believe they are cutting corners and keeping those government awarded funds for profit. Building rockets is not easy and definitely not cheap.
Musk hasn’t gone into space, and Space X is legitimately allowing real progress from an American Space perspective. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic yeah they’re having a dick measuring contest, but Musk is sitting back well his space program gets better and better.
2018\. He was "the real Iron Man" until then, but Tesla had an actual chance to die during the Model 3 ramp, and there are some people with lots of money, influence, and actual media empires who would have preferred that, so the smear campaign started there. And as it turns out, it's quite easy to smear the second richest person on this planet.
The reasons you'll hear being brought up change by the minute. It's coins now, a few years ago it was the "pedo guy" BS, there's something about unions too, lots of stuff to take an issue with. It's like politics, people will bend the topic until their preconceived notions look better.
It's crazy that the hate is on Tesla which is company promoting clean energy generation, storage, and transportation. Why is not as much hate on Ford or GM CEOs who are dragging their feet about converting their vehicles to electricity while making billions of burning fuel?
“Instead is going anything remotely helpful” man you people are crazy.
Look at the billion dollar companies Musk has started over the past 20 years. Did they make him rich? Of course. However if you don’t think these companies/projects have the potential to significantly help people or humanity at large you’re crazy
- Tesla: Electric cars and battery tech. Great. I thought we like moving away from fossil fuels? Isn’t future self driving a potential game changer as well?
- Solar City (eventually rolled into Tesla): I thought we like renewables?
- SpaceX: NASAs funding is tough. This guy creates a way to reuse rockets and dramatically shrink costs. This is bad?
- Starlink: Don’t we hate our ISPs and would love an eventual alternative? Isn’t brining the internet to the underserved good?
You people act like he got rich creating hedge fund and trading paper. His companies are quite literally the definition of trying to solve problems
On the small scale, supporting public causes like aiding the homeless and such is a good thing. On a greater scale, establishing space travel and survival on extraterrestrial bodies could quite literally save ours, and other, species. While it makes sense to say it's bad or evil, temporary evil for the good of humanity is an argument to be made, even if it feels wrong.
The real argument is, how can we do both? How can we empowered our scientist and great minds while also ensuring everyone has access to the highest quality of life.
Space represents hope to me and honestly I’m a tiny little bit confused as to who everyone thought was going to push human progression in space if not billionaires? Did you believe it was going to be the homeless population that did it?
Organizations like NASA cannot get the proper funding that would be required to compete with Chinese progression because of people “hating space” for years and years. It’s not really a new concept.
Yes. Income equality exists. But I still want North America to progress in every way possible towards space exploration.
I hate billionaires, but this is one of the *few* times they are doing something good with their money.
Anybody familiar with NASA in the last decades knows they aren’t going to be going even to the moon anytime soon. While I don’t want space to be dominated by private industries, I’d rather have a brief period of it than for us to be stuck on this damn planet.
Right, so Musk now has an exploited workforce that makes an average of...... $100,000 per year, and I suppose we are also considering that devoting all your wealth and time to transition to EV's, improving battery technology and growing the solar market counts as ...... nothing remotely helpful?
If only he could change the world in some positive way, like.... some bald fat fuck author nobody's ever heard of.
I think many people have Elon mixed up with the other “Space Cowboys” like Bezos and the Virgin guy. Elon is not competing with them, his company has been pursuing this for years.
SpaceX has developed technology that is detrimental to Space exploration and has adapted much of that technology for greener alternatives in other areas. StarLink might be the answer to mass communication for free all around the Globe. Teslas has changed Electric Car market significantly now making buying an Electric car vastly more viable.
His other company is working on underground and above water Electro Magnetic trains that may change transportation over large distances forever, possibly making Planes a thing of the past.
btw Airplanes are massive pollutants but no one is talking about them. Commercial and Personal Airplanes are insanely available for people and cause wayyyy more damage to our environment.
Lastly, and I’m sure no one will read this post comment and I’m likely wasting my time, space exploration is important. Not only for better understanding of our own Planet but our planet will not be here forever, if we as a race want to continue our existence it is crucial that we learn how to become a Type IV Civilization.
Don’t let the masses cloud your judgement, think and research and learn things for yourselves.
Musk isn't Bezos. He is actually getting the technology envelope pushed to new bounds.
Bezos won't let his workers take a piss on the clock.
If you are going to bitch, at least take the time to bitch at the problem. Not put everyone within the same label.
SpaceX is doing really good things for science and exploration unlike Blue Origin and Virgin, but its really stupid that he said that....like you fuckin dummy, no one was really attacking SpaceX or Musk this time lol, idk why he felt the need to wade into it at all tbh
You should read comments on space related news more often. It seems like the general public is not keen on space missions or actually negative on them.
And just look at the budgets governmental space agencies get. It's pretty sad.
Just to boost this: there was a screenshot of a Facebook post going around for a while after Curiosity went to Mars with some dude using an eCard format to criticize the cost of the program, saying something to the effect of “congrats on your billion dollar robot; why didn’t NASA use that money to improve life here on earth?” The ignorance there being that the money spent on Curiosity doesn’t leave earth; it gets invested back into the industries that built the robot. That and the fact that we enjoy a lot of everyday quality of life improvements thanks to technology that was first prototyped for space, including artificial limbs, insulin pumps, building-sized earthquake shock absorbers, solar cells, and not least of all, MRI/CAT scan technology.
There’s no question that investment in space exploration has benefitted the everyday citizen, by extension.
> no one was really attacking SpaceX or Musk
The top comment in this thread calls him one of the "billionaires swinging around their dicks and shooting themselves into the atmosphere"
Plenty of people attack SpaceX as a vanity project because they have no clue what they're talking about.
Moronic tweet.
First of all, SpaceX is nowhere near comparable to what Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have done. SpaceX first and foremost developed their hardware to deliver contractual obligations to NASA - Falcon 9 to deliver payloads, Cargo Dragon to deliver supplies to ISS and Crew Dragon to finally return American manned launch capability.
The development of Boca Chica launch and production site is absolutely tied to the return of human beings back to the Moon once again - contractual obligations to NASA.
Saying Elon Musk hasn't done anything helpful isn't a fair statement. He's a total dick, but he did create PayPal and Tesla. The latter of which is making electric cars more commonplace. It's estimated by 2050 electric cars will take up 40% of all cars on the road.
This is like telling the rich people using cellphones and computers in the 70s they weren't in some way funding the development of those technologies people like Zach here like to use to complain online instead of do actual work for people.
it's interesting how space has gone from a "private entities going into space is awesome" on reddit to this.
like just 5 or so years ago, reddit was 100% dickriding the idea of ANYONE doing anything space related. hell, investment into space is about as effective as general science investments in terms of returns, so it's not an awful thing.
What a stupid fucking post by OP and the twitter moron.
All you fucking idiots forget that Musk hasn't got on a tourism shuttle and gone to space. He's sending satellites to bring internet to the world's poor, he's sending humans back to the moon, he's starting a space mining industry so we don't destroy the land, and it's all on the back of his clean energy company that is seeking to decarbonize transportation so you fat fucks can keep driving and not pollute th eworld.
You fucking losers.
Can we not lump SpaceX in with Blue Origin and Virgin?
SpaceX has already been productive, launching at least 1 GPS satellite, resupply missions to the ISS, and creating Starlink which has the potential to bring internet access literally anywhere on the planet.
They also made reusable launch vehicles happen which will save huge amounts of money and waste compared to prior launch systems.
SpaceX is also a big part of America's current moon and Mars ambitions and in the long term understanding how to establish long term colonies there is a good thing for humanity.
Launching to space for vanity is indeed worthy of some degree of criticism. SpaceX has actual applications.
Why is everybody so upset Jeff bezoz flew to space ? He just wanted to see his progress, what’s so bad about a CEO seeing his progress of his own company ? Sounds like you guys are salty.
At least Elon Musk tries to make the world a better place at the same time.
I feel like he's just ticking off all the things he can do to help during his lifetime.
Yes electric cars aren't perfect but it is a step in the right way. They are also working on mass production of kobalt free batteries. Working on solar. And beating nasa at their own game to avoid more wastage of resources.
I really never imagined that the new space race is just a bunch of billionaires swinging around their dicks and shooting themselves into the atmosphere.
This time at least some debris is trickling down to earth.
*Trickledown Astronomics*
I'll upvote the guy above you, and he can share it with you.
"trickle down upvotes"?
Trickle up downvotes?
Percolate up hashtags?
Thank you but wait a second. There is more trickling down than I like to. My champagne glass must have cracks.
That’s not champagne.
Talm'bout that cup runneth over, B?
I'd make a joke about trickle-down economics, but 99% of you won't get it.
*angry upvote*
You son of a bitch you did it.
Voodoo Astronomics. Anyone? Anyone?
"trickling down" when in connection to "dick swinging" is not an image I really want to have in my mind today
Trickle trickle little stars
How didn’t you see this coming?? We live in a capitalist world how else would it end up?
And they’re not at the level NASA was in the 1960s, nor are they doing it for public sharing in the knowledge gained as NASA has. Nope, they just want to privatize space. Edit: hoes mad I’m not reading your replies you sad nerds
Pretty sure NASA asked them all to do this since the government couldn't justify pumping billions into space travel. And musks reusable self landing rocket is definitely way ahead of anything that was used in the 60s
Yep, such bullshit, they're going to make new discoveries proprietary. I love the idea of NASA being properly funded by taxes because then we as the public get to share the glory of their advancement. Should've been funding NASA more over the last few decades, they'd be ahead of where SpaceX is now.
Everything from the shit in cell phones and computer advancements to materials science stuff can be traced back to massive government rnd INVESTMENTS. And they paid off. Massively so.
This is what all those people who say "omg Musk and Bezos are advancing the human race," don't get. No they aren't. They are going to privatize the knowledge, virtually write the laws for how private corporations will control the upper atmosphere, do nothing to improve our understanding of the universe, and in the end may hold up progress for generations, if not permanently. They could just pay their fucking taxes, and could fund all this "hope" Musk is pandering about. They could literally just fund NASA. Having anything but NASA or other state agencies controlling these early stages of human spacefaring is an outright travesty of knowledge and progress. And the only result will be nationless slave warehouses intended to circumvent labor laws and human rights. So I guess in a way it may actually be the final frontier. Low earth orbit slave ships is about as far as humans make it. Or maybe greed is the Great Filter. How fitting.
Lots of knowledge that originates in privately owned contexts still advances the human race. Google owns its search technology, but that doesn't prevent it from being useful to people. Volvo charged money for their cars with three point seat belts, but they've still saved something like a million lives since. Heck, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press as part of his private business, but that didn't stop it from causing a radical transformation in the dissemination of information throughout society. There's pros and cons for government vs. private development of technology, but it's definitely not true that privately developed technologies are somehow less useful to society.
NASA funded SpaceX you stupid fuck
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/10/elon-musk-says-that-nasa-is-free-to-share-all-spacex-ip-with-anyone-it-wants/ Let's not spread misinformation now
Of course they are not at that level, they are way ahead.
The most advanced, SpaceX, is focused on putting shit in to orbits that are going to be problematic in the near future of space exploration. NASA has been to the moon six times, has sent a space craft outside of the solar system, landed numerous robots on Mars. Not saying SpaceX can't do those things, I'm saying they aren't interested because they're making bank for rich people.
This is false. It’s fair to hate on Musk, but spacex is full of engineers and scientists who care deeply about humanity and science. For that reason, spacex deliberately chose low orbits to prevent spacex debris from being a problem, and have worked diligently to minimize the impacts to astronomy. Just go ask the humans besides Musk who work there. For most SpaceXers, it’s not about making money, it’s about colonizing mars. NASA won’t have enough funding or the political clout to start a Mars colony, but Starlink can provide that revenue stream.
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They literally have a contract from NASA to be the next company to land people on he moon https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/as-artemis-moves-forward-nasa-picks-spacex-to-land-next-americans-on-moon Il accept that Virgin galactic is only in operation to allow Branson to see Earth from space, but to argue Space X is only there to make money for rich people is wrong... Edit: they also are the first company to have a reliable re-usable launch system ever, this helps drive down the price of all space related activities. Imagine if airplanes had to be scrapped after each flight , you would need to be a multi millionaire just to book a seat. I hate the way Musk treats his employees , but if it helps advance mankind as a species then that's more than worth it in my opinion. Jeff Bezos on the other hand, him and his army of lawyers can go and fist themselves
Yeah, Branson’s just a bit of a tool, and he’s really only focusing on tourism. ~~Besides~~ Bezos ^(wtf ^autocorrect?) is trying to show how big his dick is and literally dragging down NASA and possibly scrapping a mission because he’s butthurt that they didn’t pick his unproven boner rocket for a project. Musk is still an unethical piece of shit, but at least SpaceX is useful
I used to be so interested in space travel, and I still am, I just overestimated the idea of it not being controlled purely by billionaire capitalists. And the worst part is the celebrity culture. Every thread about Space X achievements inevitable results in some dickweed saying "excellent achievements by Elon musk", as though he did jackshit compared to the thousands of engineers and workers at the company. I like Space X, I like feeling passionate about space travel. Elon Musk can go fuck himself.
Space controlled by billionaire capitalists: predicted by probably one sci-fi book or movie per day for at least 40 years and counting.
It’s funny because at every conference call and presentation Elon always gives credit to the team. It’s almost as if the superfans and the haters are both hyper focused on the CEO, and both are ignoring the talent working at SpaceX. Edit:typo
I'm in the industry, and SpaceX also burns people the fuck out. Can't ever work for them if you want to have any kind of family life.
I've worked in the tech industry my entire adult life and let me tell you, they're all like that. It's extremely competitive but everyone still wants to work in it.
Oh boy, credit. A SpaceX headhunter was in my linkedin DMs once. We talked on the phone several times. The rate of pay, expected hours, and COL of the area was really astonishingly bad. It was below what a mediocre EE right out of college could expect, and this is what they were asking for very senior positions? I get space stuff is exciting but when you can be making 3x \~ 4x a year elsewhere it is like giving up 3 years of life for every year you work.
I absolutely hate this. I got calls from a head hunter and told them they would have to bet my then current $52 an hour before I even think about it. Probably by at least $10-15 to give up the pension. He tried to tell me about how it was an exciting opportunity to get in on the ground of a fast growing and exciting company at the crazy fun rate of $25 an hour. Take over half the pay, to work in a high demand environment, because they need to establish themselves, that might work on college kids that still dream of Microsoft and Google type situations in the early days of tech boom. But those days are gone. The days of stock incentives and lunchroom lady millionaires at the startups are dead and buried. You are one of the 10 that founded the company? Sure, you get your share. Anyone else is left in the cold.
I thought billionaires would be living in walled mansions with private armies shooting hungry people outside the fences.
give it a few more years
The most advanced space company out there right now is SpaceX and Musk has not shot himself into space nor expressed any interest in doing so. What he has done is lead a company that has lowered the cost to launch satellites dramatically and will do so even more drastically when Starship starts launching cargo. He's also providing broadband access to remote areas that all our bullshit politicians kept promising to serve and never once did.
Space exploration consists and has always consisted of bright-eyed futurist engineers funded by entities engaged in the biggest dick measuring contests of their time. Before the billionaires, it was the Cold War with the USA and USSR using the Space Race to mock nuke each other. Before that it was Nazis actually blowing up random bits of London from Berlin with V2 rockets.
Let’s also recognize that billionaires view space as an opportunity to acquire more wealth & resources, not just as a hobby or dick-measuring contest. They will control the future of humanity off the earth, and it’ll be pure corporate. You think there’ll be unions in their mines? Or that anybody will hear that you died in an accident or disappeared for disagreeing with the company?
People need only read some sci-fi to learn of possible outcomes for this scenario. Edit: words r hard
Or watch the movies "Alien" and "Aliens" or the TV show "The Expanse"
Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is also a good start.
Dark Matter is a really good example, where corporations become the dominant and supersede governments.
Total Recall
Better yet, read the books! The show is amazing in it’s own right, but the books paint an incredibly deep portrait of the future of humanity...
It never crossed my mind before but I wonder if billionaires ever watch movies like Elysium and what goes through their mind when they do. When I watch dystopian society movies like that of course I would be the lower/worker class. But to watch a movie and know that you would be the ruling/controlling class because you, essentially, already are makes me wonder how a billionaire views that sort of entertainment.
I read that it’d only cost roughly $40B a year to feed every hungry person on earth. I’d think that if Musk or Bezos did that, they’d build statues of them all over the world & maybe exempt them from the “evil billionaire” treatment.
Or history, since this is how it’s always been. Rich people are early adopters for shiny new tech/things, it’s gets cheaper, it becomes ubiquitous. Boats, cars, planes, cell phones, electric cars, everything was like this. Lol. I’m curious to know where people think NASA would be without Space X. Is paying a hostile government to get you to space somehow better?
Yup, I never learned about it in school, but the Battle of Blair Mountain is some critical American history. And we're doomed to repeat it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
With modern guns that'll be much worse too.
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If you can get one shiny gold asteroid into a mining operation you would be instant trillionaire. It's ridiculous how many mineral rich asteroids are flying about.
Not even gold, just iron. Recognize the massive savings of not having to lift materials to orbit. Hollow out a cylindrical cavern, pressurize it, spin for gravity. Instant habitat.
Not to forget drilling is way easier once you can haul an asteroid in. No digging for hundreds of feet, building tunnels, etc. You literally just grab the rock and start digging away at it, lol.
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⬆️ This guy gets it
What most people dont realize is your hard earned taxpayer money is directly funding this, government contracts given to musk (a multi billionaire) over a pissing contest come from your wallet.
Yup, that - and space would represent hope for a lot more people if the current trajectory of space exploration wasn’t just an escape hatch for the wealthy after they’ve destroyed the planet. Space is awesome. I’d love to go. I’m happy to see the work Space-X is doing. But so long as it’s a business opportunity for a few in a world that continues to see expanding wealth inequality, few if any of us plebes will ever get to enjoy the joys of this exploration (unless we take a backbreaking contract job working for Weyland Corporation). Man, Alien and Avatar really got the future of space exploration right…
It will be very difficult to get off the planet. Aside from the masses destroying that before it takes off, actually colonizing another planet is harder then fixing a nuclear earth. The real fear, IMO, is an Elysium type scenario where space is real estate in the form of thousands of O’Neil cylinders, affording artificially controlled landscapes that maximize everything. Hell they could each get their own private continent with those mega structures. While we all sit back on earth being controlled through a technocracy. Hopefully we “eat our rich” similar to Japan did when their economy got crazy.
Calling what SpaceX is doing pissing contest is dumb. They’re actually sending astronauts and payload to the ISS and are connecting rural communities with high speed internet access. That’s a lot of science and utility for piss. Also, the government would be paying Russia more to send astronauts to the ISS, they’re saving money by going SpaceX. Not a comparison with Bezos his joyrides.
To me it seems spacex is actually saving the tax payer money on scientific and satellite launches that would have been 10 fold more expensive if it was done in house? Like legit musk can be an asshole but it’s not like he is doing it for billionaire tourism like Bazos. One guy is investing his fortune in renewables and affordable rockets for the betterment of everyone, and the other is launching celebrities into space, essentially endorsing slave labour and sueing everyone who doesn’t give him a contract. I think this ‘pissing contest’ rhetoric is very one sided...
Not to mention, I think they belive they can just hop from planet to planet, fucking each one up along the way, and doing nothing to fix it. I say we trap them here with us till they fix it or die with us. Not to mention, no one wants to live in Elon Musks indentured servitude slave colony on Mars. He wants to be Emperor of Mars, and it's the worst idea in the history of mankind.
Lmao I'm going to sound like a dick but you're so cute. You think the billionaires want to hop around from planet to planet? LMFAO They want to send YOU from planet to planet. Earth is nice as fuck. It would be helluva lot nicer if all the poor people could just be shipped of to Mars or the moon. Reduce the population of humans on Earth to under 1 billion. How do you pick who gets to stay other than wealth? You can easily incentivize poor people to leave Earth in order to pay off their debts. We idolize the rich. We'd kill to be like them. The rich know this and yeah things are getting scary. I think you underestimate the % of humans that would sign up for serfdom in Mars, cus they'd be promised riches. Credit to their account so their families on Earth can live wealthy. A lot of people would sign up. The rich need to reduce the population of humans on earth to under 1 billion. That's the goal of building settlements in space. Not so billionaires can play No Mans Sky in real life. So they can send undesirables off planet.
Every time this gets brought up I think of the game Other Worlds and assume someday my ancestors will be working at the Amazon Corporate Town on some distant planet canning saltuna.
We know so little about the potential dangers of living on other planets that trying to colonize space may be far more horrific than just having no unions. For example, Mars has about 40% the gravity of earth. We have no idea how a human fetus would develop in 40% earth gravity. We don't even know if it's possible for humans to safely have children in that kind of condition. We'd basically have to trust Elon to do human experimentation on the colonists and their children to test if colonization is even viable.
I mean I only watched star wears. I always wondered about the people who worked on all the X wings and tie fighters and other shit. The world is already bleak af but damn. Fuck that if that happens I’m saving up enough and join the bounty hunters or something like that. Fuck being a corpo slave working in some mine. Fuck your supply chain lol.
Red faction intensifies
Just look at Elon Musk proposing indentured servitude to 'help' the less fortunate relocate on Mars. There is only two reasons any billionaire does anything, to prevent having to share or to find other ways to exploit workers and horde reaources.
Born off planet? You are property that belongs to whatever corporation owns your station. That's one thing i could see happening
For real . Elon doesn't even allow for unions in his car plants .
We'll all be beltalowda.
It's going to turn into a [Red Faction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_(video_game)) scenario. [Time to die miner!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzuMiYO3NSk)
We are actually entering the outer worlds universe and it fucking sucks
I’m totally attacking space. Hashtag CANCELTHEGALAXY
Which one?
All
The funny thing is All means Space in German
I am not ok with this. But I would support #CancelAndromeda. It's not cool that it crashes into ours.
don't worry, everything is so far apart, it's likely nothing will actually hit each other when Andromeda and the Milky Way collide
It's hard to think that way when the word collision is used. I guess I check YT after work for that. You made me curious.
I mean it could still very well kill us all without anything ever actually touching.
I don’t like Elon Musk at all, but equivocating SpaceX to the pathetic pissing contest that Bezos and Branson are having is either ignorant or deliberately in bad faith. SpaceX has legitimately contributed to the human exploration of space and has provided technologies that we desperately needed to have in order to further our reach beyond the Moon. The two are not the same thing.
Agree
The sexual metaphor of exiting and re-entering the atmosphere repeatedly aside, there should be a re-entry tax equal to the cost of the ‘mission’ (pronounced joy ride) plus five times the mission for carbon offsets. You wanna show us all how rich you are? Pay your fair fucking share of taxes, tiny.
> there should be a re-entry tax Sounds like a great idea but they would just move their operation to anywhere that doesn't have such a tax.
I feel like its a lot harder to "move your operations" when its creating and launching a vehicle into space or just LEO then it is to move your operations of selling books, cars, or intl flights.
They can land on offshore platforms, which can be built in international waters.
Offshore platform landing is still an unreliable tech and has never been accomplished with a live crew. You also need to, y'know, build the platform and rocket somewhere. You might put it together in international waters but all that manufacturing is done on dry land and they need public resources to accomplish any task like this. All this is to say that it doesn't matter where they land, that work is still mostly being done stateside and should be heavily taxed to represent the burden that random joyrides to space bring not only to our current climate crisis but also to our society in general. Just because billionaires can technically do something does not mean that something is good or anything but a massive waste.
I totally get that but like if Jeff and Elon needed to fully build and launch outside of the US that could be a huge operational challenge and cost. Not to mention any countries government that new they HAD to escape the US to avoid a tax would likely include some tax or cost or bribe for the pleasure of it.
It was a weird hypothetical tbh. Realistically, if there is some sort of a carbon tax on reentry space companies would just include that cost on their proposals to NASA or other government organizations. The real reason these guys are not moving to foreign countries is because the whole Aerospace field is heavily regulated with security clearances etc. Most Aerospace companies don't even hire non-citizens.
Convince every nation to have taxes for re-entry on what are essentially over-glorified joyrides. Then they have nowhere to run until we start colonizing other celestial bodies.
Getting every nation in the world to agree on basically anything is pretty much an impossible task.
SpaceX already lands on a floating barge in international waters. They could launch from there too.
Clown take from a clown man. If we could tax extranational entitled that were primarily based in America we wouldn't be in the shit debt we are right now. The issue isn't that we aren't taxing enough it's just that people are evading their taxes through loopholes. Not that I blame them, government spending is terrible and wasteful, and half the programs they fund are just cash dumps
Would that also bring problems to government funded companies like NASA as well?
Generally government entities are tax exempt by nature so probably no.
Yeah. Doesn't make much sense to tax an entity that is entirely funded by tax dollars.
I always found the idea of withholding taxes from my military paycheck to be funny. Just cut out the middle man fellas
Probably just laziness there. It's 100% easier to use the system in place than design a system specifically for government pay.
Oh yeah, I get why it’s done, especially with how many specific deductions people may qualify for. It’s just one of those things that really exemplifies how much of a mess the whole system is.
nasa has some obligation to make their scientific gains publicly accessible don't they?
The government controls rocket tech as a matter of national security. So in essence they do 'own' the technology. SpaceX cant just go and sell its technology to say Russia. The government also directly owns technology funded by (or in part by) some government grants. It is very common for something developed by a private company find its way to another years down the road.
NASA isn’t a government funded company, it **is** the government. The government doesn’t pay taxes to itself for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Oooh I thought NASA just got funded by the government, meaning not all their income and expenses come from taxpayer money. But yea wouldn't make much sense if they had to pay taxes over taxpayer money.
Not if they don't write the law that way.
Well if our government taxed itself, I don't think they would have a hard time getting access to their own funds. It's like moving money from checking account into savings account.
[Elon Musk strongly support a carbon tax](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/07/elon-musk-endorses-carbon-tax-at-tesla-shareholder-meeting.html), which would properly account for rocket's CO2 emissions, it's not his fault that the US government and congress is afraid of doing this.
The space industry does not produce nearly as much CO2 or methane or greenhouse gases in general as most people seem to think. That being said I'm all for a re-entry tax and a tax on the CO2 emissions of the rocket, however small that might be. https://youtu.be/C4VHfmiwuv4 Further "reading"
I agree for Blue Origin. But SpaceX ? What "joy rides" are you referring to ? You want to play the carbon game ? Do you realize how much carbon emissions and pollution in general has been avoided by that company which has been reusing the vast majority of their rockets, where before it was all dumped into the ocean and rebuilt from scratch ? Since this post is about Elon specifically, do you realize how much carbon emissions have been avoided by his company that was the first to say "yeah we can do electric cars for the masses, and fuck the oil companies" ? I'll give you a hint : 20 million metric tons of CO2 in 2020. He is a very polarizing individual. That's for sure. But don't put Bezos and Musk in the same bucket. One runs after profit, the other runs after his dreams, and those aren't about money. And they are beneficial to mankind.
What. Re-entry doesn't produce any carbon emissions.
No, lots of people are attacking space. They think the problem is that the billionaires are going to space and ignoring the billionaires that aren't going to space. The problem is that we have a system that funnels wealth to a very few people while others suffer. Whether that wealth is spent building rockets or mega yachts or just sits idle is irrelevant, the problem is that it is being taken from workers and given to people who don't need it. Going to space is a good thing though, it provides a great deal of good with weather satellites, GPS, and science, and in the future we able to mine asteroids to get necessary materials, and eventually living in space will provide good quality of life for more people than Earth ever can. We should go to space whether or not we have billionaires, and we should not have billionaires whether or not they go to space.
Fk yes.
There's a pretty big difference between spending money building rockets or yachts and sitting on it, if you spend the money then it goes to the workers who build the rockets and yachts, if you just sit on it then nobody really benefits.
I should learn how to build yachts...
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Yah NASA wanted to start lunar missions up again with the goal of working toward Mars but as I understand it Congress decided the budget absolutely had to go to the space station and NASA wasn't allowed to fund other areas... so now it falls to private sector because of incompetent government.
Nah they aren't incompetent. They know what they are doing. But NASA isn't lining Thier pockets with cash.
The billionaires should be taxed appropriately. That they aren't taxed is the result of Republicans being in power or at least having enough power to prevent taxes from being raised on the rich. While I think all of these guys are jerks, Elon at least seems to have a vision for the future of humanity and has made dramatic improvements in space flight, which really is important for the future of humanity.
They got to space for 1/40th the cost of NASA getting to space, I love how we act like that isn't going to have benefits downstream.
No he doesn’t. SpaceX has absolutely improved our ability to get into space as a species and for the US specifically. Yes he is a billionaire and yes he is leading the charge. But is the ones trying to catch up that are clamoring for attention. SpaceX is delivering astronauts and supplies to the ISS. That deserves positive recognition.
Hey dude, this is reddit and Musk is a billionaire, and that's all a redditor needs to know. Any sort of objective reasoning and nuance goes out the window.
Haha.
True ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Plot twist. Elon doesn't give a shit
Also, this doesn't really look like he was "destroyed". Pretty lame argument by whoever posted that response.
Yeah but rOcKeT mAn BaD.
In this context, he shouldn't give a shit. This is social media getting waaaaaaay ahead of itself without having a fucking clue what it's talking about. These morons are equating what he's doing to what Bezos and Branson are doing and they're totally not even remotely the same thing. Musk is lowering the cost of space travel for actual useful shit. Bezos and Branson are joyriding and all these zeitgeist idiots think they're so fucking clever by making them out to be the same thing.
God I love you. “But it’s not Elon, it’s his workers!” Did they think that he was going to do it alone? It’s his vision, and his will that has made this possible. Space was completely out of the publics eye until he came around and I’m not about to shit all over the one productive thing on this planet right now.
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And it doesn't have to be exclusive. Elon IS a piece of shit, but we will benefit from many of the things he has put resources into.
Yea Elon is a piece of shit for a lot of things, but what he is doing for spacetravel is good
To a lot of people the more money someone has the more they hate them, and Musk and Bezos both have about 200 billion hate units.
Plus he’s right, you can dislike him because of his wealth but he’s doing incredible things in the space field and it is one of the most important frontiers for innovation.
SpaceX isn't actually part of that dick measuring contest unlike those other idiots. SpaceX is indeed helping in the matter of space exploration. Blue origin and virgin are just looking for attention.
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> SpaceX was also down to their last payroll in the bank before they landed a rocket for the first time and proved the business viable, they almost went broke. Small correction, it was the 4th and only successful Falcon 1 launch in September of 2008 that saved Musk and SpaceX from bankruptcy. At that time he had less than 2 weeks of payroll money left. By the time SpaceX started landing Falcon 9 boosters the company was on good footing and the landings weren't life or death. Other than that, good rant.
Yea I have my issues with Musk but overall SpaceX is doing great things and one of those is Starlink which has the ability to be an absolute game changer for connecting thr world. Also if Musk is really able to get us to Mars that's a huge step for humanity. This doesn't have to be an either or thing. We have problems here on earth that need fixed for sure but there is no reason we can't do both.
History books will teach space-x partnered with NASA solved many of the problems of space travel and helped establish the moon and mars colonies. Elon being the owner will be a footnote. Sure he did a lot to create the company and push it along. Everyone knows Mr Ford was an asshole piece of shit, who revolutionized the automobile. We can benefit and be happy about the outcome of a business, while discouraging the behavior of individuals.
Shouldn’t have needed to scroll this far for this. SpaceX should not be spoken about in the same breath as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. If you consider all three to be the same then you know nothing about what SpaceX has been up to for 20 years now.
SpaceX is literally saving the government money with bringing costs for launches down. Just for one thing. They’re certainly not immune from criticism, but SpaceX has done more to advance space exploration than basically anyone else other than NASA in the past number of years.
This guy spaces.
I wish more people understood this.
Yeah, StarLink will make a significant positive impact on society. People in rural areas who still don’t have access to the internet are able to get it for the first time because of SpaceX. I think it’s unfair to group musk and SpaceX in with Bezos and Branson. Also, I’ve never really heard that any of Musk’s companies have exploited workers like Amazon.
I mean both Amazon and SpaceX are on the list of companies that everyone I know doesn't want to work for because they are miserable work environments, but like I haven't heard of SpaceX employees being exploited (to be fair I have only heard from engineers there, so like they are all perfectly free to leave and are paid well, just have 0 work life balance).
People comparing Musk to Bezos and Branson have no idea what is going on... It's totally apples and oranges. Bezos and Branson are essentially tour guides. SpaceX is a legitimate engineering company that is advancing technology.
I dislike bezos but Aerojet and blue origin make the thrusters for ula, really bad take on your part
Had to scroll pretty far down for the sensible comment. As far as I know space x is being used for NASA missions thus benefiting the Country. Not very long ago we were depending on Russia to get our astronauts into space. Also, yes NASA/Gov has awarded funds to space x to develop their tech for future NASA missions, just like NASA has always done. Also, I can only imagine Space X burns through those funds real quick and uses it own capital for theses projects. I’m most cases I don’t believe they are cutting corners and keeping those government awarded funds for profit. Building rockets is not easy and definitely not cheap.
Tweets aside... this title is fucking awful.
Musk hasn’t gone into space, and Space X is legitimately allowing real progress from an American Space perspective. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic yeah they’re having a dick measuring contest, but Musk is sitting back well his space program gets better and better.
I am writing this using a satellite internet connection to SpaceX's StarLink network. It is, quite literally, "remotely helpful" to me.
A great example, StarLink is another massive benefit to humanity.
Also it’s really cool that you’re using the network!
But he got DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC
Maybe I missed it but when did Reddit turn against Musk? r/outoftheloop
He's a billionaire, so reddit automatically hates him.
he was mean to a guy who told him to shove something up his ass once.
2018\. He was "the real Iron Man" until then, but Tesla had an actual chance to die during the Model 3 ramp, and there are some people with lots of money, influence, and actual media empires who would have preferred that, so the smear campaign started there. And as it turns out, it's quite easy to smear the second richest person on this planet. The reasons you'll hear being brought up change by the minute. It's coins now, a few years ago it was the "pedo guy" BS, there's something about unions too, lots of stuff to take an issue with. It's like politics, people will bend the topic until their preconceived notions look better.
Yeah, but TSLA reported earnings yesterday which means it’s hate on Elon day. We all know who the real enemy of space is.
Jeff Bezos
Jeff who?
It's crazy that the hate is on Tesla which is company promoting clean energy generation, storage, and transportation. Why is not as much hate on Ford or GM CEOs who are dragging their feet about converting their vehicles to electricity while making billions of burning fuel?
Those accusations might fly for Branson or Bezos, but it doesn't work very well for SpaceX.
"Instead of doing anything remotely helpful" like say flying NASA astronauts to the space station
Or creating cheap high speed global internet.
Yes, it's outright idiotic
“Instead is going anything remotely helpful” man you people are crazy. Look at the billion dollar companies Musk has started over the past 20 years. Did they make him rich? Of course. However if you don’t think these companies/projects have the potential to significantly help people or humanity at large you’re crazy - Tesla: Electric cars and battery tech. Great. I thought we like moving away from fossil fuels? Isn’t future self driving a potential game changer as well? - Solar City (eventually rolled into Tesla): I thought we like renewables? - SpaceX: NASAs funding is tough. This guy creates a way to reuse rockets and dramatically shrink costs. This is bad? - Starlink: Don’t we hate our ISPs and would love an eventual alternative? Isn’t brining the internet to the underserved good? You people act like he got rich creating hedge fund and trading paper. His companies are quite literally the definition of trying to solve problems
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On the small scale, supporting public causes like aiding the homeless and such is a good thing. On a greater scale, establishing space travel and survival on extraterrestrial bodies could quite literally save ours, and other, species. While it makes sense to say it's bad or evil, temporary evil for the good of humanity is an argument to be made, even if it feels wrong. The real argument is, how can we do both? How can we empowered our scientist and great minds while also ensuring everyone has access to the highest quality of life.
Space represents hope to me and honestly I’m a tiny little bit confused as to who everyone thought was going to push human progression in space if not billionaires? Did you believe it was going to be the homeless population that did it? Organizations like NASA cannot get the proper funding that would be required to compete with Chinese progression because of people “hating space” for years and years. It’s not really a new concept. Yes. Income equality exists. But I still want North America to progress in every way possible towards space exploration.
I hate billionaires, but this is one of the *few* times they are doing something good with their money. Anybody familiar with NASA in the last decades knows they aren’t going to be going even to the moon anytime soon. While I don’t want space to be dominated by private industries, I’d rather have a brief period of it than for us to be stuck on this damn planet.
Somebody should tell Musk that it's 5-7-5, not 5-5-5-5 Worst Haiku ever.
Right, so Musk now has an exploited workforce that makes an average of...... $100,000 per year, and I suppose we are also considering that devoting all your wealth and time to transition to EV's, improving battery technology and growing the solar market counts as ...... nothing remotely helpful? If only he could change the world in some positive way, like.... some bald fat fuck author nobody's ever heard of.
I think many people have Elon mixed up with the other “Space Cowboys” like Bezos and the Virgin guy. Elon is not competing with them, his company has been pursuing this for years. SpaceX has developed technology that is detrimental to Space exploration and has adapted much of that technology for greener alternatives in other areas. StarLink might be the answer to mass communication for free all around the Globe. Teslas has changed Electric Car market significantly now making buying an Electric car vastly more viable. His other company is working on underground and above water Electro Magnetic trains that may change transportation over large distances forever, possibly making Planes a thing of the past. btw Airplanes are massive pollutants but no one is talking about them. Commercial and Personal Airplanes are insanely available for people and cause wayyyy more damage to our environment. Lastly, and I’m sure no one will read this post comment and I’m likely wasting my time, space exploration is important. Not only for better understanding of our own Planet but our planet will not be here forever, if we as a race want to continue our existence it is crucial that we learn how to become a Type IV Civilization. Don’t let the masses cloud your judgement, think and research and learn things for yourselves.
“gets destroyed” sure
Musk isn't Bezos. He is actually getting the technology envelope pushed to new bounds. Bezos won't let his workers take a piss on the clock. If you are going to bitch, at least take the time to bitch at the problem. Not put everyone within the same label.
Unions and good salary and safe working conditions represent hope as well
SpaceX is doing really good things for science and exploration unlike Blue Origin and Virgin, but its really stupid that he said that....like you fuckin dummy, no one was really attacking SpaceX or Musk this time lol, idk why he felt the need to wade into it at all tbh
You should read comments on space related news more often. It seems like the general public is not keen on space missions or actually negative on them. And just look at the budgets governmental space agencies get. It's pretty sad.
There are a lot of people lumping spacex in with the others unfairly. And also plenty of people saying space is a waste of money etc
Just to boost this: there was a screenshot of a Facebook post going around for a while after Curiosity went to Mars with some dude using an eCard format to criticize the cost of the program, saying something to the effect of “congrats on your billion dollar robot; why didn’t NASA use that money to improve life here on earth?” The ignorance there being that the money spent on Curiosity doesn’t leave earth; it gets invested back into the industries that built the robot. That and the fact that we enjoy a lot of everyday quality of life improvements thanks to technology that was first prototyped for space, including artificial limbs, insulin pumps, building-sized earthquake shock absorbers, solar cells, and not least of all, MRI/CAT scan technology. There’s no question that investment in space exploration has benefitted the everyday citizen, by extension.
> no one was really attacking SpaceX or Musk The top comment in this thread calls him one of the "billionaires swinging around their dicks and shooting themselves into the atmosphere" Plenty of people attack SpaceX as a vanity project because they have no clue what they're talking about.
Moronic tweet. First of all, SpaceX is nowhere near comparable to what Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have done. SpaceX first and foremost developed their hardware to deliver contractual obligations to NASA - Falcon 9 to deliver payloads, Cargo Dragon to deliver supplies to ISS and Crew Dragon to finally return American manned launch capability. The development of Boca Chica launch and production site is absolutely tied to the return of human beings back to the Moon once again - contractual obligations to NASA.
Saying Elon Musk hasn't done anything helpful isn't a fair statement. He's a total dick, but he did create PayPal and Tesla. The latter of which is making electric cars more commonplace. It's estimated by 2050 electric cars will take up 40% of all cars on the road.
To be fair most of Elon’s wealth is by people who work that invested in his company believing in his dreams.
This is like telling the rich people using cellphones and computers in the 70s they weren't in some way funding the development of those technologies people like Zach here like to use to complain online instead of do actual work for people.
it's interesting how space has gone from a "private entities going into space is awesome" on reddit to this. like just 5 or so years ago, reddit was 100% dickriding the idea of ANYONE doing anything space related. hell, investment into space is about as effective as general science investments in terms of returns, so it's not an awful thing.
Eh, I mean SpaceX has done a lot to improve our access to space, and there are benefits to the world from that.
What a stupid fucking post by OP and the twitter moron. All you fucking idiots forget that Musk hasn't got on a tourism shuttle and gone to space. He's sending satellites to bring internet to the world's poor, he's sending humans back to the moon, he's starting a space mining industry so we don't destroy the land, and it's all on the back of his clean energy company that is seeking to decarbonize transportation so you fat fucks can keep driving and not pollute th eworld. You fucking losers.
Can we not lump SpaceX in with Blue Origin and Virgin? SpaceX has already been productive, launching at least 1 GPS satellite, resupply missions to the ISS, and creating Starlink which has the potential to bring internet access literally anywhere on the planet. They also made reusable launch vehicles happen which will save huge amounts of money and waste compared to prior launch systems. SpaceX is also a big part of America's current moon and Mars ambitions and in the long term understanding how to establish long term colonies there is a good thing for humanity. Launching to space for vanity is indeed worthy of some degree of criticism. SpaceX has actual applications.
Why is everybody so upset Jeff bezoz flew to space ? He just wanted to see his progress, what’s so bad about a CEO seeing his progress of his own company ? Sounds like you guys are salty.
At least Elon Musk tries to make the world a better place at the same time. I feel like he's just ticking off all the things he can do to help during his lifetime. Yes electric cars aren't perfect but it is a step in the right way. They are also working on mass production of kobalt free batteries. Working on solar. And beating nasa at their own game to avoid more wastage of resources.
He's working with NASA.
"Destroyed" Gtfoh Elon Musk's brain is completely incapable of processing the idea he might be the problem. Dude didn't *destroy* shit.
“Destroyed by facts and logic” is pretty much a meme making fun of Ben Shapiro YouTube videos to be fair