• @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    93 months ago

    They have a $25B yearly budget.

    What is SpaceX spending on R&D? From what I’ve read, Starship is estimated to cost $10B for development and their R&D budget for 2023 was $1.5B. If NASA was going to build something similar themselves, they’ve had nearly 70 years and hundreds of billions to accomplish it.

    In reality their budget goes toward companies like Boeing, Northrop Grummon, and Lockheed Martin, who then pocket it and build substandard equipment. This is all public information so I can’t imagine why people are downvoting other than being extremely emotional for some inexplicable reason.

    • @theneverfox@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      123 months ago

      NASA doesn’t have effective control of their budget anymore. Congress holds the purse strings and uses them like a harness

      NASA gets funding to do something - like go to the moon, or track CO2 emissions. But it comes with strings - sometimes you have to build a certain component in a certain congressional district, sometimes Congress chooses the design you have to use

      It’s a problem of politics and corruption. When the public supports NASA, they have more autonomy. When NASA gets a blank check, they do more with it - reusable rockets aren’t a new idea, and when they cancelled the shuttle program NASA had brain drain. Some of those people founded spaceX - Elon didn’t start it, he came in when they were getting off the ground, just like with Tesla

      • @intensely_human@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13 months ago

        From wikipedia:

        In early 2002, Elon Musk started to look for staff for his company, soon to be named SpaceX. Musk approached five people for the initial positions at the fledgling company, including Michael Griffin, who declined the position of Chief Engineer,[17] Jim Cantrell and John Garvey (Cantrell and Garvey would later found the company Vector Launch), rocket engineer Tom Mueller, and Chris Thompson.

        So your claim that

        Some of those people founded spaceX - Elon didn’t start it, he came in when they were getting off the ground, just like with Tesla

        conflicts with wikipedia’s history of the company.

    • @slumberlust@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      You are omitting the lede. Public appetite for failure on tax payer funds is near zero. That increases time, complexity, and cost for launches (with or without humans aboard).

      • @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13 months ago

        Which can be a failure in itself when you spend 10 years and tens of billions building something “perfectly” only for it to break on its maiden voyage. That makes you wonder what was the point of doing everything so methodically when they could have taken a more efficient and iterative approach.

        • @slumberlust@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          13 months ago

          I’m not saying it’s a good system, but one that exists due to the nature of the funding. Those external pressures (especially when it gets political) just don’t allow for the same amount of mistakes.

          Remember, SpaceX was one failed launch away from bankruptcy.