Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Caliga]

I think I've mentioned before that I think Elon Musk is a piece of shit and a con artist.

Just wanted to quote myself here.

[Zoupa]

I just wish we had 50 more billionaires calling on their 120 million followers to prosecute public health officials.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Indeed, 50 more like that and we'd be floating in cities on Jupiter and shit man, big brain Genius.

[Barrister]

The ISS is being shutdown relatively soon.

Boeing's craft which was awarded an ISS contract at the same time as SpaceX is also expected to start sending crewed missions up in the first half of 2023, even if it's delayed again it is fairly close to being ready, they've had extensive test launches / flights.

All that is to say, I don't care? If we find evidence Musk is improperly doing stuff with countries we have security concerns about under the table SpaceX gets blacklisted, we'll work around the implications of that after.

For what it is worth, I see zero proof of that--but lots of smoke, which simply means an investigation is warranted, which is also all I ever said.

Boeing / ULA are all kinds of terrible though.  Boeing Starliner was finally rated for human flight - but it's first attempt to prove the capsule completely failed in 2019.  They finally did a do-over this year.

But even worse though is it launches on an Atlas V rocket - which is power by engines from our good friends at Roscosmos.  My understanding is that they have a set number of engines in stock, good for another couple years of launches, but beyond that they are going to rely on a new rocket - Vulcan - with engines in part developed by Jeff Bexos' Blue Origin.  That rocket has also had numerous delays, but also hopes to have its first flight in 2023.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Boeing / ULA are responsible for some of the most important achievements in manned spaceflight, through their various iterations. They have a development model that was probably unfortunately designed more to efficiently capture government funding than to reduce costs, but the idea they aren't capable of producing manned spaceflight solutions is crazy, they were literally landing people on the moon when Musk was still in his dad's nutsack.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Boeing's CST-100 also isn't locked to the Atlas-V--which ULA announced would cease production back in 2021 and there are only ~20 of them left with no plans to produce more, so it would be insane if Boeing had tied its craft to a rocket that is leaving service. It can launch with the Delta-9, Falcon 9, and an in-development rocket by ULA.

[Barrister]

Boeing / ULA are responsible for some of the most important achievements in manned spaceflight, through their various iterations. They have a development model that was probably unfortunately designed more to efficiently capture government funding than to reduce costs, but the idea they aren't capable of producing manned spaceflight solutions is crazy, they were literally landing people on the moon when Musk was still in his dad's nutsack.

JFK said the US should go to the moon in 1962, and 7 years later it happened.

Development of the Commercial Crew Program started in 2010, and Starliner still hasn't carried humans into LEO.  Development of Vulcan started in 2014, and it still hasn't launched.

I'm not saying Boeing/ULA will never launch a human into orbit - but it will take an enormously long time with numerous delays and at huge cost.  Something is deeply wrong with their development model, and comparisons to what happened 50-60 years ago are no longer particularly valid.

[The Brain]

NERD FIGHT!!!!11

[Barrister]

Boeing's CST-100 also isn't locked to the Atlas-V--which ULA announced would cease production back in 2021 and there are only ~20 of them left with no plans to produce more, so it would be insane if Boeing had tied its craft to a rocket that is leaving service. It can launch with the Delta-9, Falcon 9, and an in-development rocket by ULA.

The in-development rocket is Vulcan, which I've already mentioned.

I assume you mean Delta-IV.  It is not human-rated, although apparently that could happen.  Problem though is it is also being retired, also to be replaced by Vulcan.

Falcon 9 brings you back to Elon Musk.

"insane" was retiring the Space Shuttle with no other way of getting humans into orbit, leaving a ten year gap in capability.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Boeing/ULA was carrying people to space for many years--remember the shuttle program? ULA has like 4 rocket platforms that could easily carry things (including people) to the ISS or other targets in low earth orbit. The thing is Boeing/ULA does its work based on what cost+ contracts the governments wants to have with it. It had no reason to build a capsule to mount on a rocket because the U.S. wasn't using that technology to send people to space--it was using the space shuttle.

When we decided to stop flying the shuttle after the last accident, the only good option for a crewed craft were ones that Roscosmos was using. There was basically no real incentive for Boeing/ULA to try and compete...Roscosmos was doing the job fine with pretty old, well tested, and fairly cheap rockets. Why push into a low margin business when they had lots of contracts for defense / intelligence / commercial / supply launches with their existing rocket platforms none of which required developing a new crewed craft for which there was no immediate need. Then years later when it became obvious continuing to rely on Russia for ISS launches was a problem Boeing starts developing a crewed craft design.

But it's weird considering Boeing / ULA launch all kinds of shit into space all the time that they somehow haven't been doing anything since the shuttle quit flying. You do know more goes on in space than the relatively unimportant ISS missions right?

It's worth noting Boeing built the space shuttle (specifically the orbiting space plane which was developed by Rockwell and Boeing) in the 1970s and it remains significantly more complicated and capable of advanced missions than anything SpaceX has, 40 years later.

[OttoVonBismarck]

"insane" was retiring the Space Shuttle with no other way of getting humans into orbit, leaving a ten year gap in capability.

Not really, getting humans into space just isn't that important--particularly not the ISS, which I think is basically just a propaganda (expensive) device that should have been de-orbited at the end of its original planned missions.

Most human spaceflight is a significant waste of resources providing life support and supplies / accommodations for humans that are unnecessary for most missions of scientific / commercial importance.

[Josquius]

The ISS is dumb yes. Should never have been built. They should have looked to put a space station into a more stable and useful orbit.

[Valmy]

But the sense of charity clearly wasn't mutual. On Saturday, Musk used his giant public megaphone to groundlessly imply that Roth – an openly gay Jewish man who was already the target of an ongoing right-wing hate campaign – was a danger to children or an enabler of child abuse.

What the fuck?

 

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters

I must say that I didn't imagine that Musk's transformation into a full blown alt-right troll would proceed so fast.

Oh for fuck sake.

He just decided to be an extremist alt-right guy? How do you go from "yeah I used to be a Democrat but some of them are little too wacky" to "now I am fully on team far-right" in two seconds? It seems a little...unlikely.

[Darth Wagtaros]

He likes attention and he gets their unconditional love and devotion just by saying stupid shit. Isn't that enough?

[Grey Fox]

Main character syndrome. He didn't buy twitter to not be the main character.