Do you think this kind of thing is worrying or not?

  • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    Hard disagree. SpaceX has been pushing the envelope into reusable rocketry like nothing that’s ever been seen before. They delivered their crew capsule years before Boeing, and Boeing’s is still far from operational. If you ask me, the cost-plus contracts given to companies like Boeing are the real problem, and contributed to the SLS delays. That rocket will cost us billions of dollars per launch. Compare that to a few Falcon Heavy launches and see whose budget is overblown. At least with the fixed-price contracts given to SpaceX and Blue Origin, the taxpayer isn’t on the hook for any delays or cost overruns. Plus, they’re the only ones seriously building human-rated lunar landers. Yeah, I wish our space companies weren’t in the hands of egotistical billionaires, but that is the world we live in.

    • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      The falcon rockets are fine but SpaceX has been raising prices on their launches since they won the majority of the contracts.

      It used to cost 20 million a seat on the Soyuz until Russia became the sole provider of crewed launches, then they raised the price to about 80 million a seat.

      Along comes musk and promises 20 million a seat and low and behold after the contracts are fulfilled they raise the price to 80 million as well.

      SpaceX is falling into the same rut every company that becomes a monopoly enters into, and Starship is Musk’s personal meme rocket the taxpayer has already shelled out 4 billion for, and there’s not even a launch with a working payload.

      SpaceX looks cool flashy as shit but they over-promise and under-deliver at the same rate Tesla does. Early success giving way to overconfidence and an inability to deliver on their lofty promises.