Comment on NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation

• FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Which is why my expectations have lowered. “Hey can we build a rocket out of steel and power it with natural gas?” “We’d have to give engineers a raise or they’ll probably quit.”

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  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’d hope they’re paying them more, since they’re working very long hours. But I do think starship is likely to do well, they’ve crossed some huge barriers to cheap reusability.

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    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      At what point does cheapness outweigh reliability? It was good to keep wasteful and incompetent military contractors on their toes, but that’s going to have diminishing returns, eventually.

      Elon’s vision is spaceflight cheap enough for extremely wealthy consumers to frequent, any further in that direction and SpaceX maybe might no longer benefit the general public.

      We’ll see.

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      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You don’t think starship will be able to be reliable? I think they’ll get falcon 9 like reliability performance at least, and they’re aiming for a lot better.

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