First helicopter to fly on another planet Autonomous rovers Rock climbing robots Health sensors for watches Water purification LED bulbs Maybe it's just me but I've always found Space X and Starliner to be boring. They're just enhancing what's already been done. JPL is looking to take us where we've never been, technologically speaking Missions | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Are any of them offering Satellite Internet that rivals landline cable internet speeds around the world? Not a fan of DOGE but was in Europe for an extended period last summer and a lot of my coworkers all had StarLink terminals. It was the best Internet option in Western Germany, to the point a lot of American families were opting for them rather than local internet providers. Same with Musk and reusable rockets. BTW, US Government acquisition is not set up to compete at this time. We really need an Administration to come in and reform it to take us out of the current system. McCain wanted to do that but there was no way he was going to win in ‘08 against Obama. JPL is a little different since it is a research organization and is not bound by the FAR.
Starlink is good but like other things it doesn't intrigue me because satellite internet has been around for a couple decades now. They just enhanced it. JPL is working on things that have never been done before which is the beauty of government funded projects because there doesn't need to be a financial incentive. Private industry isn't going to try to do what's never been done unless there is a potential to make money
Of course they do that's exactly my point. They can't explore thought experiments unless there's a potential to make money.
I have a lot of criticisms of Musk but SpaceX isn’t one of them, at least to a significant degree. They’ve been flagrant with violating some regulations but overall I’d rate them as a net positive on society. I chalk much of that up to Shotwell at SpaceX. She has a good head on her shoulders and won’t get sucked into all the stuff you see Elon involved with.
I am not understanding the hate for failure of the Starship rocket. This is the scientific method at work. Try something new and learn something from it. Unfortunately, this experiment is done in the public eye. How many times did Edison try to make a light bulb? Look, there is a lot of things to rag on Elon about. Government policy? Go for it. Supporting bad economic policies? Sure. Elon is guilty of one thing. He flew too close to the Trump and got burned and crashed to the ground as have many others who flew into the orbit of the Trumpster. He was played by the master con artist. Hate on him for that. But not for trying to develop a rocket that can fly outside Earth orbit and return to fly again.
There’s some saying about cowards cheering the failures of those trying comes to mind when seeing posts like these.
Is there a participation trophy for highest rocket before it explodes or something? How many Billions did you literally burn up today?
These are test flights. That is when you want the rocket to fail. I guess you forgot how NASA started out.
A NASA that was not constrained to make money by the Reagan administration and which had engineered circles around both Musk's company and whatever it is the people like Bezos have been playing with. In fact neither Fail X or Blue Whatever would exist without that era of accomplishment and innovation. Try returning NASA to the model of funding science and engineering with milestones and goals including furthering knowledge and understanding, but not for profit and we will see innovation again. Unless we do that, all we will see is the next Challenger or Columbia. Also, let's take away all of the Tax Payer handouts from FailX and we will see how long they stay around.
It’s the hypocrisy being pointed out. People like rocket stuff. People don’t like the guy who cut funding for humanitarian need with zero effort to understand the impact getting billions to fail.
Whether this project is to date a success or failure I have no idea. What were its goals? What was its budget? musks approach seems to be to build these things rapidly and cost efficiently in development and accept a higher rate of failure and learn from the failure. Is that better or worse than the alternative? I don’t know. If they spent 10 times as much to try to get one right, and it failed, is that better? In all the theoretic on this I have not seen any data or standards to establish if they are succeeding or failing.
You do realize that was over 40 years ago, correct? In that time, people have retired, organizations change, and culture is lost. And I’ll ask again, NASA does not build anything itself. It acquires it’s rockets from government contractors. You do not think those companies have financial incentives?
Our agitated libbies here also don’t want to have to come to terms with the fact that Obama was the president who ended NASA as we knew it. His significant budget cuts were the opening for SpaceX to basically take over. That was his plan all along.
Vs the Chicom puppet party's plan to pi$$ money away on green scam bullshit designed only to cede freedom and control to your overlords--the government--to save us from ourselves... bc we reeeeally need parasitic bureaucrats to restrict entrepreneurial innovation, in the name of saving the planet... ...one carbon credit at a time... (...and Leer jets to transport libby politicians to Brussells and Paris n such... to preach the glorious virtue of bureaucracy, and how indispensable it is, to saving the planet!!!)
