623
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
623 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
58292 readers
5979 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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).
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
From wikipedia:
So your claim that
conflicts with wikipedia’s history of the company.