this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Whenever people tout Space X as an exemplar of private efficiency my eyebrow twitches.
They wouldn’t exist if not for the billions spent through public funding of R&D at NASA.
Space X also can take risks governments can’t. Imagine if NASA blew up rockets as often as Space X? The Republicans would gut their funding even more then they already have.
Apolo program with 60s tech: we will send one rocket per mission to the moon, and it will work.
Brain dead idiots parroting off spaceX as some savior: it will only take at least 15 rocket launches per mission to the moon. We will use the worst trajectory possible because we sold the contract for the lander to a company who can't figure out low moon orbit. 2 years out and our rocket still blows up when attempting launches.
But sure spaceX is a marvel of private industry, shudders
The trajectory was chosen by NASA because the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket do not have enough efficiency to be on a low regular lunar orbit while landing and bringing back astronauts. This trajectory has nothing to do with SpaceX.
When comparing the one rocket to land on the moon to the 15 launches (thank you for writing launches and not rockets, as Destin Sandlin wrongly did) is because the mass delivered to the surface is gigantic compared to Apollo. Why? Because we do not want to say "we did it!" We want to say "we live there!".
Can people stop saying SpaceX rockets explode? They do not. Super rarely they have, but that's not something that happens on a regular basis and happens as rarely to all other companies. Explosions are either caused by landing first stages (nobody does that, the mission success, they are pushing the limits to reuse parts and they haven't exploded in a very long while, while adding capacity no other company has) and prototypes that are meant to rapidly test limits and new technology explode, that's actually the goal: push further, test, improve, nice on to next new system. It's just a completely different approach from other rocket companies. Instead of spending years and years in research and development, they spend months, test, boom, months, test, boom. What that brings is huge innovation.
When comparing SLS to Starship, check how long has SLS taken and how much it costs while looking at its capacity:
$24B for the first rocket, 4+ per next rocket
$20.4B for Orion
11 years to get the first rocket
16 years to get the first capsule
Can bring 690ft³ of payload
As of now, and evolving for Starship:
$7B cost, 4 from NASA for the first 2 missions
11 years for the first tests, still no rocket
Can bring 220,00lb and 35,000ft³ to the moon
And they still and up with a rocket NASA can continue to use at very low price (less than 25% than SLS per mission)
Sources are from Wikipedia articles for both starship and Orion as well as an article from the planetary society on the cost of SLS.