On the one hand, I can't help but feel a degree of respect towards engineers behind those reusable rockets. It is a complex system that works, so that's good.
On the other hand, it is teeming with issues stemming from the very model of it. Privatisation of space exploration is a horrible idea, although I probably shouldn't explain why in a Marxist space. Then there's the cult of Musk, the silly stunts like "launching a convertible into space, with a space suit inside that is playing Space Oddity". It's extremely yank, and it buys the online lemmings, but from the purely practical standpoint - surely there are better ways to do it!
Likewise with the tests they've been running. How many of those rockets have failed? Sure they peddle it as some kinda "success story, "stubbornly refusing to quit" and all that feel-good junk media loves to feed. But surely at some point someone had to say "it's not working right, back to modeling". People removed all the time about "failures" of the Soviet space program, especially the lunar program, so by Jove I will give space X the same treatment.
So yeah. Kudos to the proletariat making it happen, much booing to the capitalists profiting off of it and slapping their names on it.
much booing to the capitalists profiting off of it and slapping their names on it.
This is the best part though, massive wastage and corruption ensures that US stays behind in the space race, and when the funding wanes, entire thing will come crashing down.
I guess. Perhaps it's idealist in me speaking, but it pains me to see such waste. And it pains me to see this waste paraded around, infecting the minds of people into thinking "that's how you do it". That somehow this is awesome, but Roskosmos having reliable and stable launch schedule using tried and tested methods is "lame", "retrograde" and ugh.
And that's even before accounting for the limited resources we have on Earth and the impact these vanity projects have
the biggest grift in the world, melon tusk is a literal manchild
Elon fans compare him to Iron Man.
If he ever builds a suit like that, it'll be the work of his workers, not of him. And hopefully the onboard sentient suit AI will be have enough empathy to understand what's going on and fly him into the sun as soon as he puts it on.
As for SpaceX, it's supposedly contracted by NASA but the reality is it's NASA privatised. Watch China's CSA slowly pull ahead on the same budget or less because its workers aren't alienated and nobody's leeching funds from it or forcing it to waste time on dumb shit (like launching a car into space) for market optics.
I remember when we were supposed to be on Mars by 2016. And everyone was hype about it. Talked to my friends about how I'd love to go to space with cool benevolent boss Elon and work there!
- The Red Planet looks to be becoming Earth rather than Mars 😎, Musk is opaquely a fucking evil idiot, and SpaceX has promised year after year the same stupid bullshit from Mars colonization to lunar tourism and has consistently not delivered outside of dipshit vanity projects like the spacecar nonsense. Elon cares about market speculation, not space, and it certainly shows.
