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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2552 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is there any well-established rule of 'controversial topic of mild significance (because there are legitimate arguments on both sides) gets far more attention than uncontroversial disaster of much greater significance which is somehow considered a faux pas to talk about'. I guess it might just be a simple extension of the power media has to determine the discourse. Constant dysfunction is boring vs exciting rocket explosions and dynamic personalities like Musk or Trump.

There is for example a well-established discourse here and elsewhere about whether or not Starship is overhyped, about Elon Musk being too optimistic in his projections. Elsewhere there's a perception that Musk is a scammer who just takes credit for work that his engineers do and somehow bewitches investors into giving him all this money. I'm fairly sympathetic to Musk, building a whole new class of super heavy rocket is difficult, doing things for the first time is difficult, especially in space. Starship is mostly funded by SpaceX too, so it's not like its a big deal if there are delays.

But the non-Musk US spaceflight program seems to be non-controversially a dumpster fire, a complete clownshow, a world-historical money-shredding operation, grifter central. Orion alone (just the capsule) took 19 years and $30 billion. The rocket it's supposed to go with can't actually reach the Moon, it's not technically possible because Orion is too heavy. They unironically proposed building a space station near the moon to make up for this, make the moon mission even more complicated and expensive.

https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/nasas-orion-space-capsule-is-flaming-garbage/

Lockheed had the temerity to charge 2.5 billion for the luxury of adding docking capabilities to their capsule! All the money for this garbage comes from the US public.

NASA and the established spaceflight players like Lockheed or Boeing should be ruthlessly purged IMO, how can you get away with stealing all this money? Find the decisionmakers and bankrupt them, jail them, teach them a lesson. Take a lesson from China's purges, you can't just have important national capabilities turned into slush funds for lazy cabals of contractors and bureaucrats. Only during the Boeing Starliner fiasco where astronauts were left stranded was there much public attention given to the dire state of procurement and even then people mostly seemed to go 'Boeing is a shit company' rather than look at things more broadly.

But the non-Musk US spaceflight program seems to be non-controversially a dumpster fire, a complete clownshow, a world-historical money-shredding operation, grifter central.

This has been the case ever since the US committed to the space shuttle program before the vast majority* of Mottizens was even born. I once read a great series of posts (which a cursory internet search isn't turning up, alas) that criticized the space shuttle program in detail and backed it up with period documentation. It was pretty clear that while there were many who were enthusiastic about a shuttle for the wow! factor, from a simple physical and engineering standpoint it never made sense. Irrespective of the built-in limitations of gravity, space shuttle backers nevertheless pushed, and got, the largest version of the shuttle possible to the Nixon administration, thus wedding NASA to spending the majority of its budget on an ultra-high cost, ultra-low utility space plane. The choice is especially egregious since NASA's budget cuts in the 70s meant that committing to the space shuttle necessarily meant building out expensive new launch capability for the shuttle and abandoning the existing Apollo/Saturn V, which ironically could lift significantly more weight into space than the shuttle ever could. That the US continues to waste billions on launch tech based upon the shuttle's known to be inferior lift capability five decades after its inception and a decade plus after its official retirement, all while SpaceX has already achieved much better results at a fraction of the cost is just... chef's kiss.

NASA and the established spaceflight players like Lockheed or Boeing should be ruthlessly purged IMO, how can you get away with stealing all this money? Find the decisionmakers and bankrupt them, jail them, teach them a lesson. Take a lesson from China's purges, you can't just have important national capabilities turned into slush funds for lazy cabals of contractors and bureaucrats.

You'd think so, but in fact the US has demonstrated that it can and will pursue dodgy technology with only marginally better potential than existing tech, if at all, and do so over and over again. What's especially impressive are the ridiculously wasteful patronage programs "cost saving" programs that are so bad that we vow never to do them again... until generational memory decays enough to begin a fresh round of graft at the expense of the US taxpayer. Where's William Proxmire when we need him?

*ISTR at least one Mottizen claiming to be a Baby Boomer

I agree with the main point and am usually first to criticize cost-inefficient US military procurement, especially in the age of drones. But the F-35 is OK, it is at least better than its 1960s equivalent, you get some more bang for a lot more buck. And there are export orders. The Zumwalt is pretty terrible as a warship but it's better than it's 60s equivalent, if only it weren't so ruinously expensive and they didn't cancel the guns. The LCS is pretty useless, I think it might indeed be worse than its 1960s equivalent, the Charles F. Adams Class. I've heard some defences of the Osprey, it's not like the capabilities it brings are that useful (any serious opponent will shoot them down pretty easily) but there are some capabilities it brings to the table. These are flawed programs and show a reckless disregard for efficient and realistic procurement.

But SLS+Orion is just worse than the Saturn V. Less power, more cost, can't reach the Moon. I think this is just a whole other league of terribleness to the standard story of defence procurement fiascos, on par only with the LCS. Maybe even worse than the LCS because at least there was some kind of idea where it'd be useful, fighting in low intensity wars. Whereas SLS+Orion is supposed to go to the Moon but can't.

If the F-35 was outright worse than an F-4 Phantom then Lockheed executives should be aggressively, intensively bullied. That's the spaceflight equivalent I think.

The thing that I'm trying to point at with the F-35 reference specifically is the lessons learned from the TFX program/F-111 were that trying to save money by making one common multi-role aircraft ultimately netted a thoroughly mediocre end result that was delivered way over time and way over budget, and that sticking with individual designs to fill specific roles was far superior as evidenced by the subsequent fighters. But as sure as Odin made little green apples, the US tried to do it again with the JSF/F-35, harder and longer, as is the custom with military procurement these days, because post cold-war budget cuts, or something.

Rabble.

cost is just... chef's kiss

AI slop detected.

Are we going after ellipses now? Is nothing holy?

It stops being holy if it becomes an LLM-ism. Same with it's not X, it's Y.

The AI is doing us a favor by finding all the vapid, say-something-without-saying-anything phrases in writing and making them feel icky.

You do you, but for me... fuck that noise. I'm not going to change my writing style because LLMs use mannerisms I do, nor because it causes people to falsely think my writing was LLM generated. To me, doing that would be a weakness. IMO it's better to be your own person even if some think less of you for that.

No way! Why should I change? They're the ones that suck!

Be careful that you don't trip on the AIphemism treadmill.

Those hopped-up search engines with extra steps can have my chef's kiss and my em dashes when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

Starship is mostly funded by SpaceX too, so it's not like its a big deal if there are delays.

Losing the Space Race Boogaloo to China seems like a fairly big deal.

They unironically proposed building a space station near the moon to make up for this, make the moon mission even more complicated and expensive.

Not a very good argument in terms of "non-Musk space companies being a dumpster fire", as he unironically proposed having a dozen or two of orbital refuellings in order to send a single rocket to the moon, which they don't even know if they can do. Using Starship as a lander doesn't strike me as particularly sane either.

There are definitely people too invested in painting him as a clown, and I will further say they're almost certainly doing so for political reasons, but he's also definitely overhyped.

SpaceX is the only group capable of competing with China in space though? If it weren't for them, China would be ahead in orbital launch and cost-efficiency... If anyone's to blame for losing the Space Race it should be Lockheed and NASA who've blundered billions and billions on rockets that don't work properly. If SpaceX had been given that money they probably would've done a much better job with it.

Most of his launches are in-house for Starlink, and it's not clear Starlink's model is sustainable. His competition is slowly catching up to him, and much like with Tesla, his ideas to stay ahead are not panning out, to put it mildly. I'm pretty sure the trajectory of the two companies will be the same.

Also, you're shifting the goalposts. Your original argument was that it's not a big deal that Starship is delayed, and I gave an argument for why it is. Looping back to "but look at all the cool things that they did with Falcon" is irrelevant. This is the typical cycle of the conversations about Elon: use hype about the future to claim he's amazing, then claim the past should already be enough for you, when someone questions the claims about the future.

I still maintain that it's not a big deal if Starship is delayed, since firstly they're trying something new (reusable superheavy rocket) so there should be allowances for inherent difficulty. Also they're doing it with their own money instead of asking for gazillions from the US govt and then producing something worse than what came out in the 1960s.

I was responding to your point where 'Losing the Space Race Boogaloo to China seems like a fairly big deal.' but I don't see how this could be SpaceX's fault, even if Starship fails, the US is only ahead in space because of SpaceX. My 'goalpost-shifting' is a response to that.

I was responding to your point where 'Losing the Space Race Boogaloo to China seems like a fairly big deal.' but I don't see how this could be SpaceX's fault, even if Starship fails, the US is only ahead in space because of SpaceX.

If the Space Race is about the moon, I'm not even sure the US is ahead of China, and I don't see how you don't see it's SoaceX fault. They were supposed to have a whole bunch of milestones checked off by now, and they didn't make it to orbit yet.

Oh, they're still asking for and getting billions from the US govt; the differences between them (and Blue Origin) vs Boeing or Lockheed are that they're spending way fewer billions (probably over $10B for the whole Starship program R&D before SpaceX is done, but SLS and Orion are over $50B now), a minority of that spending is from the government (SpaceX's two HLS contracts total a bit over $4B, Blue Origin's one a bit under), and the spending disbursement is tied to milestones rather than to "here you go; if stuff's not working come back and ask for more" (though the milestones are way too front-loaded; these are very stringent contracts by NASA R&D standards but they're weak by any non-R&D standard).

I don't see how this could be SpaceX's fault

SpaceX bidding "Elon time" estimates rather than realistic schedule estimates might have been part of how they beat Blue Origin for the original HLS award, and this delayed Blue Origin's award by a couple years of legal/policy wrangling. If SpaceX's delays are more than a few years' worse than China's, and Blue Origin's are less than a couple years' worse, and there aren't any "Artemis II heat shield failure" or "Axiom discovers a huge flaw in its suits" level problems from others, then China will put astronauts on the moon before we return astronauts to the moon and it'll be in part because of that bid+award. Fingers crossed for Blue Origin, though; the New Glenn was supposed to first launch in 2020 and eventually got pushed back to 2025. Fingers crossed for Artemis II, too; it feels insane to launch humans in a reentry vehicle where we haven't yet done an unmanned test of our planned fixes for its chunks-were-breaking-off-the-heat-shield problem.

I disagree that China beating us here is a big deal, because "put a few men on the moon for the first time at $4B+ a pop marginal" (inflation adjusted) was a bad goal in the first place, and changing the goal to "for the seventh time" doesn't make it any better, whereas "plant ISS-scale skyscrapers on the moon for a fraction of the price" (or even "plant 20 tons a pop on the moon via commercial rocket flights") actually has some interesting long-term possibilities.

On the other hand, even my autist-adjacent heart sees some symbolic value to lapping China in the flags-and-footprints race, because: China has just beaten us in the Barbecue-In-Space Race! I reiterate: taikonauts are now enjoying steaks and bone-in wings fresh out of the oven! At least Sputnik had the decency to limit itself to a culturally-neutral "beep beep beep"; China's is driving a stake of shame into the very heart of America!

Most of his launches are in-house for Starlink

So far this year SpaceX has launched forty non-Starlink missions. That is no longer as many launches as the entire country of China, but it is more launches than any other country in the world, including (by a margin over 50%) the combined non-SpaceX remainder of the USA. It is more launches than all non-US non-China countries combined. It is also still more launched payload capacity than the entire country of China.

The fact that he launches even more for Starlink expands this accomplishment; it does not diminish it.

SpaceX is, obviously, empirically, numerically, by hundreds of percent, the only institution currently capable of competing with China in space.

Oh - but I nearly stopped while still just talking about cargo! Last time we talked about the options to launch humans I was hopeful for Starliner, but last year's flight had continuing reaction control system issues that ended up with its two test pilots waiting for extra SpaceX seats to bring them home again, and Boeing and NASA still haven't announced any potential timeline for an upcoming flight. SpaceX are currently still the only ones outside of China and Russia who operate a manned orbital spacecraft; their 4 manned launches in 2025 exceed China's 1 and Russia's 1 (hopefully soon to be 2).

Early next year SpaceX's US competition plan to put Orion in space with people on board for the first time, which is very exciting but terrifying. I want to use a kinder phrase than "flaming garbage", but I do see the photos in that article where literal pyrolysis tore chunks of its heat shield off like literal garbage. Orion's reentry capability is at the same "well, it did survive" stage as the Starship tests' ... or worse, because much of the Starship tests' damage is intentional, and unless you count ablation none of Orion's was. But, Musk will be flying another few dozen or hundred Starships before they dare put a human on board during reentry; NASA's Artemis policy, by contrast, is YOLO.

His competition is slowly catching up to him

Hopefully their future will see a little less gradatim and a little more ferociter.

I am non-ironically excited for the possibility that Blue Origin's upcoming second attempt to accomplish a booster landing is about to succeed. It's unlikely to have any more significant delays (we're just a few days out from the first launch window), and so long as it has no delays worse than have already occurred, their landing attempt will come slightly before the ten year anniversary of SpaceX accomplishing the same. It is awesome (though again I feel I must explicitly state that I'm not being sarcastic) that the leading team among SpaceX's most serious long-term competition may now be less than a decade behind them! But to anyone without a weird grudge against Musk, it's not tempting to overstate the magnitude of that awesomeness.

I am non-ironically excited for the possibility that Blue Origin's upcoming second attempt to accomplish a booster landing is about to succeed. It's unlikely to have any more significant delays (we're just a few days out from the first launch window), and so long as it has no delays worse than have already occurred, their landing attempt will come slightly before the ten year anniversary of SpaceX accomplishing the same. It is awesome that the leading team among SpaceX's most serious long-term competition may now be less than a decade behind them!

Uh-huh. How did the competition "being behind" Tesla detract from Cybertruck, Semi, Robotaxi, FSD, and Optimus being dumpster fires, and the Chinese offering as good or better cars for cheaper? How does "being ahead" supposed to magically help Starship?

Is Cybertruck a dumpster fire? I see quite a few of them driving around, about as many as you'd expect for something as niche as an electric pickup truck. It's pretty nearly the only game in town there AFAIK -- is Rivian more or less of a dumpsterfire than Cybertruck?

If you listen to Tesla's earning's calls prior to it's launch, it was supposed to be their "best product ever", they haven't mentioned them a single time in quite a while, and the last time I remember he referred to it as "digging our own grave" with it.

EDIT: Musk was saying they're aiming for 200K sales annually, it looks like they're at ~60K total.

IDK man -- "not going as well as we'd hoped" with a brand new market segment isn't quite a "dumpster fire" in my book -- especially since it's hard to untangle the... political constraints that have come to the fore since launch. It did sell like twice as many units as the electric F150 in it's launch year; looks like Ford is selling slightly more in 2025, but emphasis there is 'slightly' -- maybe electric pickups are just not hot sellers?

Now (this)[https://www.reuters.com/business/stellantis-recalls-over-320000-us-vehicles-over-battery-fire-risk-says-nhtsa-2025-11-04/] is a (Big 3) dumpster fire!

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When you accused @RandomRanger of "shifting the goalposts", was that an honest concern of yours? I never said a word about Tesla.

I'm curious about when you think Tesla's competition was a decade behind Tesla, but mostly I'm just going to assume that you're shifting to Tesla because, when in the grip of Musk hate, all his companies look alike? They're not. The one building 2.5% of the world's cars and the one launching 85% of the world's spacecraft are in pretty different places.

It's definitely possible that the competition could catch up to SpaceX; I wish there were more even trying to catch up. Blue Origin is trying, though, and they're nearly a decade behind. Not a hyperbole decade, a look-at-the-calendar-and-subtract decade. RocketLab is trying, and with luck they'll succeed with the first Neutron flight next year and they'll only be 11 years behind.

I'm really excited about Stoke trying to surpass SpaceX; their first effort will never carry people but it's the first thing outside of China that could potentially undercut Falcon 9 on light cargo; they're the only serious attempt so far at rapid full reuse other than Starship.

In the context of the "new space race with China", it doesn't bode well that most of SpaceX's prospective competition is in China. LandSpace is probably ahead of Blue Origin, despite being 40% as old. If Starship fails, it's possible that after another ten years we'll be able to say "the Chinese offering as good or better cars launch vehicles for cheaper". Just waiting for that probably wouldn't be good American space policy, though. Ideally we'd have a second homegrown SpaceX, but we don't, and until we do they're both metaphorically and literally carrying us.

When you accused RandomRanger of "shifting the goalposts" was that an honest concern of yours?

Yes.

I never said a word about Tesla.

I know, it's called analogy. It meant to illustrate the fact that just because you reached a milestone before your competitors, doesn't mean you will forever stay ahead of them.

I'm curious about when you think Tesla's competition was a decade behind Tesla,

I dunno, I suppose when BYD first launched and Elon responded by maniacally laughing, but not having much of an argument for why they're bad.

but mostly I'm just going to assume that you're shifting to Tesla because, when in the grip of Musk hate, all his companies look alike?

Well, I do think that different companies managed by the same man are likely to suffer from the same management flaws. I don't think that's unreasonable.

I also don't hate Elon. I told you multiple times that I'd much prefer a world where I'm completely wrong about him. He's supporting most of the causes I support as well, and it would be a lot better fornmenif he proves to be a genius and vindicates ball these causes by proxy, rather than a hype peddler who's about to run out of luck and drag down all these causes with him.

I suppose I do get mildly annoyed that criticizing him inevitably summons fanboys acting like someone just murdered their dog.

Not a hyperbole decade, a look-at-the-calendar-and-subtract decade. RocketLab is trying, and with luck they'll succeed with the first Neutron flight next year and they'll only be 11 years behind.

This argument only makes sense if they managed to maintain the distance over those 11 years, and I'm that instead of doing that, they're sinking their advantage into boondoggle called Starship (which is when comparing SpaceX to Musk's other companies comes in handy, because the man really seems to like boondoggles). Starship is not going to the moon, it's definitely not going to Mars, it might end up doing it's LEO Pez-dispenser bit, but even that is not certain, and it's an open question if it does so in a cost-effective way.

Ideally we'd have a second homegrown SpaceX, but we don't, and until we do they're both metaphorically and literally carrying us.

No amount of SpaceX is going to help you, if what they're doing is retarded. You're not going to the moon with something that requires over a dozen refuellings, a space station that makes you wait a week if you miss a rendezvous, and a lander that is so tall it needs an elevator and lots of prayers to not tip over.

Not all of that is on SpaceX, but if they're so brilliant they should have raise some objections to the idea.

This argument only makes sense if they managed to maintain the distance over those 11 years

Then it's a good thing they've been maintaining some distance! In those years they've:

  • Increased Falcon 9 payload capacity over 50%
  • Added downrange booster recovery options
  • Added booster recovery from and reflight after missions beyond LEO
  • Begun launching national security payloads and NASA flagship payloads
  • Tested and made operational a super-heavy launch vehicle, also partly-reusable, launching it 11 times so far with no failures
  • Began reuse of their unmanned space capsule
  • Had the longest streak in history of successful operational launches of any rocket, then the longest streak of any company, by what is now the most reliable launch vehicle in history
  • Human-rated Falcon 9
  • Tested and made operational a manned space capsule, in the first manned launches from the US since Shuttle, and launched several dozen astronauts to orbit with no failures
  • Surpassed the total on-orbit flight time of any other manned launch vehicle (and of a few space stations)
  • Done launches with GEO insertion
  • Added fairing recovery
  • Added extended fairing options
  • Launched payloads to the Moon (orbit and landing), asteroids, and Jupiter
  • Increased their flight rate 20-fold, flying it far more frequently than any other launch vehicle in history, and more in total than any vehicle save Soyuz
  • Reused recovered boosters, now up to 30 times each, exceeding Shuttle for most-reused orbital rocket stage ever
  • Launched and are now operating enough active satellites to exceed the currently-active total of everyone else in history, by a factor of 2, with several million users and a million more every few months
  • Launched the most powerful rocket in history, nearly by a factor of 2, then recovered three of them and reflew two of them
  • Launched the largest single spacecraft ever (i.e. [edit: not] counting on-orbit assembly) into space
  • Successfully reentered and did a soft splashdown with the largest reentry vehicle ever, with the first live video of reentry ever, then did it again 4 times

Some of those are just firsts for SpaceX, but several are firsts for anybody in history. They are by far the most successful space launch developer in history, and have not been slacking ... and I'm just mentioning their technical achievements, which are secondary to what's actually best about them. The list above is a side effect of the work done lowering the cost of space access.

if what they're doing is retarded

Long ago, you had no idea what you were talking about, but you at least noticed it when I pointed out that SpaceX was indeed already flying astronauts, and you intended to do better. You still have no idea what you're talking about, but now you have no idea that you have no idea - you believe you know so much that you can call the people who are more correct retarded! I don't see how you can come back from that, but you have to try! I know that orbital refueling logistics is a lot more complicated than "look up, SpaceX put that light in the sky and it has people in it", and so I don't think I can get it past your biases this time, but I promise, there is a reason why everybody who hasn't been lobbied by SRB manufacturers is in favor of it, there is a reason why Blue Moon is also planning to do it, and there is a reason why even SLS, the epitome of huge disintegrating-totem-pole rockets, turned out to be unusable for its core mission without it. If we wanted to be the first to get flags and footprints on the moon, we should have canceled Artemis 8 years ago and saved $50B, because it turns out we already did that 50 years ago. If we want to do anything serious on the moon, then doing it 20 tons (Blue Moon Mk2, 4 launches per mission) or 100 tons (Starship HLS, definitely less than 20 per) at a go is the way to do it, but more importantly doing it at a high cadence to help amortize costs and reduce risks is also the way to do it. The marginal cost of a dozen launches even of a fully expended Starship is still cheaper than a single SLS launch.

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Losing the Space Race Boogaloo to China seems like a fairly big deal.

I mean it'd certainly sting pride-wise, but US lost the space race to USSR, and yet USSR was dead within a generation. One can argue that losing the space race had been beneficial, serving as a wake up call that stimulated increased interest in space technology in particular and science and technology in general. Given how senile, inept and infested with grifters US governance structure had become, maybe losing another space race would be the necessary wake up call that produces the necessary change? I'd rather choose the timeline where US loses the race now and China's communism collapses in 30 years, than one where US barely pulls ahead because it can afford to waste trillions, and smugly sleepwalks into the situation where in 30 years it's being eaten alive.

One can argue that losing the space race had been beneficial, serving as a wake up call that stimulated increased interest in space technology in particular and science and technology in general.

If the argument for Elon Musk's brilliance is supposed to be that he will make you lose the space race and serve as a wake up call, then all I have to say is that you're getting ripped off. I can make you lose the space race for a fraction of his price!

I don't think this is an argument for Elon Musk. If anything, Elon Musk is the only person who is preventing this outcome - if not Musk, it would be correct to conclude that the race is definitely lost and it's just a matter of time before the structural collapse reveals itself in a way that is obvious to the public (and if we're very lucky, it would not have a body count attached). As it were with the case of USSR, by that time it would be way too late to do anything - and in fact, it may be already too late to do anything 30 years before that. Not that anybody is inclined to do anything. To start thinking about change, you need to either a strong wake up call - like losing the space race - or have a person that is completely crazy and just decides to do something which had been proven many times it can't be done, and then does it. But we don't know yet which of the ways the future would go. Maybe Musk would lose and we go the wake up call way. A lot of people in the US are certainly rooting for that way, because Musk hurt their feelings and there's nothing more Hitler than that. But I am also afraid that the wake up call may arrive when there's nobody left to be woken up (insert a pun about "woke" here, I'm too lazy to follow through).

If anything, Elon Musk is the only person who is preventing this outcome - if not Musk, it would be correct to conclude that the race is definitely lost and it's just a matter of time before the structural collapse reveals itself in a way that is obvious to the public

Yeah, no that's crazy. Nothing about the mission architecture of going to th moon with Starship can be reasonably described as preventing this outcome. 10 years ago, when nearly everybody thought that Elon can do no wrong, I could at least understand the belief that he'll conjure something out of thin air to solve all the problems that are plain to see right from the drawing board, but nowadays, after seeing how Hyperloop, "Full Self-Driving", Cybercab, Robotaxi, and Optimus are turning out, I'd hope people would be a bit more skeptical of him.

I am not saying "Elon can do no wrong". I am saying "Elon is our only hope". That's quite different. I don't know if Elon can get us to the moon. Maybe yes, maybe not. I know NASA bullshiters can't. And won't be for a while. Yes, Elon has a lot of failures, you don't need to bother listing every one of them, I am fully aware. That doesn't change my point even a little bit - either Elon succeeds, however flawed and problematic his plan is, or nobody does. That's the only two realistic options. I can not influence the outcome in any way of form, but for people who can, I think fighting against Elon is just betting on US losing. Again, maybe it will benefit the US in the long run, but certainly not anytime soon.

I am not saying "Elon can do no wrong". I am saying "Elon is our only hope".

What I said was that there was a time when people were acting like he could do no wrong, and at that time claims like "he's our only hope" would be somewhat understandable, they're not anymore. Not only is he not our only hope, right now he's the limiting factor. Any of the competing landers would have had a better chance of success, and the way things stand right now, they might still succeeding over Starship.

To be fair, it's it's not just Elon's fault, there were very odd things going on at NASA when the decision was made to go with him, but no, "Elon succeeds or nobody does" are not the only two options.

So I think a lot of the anti-Musk sentiment is driven by him humiliating the wrong people. Space-X makes NASA look bad. Tesla made American car companies look bad. The Starlink deployment in Ukraine made a whole lot of defence companies and EU leaders look bad.

A grossly simplified model of progressivism is that it believes all of the worlds problems are fixed by giving more money to progressives.

A lot of modern problems with governance are caused by the fact that they won't be blatant and just say that 30% of funding must be set aside for fake jobs for families of connected people on the left. Instead they mandate that various consultants must be hired or certain companies must get the contracts. As a result the actual work gets affected.

Here's a video from a NASA subcontractor explaining how the minority owned business requirements are affecting projects: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FIONXPbIkVo

are fixed by giving more money to progressives.

Correction: replace "more" with "all the" and "money" with "power". Money is downstream from power. Forcing NASA to do DEI hires is the exercise of pure power, and when the power squeezes, the money flows to the required direction.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/nasas-orion-space-capsule-is-flaming-garbage/

Damn, I can't believe I was too lazy to be first to post this. Readers interested in space, don't just keep scrolling past the link here; it's exhaustively but brilliantly devastating.

"I’m a technical manager. I’ve had bad days. Who hasn’t? But I’ve never had a “we forgot to ask about docking for 13 years and now it’s going to cost us $2.5b to correct” day. Has this ever happened to you?"

I recently defended SLS here; I think it's indefensible in an absolute sense, but it at least holds its own in a "relative to Saturn V" sense. Both programs are justifiable answers to policy makers who keep asking the wrong question. But the cost and danger of Orion are just unconscionable.

(and, to be fair, Casey's view of SLS is also harsh: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/10/02/sls-is-still-a-national-disgrace/ )

Seems like a cross between The Toxoplasmosa of Rage (Musk is more toxoplasma than man, now), and that quote from The Dark Knight:

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, we'll give Lockheed-Martin another few billion dollars for nothing, or a flight of scientists will be left stranded in orbit by Boeing, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when Musk says that his not-so-little rockets will get us to Mars, well then everyone loses their minds.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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