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