FabledAepitaph

Yeah. The cost of movie tickets is outrageous nowadays, and the snacks are just as bad. 50-60 bucks for a movie, popcorn, and a drink for two.

A minimum wage person has to work for 6 or 7 hours to take their friend out to a movie at that rate--ridiculous lol

Are these the new American exports Trump has been pedaling his deals for?

I get it, you're just trolling. There is no valid argument here; NASA is a government institution who's intention is to serve the people through scientific advancement, not scrounge up a fucking profit. I literally just showed you that SpaceX is only more "efficient" by taking advantage of people, which is the complete opposite end of the spectrum from what government is supposed to do. They are not even competitors. They're not even competing; SpaceX will never develop the technology that NASA did, that SpaceX relied on to be in business in the first place.

The original conversation wasn't even about money, efficiency, or profit; it was about the ability to create and benefit society. Because SpaceX has a profit motive, it will never be able to create and innovate the same way NASA did; it'll only ever be able to fulfill narrowly defined contacts. Because guess what? If it goes beyond that, it'll basically be where NASA is and then you'll be in here bitching about them too because they're not "as efficient" as the people they're paying to do a simple, narrowly defined task with overworked, inexperienced employees as they generate rampant environmental harm.

Reading directly from your source: one of NASA's key drivers have been RELIABILITY, and a "non-industrial" culture. Of course both of these things drive cost up. "Industrial" cultures have eliminated creativity since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line at his plant--everyone has a single efficient responsibility and it makes everyone miserable as a result, leading to nobody giving a single damn at the end of the day.

In the same paragraph you linked: "The low Shuttle flight rate not only makes for inefficient use of personnel and facilities, it distorts the cost per flight calculations because of high fixed costs.” (Rutledge, 93-4063)" Meaning that if they had modified their program and product to launch more frequently like SpaceX does, then the costs would be much more favorable.

And also: "Another key factor in SpaceX’s low costs is its young, highly motivated workforce of top graduates willing to work significant unpaid overtime. " This is NOT a good thing--people shouldn't have to slave away for their career. It's also not sustainable, and it means that the work is being done by inexperienced individuals which leads to disasters like:

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/18/texas-space-x-lawsuit-tceq-pollution/, and

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/mexico-president-lawsuit-spacex-debris-rocket-explosions, and

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy-launch-destroyed-launchpad-volcano-sized-explosion-2023-11

They keep giving contracts to SpaceX because that's the way the budgets are mandated from congress. They have X amount of money to distribute. Everything goes to generally the lowest bidder, and because there are only a handful of options, they have to keep using one contractor to produce their parts because it's even more expensive to keep switching.

So drop the attitude. Usually the worst bidder gets the job, and it ends up costing more money after everything is said and done.

The whole point is that SpaceX's contributions have been minimal... and have still been paid for by tax dollars anyways with all the contracts they're getting. Their big thing is supposed to be reusable rockets.. guess what, NASA already pioneered the concept of reusable spacecraft with their space shuttle.

Yeah. These dumbasses forget that government funding is what originally set the stage and enabled any progress at all for private company-entrepreneurs who benefitted from all that publicly available knowledge, paid for by our tax dollars.

Innovation will slow to a trickle with all these government cuts because these companies literally can't pay for anything not directly related to their bottom dollar, and none of them can see far enough past next quarter's profits to invest in the future.

Could you elaborate on how SpaceX "ran circles around NASA", seeing as how NASA basically pioneered every single piece of modern space technology, and all SpaceX is doing is fumbling to rearrange it like Legos that explode on the launch pad? Lol

Wouldn't be surprised of we begin seeing these headlines from the US, thanks to the Trump administration

So weird seeing my Ikea room divider in someone else's house haha

Mmhmm, if it were truly "intelligent", why would it need copyrighted material at all?

Dang, I was hoping there was a competitor. I'm boycotting Musk companies as best I can