Considering nobody in the world can compete with SpaceX currently this seems purely political in nature. The EU is struggling to even come up with an answer to reusable rockets. China is the closest and will likely have something equivalent to the Falcon 9 within the next 2 years. But someone in the USA? People are delusional. Sure it is always best to have competitors but how did that work for Boeing/NASA/Starliner? You can't have two players/competitors if there is only one player in the entire world. And the reason why you need reusability is so that it is actually sustainable to use it! Does anyone here thinking this is a good idea have any idea how much it costs to launch SLS just once??
To anyone not getting it still. SpaceX position in rocketry is comparable to that of Nvidia in AI GPUs. Thinking that Blue or anyone else will be beating them in anything any time soon is simply naive. Blue is the AMD here. The AMD that is today where Nvidia was 5 years ago. That's just the way it is. Also, like Nvidia, SpaceX has a massive budget for R&D. Just the revenue from Starlink is projected to eclipse the entire NASA budget within a couple of years, maybe sooner.
> China is the closest and will likely have something equivalent to the Falcon 9 within the next 2 years.
That's wildly optimistic. Falcon 9 launches operationally 100+ a year and single boosters with 20+ uses. Even if in the next 2 years, China has some kind of first stage that lands, its in no way 'like Falcon 9'.
So lets not be unreasonably optimistic just because its China. China isn't magic and they wont have such a rocket no matter if they invest in it or not.
> But someone in the USA? People are delusional.
BlueOrigin is much closer then anybody in China. They have actually attempted launching a large rocket, China has not. And BlueOrigin has made its own advacned reusable engine and flown them to Orbit, argaubly China has not done that.
Reusability is not a bonus like Falcon 9. The whole concept assumes reusability to refuel the lunar lander in Earth orbit since it cannot get to the Moon on its own. It must be refuelled between 10 and 20 times. They won't even say exactly how many times yet. You cannot just yeet that many Starships to get to the Moon once. You must reuse.
Could they? The Apollo program took 9 years from conception to landing the first person on the moon, and cost $257 billion adjusted for 2020 dollars ($25.4B at the time). For comparison, the Artemis program was budgeted for $86B [0], with less to spend due to NASA budget cuts. The SpaceX Artemis contract is "only" worth $2.9B. Finally, the Starship program has cost an estimated $5-8B so far [1].
Some conclusions / opinions: Starship so far is relatively cheap compared to the previous program that took Americans to the moon. Developing a moon capable rocket takes a long time, especially if they don't just copy the existing designs from 60 years ago. And a single purpose rocket will long-term be more expensive than a more generalised / reusable platform, but that's more capitalist objectives than political (e.g. beating the commies).
If people can constantly attack Steve Jobs for “just being an idea guy” while Wozniak did all the work, I think we can all agree that Elon Musk deserves (at most) limited credit for the amazing engineering achievement one of his several companies/projects accomplished. Especially given the overlap with his several-months-long stint being a Trump groupie and proudly taking a chainsaw to the US government.
Yes his vision and direction matters. But let’s not act like the dude did that himself. Especially while he was so distracted having his nose up Trump’s proverbial rear.
And yet, no other rocket company has done anything close. And no other car company has made such radical differences in the market as Tesla.
Again: you must be able to keep two things in your head at once. I understand that Elon is an absolute ass, but also that he has made several incredible (literally!) things happen. Give credit where credit is due, and give blame where blame is do. Don't confuse the two.
> you must be able to keep two things in your head at once
You need to stop saying this it is incredibly rude and patronizing. I specifically pointed this out the first time you said it, so I can only assume you’re doing it intentionally at this point out of disrespect.
Even on cloudy days you can generate power. Unless it is very thick clouds I generate enough for my base loads even in complete overcast skies because I have an "excess" of PV panels.
> "excess" of PV panels ... aligns with as much as one can afford.
does it? Panels are not the most expensive part of the system any more. Overcapacity of panels isn't the bottleneck any more. Battery capacity or roof space might be instead.
In case you didn't realize he is looking to store ALL of the summer generation into a battery and generate zero power in winter.. so rely entirely off of a battery during winter.. which is absolutely no feasible for a normal person and nobody would ever do.
If you have a circuit rated for 15 amps, and plug in 12 amps of solar, then the breaker won't trip until the circuit load exceeds 27 amps, which seems bad.
Hmm, if you have an appliance (like a clothes dryer) with a dedicated circuit, it seems like you could solve this by connecting there. If you have the balcony solar device plug into the wall and the appliance plug into the balcony solar device, then you can easily put an additional circuit breaker where it's needed.
Not all homeowners are built for even these simple tasks. I watched someone try to replace a receptacle live, all while wondering why it was arcing and tripping the breaker repeatedly.
My solution would be using trade schools to run a homeowner electrician's program, teaching folks basic safety, measurement, and mechanics of what they would need do the work safely.
A program like this shouldn't take more than a weekend to cover all the issues including a Hands-On lab. A second weekend could be added for ground mounted solar setups.
I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks get such a ticket.
