• vas@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Musk does not do a space race. Not on his money, at least.

    Instead, he does it on US taxpayer money, with billion-dollar contracts to get people to Mars by 2025 and other timelines like that. The government employee who approved one of the largest contracts to SpaceX quickly quit working for the government and now works… at SpaceX.

    So you tell me, is Elon in a space race, or are the US taxpayers in a race to fund the billionaire?

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      the thing is that NASA did indeed try to build reusable spaceships themselves back in 1968 with the space shuttle. the thing is: they didn’t make it. their space shuttle sucked and cost more than non-reusable rockets. Then some 30 years later SpaceX came along and somehow did the impossible, which is to build reusable rockets that are actually cheaper than the previous, non-reusable rockets. So, that’s a big step forward. As a consequence, NASA started paying SpaceX for the fine product they were making that they tried to make themselves previously but failed.