• FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      Which is why my expectations have lowered. “Hey can we build a rocket out of steel and power it with natural gas?” “We’d have to give engineers a raise or they’ll probably quit.”

      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        I’d hope they’re paying them more, since they’re working very long hours. But I do think starship is likely to do well, they’ve crossed some huge barriers to cheap reusability.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          3 months ago

          At what point does cheapness outweigh reliability? It was good to keep wasteful and incompetent military contractors on their toes, but that’s going to have diminishing returns, eventually.

          Elon’s vision is spaceflight cheap enough for extremely wealthy consumers to frequent, any further in that direction and SpaceX maybe might no longer benefit the general public.

          We’ll see.

          • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            You don’t think starship will be able to be reliable? I think they’ll get falcon 9 like reliability performance at least, and they’re aiming for a lot better.