@tlalexander regulatory oversight, that is not a engineering method, that is a failure, even when looking just at the company in isolation. When they avoid appropriate oversight and massively impact the environment and the people that were there before they decided to build their launch site (I posted a number of links about that here: https://chaos.social/@aekis_projects/110248288031791376), that is a massive failure when viewed in context.

@tlalexander In a reply to someone else you mentioned them launching hundreds of rockets a year as an example of them being successful, which is a thought that horrifies me. Because when viewed in context (Sam Lawler posts a lot about that, e.g. https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/110216466196775068) it might be the biggest failure in the history of human spaceflight. Technology is not neutral, it cannot be viewed in isolation, it's consequences must be considered. Especially from an anti-capitalist perspective.

@aekis_projects Hi, thank you for responding. I have had a busy few days so it took me some time to get back to this.

I guess I just want to say it seems like there is a lot of misunderstanding of my meaning here. Which is okay, this is a limited medium.

I don't think leftists will ever take over capitalist industry. I think we will have to build our own independent industry mostly from scratch. That work must begin ASAP, and will require a great deal of engineering (few machine tools are open source and proprietary technology is a dead end) so leftists must understand engineering. Yes, this is a revolutionary view, but one that starts small and starts today. This is the basis of my work with the farming robot.

@aekis_projects When I say SpaceX is successful, I mean this in a narrow sense. I mean they have set many ambitious engineering goals in their history and have mostly succeeded at reaching them, even when experts predicted failure.

With Starship they have set the goal of eventually building a working system, while moving quickly and blowing up a few things along the way as the system matures. By their own standards, they are succeeding.

So when people online say they are failing because their rocket blew up, it is hard for me to see how that could be true. Since their very first rocket they have always blown things up a few times before something works. I do not see how this time would be any different. Explosions are not failure to them.

@aekis_projects As far as the engineering method. I am not saying it is superior period. NASA's method is fine for NASA. But if you want to have a rapidly reusable rocket with a low per-unit cost, then yes this method is in my view more likely to produce that result.

Now, is launching lots of rockets a good idea? Or a policy failure? In this discussion I have attempted to steer clear of that question. I am trying to make the narrow claim that SpaceX is not failing to achieve their own engineering goals. Whether those goals are worthwhile is something I think I am not equipped to discuss. I am biased. I grew up in a spaceflight family since childhood. I want to believe. It's a good question, but not one I am well suited to discuss.

@aekis_projects As far as socializing costs and privatizing profits - this is kind of an odd point because NASA does not actually build rockets, and historically NASA has given way more funding to Boeing, ULA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and Northrop Grumman than they have to SpaceX, even in just the last ten years. All spaceflight is government subsidized, and I am under the impression that SpaceX is using far less government money than the other players. Their low cost approach is saving taxpayers money!

I have waited my whole life for someone to lower the cost of space exploration enough to see an expansion of that work. To move our work to the moon and planets. Only a large and fully reusable rocket can do this. And SpaceX is leading the way.

@aekis_projects From my view, with all the dreams, I have had, it is hard to say whether this goal is worthwhile.

But what I can say is that if you have an engineering goal of building human cities on the Moon or Mars, you're going to need a huge payload to orbit capability. Not just per launch but per year. And NASA, through their partners Boeing, ULA, Northrop Grumman, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, has not even remotely delivered that with SLS - a rocket which will launch once every few years at best, at over $2 billion per launch.

The only organization with a clear path to such an annual payload to orbit is SpaceX. And blowing up one rocket is not a sign of failure, it is a milestone on a development process they chose with intention.

@tlalexander I probably won't be able to get back to you before next week, but I wanted to say a quick thanks for the patience to keep the conversation going, quite a while ago that I was last able to have a discussion online of this quality, already gained quite a few valuable insights. Appreciate it!