So much of the criticism focuses on Starship, specifically. Starship has never claimed to be anything other than a test program. Look back into the history of NASA test programs and you’ll fine lots of exploded pieces of rockets. Starship is also moving along a whole lot better than the SLS at a comparable stage of the development track. People bleating about this clearly don’t have a lot of knowledge about rockets and their history.

Safety is somewhat valid. Obviously, exploding rockets over the Gulf of Mexico is not a good thing, but the chances of debris actually hitting a plane are minuscule. See Big Sky Theory, which is the basis for a lot of air traffic policy. It’s just that the aviation industry has extremely tight safety standards, and so they divert planes.

Falcon 9 also exists, and now has a better track record than Soyuz (the previous gold standard). People making these arguments seem to conveniently leave that out.

Now, environmental standards, how Musk is trying to gut NASA and the FAA, and how the company never would have survived without government subsidies? Yes, absolutely focus on those. Also, the fact that SpaceX employees are mostly insulated from their idiot CEO. They’re the real heroes of the company.

In a different Administration, I think SpaceX should be nationalized and run something like the USPS or Amtrak. NASA shouldn’t make their own rockets anymore. They’re really bad at making anything close to cost effective.

SpaceX is not some virtue of musk, he also pollutes heavily, and ignore safety standards to launch all those in texas

@Fredthefishlord @QuarkVsOdo all his companies basically exist to siphon off government funding that should be going to something more worthy. In the case of SpaceX, look what’s happening to NASA now. And with the Hyperloop, he openly said he promoted that to take attention and money to prevent the development of high speed rail

Yes and no. The engines and upright landing is very good… designing&Testing unbound by yearly grant applications but with “fuck you money” really propelled the industry forward.

But they cut so many corners.

Agreed, I despise Musk as much as any sane person does now, but I just can’t get on board with this prevalent behaviour of indiscriminately trashing everything about a person who you don’t like.

Just be honest! He clearly has played a big part in achieving some spectacular results: Whether you think that was in engineering, or by cunning manipulation all the way up; the fact is SpaceX have achieved feats nobody else has, and I don’t believe it would have happened without Musk.

None of that changes the fact he is a cunt, but dishonesty in criticism only weakens it.