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0 pointsVeserv6d ago0 comments

Why are you deceptively bringing up the Space Shuttle? That was never intended to be a serious cost-effective launch vehicle. Also, why are you deceptively talking about 97% and 99% like the difference between 30x and 100x is not a factor of 3?

The Ariane 5, first launching in 2003 which is 7 years earlier than the first Falcon 9 launch, had a launch cost of ~150 M$ in 2015 with a payload to LEO of ~16,000 kg for a cost of 10,000 $/kg. The Soyuz-2, first launching in 2004 which is 6 years earlier than the first Falcon 9 launch, had a launch cost of ~35 M$ with a payload to LEO of ~8,000 kg for a cost of ~4,500 $/kg.

The truth is 3-6% of your claim of 100x cost improvement.

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somenameforme6d ago

Because the Space Shuttle is what SpaceX replaced. A 97% discount relative to that is what SpaceX has managed, after a commercial profit margin. 99% is 2 orders of magnitude. So you're here bickering over 2% with all the class that one would expect.

VeservOP6d ago

No it did not. Nobody launched their commercial satellites on Space Shuttles. Soyuz, Atlas, Proton, Delta, Long March, Ariane; those are commercial launch vehicles. Even considering crewed missions we can look to ISS crew missions which were half Soyuz missions and then entirely Soyuz missions between 2009-2020.

And again, you do not seem to understand how percentages work. If I have a thing that costs 1,000 $ and I find a 99% cost reduction it is now 10 $. A 97% cost reduction means it is 30 $. That is a 3x difference. The difference between 1% and 3% is a factor of 3x. That is half of a order of magnitude right there and here you are claiming it is small.

So you are wrong on history, wrong on comparables, and wrong on math to defend a man who runs a company that is legally, and I quote a actual legal decision: a "greviously reprehensible... grossly racist workplace"[1]. But, you know, racism man good because he slightly lowered the cost of cruise ship internet I guess.

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06... Page 31.

somenameforme5d ago

You're engaging in some wild freak out mental gymnastics here. Seriously, just read your paragraph about me not understanding percents, and tell me you don't get hard-core Chewbacca Defense [1] vibes. It seriously reads not only like satire, but pretty good satire! You just need to add a QED to the end. lol

And don't trust flatterbots to argue for you. They hallucinate regularly and just make you look more absurd. The Space Shuttle was flying crewed missions to the ISS until 2011. The reason they stopped is because the Space Shuttle had been retired and commercial crew began, which was ultimately won by SpaceX. Well SpaceX and Boeing in an overt act of insiderism, but Boeing is still - 15 years later - trying to figure out how this whole space thingy works.

The alternatives you mention were never commercially viable against SpaceX. All not only cost multiple times more but come with significantly worse reliability records as well as lacking the payload capacity of something like Falcon Heavy for those missions that require it. And when you look at things like the Soyuz, the sticker price doesn't matter so much as the price companies were obligated to pay. They offered cheap internal launches, and charged dramatically higher rates for foreign launchers - including NASA. By the end NASA was paying $90mil/seat.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV6NoNkDGsU

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