• ZapBeebz_@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    As much as I detest SpaceX and the literal child in charge of the company, their craft at least has a track record of safely bringing astronauts to and from the ISS. Boeing doesn’t even have that.

    • felbane@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      SpaceX is Shotwell’s company, and she’s way more capable of driving success than the fuckstick who does their PR. It’s difficult to dismiss the objectively astounding leaps in technical progress that the engineers at SpaceX have achieved.

      Musk could take a long walk off a short bridge and it wouldn’t affect SpaceX’s operations at all.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I know you all like to think that Musk does nothing at SpaceX, but that’s not the case. He is heavily involved with Starship, and he was involved with F9 in the past. For example, landing on barges was his push, same as pushing to use stainless steel for Starship.

        Whenever someone working at SpaceX says hes involved though, you all just dismiss it as “they don’t want to lose their job”

        Shotwell runs the day to day though, he’s not involved with that.

        • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          In business, just like in war, the few take credit for the work and will of the many.

          We remember Eisenhower, not the millions who died and sacrificed their life fighting for him.

          • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            We do remember those people… there’s a huge WWII memorial in DC and memorials around the country. The Korean War has a great memorial in DC too, great statues.

            Dwight Eisenhower apparently has a small memorial as well. I had to look it up to find it. The first review says:

            We just happened to find this memorial while waiting for our timed entry into the Air and Space Museum.

            So, who is remembered more?

        • hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
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          2 months ago

          same as pushing to use stainless steel for Starship.

          Which he totally didn’t do because he’s a fucking moron who likes stainless steel, nooo this is definitely a sign that his contributions are meaningful

          • Bimfred@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            It’s stronger than aluminium, as well as easier to manufacture and work in less-than-ideal conditions than carbon fiber. Useful traits when your end goal is to build a whole fuckton of the biggest, most capable, fully reusable rockets in history.

            • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Don’t worry, if SS ends up being a failure for any reason they’ll blame him, but if it succeeds they’ll be silent or say it was dumb luck or he had nothing to do with it.

        • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I remember hearing a podcast story - maybe the Economist? - punctuated with Elon personally canceling the weekend for all of SpaceX by screaming commands at the shift supervisor of the launch platform at night on a Friday.

          Everyone dutifully and instantly canceled their plans and worked through the weekend and in fact made great progress.

          So I don’t believe all the convenient hype that he is not involved.

    • corroded@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I feel the same as you, but you really can’t deny the fact that the engineers at his various companies have managed to design some really great tech despite their CEO.

      Not just spacecraft either. Starlink is really the first usable satellite broadband, and Tesla has mastered the art of putting advanced powertrain in terrible automobiles.

      • rtxn@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Those companies have people whose unofficial job is to manage the child when he throws a tantrum and somewhat isolate him from things that could be damaged. Twitter didn’t have this protection.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          This. SpaceX and by proxy Starlink have Gwynne Shotwell to actually run things. Elon may be the one talking all the time, but he doesn’t actually run daily operations.

        • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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          2 months ago

          I’ve read that Tesla and SpaceX engineers were actually happy that Musk bought Twitter because it’s been keeping him occupied and out of their hair.

        • VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          Well, Twitter’s not made up of researchers and engineers. Catering to the whims of a rich guy to get your research funded is a tale as old as the scientific method, they’ve got it down by now.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      some people don’t realize that, despite politics and who owns it, they launch like 90% of the things in orbit worldwide. they are essentially the standard.