@ianbetteridge “Why didn’t SpaceX build itself without massive government contracts?”

@ianbetteridge “because when the courts decided US government spending couldn’t exclude blacks the right decided they’d rather wreck everything by hollowing out government spending than allow blacks decency.”

@ianbetteridge ah yes governments can’t build shit, apart from say the trillions upon trillions of infrastructure worldwide, entire healthcare and educational systems, social care systems, postal systems etc.
Have those children ever watched the Monty Pythons’ “what have the Romans ever done for us” sketch?

@ianbetteridge

Grumman and Rockwell built the various craft making up Apollo, Boeing, Rockwell and Douglass the Saturn V, etc, etc with other sub contractors.

Sure, design oversight, project management, mission management were all largely in Agency hands.

But the 'O' rings and cost model meant it had to change.

@ianbetteridge On the other hand, I think "why has the US government been incapable of successfully building big things in the last few decades" is a reasonable question to ask

(Also the UK, to a slightly lesser extent)

And I'm pretty sure the answer, as with so many related questions, is "Regan (and Thatcher) hollowed it out and it never recovered"

@ianbetteridge not the sharpest tech in the drawer

@ianbetteridge I did NASA that one coming!

(I’m here all week.)

@ianbetteridge Musk is a horrific person, but SpaceX is nothing like Apollo. You want Apollo, look at the current NASA Space Launch System, which is eye-wateringly expensive, hugely delayed, will launch at most once every 18 months, and will cost so much to fly it won’t be sustainable. (Those are the views of the GAO.)

SpaceX puts more mass in orbit than the rest of the planet combined, and at a vastly lower cost. It’s nothing like Apollo

And Musk is a horrible person.

@ianbetteridge Capital doesn’t do stuff until it’s been derisked and there is a good chance of return on investment. Years of government funded research and development is the only reason SpaceX had a chance, along with huge wodges of cash from the government.

@ianbetteridge Jeez. Crap like that confirm my decision to cancel my stratechery sub earlier this year. I had been a subscriber for years and there was always something that I had to roll my eyes at, but a lot of the writing was really good and informative. But now it feels like the whole project has become (always has been?) about arguing for the existence of monopolies and the primacy of "the tech industry" to keep his theory valid.