Comment by ruivil7 a day ago
Back a few years ago. This was the starship that in 2024 would reach Mars with humans, with so much space taken by crew and materials, and almost no fuel, and "10 times cheaper". And currently is an empty shell. Nice fireworks and show, but no meaningful payload yet. Not even LO. And this will be ready for 2026 artemis mission?
Guy is a serial liar and you are making excuses on his behalf.
He is a serial liar, but we can also actually see the engineering progress which is remarkable regardless of his overinflated timelines.
His lying doesn't change the incredible work by those engineers and other employees of SpaceX.
In about two years, when these things will be launching hundreds of starlink satellites like clockwork, you’ll just move the goalposts and find something else to criticise.
I’m saying this with confidence because it’s the established history of SpaceX critics. Everything from reusable rockets, space internet, full-flow staged combustion, etc.. has had its naysayers that all shut up and found something new to critique once SpaceX showed it was possible and even profitable.
At this stage you may as well just come out and say “I don’t like Elon”.
I don't think that's a useful framing.
If not SpaceX, it would be all NASA. NASA lies about their budget all the time, with massive overruns. For example, the Artemis overrun exceeds the entire cost of Starship development so far [1].
[1] https://www.space.com/nasa-sls-megarocket-cost-delays-report
Not to mention that each Artemis launch is of the same order of magnitude cost as the entire Starship program. Each engine is about the same cost as Falcon 9 launch!
I’m not a big fan of Elon Musk, but this is just the typical executive talking up their product and to some extent being overly optimistic about timelines. You’d think with the quantity of software engineers in HN this would be obvious, but the (rightful IMO) disdain for Elon Musk is resetting people’s brains.