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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 3 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.003s | source
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radu_floricica ◴[21 Oct 25 13:53 UTC] No.45655837[source]▶
I'm not really sure if keeping a strict schedule has any real relevance here, outside maybe PR and politics. Starships will drop the cost to other bodies in the same way Falcon dropped the cost to orbit. Why would anyone want to invest in a technology and a project that will be obsolete by the time it's implemented?
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saubeidl ◴[21 Oct 25 14:05 UTC] No.45655981[source]▶
That is assuming Starship succeeds. Elon's track record hasn't exactly been stellar as of late.
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1. radu_floricica ◴[21 Oct 25 14:13 UTC] No.45656080[source]▶
Except it kinda was stellar? When the test pad blew up I was absolutely sure we won't be seeing a V3 this year, but they recovered amazingly, with the last V2 test checking pretty much every goal they set for it.
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2. danbruc ◴[21 Oct 25 14:29 UTC] No.45656288[source]▶
But only if you are looking at the revised goals, if you look back at the original goals, things look different. It was supposed to fly around the moon with people on board two years ago.
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3. radu_floricica ◴[22 Oct 25 06:22 UTC] No.45665480[source]▶
Comment was "of late".

If you want to look long term, well, they're still stellar :) Considering everything they're achieving, and how they're so much better than everybody else in the field.

It's a failure only if you look at a rather small time range and criteria. Which I don't think was a surprise for anybody - Elon is famous for going for moon shots and failing, but still delivering better than anybody else.