SpaceX being private has a much larger cushion for failure. Elon will keep funding it far longer than congress would Nasa is my guess. If SpaceX loses some rockets that's the cost of business, of course once those missions are manned it's a huge difference but until then I think it's not really comparable.

Also, SpaceX IS mostly funded by NASA anyway as a government contractor. SpaceX exists because the government wanted to create a private space market. Strangely thank George Bush for it. https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/05/how-profitable-is-...

As you can see, SpaceX was so cash strapped in 2017 it obviously didn't go to mars in 2018 as they wanted. Also notice Elon didn't fund that trip (otherwise it would have happened). There is no way he would risk HIS own money on that.

This would mean that SpaceX would need to develop and fund Dragon 2 propulsive landing on their own, with only real mission fully requiring it being Red Dragon.

In the end it was much easier to just drop the whole thing, especially with the much more perspective Starship on the horizon.

SpaceX is trying to land things the size of buildings.

Let's just say it's a very different problem.

If you though there is someone in Boca Chica flying Starship remotely with joystick and steady hand, I'm afraid I need to disappoint you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

> The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or escaped the planet's vicinity and entered an orbit around the sun. An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two software systems: metric units by NASA and non-metric ("English") units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander#Landing_atte...

> Communication was expected to be reestablished with the spacecraft at 20:39:00 UTC after having landed. However, no communication was possible with the spacecraft, and the lander was declared lost.

Actually it is not mad - becase it exploded into millions of pieces due to the leaky fuel system...

Let's not diminish ether's breakthroughs, but financial isn't one of SpaceX's.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not but... yes, of course NASA developed reusable rockets. The space shuttle missions reused the shuttles and the boosters.

As far as I know no solid state boosters were ever re-used (how would that work?) - but then again SpaceX doesn't re-use solid state boosters either (because they do not use any)...

Things can be more complex and nuanced than quippy internet back and forth suggest. That's not even touching on the ship-of-theseus problem that is many former NASA engineers working at SpaceX these days.

Nitpicking of "reuse" vs "refurbish" aside the SRBs were significantly reused:

> The RSRM was designed to make the most use of recoverable hardware. The majority of metal hardware was recycled through ATK’s Clearfield refurbishment plant in Utah and returned to a flight-qualified conditioned.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20120001536

The boosters used for the final mission, STS-135, even included parts from STS-1! https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts135/fdf/135srbs.pdf

Here is a video that explains it in decent details if you are interested, but the TL;DR is that SpaceX is more expensive than the shuttle and way more expensive than they said they would be: https://youtu.be/4TxkE_oYrjU

No it doesn't. The person was trying to say SpaceX > NASA. Many people here are trying to shit on the other side as if they have a real point.

They're both doing cool and useful things and they're both really really good at what they do.

I don't think it makes sense to talk about which is better unless there is some specific metric that can be measured so a conclusion could be reached. I am encouraged though that SpaceX has a trajectory that will allow greater access to space. By bringing the cost of space travel down, I expect we will get a lot more of it. NASA (and other governmental space programs) started the initiative, but I think SpaceX is continuing it marvelously.

Here's a breakdown: https://youtu.be/4TxkE_oYrjU

I watched the first 90 seconds of this. On the cost of re-usability of a falcon 9 point, the figures are shown as from Wikipedia.

So 1) not a primary source. 2) fails to calculate the percentage correctly between $62m and $50m as "around 10%". It's almost 20% on those figures. 3) and most importantly, those numbers are the cost to the customer, not SpaceX's internal cost. As they have no current competition in rocket re-usability, they are able to recoup the R&D cost for developing this technology.

I don't think I'll bother watching the rest of the video.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample-return_mission#NAS...

Like it's nice to finally have a firmer timeline for that, but damn, 10 years from now. A SpaceX employee gathering the sample tubes into his backpack in a couple years time to be returned on the next milk-run flight back to Earth is just so much cooler! :)

I think Elon was hoping for a manned mission to Mars in 2024 back in 2017 but his latest projection is 2026. He's certainly optimistic :)

The size of the objects that SpaceX is landing is much larger. The approach that was used here for Perseverance (Skycrane) would not work for larger ships, like those required for a human mission. Just like the previous approaches, e.g. Lithobraking with Spirit and Opportunity, would not have worked for Perseverance.

Larger objects are much more difficult to land. Simply put, while mass will increase by the power of three, surface area, which is used for aerobraking only scales by the power of two, relative to size.

In order to land something large enough to carry and support humans (10-100t), you need hypersonic retropropulsion. Guess who was the first to achieve this? SpaceX. And they remain the only ones. When they light the three engines for the entry burn the earth atmosphere is very similar to the relevant section of the future Mars decent. By developing the first stage landing of Flacon 9, they solved one of the biggest development challenges for humans landing on Mars and it was not by accident. NASA was very happy to get that data and helped them collect it with their chase planes.

That's why you always see parachutes + something else for Mars EDL - parachutes + rockets, parachutes + airbags, parachutes + skycranes. And in Starship case, high speed glide and speed shedding with propulsive landing at the end.

Not to mention weird, considering how successful SpaceX has been at dominating the commercial launch sector.

(Update: sorry, by "this" I mean the parent comment.)