Ahhh the future. In which techbros idiots whining about regulations and then make mistakes that kill people or leave them with no money. This is why we can't have nice things

We’ve got heaps of nice things because of techbros. Techbro Steve Jobs pumped out heaps of nice things, the main one being the device held in the hands of every girl on insta, without her even realising the complexity of what it took to do

In today's standard I don't think Steve Jobs would have been a techbro. At least not one like this prick Rush or SBF.. But who can tell, every coin has 2 sides I guess

I agree, so I guess I was commenting on the fact that successful techbros we don't mind so much, it's just the unsuccessful or egregious ones that stand out.

That iPhone you're using? More people died for it than did for the whole of the (Western) space program.

Couple you please explain and normalize the comparison? I assume you’re referring to Foxconn suicides that, as I recall, actually occurred at a lower rate than the relevant demographic groups. Or are you reaching further back into the supply chain (rare earth miners?)?

Are you solely counting astronaut deaths (and, if so, only the ones in the course of missions or also, say, T-38 crashes visiting contractors) or are you counting excess deaths among the 400,000 folks involved in the Apollo program?

Except the difference is, you know, risk to life.

Blowing up a landing pad, trashing the local environment and sending massive amounts of concrete flying hundreds of yards not killing anyone is in fact techbro idiocy. Not doing something stupid like that has in fact been understood since launches in the 1960's.

While the stage zero stuff was clearly dumb, I don't know if it was "risk to life" dumb given the exclusion zone.

My ignorance permits the possibility that exclusion zone wasn't big enough, for example.

But it did have an exclusion zone, and Musk gave it, what, 50% odds of making it past the launch tower? Or was 50% a different test launch?

I believe it was acknowledged that the lean of the rocket immediately after launch was unintentional possibly due to the damage of the pad, and later (for possibly unrelated reasons) the thrust vectoring failed completely. Given it took more than 30 seconds for the flight termination to take effect there was definitely non-zero risk there for staff or potentially even the observers a half-dozen miles away.

While the FTS needs improvement, my (limitied) understanding is that its ineffectiveness was due to the fuel tank being almost empty at the time, and while in extremely thin air.

(But this is what I get as an untrained watcher of Scott Manley videos, I'm not a rocket scientist nor a pilot so I assume I only half-understand what he says, and what he says is necessarily a summary or the videos would be x10 longer).

The entire goal of Starship is to carry human passengers.

Oceangate also started with unmanned test dives before they declared their submersible to be safe for humans.

It's not directly comparable. Oceangate didn't do that many test dives and never tested their sub to destruction, and SpaceX is working with several government agencies on certifying Starship (both Nasa and FAA). But there are parallels in attitudes that should be drawn and compensated for.

> Oceangate also started with unmanned test dives before they declared their submersible to be safe for humans.

They were reusing a material that is not safe to reuse that way. If they were only testing the design, it's unlikely anyone would be dead.

Material selection is part of the design.

Selection and use.

Either "reusable carbon fiber" is the design, and you need to test what it takes to break that.

Or "single use carbon fiber" is the design, and you need a new hull each trip.

They did neither.

They didn't stress test the reusability before putting people on board, and that's both one of their biggest mistakes and one of their biggest differences from SpaceX.

No, that was just regular idiocy.

SpaceX has never had a human fatality so far, not even among the ground crew, which is a lot better than the Apollo or the Space Shuttle program, or even some smaller space startups like Scaled Composites. It is typical for large engineering enterprises to rack up fatalities over time, but SpaceX stands at 0 after existing for 21 years, which is actually a remarkable achievement. Of course, they were lucky sometimes; but so were the others in the list.

SpaceX's development program is explosive, but I see no evidence that they are "techbro idiots" who risk actual human lives. The stuff that explodes is remotely controlled hardware, and I am personally fine with that. You can't have rapid technological development with at least some negative externalities.

> The incident was not related to any rocket test.

Good thing this prick died. It's such a shame he could break the rules and take pride in it along with other people's lives. This is the sad end of this type-A elon-muskish bs attitude.