Musks company provides not only the most cost effective but also the most reliable access to space that is currently unparalleled by any other company.

We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently.

You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.

As I see it Musk is lobbying the goverment to give him money to do useless stuff & expensive in space like land on the moon again - basically redirecting funds away from useful stuff like the James Webb Telescope for publicity stunts. Not any different from the legacy aerospace companies, who also lobbied like crazy, except on a bigger, dumber scale.

Then you see it wrong. Plans for returning humans to the surface of the moon have been being developed for longer than you've known Musk's name.

The Artemis program was developed out of the Constellation program, which was initiated sometime around 2005 or 6.

How is landing on the moon not a publicity stunt? What can the humans do that massively cheaper robots couldn't - besides take some awesome photos and bring back some more moon rocks?

Of course there have long been plans to go back to the moon because its a cool fun thing to do and whoever happens to be president would likely be well remembered for taking credit for it. That doesn't give it credibility as a useful endeavor.

> How is landing on the moon not a publicity stunt? What can the humans do that massively cheaper robots couldn't - besides take some awesome photos and bring back some more moon rocks?

Humans have intuition and curiosity, they can spot something quickly in the distance that looks peculiar, go to it and quickly inspect it.

Even if it is a publicity stunt it was not lobbied by Elon Musk. Also Jeff Bezos Blue Origin got more money for the Artemis program.

I see. And how do you you know that elon, a notably close supporter of the president didn't have anything to do with the Artemis program? I notice that Chinese electric vehicles are essentially banned in the US, but probably that had nothing to do with Elon as well right? And what does it matter if Blue Origin also made money on the Artemis program?

No need to be so combative.

Artemis was announced under Trump 1, but the contract was awarded by Biden. The concept is older than SpaceX.

That should be enough clue.

The Chinese car ban (not just electric mind you) was at the instigation/behest of Unions and Ford in particular. Another Biden thing

Blue Origin matters because they got more money to do less.

  > How is landing on the moon not a publicity stunt?

You've just changed your argument as I addressed your previous argument. Which clearly demonstrates that you don't have actual arguments against the Artemis program, rather you have some personal problem with Elon Musk.

That's fine, we all have our personal heros and villains. But don't be so disingenuous with your arguments or your reasoning.

It looks to me like they fully addressed your comment. Did you read their entire response?

More science was done on the few hours spent on the Moon by astronauts than all the lunar and Mars robotic missions (lasting decades) combined. Robots won’t be comparable to human exploration until we have general AI and that’s far away. Otherwise you’d have a lot more robotic exploration on Earth.

Starship is mostly funded by Starlink.

Yes, Musk is a crappy character, but that's not a reason to make things up. This isn't Reddit.

Starship isn't actually operational. I'll let you look at their plans for it and you can tell me if they involve doing things the goverment would pay for like landing on the moon and building space stations or not.

>redirecting funds away from useful stuff like the James Webb Telescope for publicity stunts

The point is this isn't happening.

Almost everything you're complaining about happened under Biden, who Musk wasn't on good terms with.

SpaceX is the cheapest provider of the services it offers, and the government is a large customer but has been less than half of revenue since before 2024.

If the government wants to build a space station (Vast, Axiom, Voyager) or land something(Firefly, Intuitive Machines) or someone on the moon(SpaceX, Blue Origin) , it will find contractors that can do all or part.

The contractors here are BAE Space & Mission Systems (fka Ball Aerospace), L3Harris, and Teledyne. i.e the "NASA" money always ends up at some corp. And complaining about SpaceX stealing money is ignorance.

It's worth noting that the primary contractor for the ISS is Boeing, but Leidos and KBR are involved.

Musk used to be reddit's darling. People's newfound hate for him seem to cloud their judgment and make them forget what made Musk their darling in the first place.

> the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors

Are you talking about SLS?

Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?

At least it works unlike Starship. But yes both SLS and Starship are handouts to political donors.

But the Starship contracts were awarded by Biden.

And unlike SLS weren't no-bid