"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs that's always such a strange take to me.
Government bodies stretch their budgets way more effectively than private industry.
And it should be obvious that that is so because they don't need a profit.
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@thomasfuchs that's always such a strange take to me.
Government bodies stretch their budgets way more effectively than private industry.
And it should be obvious that that is so because they don't need a profit.
@snarfmason to be fair, none of the private companies make profits either; e.g. SpaceX had a $4.9 billion net loss on $18.7 billion revenue in 2025
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs
Much more efficient at disaster when you don't have to bother with all the failsafes. -
@snarfmason to be fair, none of the private companies make profits either; e.g. SpaceX had a $4.9 billion net loss on $18.7 billion revenue in 2025
@thomasfuchs hahaha well true. But at least theoretically they are trying to, right?
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@thomasfuchs hahaha well true. But at least theoretically they are trying to, right?
@snarfmason I assume the reason they want to IPO now is that they need money and likely think the AI bubble is going to deflate markets soon
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs Oh they are!
Time it took an organisation to ruin everybodies nightsky?
NASA: 1958 - ???
ESA: 1975 - ???
JAXA: 2003 - ???
SpaceX: 2002 - 2025 (23 years) -
"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Note, these are all super-heavy-ish launch vehicles.
(The cargo capacity of the Space Shuttle was a lot lower than “super heavy” because it has to lift itself up into orbit as well; but all these vehicles are in about the same ballpark as for their total power.)
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs but don't you know private industry is a lot cheaper for the public?
NASA is funded by your tax dollars, while SpaceX is funded by... Your tax dollars being funneled through a private company!
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs "we can iterate faster because we can take more risks."
Saturn V: 13 launches, 12 successful
Starship (to date): 12 launches, 0 successful
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs It's easy to fall into the trap of mistaking businesses for having the potential to be efficient because you'd think, in theory, someone chasing profits will, in fact, optimize costs, but in reality large companies do the exact opposite: deoptimizing as much as possible. Well, for a whole bunch of reasons, but the craziest to me is how much they gleefully burn all their long term bridges in their desperate chasing of getting a slightly higher profit margin on each next quarterly report... It's crazy how much more they'll spend long term just to make the short term look better...
(But yeah, some things just don't work right if you're chasing profits. Reaching space is one of them.)
That said, SpaceX is just straight up running a scam operation and pocketing handouts...
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs look theyre just having trouble finding talent to realize their genius o̶l̶i̶g̶a̶r̶c̶h̶s̶ capitalists ideas
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@thomasfuchs but don't you know private industry is a lot cheaper for the public?
NASA is funded by your tax dollars, while SpaceX is funded by... Your tax dollars being funneled through a private company!@HorayNarea @thomasfuchs They eliminate the middle man by . . . uh . . . adding more steps.
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs I support your premise but the argument is flawed. NASA flew a lot of unsuccessful rockets up to and including the moon mission building capability. SPACEX got to super heavy much faster. Space x spent less time adjusted tax payer money.
You could argue that Musk is a more efficient space Nazi than Von Braun.
FWIW, every clear moonless evening I stand and shake my fists at the satellite clusters rushing toward destroying astronomy and access to space. Hard to be a space exploration fan these days
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs More efficient at the transfer of public funds to private profits, they did neglect to say what it was more efficient at and generally it's going to be "returning value to stakeholders".
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs not to mention spaceX has a habit of making rockets that blow up and/or crash like 1 out of 4 fuckin times, I am not trusting Elon's bitchass unreliable commercial-yet-nonprofit rocket hobby with any sort of human life whatsoever
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@snarfmason I assume the reason they want to IPO now is that they need money and likely think the AI bubble is going to deflate markets soon
@thomasfuchs @snarfmason deflate is such a calming way of putting what I expect ahead. It sounds so much more peaceful, haha.
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@thomasfuchs that's always such a strange take to me.
Government bodies stretch their budgets way more effectively than private industry.
And it should be obvious that that is so because they don't need a profit.
The idea that government is less efficient than private industry is 100% entirely due to the fact that private industry does not provide for transparent accounting.
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"Private industry is much more efficient and faster than NASA"
Time from first concept to first operational flight:
- Saturn V: ~11 years (1957–1968)
- Space Shuttle: ~13 years (1968–1981)
- SLS: ~14 years (2012–2026)
- SpaceX Starship: 21 years+ (2005–?, no operational flight yet)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
they meant faster and more efficient at looting the US Treasury
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R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
