• PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      SpaceX does one thing though… Well, three things. Rocket development, launch services and starlink.

      NASA does a whole lot more, they have 10 times as many employees and far more suppliers than SpaceX does. SpaceX is basically a service provider for NASA.

      This is kind of like saying that Lockheed Martin is more efficient than the department of defense.

      • grayman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        SpaceX gets shit into space cheaper than NASA. Let’s just compare the services that both provide and not move goal posts.

          • grayman@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 months ago

            Ok… So what does NASA do that overlaps with SpaceX? Apparently nothing. NASA is 100% dependent on private rockets. Are we supposed to call that a win or a loss?

    • Srh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      SpaceX would never exist if there was no NASA. Before government programs that can pioneer and not have to be “profitable” no company can exist.

    • AlfredEinstein@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      Definitely more efficient than NASA today. But private companies wouldn’t have been able to pull off the moon landing, which was NASA’s great accomplishment.

      There’s a place for government programs and enormous piles of money.

      • grayman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        11 months ago

        Well one metric would be cost per kg to get something into space. I also recall a lot of people dying when NASA first started going into space, of which SpaceX has not had any rockets explode with people in them, but I’m not impaired enough to make that false equivalence like you did with Mars.

        • MostlyHarmless@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          Of course my comment is false equivalence, because the initial assertion is false equivalence.

          You can’t compare NASA and Spacex because they have different goals. NASA even contract many of their payloads to Spacex, which they wouldn’t do if they were in the same business.

    • Flipper@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      Anything is more efficient without cost+ contracts, where the cost is covered + a fixed percentage profit on top.

      Those kinds of deals make the cost explode somehow. Who would have thought.