What SpaceX has accomplished is just phenomenal.
For their conventional space launch operations they also want multiple... to target different orbits, and to parallelize the high volume operations they anticipate.
There's already two Starship launch sites. The one in use in Texas, and one (LC-39A) in development at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. And there's good reason to believe they've begun planning a third in Louisiana. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64900.0
On a more serious note, the Cape Canaveral area / Kennedy Space Center has a large amount of empty land to build space infrastructure. The island has been dedicated to space facilities since the 1960s. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have facilities there.
What other company would you rather see funding go to?
The rise of moralization of everything is really killing online discourse. It's gotten to the point where people will now mostly criticize and support ideas based on who proposed them, and not based on their merits. Tribalism at its worst.
"People" were always like that and will be so..stupid. Let me quote Agent K from MIB for you.
> A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it...
The funny thing is that these are the same people who applauded obvious scams because Musk proposed it when they liked him...
The sum of these merits adds up to something. SpaceX is a political venture, and just like the uncomfortable questions that Microsoft/Google/Apple all pose, it's worth asking what the consequences will be in the long term. Lawful intercept sounded like a great plan, before it was leveraged by America's adversaries in Salt Typhoon as a prepackaged surveillance network.
NASA has been propaganda since Operation Paperclip, sadly. It's hard to politicize something that's always been political, even if Musk gives Peenemünde optics a run for it's money.
Whatever good Musk has accomplished with SpaceX will be offset by the harm he has done to biomedical research in the final accounting.
> In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.
> My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space
Yes, Elon is very sane.
Will we get to Mars soon? Hell no. But we may end up with a world-leading launch provider based in the US and that's a clear win for the country.
dmix•1h ago
> Liftoff will occur at 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday (May 19)
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
laweijfmvo•1h ago
tristanj•1h ago
mcbits•1h ago