Link to tweet

Musk is a conman. This thing has never carried any cargo or made orbit. They're years behind where they told NASA they would be. It has no chance of succeeding. Musk isn't taking anyone to Mars. It's a scam, just like all his other scams:

This is a big deal.

Has NOTHING to do with Musk.

He didn't do ANY of it.

He didn't design the engines, didn't build the facility or machine the parts.

At least have the decency to appreciate the people at SpaceX that made this happen.

Don't be anti-science for political reasons.

This is only the 5th test flight of a new, highly complex launch system and, was a great success. They are making even better progress than with Falcon and Falcon Heavy, both of which have proven to be highly reliable, useful and cost-effective launch vehicles.

IMO today's test launch was astounding. To land and catch the booster without an apparent glitch on the first attempt was amazing. Whatever you may personally think of Musk, SpaceX is leaving the competitors such as NASA/ULA and ESA (European Space Agency) in the dust. I see no way they will be able to compete with SpaceX in the medium to heavy launch business. I have seen estimates that the Starship main booster will be able to place heavy payloads in orbit or beyond at about 1/10 the cost of the ULA heavy booster.

The only nonsense here is your post.
This is a great achievement by Space X and that you can't see that is ridiculous.

Yeah, I’ll piss off a lot of people by cheering for SpaceX. Well, tough. Gwynn Shotwell deserves ALL the champagne today.

I’m really tired of hearing the naysayers criticize space travel and exploration, private space companies, etc. Yep, we all hate the MuskRat, and I do hate that his financial stake in creating SpaceX gives him as much sway over Gwynn Shotwell’s brilliant company as it does. But this is not some kind of useless vanity project, any more than sending exploration ships from Europe to other parts of the world was. Yep, lots of rich companies were doing that, we had horrific colonization happening, and lots of really horrible people did horrible things. Same with caravans before that. Same thing with Rome’s empire building before that.

People being horrible to each other is the oldest story on earth. But exploration, new technology, and science gets accelerated when we do this kind of crazy shit. It’s not a “waste of money” to learn about other planets, or figure out human space travel. Even when stupid, obnoxious billionaires play that game (just as they did in every other type of exploration in human history), and there are rich passengers pretending to do exploration at times, it’s worth it. It is also very, VERY worth it for private companies to play in this arena, without the politics of progress being driven or slowed by the state of international competition and one-upmanship, the whims of congress for funding it, and the horribly heavy toll of government bureaucracy and contracting. Gwynn Shotwell has advanced space launch tech more in a decade than NASA has since the 1980s. Let her figure out launch, reusability, and rapid scheduling. NASA can spend its efforts on long-term reliability, exotic planetary exploration tech, and insanely complex communication, software patching, and observation equipment. The trope of a billionaire pissing contest in space is horrifically misguided - this evolution of a public and a newer private path to space is a natural progression in how we will explore and do useful things off this planet, both.

The reality is, MuskRat and Bezos and several others will either wind up in prison, go broke, get too wrapped up in other things, or simply die. We aren’t stuck with them forever, any more than we were stuck with the swinish industrialists who laid rail or built the first giant ocean vessels for trade and public transportation. MuskRat will be an object lesson of history, while Gwynn Shotwell will become remembered as a space technology visionary, and her work will be a cornerstone for the next era of human advancement.

Cheers, Dr. Shotwell. I hope you’re having a grand day.

More rockets. Yay. Amazing.

who continues to find success despite Elon's lunacy hampering her efforts to build strong partnerships.

He would put a hamper into things as he hovered over the guys doing the real work.

An example would be crossfeed on Falcon Heavy, it was a good idea in principle, but cryo connections are hard enough to keep from leaking on the ground much less in a highly complex rocket, and all for a few percentage of performance, it was a dead end. Similarly landing Dragon sounded cool and made good videos, but you can't rely on thrusters at an angle for that, parachutes work just fine, etc.

He should be CEO in name only. He simply doesn't have the knowledge, experience or anything to weigh in on the day to day operations.

And I live about 40 miles away from the launchpad