How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Pretty sure they did ages ago, that was kinda the point of the space shuttel program. And thats just the most notable attempt, the DC-X is another example. Reusable rockets are just kinda inefficient for a lot of shit.

    • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The DC-X/Delta Clipper was really cool, but the Space Shuttle was a design-by-committee safety and maintenance disaster. VentureStar didn’t go much better either, though that was mostly Lockheed.

      NASA’s had the tech, the expertise, and the will for a while, but the political process was never going to give them permission to do anything more than slow-moving rehashes and incremental evolutions of old technology.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Reread what I typed, reusablle rockets have their place but they can become rather inefficient or even outright wasteful depending on the circumstances. Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit, that means more fuel, more fuel means more weight. And sometimes it better to put that fuel and weight into putting more shit into orbit.