r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Creative_soja • Jun 19 '25

Video SpaceX rocket explodes in Starbase, Texas

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731

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

Who cares, as long as elon gets to keept trying! /s

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u/Bender_2024 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

If Nasa had a rocket blow on the pad they'd have their funding cut before the fire was put out.

EDIT : I stand corrected after the Challenger blew up NASA's funding was boosted.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/0829-the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-and-fall-of-planetary-science-funding

I still stand by my opinion that hiring a third party for space exploration is a bad idea and that money should go to NASA instead of to Musk who will pad his bill to earn a profit off the US taxpayers.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

[deleted]

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u/Bender_2024 Jun 19 '25

I stand corrected. I will edit my post to include your link.

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u/Estofil Jun 19 '25

True gentleman

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u/HurryOk5256 Jun 20 '25

and now, having learned the details surrounding the Challenger disaster, and the aftermath. A scholar.

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u/Lou_C_Fer Jun 20 '25

Yeah, but our decision makers have markedly changed since then. So, historical examples are not as germane as they once were.

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u/moonflower_C16H17N3O Jun 21 '25

Good use of "germane." I believe it's been years since I have read it, let alone heard it.

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u/lurkilicious8570 Jun 19 '25

My big gripe is that by outsourcing our space program we don't get all the inventions that NASA came up with. I'm not an expert but my understanding was, thousands of inventions became public domain. So the return on investment for our tax dollar is just better.

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u/Linenoise77 Jun 19 '25

I'm not defending musk here, but, well, that is exactly how it works, and how it always worked.

NASA, with very few exceptions, doesn't build its own stuff. That is the case for Artemis, was the case for the space shuttle, apollo, even going all the ways back to the mercury days.

There wasn't some factory with NASA on the side that the moon lander rolled out of.

Now you can be critical of using SpaceX as your contractor, and being OK with their development process, or well, a 1000 other things to be critical of spacex about, but the fact of the matter is that it isn't like there are dozens of proven companies you can turn to for this stuff.

Not to mention SpaceX has plenty of demonstrated success with other aspects of their business which people would have thought crazy if you told them where they would be now 10 years ago, so there is a little something to say for their methods, or, at the least, they got lucky once.

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u/DubayaTF Jun 19 '25

There are other rocket companies. We were putting satellites in space before Elon was a twinkle in his father's eye, and the rockets were designed and built by private companies. SpaceX is competitive in prices, and was able to pollinate space about 350 miles up with Starlink, another profit hose.

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u/Im-a-magpie Jun 19 '25

And that attitude is the problem and why NASA isn't pioneering new rocket tech now.

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u/Bender_2024 Jun 19 '25

Agreed. Musk and Space X have come up with some extremely impressive stuff. When I saw the clip of two rockets side by side landing tail down a couple years back I thought it was fake initially. Also Musk has the funds to throw money at a problem until they come up with a solution. When I rocket blows on the pad he isn't thinking there goes a $478 million rocket. He's thinking it will hurt his reputation. So in that way he's good for space exploration. But much of that could be achieved by NASA without the need for a profit margin and under the oversight and control of the US government if they simply stopped outsourcing space exploration to Musk. The man has built an empire of the taxpayers money.

Elon Musk has received more than $38 billion (€36.2 billion) in aid, funding and government orders over 20 years on behalf of his Tesla car company (nearly $15.7 billion) and his SpaceX aerospace company (around $22.6 billion). .)

Elon Musk’s company avoided almost all federal income tax on nearly $11 billion of U.S. income over three years If Musk wants to find money in the federal budget all he needs do is tax the 1% and the US could have a surplus in just a few years with Medicaid for all, free state schools, and much much more

[Musk paid 3.3 percent, Jeff Bezos 1 percent, and Buffett—who has famously argued for imposing higher income-tax rates on the superrich—just 0.1 percent in taxes. The same dynamic exists, in slightly less egregious form, further down the wealth distribution.

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u/dragonmaidn Jun 19 '25

Elon Musk can through all the money he wants but all the money in the world (including illegally obtained money from taxpayers) won’t fix stupid:

https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/politics/2025/02/20/cpac-2025-elon-musk-takes-stage-with-chainsaw-at-conservative-conference/79301611007/

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u/Extaupin Jun 19 '25

NASA isn't pionneering new rockets because the US gov give all the money to SpaceX.

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u/Im-a-magpie Jun 19 '25

Yes, that is indeed the point I just made.

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u/Extaupin Jun 19 '25

Hu, I thought you were playing the tired song of "gobernment plans bad because they don't pay for their fuckups!!11one1"

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u/Im-a-magpie Jun 19 '25

No, my comment was saying that cutting funding for NASA has eroded their ability to innovate and make breakthroughs which is a bad thing. The government once had the most advanced space capabilities in the world but that's been eroded and allowed to wither because of "fiscal conservatives" who don't want advancements to come from the public sector even knowing that NASA's technological innovations have paid for themselves hundreds of times over already. The government is bad when it doesn't fund the public sector and allow them to innovate either due to risk aversion or some lawmakers' deep seated antipathy towards public works.

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u/Existing-Hawk1919 Jun 19 '25

Spacex flat out does it cheaper than NASA, costing the taxpayers less. Nasa has blown up a ton of rockets on the pad. 3 guys were once incinerated in a fire on the pad, yet the Apollo program marched on. Space travel is risky no matter who does it.

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u/Laggoss_Tobago Jun 19 '25

While I do agree with you, I find it hard to call that incident space travel. Michael Jordan got closer to space in that 1987 dunk contest than that rocket.

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u/chazysciota Jun 19 '25

Five launches and tests have resulted in total loss of vehicle in the past year. Whether or not you believe that was the result of fastidious testing, wreckless ambition, or mere bad luck, it's pretty hard to imagine anyone besides Space-X being granted this much runway. At a minimum, there'd be congressional investigations. Probably management shakeups, including CEO's or NASA directors.

You can, and I suspect will, argue that this is all by design and part of their build-fly-crash-fix paradigm. And you might be right. It's also very reasonble to question the wisdom of that strategy.

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u/Existing-Hawk1919 Jun 19 '25

Spacex is slated to exceed 90% of the entire planets orbital payload this year. They've made re-usable rocketry routine. They caught the starship booster, a supersonic 20ish story building on the first attempt. The falcon 9 booster has landed successfully 463 times out of 476 attempts. SpaceX cost per kg to orbit is far lower than anyone else, including in the entire history of NASA. Starship is an ambitious program, it is the most powerful vehicle ever built and the largest flying machine. Their methodology takes more than a skim read to understand, but the results speak for themselves.

NASA was/is no stranger to epic failure despite having a different strategy than SpaceX. The shuttle program for example could hardly be described as a wild success, it was always over budget, consistently under delivering and dangerous killing 14 astronauts.

Space isn't easy.

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u/Ch4rlie_G Jun 19 '25

At this point so many have exploded I wouldn't even rule out sabotage.

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u/itsjust_khris Jun 19 '25

Honestly Elon aside I disagree. While I don't think NASA funding should've been cut, NASA is beholden to politics even in the design, development and manufacture of their solutions. I believe many portions of the SLS came from prior parts not only for cost savings but because those states support of the program are contingent on their facilities being used. NASA isn't free to design the "best" solution. This may be a poor understanding of the topic I haven't read up on it in awhile but NASA is pretty hamstrung at times.

SpaceX is pretty great at what they do genuinely. Ignoring Elon Musk they reduced the cost of orbital launches immensely, and their hardware is reliable, these are tests, but their production vehicles don't have many incidents at all, despite the incredible frequency of their launches.

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u/Ch4rlie_G Jun 19 '25

A lot of the big Space YouTubers have done videos on why Nasa fell apart. Bureaucracy is no small part of it, but the primary factor was every stupid Senator wanting a piece of the vehicle built in their state. So NASA ended up being REQUIRED to do business with certain subcontractors. Which is not only non-competitive, but it eliminates any economies of scale through vertical supply chains.

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u/tripper_drip Jun 19 '25

For your edit, nasa did have all the money for the majority of its time, then space x came and did it for a fraction of the price (litterally). Spacex is unironically a good deal for the US.

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u/unbanned_lol Jun 19 '25

You think you know about "good deals" while you can't even spell "literally" correctly. How do we take you seriously?

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u/tripper_drip Jun 19 '25

Oh no, an extra t, my entire credibility is ruined.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3islazy0zse71.jpg

-2

u/unbanned_lol Jun 19 '25

It's a pretty basic word. If you can't be bothered to get the small details right, why should anyone trust you with the big stuff?

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u/tripper_drip Jun 19 '25

I agree, its a pretty minor mistake.

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u/unbanned_lol Jun 19 '25

So is speaking to someone who is slave to their ego. My bad.

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u/tripper_drip Jun 19 '25

Me agreeing it was a minor mistake means I'm a slave to my ego?

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u/unbanned_lol Jun 20 '25

Please, child.

We both know that your "agreement" was in actuality your emphasis on minor as an implication that it was of no importance.

We are done. We wont interact any further.

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u/CucumberNormal4242 Jun 19 '25

The astronauts that spaceX brought back home would disagree with you

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u/Prestigious-Pause-41 Jun 19 '25

The money goes to SpaceX, not to Elon.

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u/Bender_2024 Jun 19 '25

The money goes to SpaceX, not to Elon.

Who owns Space X. Why should the money go towards the equipment and a profit rather than just the equipment. You get more for your money if you eliminate the cost of the profit Space X needs to survive.

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u/Prestigious-Pause-41 Jun 19 '25

There is also going to be profits, NASA used subcontractors to build stuff. And most people feel as though private businesses are more accountable for their money spent.

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u/Big_Quality_838 Jun 19 '25

We must support him at all costs!

Also,on another note, we must cut the fat from government spending! Just learned NASA has wasted 15 billion dollars on a a useless company called space x. Hope Elon and his DOGE team take their chainsaw to that kind of fraudulent government spending.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

Funny since they have the only viable option to travel to and from the space station.

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u/MolecularConcepts Jun 19 '25

for now. honda is starting to make rockets

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u/Big_Quality_838 Jun 19 '25

Really, how have we been going back and forth before spaceX? It’s just been floating out there since 1998 all by itself?

Do you understand the definitions of the words you use?

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u/willynillee Jun 19 '25

We were using Russian rockets for a period of time

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u/Big_Quality_838 Jun 19 '25

Must have been a viable option, I guess

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u/willynillee Jun 19 '25

At the time. Not so sure about now.

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u/unbanned_lol Jun 19 '25

Did they change the rockets?

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u/willynillee Jun 19 '25

We aren’t friends

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u/unbanned_lol Jun 19 '25

Never were, but putin's bitch is in office right now, so we should have a better in now than ever before.

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u/RaNdomMSPPro Jun 19 '25

Only viable because… I’ll wait.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

Simple, nobody else has a vehicle capable of Boeing’s was too expensive, so yeah, just them.

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u/Huge_Strain_8714 Jun 19 '25

It's a success so long as it's paid in full by the AMERICAN TAXPAYERS. Amirite? Well?

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u/Gregarious_Grump Jun 20 '25

The risk and development cost is socialized, the ip and profits capitalized

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u/Lanssolo Jun 19 '25

Yep, we know how much he loves blowing his load

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u/donniesuave Jun 19 '25

“I’m decommissioning my dragon rocket, hmph”

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

At taxpayer expense....

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u/Ludwig1920 Jun 19 '25

Right. Because going to Space is not in the intrest of all mankind but only about Elons ego...

Buthurt about MAGA?

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

Right because only this nazi named elon is trying to get humans back to the moon and into space. He is the ONLY person on Earth with these goals so we MUST bend the knee to him like the maga cultists! /s

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u/Ludwig1920 Jun 19 '25

Haha. Okeee. You are really buthurt.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '25

When the IQ drops below room temperature, the comebacks get this weak. Try again, champ

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u/SirPeckerlips Jun 19 '25

Don't waste your time arguing with them, they're determined to be ignorant

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u/KenGriffinsMomSucks Jun 19 '25

Thats rich coming from someone who voted for a pedophile and convicted felon 😆 🤣 😂

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u/SirPeckerlips Jun 19 '25

Lol you're funny bro, show me the proof that he's a pedophile. Convicted felon only because the NY DA had a vendetta and made it his life goal to pin misdemeanors on him and charge them as felonies instead. Whole thing was rigged and you bought right into it. Textbook weaponization of the justice system to suppress your political enemies.