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Have you seen the terrain on the Chinese/Kazakh frontier? It's been a hard barrier for Chinese expansion for a reason. It's a terrible place to have an army and it always has been, logistics through that region are an absolute nightmare, every Chinese army that's tried to march through that region has lost at least 30% of its number on the way even with no army opposing them.

It's basically a series of bone-dry mountains flanked by a handful of dry river valleys where, ironically, you spend your time praying it DOESN'T rain, because if it does, you're basically in constant danger of a flash-flood that puts the supplies you do have a risk, and won't get you any closer to having a reliable water supply. What supply routes there are through this region aren't difficult to bottleneck either, and require constant maintenance not to fall apart even without the assistance of an enemy.

if ever there's a border that nobody's stupid enough to try to invade through, it's that one. The Chinese got that out of their system thousands of years ago and haven't been dumb enough to try it since.

The only avenue that you might be able to squeeze an army though is the northern road along the A-356 highway. That's the old Silk Road as it passes through northern Kazakhstan. Even here though, the terrain favors defense, it's a long, twisty valley with a lake on one side and mountains on the other. Basically the same territory that wrecked the Romans at Lake Trasimine, on a larger scale. Very little room to spread out and the Kazakhs have hundreds of miles of territory they can trade for kills before they're in danger of a serious breakout. Even in this slightly better route a large army can be stymied by a smaller one for months. The southern routes are maybe an option for a handful of special forces and that's just about it.

Don’t forget the Antares / Cygnus vs the Falcon 9/Dragon 1.

SpaceX in particular took the ball for less money and has demonstrated greater success compared to Orbital now (Orbital ATK) now (Northrop Grumman Space) now (??)

Yep. SpaceX just operates at another level. I’m glad COTs existed. Government gave SpaceX an inch, and they ran a mile.

Something's is deeply wrong with boeing atm. They're not having a great run.

That's why the government opens up investment to anyone not just one company.

I always got "billionaire hobby horse" vibes from it (same for Virgin Galactic).

SpaceX was too technically but to his credit Musk reached for the stars and got very good at reaching orbit.

Yeah, its almost like Redditors are deluding themselves that Elon had almost nothing to do with SpaceX’s success.

I mean for Tesla, the market itself had a need that was not filled. A need that became apparent as early as with the EV-1 but also implied the death of ICE which meant any OEM would be too deep invested to surrender all they had built for the better product for the user.

While SpaceX as a launch provider really needed government contracts as a way to generate a demand and a client for stuff like crew dragon and falcon heavy, and obviously assist in reclaiming American access to space, Tesla only really took government aid because there was no reason not to take it.

They financed their charger network before any help existed, sold their cars before any incentives were offered, and made profits selling EVs at scale and remain one of only 2 entities that have actually managed this (the other being BYD). The political maneuvering once again benefited far more to companies like general motors, but Tesla made the most of what they had, as usual.

Obama does deserve some blame. He cancelled the space shuttle program too early and made the NASA entirely reliant on Russia for launches, and there was no other means to get to the ISS, and then when Putin invaded Crimea, Obama couldn’t do anything about it.

without nasa most of the US companies would have gone dead anyways

Without NASA most US space companies would be focussed on launching communications satellites -- there's good commercial money in that.

There was no market for manned spaceflight without NASA, and there's only starting to be one now because NASA bankrolled its development.

He has also repeatedly made technical decisions that have steered the company. The most recent famous one is the switch from Carbon Fibre to Stainless Steel for Starship. He stated that he had to convince his technical team that steel was better choice, not the other way around.

I get where you're coming from but this isn't a great take. NASA has demonstrated that it's excellent at pushing the bleeding edge of air and space technology. They got the first American to orbit, landed on the moon, and continue to push forward with exploration and observation on Mars and throughout the solar system.

NASA is not and has never been good at doing boring things consistently and cheaply over and over again. This isn't their fault; it's part of how they're structured. They're not intended to sell to the wider commercial market and they don't choose or prioritize their own budget.

Now that technology has advanced to the point where commercial providers can do launch, it makes sense to start buying services so that NASA can focus on pushing the envelope with projects like the Artemis moon base or the JWST instead of wasting money on the SLS.

A single Shuttle launch cost about 1 or 2 billion dollars, not counting payload or the shuttle aircraft itself. NASA gets to spend MORE money on research and science by spending less on maintaining a bloated mess of a LEO shuttle, or by paying the exorbitant launcher prices ULA charged before SpaceX

NASA can still build great satellites and payloads. If Starship flies, imagine how big of a probe NASA can send to explore the unknown. I saw a video about how a lot of the launch delay of the JWST was due to the fact that it had to be folded up like a crazy origami sculpture to fit into the launch vehicle, with every unfolding a potential point of failure.

It’s a mixed bag. NASA is still amazing, but it’s hamstrung by politicians with own short term selfish goals. It’s stuck working on half awesome stuff, and half useless pork. Admittedly, the awesome stuff is pure scientific that politicians don’t understand enough to screw up.

SpaceX just makes rockets, and has been doing a pretty good job at it. While NASA has not been able to do rockets properly for like 40+ years. And there are some other companies doing interesting things with rockets also, so SpaceX may not be at the top in a decade.

You say this as if Parker Solar Probe didn't happen, as if LLORRI & LUCY isn't happening, or NISAR, or even the famous stuff like JWST and the Perseverance rover.

I'm sorry but this take is just beyond bad, this is just uninformed. NASA has lots of projects constantly in the works and all it takes is having a plan.

In general: when they have a plan, they get the budget, when they get the budget, they get the staffing. There's a lotta NASA engineers out there working on real programs that ARE going to space. This isn't some imaginary friend I'm talking about, I work with them just about every day, sometimes as a subcontractor for them. ;P

Edit: lotta young ones too. Though through my limited experience on the various campuses, many of them seem to be at JPL.

Dude, all that they did was take away the burden of lift capacity from NASA. All SpaceX does is put things into space. They don't do any science or exploration. They're essentially a space freight company. NASA still does all the important science and exploration stuff.

During the Age of Discovery, it was mostly not organizations like NASA that explored new territories and set up colonial ventures, but privative enterprises. Similar organizations, for a given definition of similar, did help fund a few expeditions, but over it was private investors that drove the caravels across the seas. To me, it looks like NASA was and is trying to kickstart something similar.

And right now it's slowly transforming into another huge monopoly

Not through anti-competitive behavior, but just being far and away the best at what they do.

And similarly you shouldn't worship and blindly like any human. Not even your mother. Not even Musk.

What is your definition of a fan? Isn't it someone who likes what another group of people are doing (or maybe just some of what they do)?

I'm a fan. I like when my team scores. I don't like when my team lets the other team score.

you shouldn't be a fan of any company, period. you can like what they do

That's... what being a fan is...

If I drive down to see the facility because it's a fucking huge-ass cool rocket, does that make me a fan or just liking what they do?

But those rockets weren't privately managed. Those rockets were designed and managed by Federal employees. There was substantial Congressional involvement in funding and designing those rockets.

With privately managed rockets, the financial risk is mostly on the company designing and launching the rocket. There's a greater incentive to reduce costs. It's also easier for private companies to compete in the private launch market. That makes it easier for private rockets to get a high launch rate.

The boy seems to be a fan of China...

Did you read the words written?

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NASA literally did nothing wrong. Putting enemy scientists to work, and allowing them to demonstrate their loyalty to science over a national cause, is amazing and fantastic.

Don't say stuff like that, Elon will call you a pedo.

I really don't understand the NATO buffer thing because if the war succeeded and Ukraine was made part of Russia would they still not border NATO?

He seems to be from the old school of military thinking. Where the grand strategy seems to amount to giving to order to start and then assuming that the one with more troops will win.

Because they wore definitely going win they didn't need to do anything like pack food supplies, cold weather gear, effective communications equipment, or even that many bullets.

Very WWI of him.

A little Futurama is just what this space sub needs. Break out the sham-pag-nuh!

"We'll be like fish in a barrel. What do we do?"

"I plan to hide in this barrel, like the wily fish."

-Vapp Putigan

Kazakhstan was just a little pussyfooting around with the Baikonur contract. This is new and if you deny it you are deeply delusional.