- after spending far more time & money than the entire fucking Apollo program, which at this point on the same time frame & despite being 50+ years behind on tech & research, had been to the Moon several times & then gracefully retired...

Reply to - after spending far more time & money than the entire fucking Apollo program, which at this point on the same time frame & despite being 50+ years behind on tech & research, had been to the Moon several times & then gracefully retired... on Tue, 12 May 2026 14:47:06 GMT

jwcph@helvede.net — Tue, 12 May 2026 14:47:06 GMT

@notsoloud Oh, the SpaceX engineers are probably among the best around - I lay every bit of this at Elon's stupid feet.

Reply to - after spending far more time & money than the entire fucking Apollo program, which at this point on the same time frame & despite being 50+ years behind on tech & research, had been to the Moon several times & then gracefully retired... on Tue, 12 May 2026 13:36:13 GMT

notsoloud@expressional.social — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:36:13 GMT

@jwcph
Elon (piss be upon him) has blown any credibility he might have had at some point. It still remains that spacex is currently best at launching rockets and that the things they have demonstrated with starship are very impressive.

Reply to - after spending far more time & money than the entire fucking Apollo program, which at this point on the same time frame & despite being 50+ years behind on tech & research, had been to the Moon several times & then gracefully retired... on Tue, 12 May 2026 13:26:32 GMT

jwcph@helvede.net — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:26:32 GMT

@notsoloud No, it isn't. The question to ask is, how does a company with all the money & an extra 50 years of research & tech development take this long to do the one thing they said they would do. Nobody is forcing them to do anything; they took this task upon themselves & they've projected far faster progress repeatedly.

Reply to - after spending far more time & money than the entire fucking Apollo program, which at this point on the same time frame & despite being 50+ years behind on tech & research, had been to the Moon several times & then gracefully retired... on Tue, 12 May 2026 11:48:39 GMT

notsoloud@expressional.social — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:48:39 GMT

@jwcph
The question to ask is how the Apollo program would have fared if they had attempted to build a completely reusable orbital rocket.

Or how how spacex would have done if they had attempted to land ten times on the moon and then retire.

Reply to - after spending far more time & money than the entire fucking Apollo program, which at this point on the same time frame & despite being 50+ years behind on tech & research, had been to the Moon several times & then gracefully retired... on Tue, 12 May 2026 11:27:44 GMT

oldwoofian@beige.party — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:27:44 GMT

@jwcph Perhaps it won't go very very big boom this time.