MCT

>why would SpaceX be sending NASA astronauts?
Because SpaceX doesn't have the $10 billion they've said it will take to build ITS, let alone the $20 billion it will end up taking, let alone the other $30 billion it will take to do everything else you need for a manned Mars program.

NASA is the only reasonable prospect to pay for that. NASA gets upwards of $15 billion per year. For a big, super-impressive project like a Mars program, $5 billion per year for ten years is reasonable.

Musk has been counting on this from day one. He knew people would compare the incredibly ambitious ITS plan with the laughable SLS "path to Mars" non-plan, and then the pressure would be on NASA to shutter MSFC and transfer the budget to SpaceX.

Did Michael Bay direct this

>What happens when this thing crashes and kills half a dozen NASA astronauts on the attempted first manned Mars landing?

ever notice how the risk of death is only used as an excuse to shut down scientific progress and never to shut down major financial interests that exploit and kill people every single day...

really makes you think.

your*

normal workers don't take tens of millions of dollars to train like astronauts do, let alone the celebrity/national icon aspect that comes with astronauts

Astronauts don't take tens of millions of dollars to train either. Mostly, they're cargo. NASA spends tens of millions of dollars training an astronaut because it's full of people looking to justify their salaries and to get more subordinates so they can advance their careers.

Remember, when Challenger blew up, they were carrying an elementary school teacher to demonstrate how it could be done by ordinary people.

>Remember, when Challenger blew up, they were carrying an elementary school teacher to demonstrate how it could be done by ordinary people.
and it set the space program back at least a decade, but no SpaceX can kill anyone they want and it won't be a problem because they're immune to the public eye :^)

>and it set the space program back at least a decade
No it didn't. It only stopped the shuttle program for under 3 years, and that was an awful program which set the space program back two or three decades.

The loss of life was only a PR problem, and it didn't demoralize the public or make them less willing to support human spaceflight. The problem it uncovered was that NASA was lying about how reliable the shuttle was. The trouble with the reaction is that the shuttle program spinmeisters managed to get it perceived as, "NASA is a bunch of reckless cowboys" rather than "the shuttle is failure".

When NASA pivoted to the shuttle program, it had Skylab, Saturn V, Saturn IB, the Apollo capsule, and recent experience with Project Gemini (which could put two men in space in a vehicle with docking capability using a rocket with only 3.5 tons to LEO capability, and bring them home again).

Shuttle's lateness resulted in Skylab splashing, and the abandonment of Saturn V meant another couldn't be launched. The shuttle ended up costing more to fly than Saturn V while being less capable than Saturn IB and less safe than any previous manned spacecraft.

This meant that, as long as NASA insisted on flying it, it couldn't significantly advance in human spaceflight. It could only do some of the less impressive things it had already done, for more repetitions over a longer timescale. From 1974 to the present, NASA has done nothing new and interesting in manned spaceflight. The

>No it didn't. It only stopped the shuttle program for under 3 years, and that was an awful program which set the space program back two or three decades.
Stopped reading there. The shuttle was already plagued with problems but the disaster effectively gimped the program permanently. There would be a US-only station and 10+ shuttles flying today if there was never an accident.

eh
If he actually kept shit to schedule, he could self-finance his whole colonization program just off the ITS launching payloads to orbit or the moon

?
There was never any intention to build more shuttles, never any point either because they were insanely expensive & cost more per launch then expendable rockets.

90% of the reason the US didn't go back to the moon is because the shuttle absolutely was incapable of it.

space program and science in general needs to be defunded because the 1% need tax cuts that will trickle down on your minimum wage slave heads.

/space travel is 2017 is dead in the water fellas.

>The loss of life was only a PR problem
I cannot believe what I am reading.

>Shuttle's lateness resulted in Skylab splashing
I cannot believe what I am reading.

Occupational hazard.
When you become an astronaut, you assume that just about anything going wrong is likely going to kill you.

>The shuttle was already plagued with problems but the disaster effectively gimped the program permanently.
No, the shuttle program was already a failure before Challenger. It came in years late, way over budget, with a vehicle unable to perform the missions in the specification, and even ignoring R&D and initial construction costs, still more costly to fly this "reusable" vehicle than to build a new expendable rocket for each flight.

It was absolutely not worth doing, and every time they decided to fly another shuttle mission was a mistake.

>There would be a US-only station and 10+ shuttles flying today if there was never an accident.
Absolutely delusional. There was never a plan to build more than four shuttles. They were going to build four, before the end of the 70s, fly a hundred missions in each by the late 80s, and then do something else like a fully reusable vehicle. The result of the disaster was to increase shuttle spending and have less public discussion of any other problems than loss of life.

And it wasn't "an accident" so much as an inevitable outcome of a failed project.

>>The loss of life was only a PR problem
>I cannot believe what I am reading.
You know what I mean. If the shuttle had been unmanned, that failure would still have been a disaster requiring a multi-year stop of launches, because a loss of vehicle is a severe problem for an RLV that's only barely more cost-effective than an expendable even if it works perfectly. New shuttles were extremely expensive.

>>Shuttle's lateness resulted in Skylab splashing
>I cannot believe what I am reading.
The plan was to return to Skylab with the shuttle, to resupply and reboost it, and to bring crew for another extended stay. The shuttle was so late Skylab's orbit decayed before they did.

As basic background, read this article from before the shuttle's first flight, which references NASA's claims:
freerepublic.com/focus/news/835107/posts

>2+2=4
I cannot believe what im reading

It's the Trumpf Golden Shower Trickle Down policy.

However there is hope in Musk, Bezos, Chinese and Hindu.

the little rcs thruster that could(n't)
ah good meme you sure did appeal to the current lingo of 4channers!
correct