“Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car, or do you not want the best car?” [Apartheid Manchild] told audiences at an event in November.

Well, for starters I don’t want a car at all. I’d rather use public transit. You know, an actually effective means of reducing emissions.

If I were in the market, yes, I would want the best car. Which is why I’d never buy a Tesla. I’d buy an XPeng or a BYD or the like.

  • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    The Muskrat is the reason why I can’t even feel good about anything SpaceX does. Every time they do something to propel space exploration forward, all I can think about is how he and his cronies are going to use it to privatize space for profits.

    • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The alternative needed to be NASA, slow, methodical, maximum safety, maximum consideration, with patents benefiting society instead of a private class of shareholders who see it as just another gift in their portfolio.

      Instead, we gave away the future to reckless profiteers, and starved the correct, societal scale project of growing beyond our world that could have provided a sense of common purpose and accomplishment as Mercury and Apollo did, which given we’re at each other’s throats would have been useful.

      We won’t get anywhere with people like Musk or any other avarice obsessed profiteer at the wheel, only heartbreak in trusting human lives to them as they cut corners and overpromise their capability.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Blame the Boomers on this one. They got the moon landing as kids and then thought the rest was boring so they cut funding once they made up a large part of Congress in the mid 80s.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        FWIW spacex doesn’t actually have a lot of patents for their ships. Patents mean making things public but hold society back for the duration of the patent.

        SpaceX treats it’s rocket stuff as trade secrets so countries like China that don’t respect patents can’t use it. However, if someone does figure it out on their own, SpaceX has no protections.

    • rezifon@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Every time they do something to propel space exploration forward. . .

      Musk is trying to build the Dune future, not the Star Trek future

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          The thing about Elysium is that if they created it with modern tech itd be somewhat trivial for a resistance group to starve out the ones in space at least. Just a recoilless rifle with a targeting computer probably running Linux mounted to the back of a Toyota hilux would be more than enough.

          • Rolando@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            That might work once or twice, but I suspect the rich would just launch their supplies from an island, or from a very large “Green Zone.” But I’m guessing the space station would be very susceptible to sabotage or a suicide attack, or something.

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      2 months ago

      Honestly SpaceX is WAY overrated.

      Yes, they have some good engineers, i dont doubt that, but:

      They still haven’t been able to replicate what NASA did way back in the 60s with a bunch of rulers, they still haven’t gone beyond low earth orbit.

      Their heavy rocket’s best attempt got it empty into an unstable spinning Leo, and thanks to fucking musk it destroyed a launchpad, polluting kilometers around which I’m sure they cleaned up, right?

      They’re entire shtick was that they’d be super cheap and they’re fucking expensive, even after everything they have done is basically funded by tax payers.

      All that is steered by a lying narcissistic psychopath who now uses his crashing Twitter system to get a dictator elected. The guy is like trump, every second word out of his mouth is a lie. Seriously every project he coined was bullshit, every claim he made was bullshit, none of it happened. Hyperloop, anyone? It killed high speed rail, so yeeeeiii? Tesla’s with rocket engines? Ballistic missiles to transport humans across the globe in 30 minutes? The boring company making tunnels 1000x cheaper? And SpaceX? We will be on Mars in 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026, for sure! They’re still in Leo, which is the (relatively) easy part of getting humans to Mars…

      ALL of it, bold lies.

      So yeah, I honestly think that SpaceX is not really helping space exploration forward. I think it’s 90% bloat aimed at getting as much money for musk as possible

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They still haven’t been able to replicate what NASA did way back in the 60s with a bunch of rulers

        A bunch of rulers and a LOT of money and industry, courtesy of tax dollars. It was basically a concerted national effort.

        I’d say SpaceX is doing great given modern financial constraints for spaceflight.

      • Ænima@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Getting to Mars is a cover.

        Musk is using his fortune, tax dollars, and rich investors to develop the means for the rich to escape the hell they’ve created and/or the mobs of common folk that will surely beat down his, and other wealthy oligarchs, doors when society inevitably flops. That’s why he’s ignoring regulations and laws like they don’t matter to him. When your entire purpose is to help the rich escape their fate, you don’t give a fuck about rules.

        He’s an accelerationist with more money than god.

    • Nurgus@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Every time i hear about SpaceX, I wonder how much further along we’d be if we had proper taxes and gave the money to NASA/ESA. Even if the answer is “about the same” then at least they treat their engineers well.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        Every dollar SpaceX spends, NASA gets it done with a fraction of the budget. The James Webb took forever but it was worth it. SpaceX would have trashed it for a tax write off.