Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Elon Musks Dumbest Fans: BUSTED" video.

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  9. As an aerospace engineer I love Elon for his enthusiasm and his investment. In that he has actually been a very, very good thing for space industrialization and without that we would be worse off. BUT I absolutely hate the fantasies he promotes at times. I suspect its his way of challenging people or his way of inspiring the public. Problem is those of us who know can see through it. I do remember Space Station Freedom because it was the solution to what's next when I was in college (late 80s). Then a little thing called the Challenger accident happened and our hopes crashed with it. Some things of note from that time. Apologies if the following is long and seems like lecture notes. 1: Space Station Freedom was first budgeted at $20Billion. That was TOO expensive so it was redesigned and then budgeted at $30 Bullion. That was TOO expensive and it was then redesigned for a second time and costed at $40 Billion. So that got scrapped and we got the ISS for $200 Billion. 2: The massive costs of operating the Space Shuttle and massive costs it added to the ISS are the main reason nobody has gone back to the moon in 50 years. There just wasn't any money left after the shuttle and ISS. The massive issue is with those costs is that the technologies needed for a moon bas or Mars base have never been fully funded and there's still huge amounts of work to do and most notably in life support. It wont matter if anyone goes to Mars and is dead from a lack of oxygen or carbon dioxide poisoning months before they get there. 3: After Challenger happened and people were calling to scrap NASA it was revealed that the Apollo program had returned almost $10 for every $1 spent. You see all those technological advances had finally started to filter through and pay off back in terms of sales tax and technology exports. Every body knows about Teflon, but many of the aluminum alloys we have across out industries came out of Apollo. But the biggest of all was the computer evolution from the size of houses down to shoe box size. All of Microsoft, Intel, Google, Facebook and the rest of them might not exist if the Apollo AGC wasn't built. The technology boom Apollo kicked off is still generating money to this day. 4: Kelly Johnson (yeah the guy behind the SR-71) told congress to not replace Challenger and instead spend the money on its replacement. He asked for the $3 Billion budgeted and no interference and estimated he could have an SST in 3-5 years. Boeing stepped in, Rockwell stepped in, others stepped and NASA got a 5th shuttle that also cost too much to operate. They then spent over $14 Billion on a shuttle replacement that was NEVER DELIVERED and that $14 Billion doesn't include anything spent on SLS, which still hasn't flown. Best wishes to all.
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