Comments by "Grak70" (@Grak70) on "Why Moon Mining Will DEFINITELY Be A Thing | Answers With Joe" video.

@brianfhunter SpaceX literally gets billions in subsidies and contracts from the government.
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@brianfhunter I like how when SpaceX gets government money, it’s a contract. When Boeing gets government money, it’s a handout. Nobody’s here to argue SLS isn’t way too expensive. But you’re shitting in one hand and polishing with the other.
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@brianfhunter I count 39 NASA/USSF/USAF launches since 2013. At $150M to $300M per launch, that easily exceeds $4B in revenue even being conservative, so again, talking out your ass. The US government is by far their biggest customer. Other launches sometimes cost more because gasp there’s more than a rocket service involved in the contract. Big missions can be decades in the works with zero tolerance for failure. They naturally choose systems with longer track records for that, so the longevity of Atlas should come as no surprise. Atlas also is more or less on cost parity with a SpaceX launch. The USAF just awarded two contracts to both ULA and SpaceX for 2022 launch and their bids were within 10% of each other. SLS is another beast entirely considering the political and bureaucratic rules placed on it. Is it wildly over budget? Absolutely. But SpaceX wasn’t going to build that shit. And even so, the first article is assembled and on the pad right now. Starship, as cool as it is, is still a tin can. And finally, the human lander project awarded to SpaceX is worth $2.9B. And no actual rocket exists yet. So is that a subsidy or a CoNtRaCt? Do I think SpaceX will make it happen? I’m pretty confident the answer is yes. Am I going to fanboy out gargling Elon Musk’s balls about it? No. He’s getting government subsidies whether your corporate cheerleading likes it or not.
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@0x0michael SLS is a stacked fully functional rocket. It was more expensive because of the limitations put on it by politics, not because the contractors who built it sucked. And fuck Blue Origin, they’re just vapor ware. I never defended them in the first place. NASA likes Boeing for a reason: they’ve worked with them for decades and launched many many missions successfully. As SpaceX gets more experience, they will win more contracts. But already, ULA and SpaceX are at about parity for launch cost to the US government. Cf the two contracts recently awarded to SpaceX and ULA by the Air Force. The bids on those launches are almost the same.
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