alt.hn

7/24/2026 at 10:44:38 PM

SpaceX Starship Flight 13 livestream [video]

 https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13

by cryptoz

7/24/2026 at 11:33:02 PM

Successful Raptor on-orbit relight demo! That should clear the next flight to go to orbit and deploy operational satellites! Big milestone for the program.

And the ship landing was so soft it didn't even explode! That's never happened before. And it's still connected to Starlink too. The ship's cameras are still working underwater! I wonder if they will be able to recover it intact?

We're getting some great views of the heat shield post-reentry. That's great data for the heat shield team. The heat shield is the biggest remaining question mark in the whole program. Reflight without heat shield refurbishment will be required for the whole architecture to work, and it's never been done before. None of the heat shields so far looked reusable without refurbishment, including this one.

Edit: Spashdown video https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2080804682918764619

by modeless

7/25/2026 at 12:24:19 AM

> That should clear the next flight to go to orbit and deploy operational satellites!

Mid-stream they said they were deploying 20 real V3 Starlink satellites.

At the end of the stream the said all 20 had checked out as well.

by agent86

7/25/2026 at 12:48:19 AM

They were real satellites but deployed on the suborbital trajectory of this flight, so will have burned up over the Indian ocean about the time that the ship re-entered.

The goal was to get about 20 minutes of testing the new satellites in space, not for them to have any chance of becoming operational.

Starship hasn't been entering a full orbit so far because it would be really bad if the relight burn did fail - chunks of ship would rain down a few days/weeks later on some random area anywhere within 27° of the equator. On a much smaller scale this has been an internationally embarrassing problem for China's LM-5.

by FLHerne

7/26/2026 at 3:44:02 AM

I could not believe they sacrificed twenty sats. What do think was the cost?

by throwaway2037

7/26/2026 at 6:04:00 AM

I imagine they built these a long time ago (anticipating fewer test flight problems) and have probably improved the design since then making these obsolete. They are going to build thousands so they can't be too precious.

by modeless

7/26/2026 at 5:52:20 AM

Based on v1 satellite cost estimates, under $5MM for 20. It was v3 sats, don't know the cost on those yet.

by fancy_pantser

7/26/2026 at 7:35:36 AM

From the official launch video from SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13

Around 20 minutes into the flight, they deploy 20x v3 sats. Google search tells me those cost more than 1M USD each. Yikes... they burned up 20M USD for a "few tests". Damn, space is expensive! The official video says that SpaceX only had twenty minutes to test the deployed sats before they fall back to the atmosphere.

by throwaway2037

7/26/2026 at 7:40:16 AM

Worth it to prove the pez dispenser deployed them correctly? Small % of the total launch cost.

by fancy_pantser

7/25/2026 at 12:31:34 AM

They need to be in orbit to deploy the satellites into a useful orbit. These ones only lasted for 20 minutes before breaking up.

by everfrustrated

7/25/2026 at 12:05:44 AM

They have a much biglier support vessel this time, almost 300ft long IIRC. So maybe they can recover it?

by a34729t

7/25/2026 at 1:10:35 AM

It might be possible. Allegedly they had previously asked the Australian government about towing the ship back to a port.

Marine recovery can be much more difficult than it might seem though. Towing this nearly 200ft structure weighing a decent fraction of the weight of the boat that is not designed to be seaworthy, potentially full of explosive gasses and that could rapidly start breaking up and taking on water, nearly 300 nautical miles back to shore, would be quite difficult and dangerous. I would be impressed if they ever do it.

by stinkbeetle

7/26/2026 at 3:45:26 AM 

    > Allegedly they had previously asked the Australian government about towing the ship back to a port.
Any sources? I cannot find any. What was their response?

by throwaway2037

7/25/2026 at 1:20:11 AM

yeah it's suppose to tip over, explode and sink. Not sure what they're going to do with it now. If some other country comes in and salvages intact Raptor3, flight computers, and all the other ITAR regulated tech SpaceX may have a big problem. SpaceX will probably ask the airforce to gift them a jdam delivery or something.

by chasd00

7/25/2026 at 1:26:16 AM

They can relatively easily sink it, and in fact are required to be able to in order to get their US FAA launch license. As part of the environmental assessment specifically, but I could be wrong on that. For those curious, they have recovery teams on sight who can essentially shoot it to further puncture the hull or attach explosives even. They have experience with their Starship boosters not sinking off the coast of Texas and floating into Mexican waters.

by aejm

7/24/2026 at 11:53:44 PM

My brain refuses to resolve the effect of it as anything but CGI. Event though it isn't.

by maxlin

7/25/2026 at 1:45:09 AM

I mean, folks who make CGI better watch these too or they're not doing their jobs.

by cadamsdotcom

7/25/2026 at 2:44:23 AM

I hope they watch some of these, because movies are full of disappointing rocket scenes that are so many orders of magnitude away from the real thing that it's like representing a skyscraper with a treehouse. There is considerable room for reality to inspire fiction a bit more on this front.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 7:47:16 PM

I remain shocked at how lame the nuke in Oppenheimer looked.

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 10:04:29 PM

Oof yeah. Compared to the eldritch horror of the real slow motion footage, the glitter was painfully lame.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 1:20:55 AM

> None of the heat shields so far looked reusable without refurbishment, including this one.

What about this one looks not reusable without refurbishment?

To my eye it’s by far the best we’ve seen, no burn through on flaps, etc

by testing22321

7/25/2026 at 1:59:49 AM

Lots of missing tiles still. Best case is it's all infant mortality and replacing just those tiles will result in a durable heat shield for many more flights. Worst case is every flight loses that many tiles and the ablative underneath can't be reflown until replacement.

I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing a heat shield refurbishment attachment to the launch tower that allows technicians to access the side of the ship to patch up between flights without leaving the pad. They're going to need some kind of solution for the many back-to-back HLS refueling flights.

by modeless

7/25/2026 at 2:31:33 AM

They've intentionally flown a number of times with missing heat tiles in sensitive spots, and many of those don't have the ablative coating. One of the benefits of steel over aluminium.

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 2:32:33 AM

Musk tweet:

“We got all the heat shield data we needed and then some! ”

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2080812297694409014

by testing22321

7/25/2026 at 6:01:36 AM

Also they plan to catch the ship next time! Excitement guaranteed!

by modeless

7/25/2026 at 12:28:43 AM

Summary: almost, but not quite entirely successful.

Launch successful. Booster separation and boost back burn looked good. Booster failed to relight some of its engines and hit the water hard. Successfully deployed the 20 starlink satellites. Successfully reignited an engine in flight to prove potential for de-orbit burn on future flight. Re-entry looked good and less spicy that some previous attempts (subjective). Such a soft landing that the ship flopped into the water without exploding and floated for a good long while (possibly still floating for all I know). Got some great drone footage flying over the heat-shield.

So the ship itself is looking increasingly good (so far) but they still seem to be having some issues with the booster.

by staplung

7/25/2026 at 12:49:02 AM

Speaking of which, are there any fan theories on why the boosters seem to have persistent issues? Or is the plumbing still churning fast enough that we keep seeing N=1 issues for successive designs?

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 1:07:18 AM

The 12th flight was the first to use the third generation Raptors, so this is only their second flight test.

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 4:02:42 AM

Until the past couple launches it was the ship that had the issues. Had to be blown up a couple times, failed to relight in vacuum, lost an engine and nearly failed to get to the suborbital trajectory last time. Meanwhile the booster had the most spectacular success in the catch, and has yet to result in a catastrophic failure.

by jdminhbg

7/25/2026 at 1:31:46 AM

The leading theory, from what I can tell, is slosh. The flip on separation is relatively violent, and while there's not much fuel left compared to the amount at launch, it's still heavy enough to do damage.

by laughing_man

7/25/2026 at 2:21:52 AM

The cast I was watching said that during the flip and boost-back the booster is pulling 11 Gs. That's a pretty hard hitting water-hammer for sure.

by staplung

7/25/2026 at 2:27:17 AM

Oof, yeah, one good slosh at 11G is probably all it takes. On the bright side, there is probably a trajectory that works and I wish them luck in finding it!

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 12:00:32 AM

Starship landed in the ocean intact and only slightly on fire!

by ACCount37

7/25/2026 at 12:18:35 AM

That just seemed to be standard venting, methane if I'm not mistaken.

by NolF

7/24/2026 at 11:28:30 PM

Whoa the acceleration from the start surprised me. It’s huge and it just … zipped off the pad like a bullet (ok not real bullet but still).

by fsloth

7/24/2026 at 11:43:57 PM

They juiced the engines up big time with the Raptor 3 upgrade. The rest of the stack is leaner and meaner too, but engines are the single biggest upgrade.

It's why they have plans to elongate the stack further. If they have this much TWR to go around at liftoff, they can afford to cash in that extra thrust to pack more fuel.

by ACCount37

7/24/2026 at 11:48:29 PM

> they have plans to elongate the stack further

Elongate the stack.

by andsoitis

7/25/2026 at 12:08:43 AM

Pun employed intentionally.

by ACCount37

7/25/2026 at 1:36:01 AM

Felix on the "what about it" YouTube channel says flight 14 will be even faster. That's going to be something to see.

by laughing_man

7/25/2026 at 2:45:01 AM

The more you accelerate early instead of later, the less fuel you have to subsequently carry to get to the same speed so it's more efficient.

by ivewonyoung

7/25/2026 at 4:25:53 AM

Given how little payload is onboard at the moment, what an empty can starship is, i sure hope for their sake there is a lot a lot a lot of zip to spare right now.

by jauntywundrkind

7/25/2026 at 11:18:18 PM

The ship had a little over 34 tons of payload, but there should be almost no difference in thrust to weight ratio at launch for an empty vs full payload bay. The stack itself weighs over 5,000 tons at launch. Assuming it’s 5,000 tons at liftoff, adding another 65 tons of payload would change the thrust to weight ratio from 1.65 to 1.63.

by ggreer

7/24/2026 at 11:16:56 PM

Seems like the booster landing burn did not light all the engines and so it crashed into the water.

by georgeburdell

7/24/2026 at 11:36:40 PM

Yup. Some of the Youtubers (like NASA Spaceflight) had video of it hitting the water pretty fast and hard. That said, this is the only test failure so far. I'm cautiously hopeful they get Ship to touch down. (it will explode after it does because of physics but stepping lightly onto the ocean will be a win)

by ChuckMcM

7/25/2026 at 12:05:08 AM

And I sit corrected as it was able to lay down without rupturing the tanks and 'sploding. So that's another win.

What I find really amazing and cool is that while its reentering the engineering team can drive it around and look at heating effects on tiles/spars/etc all while retrieving telemetry by Starlink. What many people don't realize is that early capsules were the shape they were because that was the limit of what they could simulate for re-entry forces. The ability to get real time confirmation of systems response in re-entry is a capability that we've never had. So there's that.

So at this point it looks like they are down to un-reliabile raptor relights on the booster.

Congrats to everyone who worked on this.

by ChuckMcM

7/25/2026 at 1:14:38 AM

The size of ship being big enough to create a hole in the ionization to continue to communicate with Starlink is something that I think gets underappreciated.

by dylan604

7/24/2026 at 11:41:10 PM

>it will explode after it does because of physics

Is this just a fancy way of saying lightweight fragile aerospace tube with hot stuff all over the outside and flammable stuff on the inside will not respond well to falling on it's side or is there some other thing going on here I don't know about.

by cucumber3732842

7/25/2026 at 12:07:50 AM

Sort of? Everything is weight. And since it isn't a design feature to lay down in water there isn't any weight budget for making that modality survivable? So typically when it falls (and this thing is really tall) the interior tanks detach from their mounts and hit the inside walls and rupture. The skin is still hot, oxygen and remaining fuel mix and it goes boom. This time we had fires but no boom. I look forward to hearing what was different.

by ChuckMcM

7/25/2026 at 12:21:15 AM

Starship is quite a bit sturdier thanks to the stainless steel used & very efficient engines that make it possible to have the structure heavier.

We had it demonstrated in the past with Starship surviving multiple burnthroughts and now in failing to explode. :-)

by m4rtink

7/24/2026 at 11:54:37 PM

No, that's exactly what happens. Most of the time.

There was a couple of times when SpaceX accidentally soft landed a Falcon 9 first stage into the ocean, and had it just float around. They're yet to do that trick with Starship though.

EDIT: Of fucking course.

by ACCount37

7/24/2026 at 11:51:12 PM

How many times have they managed to catch it in the last 8 or so missions? There have been a few misses like this already with the boosters

by DetroitThrow

7/25/2026 at 4:17:52 AM

They only tried to catch it twice, and they caught it twice.

by testing22321

7/26/2026 at 4:35:51 PM

They planned on catching the booster on flight 6 as well, but aborted due to some issue with the launch/catch tower

by baegi

7/24/2026 at 11:58:38 PM

I guess they also failed to explode it

by usehand

7/25/2026 at 12:07:05 AM

I am pretty unconvinced that any of the past explosions of starship used that feature. It’s very convenient to have an “explode” button so you can say all of your rocket detonations were intentional, but they are often leaking fuel or dropping chunks before they explode.

This was a great flight, though.

by pclmulqdq

7/25/2026 at 1:14:52 AM

from what i understand it kind of is a failure. It's suppose to tip over, explode, and sink. That way you don't have all this ITAR regulated tech floating around in international waters.

by chasd00

7/25/2026 at 4:17:06 AM

They actually said they’ve been trying different techniques to not have it explode like rolling.

This way they got way more heat shield data, which is, I think, their most critical item they need to learn from and iterate.

by testing22321

7/25/2026 at 3:52:41 PM

> They actually said they’ve been trying different techniques to not have it explode like rolling.

interesting, i had no idea. I was going off the info i remembered about when those unexploded parts floated into Mexican waters. It's exciting to see Startship v3 have a perfect test flight. Hopefully the next launch will be fully orbital and they can start making productive use of the capability.

by chasd00

7/25/2026 at 12:12:49 AM

Re-light seems to be one of their biggest remaining obstacles in a lot of these flight tests.

by fastball

7/24/2026 at 11:26:30 PM

It was going in the water anyway, but yeah, it touched visibly faster than it should have.

by stephc_int13

7/24/2026 at 11:26:41 PM

The actual objective was to crash very slowly into the water, and to that end, I believe they planned for about 13 out of 33 to light for the "landing burn". But only about 5 lit up at that time, giving them a higher-speed crash-landing. However, the landing site was exactly where they needed to be, and done in complete safety, so that is good.

They had been explaining the post-ignition abort from last week, and showed how 4 out of 33 engines had failed to light on the first stage. This was due to some kind of pump malfunctions. They said that if 1 or 2 fail, it's OK to launch, but more than 2 is an automatic abort. So they were able to replace the finicky motors and fully test them out.

Who knows what caused the underthrust for the landing burn, but at least all 33 engines were operational at launch, and they got plenty of data from this test run, and all Starlink v3 satellites have been deployed successfully for their "suborbital speedrun", so this test flight is doing really awesome!

by ButlerianJihad

7/24/2026 at 11:28:48 PM

Damn so this probably means another identical suborbital flight in 6-8 weeks. It is looking less and less likely that we will see either prop transfer or a ship catch this year.

by ls612

7/24/2026 at 11:33:12 PM

i don't think so - the ascent looked good. i don't think they need to put the ship on another suborbital trajectory because the booster landing burn failed. also, i don't think this impacts prop transfer or ship catch - both are separate problems.

by davmar

7/24/2026 at 11:45:07 PM

I think this is technically true but that they want a seamless suborbital flight (like the last two for the Block 2) before they move forward on those other goals.

by ls612

7/25/2026 at 12:08:57 AM

Why wouldn’t they only care about seamless ship flights, to get some value out of the launches, while they’re still learning and figuring out how to light booster?

by eightysixfour

7/24/2026 at 11:31:42 PM

They don’t have to catch the booster to test any of that.

by NetMageSCW

7/24/2026 at 11:23:54 PM

The “chopstick” catcher arrangement seems awfully fragile. Would the ground equipment have survived this if it had been a real catch?

by wat10000

7/24/2026 at 11:26:08 PM

Yes, because it would have landed a few hundred meters out from the chopsticks. It swings in towards the catcher as part of its slowdown. If it doesn't slow down, that doesn't happen.

by pixl97

7/24/2026 at 11:26:26 PM

They generally initiate landing aiming just off shore and only adjust to the landing pad after everything is nominal. So yes.

by tenuousemphasis

7/25/2026 at 12:26:34 AM

Rockets have a self destruct feature to avoid exactly this type of contingency

by consensus1

7/26/2026 at 12:45:27 PM

By the time that the booster returns to the landing zone, the Flight Termination System (FTS) is AFAIK no longer active and cannot be reactivated. Which makes sense because it is a bunch of high explosives, now nearing some valuable equipment.

The SpaceX solution is to steer carefully and have the default trajectory end in the sea. Only if everything looks good, is the booster redirected to the tower.

by inglor_cz

7/26/2026 at 5:24:58 PM

I wonder what happens when things go wrong after everything looks good. They punched a good number of holes in their landing barges when they were perfecting Falcon 9 landings. And I imagine this crazy catch tower is a lot more expensive than a barge with a flat surface.

by wat10000

7/26/2026 at 5:52:07 PM

Falcon 9 engines (Merlins) cannot throttle down, they either run on max power or they don't. Which means that any attempts to land are incredibly risky. You have to reignite them at the precise moment to slow down the rocket to zero at the height of the landing platform, or else. That is why the maneuver is called "suicide burn", and it is incredible that someone actually perfected something as crazy as this. The landing legs can absorb a tiny error, but anything over that = Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (Monty Python theme starts to play in the background...)

Raptors are much more finely controllable and both stages of Starship can even hover when necessary, so the total control envelope, while not perfect, is much larger. That is why they can even try to land into a steely embrace, with no landing legs used.

by inglor_cz

7/26/2026 at 9:23:34 PM

Merlin and Raptor can both throttle to about 40%. The difference is that Super Heavy has way more engines, so 40% of one engine is a lot less thrust relative to the mass of the nearly empty booster.

Did the suicide burn actually play a role in the various barge-holing events? It’s been a while but I don’t remember that being the hard part.

by wat10000

7/24/2026 at 11:49:02 PM

Real time reentry plasma field will never get old. Amazing

by s08148692

7/24/2026 at 11:52:01 PM

Goosebumps.

And the visuals from Starlink for the entire journey is freakin' awesome.

by andsoitis

7/25/2026 at 1:18:51 AM

With a decent soundtrack as well instead of the boring atmospheric stuff associated with space themes

by dylan604

7/25/2026 at 1:07:48 AM

Incredible. I missed the launch but exciting to see the remarkable success. Boy am I hoping we go to the Moon and to Mars and to all the other places!

by arjie

7/26/2026 at 3:27:18 PM

Does anyone care? I'm DOGEdly tired of these videos.

by spwa4

7/24/2026 at 11:39:00 PM

Its amazing to see this beast and think that all the firey stuff isn't the primary energy source (although totally necessary to pushing the mass out the back fast enough).

  The reason it’s very small is that almost all of the energy in hydrogen and oxygen is not stored in the chemical binding energy of these things going together.

  The vast majority of it is stored in just the rest mass energy of the protons and the neutrons, which chemical burning doesn’t affect at all.
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/adam-brown-gr

[Edit note: Starship and Booster are methalox, yes. The physicist is talking generically, not about this launch specifically)

by adolph

7/24/2026 at 11:41:34 PM

It’s interesting the cognitive dissonance this brings out in me. As much as I think Musk carries a fairly reprehensible aura, I would still like to see SpaceX succeed. Space has a funny, transcendent way of inspiring us.

by appplication

7/25/2026 at 1:25:04 AM

I’m glad that of all places, HN is still able to grudgingly put aside red/blue team sports to appreciate really cool science and engineering.

by qwerpy

7/25/2026 at 1:32:22 AM

Agreed. Separating those thoughts are valuable here and in life in general.

But like a lot of tech, the cool shit can have serious negative effects as well and it's important to be able to, again, acknowledge both appropriately.

The success of SpaceX has made him the richest man on the planet, and his money makes him dangerous.

by pstuart

7/25/2026 at 2:15:35 PM

He's only dangerous if you operate a legal system that allows people to be dangerous. Elon Musk has never been the problem. As long as he's not breaking the law it's all good.

by mlindner

7/25/2026 at 4:36:06 PM

The last 18 months have proven that the rule of law doesn’t apply to those who are rich enough to ~bribe~ lobby anyone who would enforce the laws.

(A donation to the presidential library, a new RV for the judge, a PAC that runs campaigns for the senator and rep - and Bob’s your uncle. Might cost 0.001% of your assets if you are a trillionaire. Cheap at ten times the price.)

by MagnumOpus

7/25/2026 at 10:23:53 PM

It's always a trip to see the people who practically fetishize the law -- the archaic language, the written form, the pressed uniforms -- turn around and not only develop a self-serving selective blindness to their own team's violations of the law, which is the kind of nonsense you expect in politics, but also employ "stop punching yourself" logic to blame the law itself for those same violations. Absolute madness.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 6:25:50 PM

> As long as he's not breaking the law it's all good.

What makes you think he hasn't? Does he demonstrate that he believes that nobody is above the law? I think you know the answer to that.

by pstuart

7/25/2026 at 9:22:07 AM

[flagged]

by croisillon

7/24/2026 at 11:45:48 PM

The tiny part of SpaceX that is actually about space, yes. Unfortunate that it has been bolted onto the hulk of Musk's AI fever dreams.

by amanaplanacanal

7/25/2026 at 12:16:55 AM

It is still about space. AI and space computers are just the vehicle to fund it all.

by Geee

7/25/2026 at 2:52:49 AM

The graveyards are full of blockchain companies who said something similar.

by matthewdgreen

7/25/2026 at 1:58:14 PM

Not many that launched rockets or anything like that.

by tim333

7/25/2026 at 12:21:30 AM

Billions of AI capex for a model that’s consistently forgettable and space computers, presumably data centers in space, are funding SpaceX?

Isn’t the opposite?

SpaceX has an extremely profitable launch program and a profitable Starlink. It’s a straightforward would be better off financially without X and X.ai.

by refulgentis

7/25/2026 at 12:37:28 AM

Cash: rockets fund AI

Equity: AI funds rockets

Of all the places that money parted from fools winds up, this is not the worst of them.

by smallmancontrov

7/26/2026 at 5:23:30 AM

Tiny part? Huh? Falcon 9, Dragon, Starlink, Starship. That is a LOT of space.

by throwaway2037

7/26/2026 at 7:17:41 PM

You should look at the S1 they filed with the SEC. All of their space related stuff including starlink shows a total possible market of 2 trillion, whereas they show AI as over 26 trillion. Basically almost all of their value is AI, not space related activities.

by amanaplanacanal

7/24/2026 at 11:51:19 PM

Even at $38/share it will still be number 20 on the fortune 500 by marketcap

Too bad for Elon gullibles its at $113/share

but its a great company at $38

by yieldcrv

7/25/2026 at 2:01:57 PM

Depends a bit on how the AI stuff goes.

by tim333

7/25/2026 at 3:43:29 PM

right.

instead of having an enterprise AI strategy, they've become a landlord, renting capacity directly to competitors on a month to month basis, competitors who are building their own compute and can cancel this rental contract at any time.

so they'll use that to try to print rosy revenue numbers, except the size of the contract is until 2029 and the month to month payments can be cancelled at any time.

and they only have capacity to rent out because they don't have an enterprise AI strategy, they overspent on GPUs for an audience that never showed up for Grok, it has abysmal usage and its radioactive because it creates CSAM and is based af. It's just outdated Nvidia hardware that they are trying to recoup just a little bit of value from.

and if you believe in space datacenters, I've got a bridge in brooklyn to sell you! actually space datacenters are the 21st century bridge in brooklyn, whoever is selling you about it thinks you are stupid. Elon Musk just wanted the trillionaire print by all accepted metrics, and got that, so he said anything and disclosed it properly, and 4.9% of the shareholders bought that plan because they were greedy hoping for a pop. The pop came. now they're underwater.

Elon Musk doesn't believe the total addressable market of SpaceX's other business lines are that valuable in comparison. 25 trillion TAM for enterprise AI applications, 3 for everything else. ruh roh

by yieldcrv

7/25/2026 at 12:06:40 AM

Actual, literal Nazis got us to the Moon and frankly no one cared. Not then, not now. Try separating politics from the advancement of humanity, you'll feel better.

by pudgywalsh

7/25/2026 at 12:37:27 AM

In "V2" page 179 Dornberger writes:

"Do you know that your closest colleagues (including von Braun) have stated in company at Zinnowitz that it had never been their intention to make a weapon of war out of he rocket? That they had worked, under pressure from yourself (Dornberger) at the whole business of development and only in order to obtain money for their experiments and the confirmation of their theories? That their object all along has been space travel?"

The men had been arrested by the Gestapo and were going to be executed. Dornberger was also threatened with arrest, but he managed to get von Braun and the other released.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 1:26:20 AM

From by Tom Lehrer's "Wernher von Braun"[1],

Don't say that he's hypocritical

Say rather that he's apolitical

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun

1. https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?t=14

by GolfPopper

7/25/2026 at 3:35:22 AM

Another interesting factoid about the V2 program is it accelerated the collapse of the Reich.

How can that be, you might ask?

The V2 program was an incredibly expensive program, and sucked up enormous resources. But the V2 proved to be an inconsequential weapon, and did very little damage, because its guidance system was primitive.

The V1, ironically, was effective. Not because it wreaked critical damage on Britain, but because it was cheap to build and deploy, and the British spent a great deal of resources trying to stop it.

It reminds me of the current drone warfare.

Hitler also demanded that it be used to attack London, blowing up civilian homes, when it would have been much more effective attacking the staging areas for D-Day.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 6:10:33 PM

The V2 cost more to develop than the atomic bomb! And Germany was far less able to absorb the cost than the US.

by wat10000

7/25/2026 at 12:47:32 AM

Good info Walter, but I wasn't trying to get too deep.

Point is to not judge a book by its cover.

by pudgywalsh

7/25/2026 at 8:08:20 PM

You've mentioned Dornberger's book to me in a previous conversation regarding Von Braun, and though I haven't yet had a chance to read it I just did some research on it.

From what I can tell it looks like like an amazing source for technical details of the V2 rocket but there are many problems with it that make it unsuitable for the kind of argument that you're attempting to make here.

First of all, the book wasn't written by Dornberger -- it was ghostwritten by a Nazi propagandist and aerospace enthusiast named Franz Ludwig Neher[0]. Neher is an interesting fellow, having been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for 18 months in the early 1930s and later enjoyed a career writing numerous Nazi propaganda biographies for 'Unsere Jagdflieger', a pulp booklet series issued on Hermann Göring's authority.

Looking at Neher's biography page on the German wikipedia we see that from 1951-1962 Neher was the press officer for the 'Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung' or 'the German spaceflight society' in English, and even served for a time on its board. In 1952 Von Braun commissioned Neher to work on a Mars-project novel named 'Menschen zwischen den Planeten' which was published in 1953 apparently with poor reception by the public. Some reprints have a pretty cool looking cover though.[1]

I don't have time right now to dissect the actual claims made in V2 by Dornberger/Neher regarding von Braun but it's safe to say from everything I found that this is a very unreliable source for the argument that you're making as the man writing Dornberger's memoir was simultaneously the paid publicist of the German spaceflight lobby and von Braun's hired novelist.

Even in a first year history course essay assignment there's absolutely no way that this book would be considered an acceptable source to reference for non-technical details. Any instructor who was knowledgeable about the subject or who actually researched the sources would underline that passage in the essay with fat red lines and would scrawl the same kind of criticisms that I just made above in the margins in red pen. If your argument was the central thesis of the paper and this source was the evidentiary corner stone of that thesis you'd at best receive a C, but more likely a D grade.

In reciting this Werhner Von Braun apologia you have fallen for Nazi propaganda. Don't feel bad about it though -- we've all bought the big lie at one point or another. It's hard not to -- as the Nazis were pretty much the Wayne Gretzky of propaganda.

I'd like make this a teachable moment by introducing you to the concept of historiography[2] and one particularly important (and coincidentally German) author in the field: Leopold von Ranke.[3] It isn't always easy but proper analysis of sources is critical for making accurate claims and analysis of historical events.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ludwig_Neher

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Menschen-zwischen-den-Planeten/dp/3453...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke

by Teever

7/25/2026 at 10:58:59 PM

Have you ever found a refutation of von Braun being arrested by the Gestapo and scheduled to be executed?

I don't know why arresting von Braun would be nazi propaganda - it paints the nazis as rather stupid.

BTW, I read the book because of the technical details, which were quite interesting to me.

Google "was von braun arrested by the nazis" and you'll see essentially the same thing I posted.

Confirmation of the same by "An Interview with Michael Neufeld, PhD, of the National Air and Space Museum": https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/wernher-von-b...

by WalterBright

7/26/2026 at 4:34:05 PM

No, the arrest most certainly happened, it's corroborated from enough sources that this isn't in question, though from what I can tell the arrest report no longer exist, but there are contemporaneous notes made by Alfred Jodl. Additionally from a cursory search there are conflicting reasons given for the arrest including what you've mentioned and even communist accusations.

When I said "Nazi" earlier I should have been more precise, I was referring to von Braun, Dornberger, and his ghostwriter as "Nazis" even though AFAICT von Braun was the only actual card carrying Nazi of the bunch.

With that said, the problems with this source remains. The ghostwriter has a financial conflict of interest with the subject which would bias him to make as flattering of a portrayal of the subject, and the people involved are all intrinsically untrustworthy because well... look at the bunch... a Nazi propagandist, a Major General from the Wehrmacht, and an actual Nazi.

Look at the circumstances around this, you have the Nuremberg trials having only recently taken place which saw a bunch of dudes these guys personally knew publically shamed and hanged, These guys themselves were directly targeting civilians with these weapons, It's the middle of the McCarthy Era -- There's no way these guys could tell anything remotely close to an objective truth.

Everything they're going to say in this context is to save their skin. They're gonna write "Oh yeah, arrested by those evil Nazis for being too peaceful and science-minded" not something more realistic like "von Braun made a deal with the devil that was an absolutely psychotic and dysfunctional authoritarian regime and the deal almost blew up but that von Braun is so damn lucky he must have a horseshoe up his ass."

An adjacent topic that I've wondered about for years is his come to Jesus stuff after the war. It's plausible that he had a serious reckoning with his world view from his experiences during the war but it also seems just a little bit too convenient, you know?

by Teever

7/26/2026 at 5:02:31 PM

Yes, von Braun was a card-carrying Nazi. But something to consider. Professors could not get their research papers published unless they were card-carrying Nazis. Von Braun could not have headed up the rocket program unless he was a card-carrying Nazi. Did he make a deal with the devil? Yes.

He was also arrested by the Gestapo and threatened with execution if he was not more diligent in his efforts to develop the V2 missile.

I don't think it is implausible that he was less than enthusiastic about nazism. And once he was in the rocket program, there was no way out for him.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 12:44:11 AM

[dead]

by 486sx33

7/25/2026 at 12:23:53 AM

You're conflating politics and ethics.

by qarl2

7/25/2026 at 12:30:24 AM

Von Braun used the Nazi war machine to make his rockets. Musk ran DOGE. They’re both political figures by their own choices.

by adastra22

7/25/2026 at 1:38:41 AM

The important factor isn't politics. It's ethics. Saying it's about politics is obfuscation.

by qarl2

7/26/2026 at 12:53:20 PM

After reading this

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/breakdown-in-pakistan

and this

https://lydialaurenson.substack.com/p/the-time-i-joined-peac...

I do wonder whether much of USAID and similar programs are an instance of a road to hell paved with good intentions. If professional NGOs hollow out existing local organizations and destroy local ability to organize on the cheap, they may be basically condemning entire countries to perpetual dependence on someone's else's politics and budgets.

by inglor_cz

7/26/2026 at 3:41:13 PM

That’s the point. I’m not being cynical, USAID is self-serving diplomacy. Doesn’t make zeroing out the budget the right call though.

by adastra22

7/25/2026 at 1:10:41 AM

[dead]

by feshbach

7/25/2026 at 12:41:56 PM

Perhaps it takes a Nazi to make a good rocket?

by jaybrendansmith

7/25/2026 at 2:17:36 PM

You're implying that von Braun was still a nazi when he was working in the US (he wasn't) and you imply that Elon Musk is a nazi in the first place when he's done nothing to indicate that.

by mlindner

7/25/2026 at 3:25:09 PM

> nothing

Heh.

by qarl2

7/26/2026 at 12:55:30 PM

Well, the Nazi party was banned permanently by the Allied powers on Oct 10, 1945, so technically every member still alive became an ex-Nazi at that point. Including the leaders later hanged in Nuremberg, and, of course, Wernher von Braun.

Of course some people say that once a Nazi, always a Nazi.

by inglor_cz

7/26/2026 at 8:35:27 PM

him being nazi was inconsequential, the richest person in earth being Nazi is.

> Try separating politics from the advancement of humanity, you'll feel better.

can't. won't.

by _davide_

7/25/2026 at 12:02:32 AM

You don't need to virtue signal your dislike of Musk-the-person to be allowed to show your admiration for the exploits of SpaceX. I don't care what you think about Musk and I'm pretty sure I'm far from the only one. Yes, SpaceX is doing great, hopefully other companies will follow their clear lead and make space access more reliable and 'affordable' so that those great wheels-in-the-sky may one day become reality.

by hagbard_c

7/25/2026 at 1:04:36 AM

[dead]

by feshbach

7/24/2026 at 11:58:44 PM

[dead]

by infinitewars

7/25/2026 at 12:04:53 AM

[flagged]

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 12:10:56 AM

[flagged]

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 12:19:24 AM

> telling his millions of followers that a rescue worker was a pedophile

Only after the rescue worker, on live TV, said to millions that Musk could stick his submarine up his ass.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 12:28:47 AM

Not even on the same level, dude. Not even close.

by olyjohn

7/25/2026 at 12:33:24 AM

He has billions of dollars and still can’t help but stoop to pathetic immaturity.

by bathtub365

7/25/2026 at 1:01:38 AM

It was an intemperate comment, sure. As was the rescue worker's insult when Musk was trying to help.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 1:08:46 AM

Front line rescue workers and first responders are famously required to be polite to looky lou's wanting to make tragic events all about themselves and their dumb PR stunts.

by defrost

7/25/2026 at 1:28:16 AM

Musk offered money and the services of his crack engineering team. Now, he probably went about it the wrong way, but dismissing it as a looky lou is a bit unfair.

Musk has also done dumb PR things like provide free Starlink service to people cut off after the hurricane.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 12:36:32 AM

[flagged]

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 1:18:25 AM

[flagged]

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 1:24:35 AM

"Bet ya a signed dollar it's true." - Musk's follow-up

It went so, so far beyond a schoolyard taunt. All of my friends and I remember the debacle clearly, and it's the moment we all went from childhood idolizers of Musk to feeling pretty sick about the dude.

by dag11

7/25/2026 at 1:26:36 AM

Months after he apologized for the initial false "pedo" claim, Musk claimed in an email to Buzzfeed that Unsworth (the rescue diver) was "a child rapist" who "moved to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was 12 years old at the time."

Musk hired a private investigator to confirm the pedophile allegations (which failed, of course).

Try again kiddo. Absolutely pathetic. Defending this shit is a moral failure for you too.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 1:28:28 AM

Cite: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45418245

> Writing in an email to Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Mac, Mr Musk went further. He told the reporter to "call people you know in Thailand, find out what's actually going on and stop defending child rapists".

> He alleged that Mr Unsworth, 63, had spent decades visiting and living in Thailand and had recently moved to Chiang Rai in northern Thailand "for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time".

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 1:58:31 AM

That would qualify as libel, and I don't defend libel.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 2:27:38 AM

Yet here you are, doing it.

Reminder:

> "pedo boy" sounds like an insult, not a charge... This is evident from you changing his word from "pedo boy" to "pedophile".

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 3:22:39 AM

I don't consider "pedo boy" to be slander any more than someone in the west calling another a "motherfucker". It's not actionable, and the lawsuit alleging it to be libel failed for that reason.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 5:36:50 AM

>I don't consider "pedo boy" to be slander any more than someone in the west calling another a "motherfucker".

'motherfucker' is a common phrase even outside of strictly english - speaking countries , and very few people go on to explain how the person had sex with a mother.

'pedo boy' is impossibly uncommon, regardless of what the singular defending belligerent claims, and furthermore he went on to publicly accuse the person of actual pedophilia.

yeah : i'm sure it didn't fail in court due to unlimited deep pockets and lawyers on retainer.

is there anything beyond willful ignorance ? You and I have had differences of opinion before, but yeesh -- talk about a hill to die on, defending elons' shite behavior during that phase.

by serf

7/25/2026 at 7:44:30 AM

> 'pedo boy' is impossibly uncommon

All it has to be is common in S Africa where he grew up. As I mentioned before, different cultures have widely varying common forms of insults.

> furthermore he went on to publicly accuse the person of actual pedophilia.

That was after being sued for $195 million. I've also remarked that I am not defending libel. A common insult is not libelous.

P.S. People successfully sue rich people all the time, because that's where the money is.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 11:32:47 AM

So your argument is that:

1. Musk calling him "pedo boy" isn't Musk actually calling him a pedophile, and there's nothing wrong with a grown man using insults (against an aid worker risking his own life to save children) that 14-year olds in the 80s in South Africa allegedly used on playgrounds

2. Musk telling Buzzfeed that the same exact guy is actually a pedophile (specifically a child rapist) who took a 12 year old bride was totally unrelated to the prior "pedo boy" comment, and you would never defend such an action

Fascinating pretzel you've folded yourself into. Not sure who you think you're fooling, hope it's not you though!

To be clear, I don't think anyone here is suggesting Musk should be held legally accountable for anything. Not sure why you keep falling back to this "libelous" standard. No one cares and defamation suits are virtually impossible in the US.

Your original snarky question was what is reprehensible about him. You are now defending his clearly reprehensible moral character, through some convoluted "didn't mean it but it was okay but also he totally did say the same thing in clearer terms weeks later and I would never defend that."

Interesting to note your own motte-and-bailey retreat on this point too though.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 5:08:09 PM

Let's review:

1. Musk offers money and engineering help

2. diver insults Musk on national TV

3. Musk insults diver on twitter

4. diver sues Musk for $195 million

5. Musk retaliates by investigating him

Neither of them are saints, and neither are "reprehensible" people. The jury in the lawsuit called it right by deliberating for one hour and then dismissing the lawsuit.

And insulting someone and engaging in libel is not the same thing, and is not a "retreat".

P.S. It's fine to write your own interpretation of my remarks, but it is not fine to put them in quotes suggesting I wrote them.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 8:43:13 PM

I don't know what point you keep trying to make about Musk winning a defamation suit in the US lol. It's virtually impossible to successfully sue someone for defamation here. The outcome of a defamation suit has quite literally zero bearing on the morality of the actions in question.

Anyway I just sent a note into a few publications to let them know that WalterBright is a pedophile child rapist.

That's apparently not even reprehensible under your moral framework.

Could you let me know the contact info of your local newspaper so I can give them this info as well?

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 1:48:10 AM

Musk did hire the private investigator after the rescue worker sued him for $195 million. I agree Musk shouldn't have done that despite being angry about being sued.

Musk won the lawsuit.

Musk also publicly apologized.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 1:49:57 AM

And after Musk publicly apologized, he sent an email to Buzzfeed accusing the rescuer of being a child rapist and moving to Thailand to take a 12 year old bride.

Please continue your defense.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 1:26:30 AM

> Musk has said it was a common insult among schoolboys in S Africa.

Consider that maybe "derogatory things wealthy white South Africans say about people in the apartheid era" is not a great standard to live up to.

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 1:51:49 AM

I never said it was. It also has nothing to do with apartheid.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 2:27:27 AM

A white kid growing up in the 80s in South Africa has nothing to do with apartheid?

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 3:23:30 AM

Playground insults have nothing to do with apartheid. Nor does it imply that every white child was evil.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 7:17:21 PM

> rescue worker

There were 100 divers in total 10,000 various workers. There were no heroes there.

by dzhiurgis

7/25/2026 at 8:36:26 PM

Lol

hurr durr heroism is when a singular person saves the day hurr durr

Disneyfication is perhaps the greatest cognitive crime committed against our species.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 12:13:44 AM

[flagged]

by pudgywalsh

7/25/2026 at 12:16:22 AM

What's authentic/"not phony" about literally making shit up about another person?

I'm genuinely confused so please explain step by step.

Do you think everyone around you is just brimming with unevidenced allegations of pedophilia to fling around at strangers, and finally we have the One True Authentic™ to just bravely say the big words out loud?

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 12:28:44 AM

[flagged]

by pudgywalsh

7/25/2026 at 12:39:39 AM

Haha nothing funnier than grown adults (??) who are so infatuated with big wockets that they seem to forget basic concepts like "moral character" if there are big wockets anywhere in the vicinity. So smart.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 12:25:17 AM

False accusations and lies are evil. It's not a debatable statement. Trying to spin it into a positive is not going to work.

by ajuc

7/25/2026 at 12:22:38 AM

[flagged]

by atq2119

7/25/2026 at 12:54:15 AM

If he meant it to be a nazi salute, why did he do it in conjunction with saying "I give my heart to you"?

Currently on TV is a WW2 documentary narrated by Tom Hanks. It's pretty good, with significant coverage of nazis. I recommend watching it. I'm a bit of a history wonk, and have read extensively about WW2. I'm afraid I don't see any parallels between the nazis and Musk.

by WalterBright

7/25/2026 at 1:45:06 AM

And responding to the backlash by posting Nazi-related puns seems like a bad way of clearing your name or trying to distance yourself from the accusation.

by muwtyhg

7/25/2026 at 1:55:19 PM

[flagged]

by ryandrake

7/25/2026 at 2:19:14 PM

[flagged]

by mlindner

7/25/2026 at 9:39:31 PM

"Doesn't look like anything to me."

Congrats, you baited me into watching the video again. Definitely a nazi salute. Twice. Crisp enough to identify as a nazi salute even if the context hadn't been a far-right industrialist celebrating a far-right victory. But that was the context, giving us two layers of unambiguity.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 1:10:01 AM

He's done "I give my heart to you" on video, too, and it looks nothing like the nazi salute that he clearly did at the inauguration, twice, in celebration of the victory of far-right populist politics in the USA.

The rhetorical parallels between Musk, his affiliates, and the nazis should be clear to anyone with remedial knowledge of history, let alone someone who calls themselves a wonk: scapegoating racial outgroups isn't a subtle strategy and Musk's pursuit of the strategy is not subtle.

WW2 is the end of nazi politics, not the beginning. In the unlikely case that you missed the parallels in good faith, I recommend the Richard Evans books to learn about the beginning and middle of the nazi movement.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 2:24:28 PM

That's because he was in a manic moment, and all his emotions and physical movements were exaggerated... This wasn't a calm investor presentation.

by mlindner

7/25/2026 at 9:46:47 PM

I suppose the mania caused his twitter posts and white house politics as well? No, he meant it all.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 1:09:30 AM

> If he meant it to be a nazi salute, why did he do it in conjunction with saying "I give my heart to you"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Schrodingers...

Here's what Musk actually does when he intends that gesture: https://www.reddit.com/r/centrist/comments/1i8ajx0/video_of_...

And here's what this one looked like: https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i6par1/elon_musk_vs_...

Go on - would you give the latter link's "my heart goes out to you" gesture publicly at, say, work, or outside a synagogue?

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 5:01:25 PM

This whole comment chain is so baffling to me. HN is relatively intelligent, but we have people here seriously believing Musk did a Nazi salute on stage and that he's an actual Nazi. I don't know what to make of it.

I have to imagine it's motivated reasoning, because of the people who say it was a Nazi salute, approximately 100% of them already hated the guy. I've seen no one suddenly swayed. Fwiw I have no strong feelings about Musk either way, but to my eyes he is obviously not a Nazi.

by eudamoniac

7/25/2026 at 9:43:42 PM

Then your eyes are excellent at ignoring everything he said in the last 4 years on Twitter and did last year in the white house. Not to mention the salute itself. Or themself -- there were two, back to back, in case you missed the first one.

by smallmancontrov

7/26/2026 at 2:17:32 AM

I have assessed your post history and it is literally 100% political argumentation, which aligns with my biases about what kind of people would write this sort of comment. That is not what HN is for.

by eudamoniac

7/26/2026 at 5:05:22 AM

You didn't even read the first page. Motivated vision strikes again.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 2:09:26 PM

So, there is little question about the type of gestures that Musk made, but I'm deeply curious about where it was directed.

Because we who read history all know that the "Nazi salute" or even the very American "Bellamy salute", and the Roman salutes before them, were directed to the leader, or a flag. And the Nazis in conjunction with saying "hail" to their leader. So far, so good?

But Musk was standing at a podium and looking out upon a crowd of people...voters...delegates... and he did not, in my view, try and face President Trump, or any leader standing at another podium, when he directed his salute outwards from the podium: outwards toward the crowd, opposite the camera angle.

So if Musk was not saluting President Trump: was he saluting a flag? Or the citizens? Because if he was saluting the citizens in this way, it gives a very, very different interpretation to the entire gesture, and if he was not saluting the president, or some leader, I do not see how this could be interpreted in the same way as the traditional salute of any type.

by ButlerianJihad

7/25/2026 at 3:50:53 PM

If you image search "hitler salute" you get 30 examples of Hitler saluting crowds. This argument is complete trash.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 7:10:25 PM

My father is 90 years old, so I asked him if he or his classmates said the Pledge of Allegiance, and he said of course they did.

I asked whether he had seen any of them making the Bellamy Salute, but he said no. I suppose he was too young to see it. Hail Caesar.

by ButlerianJihad

7/25/2026 at 9:15:19 PM

Caesar has been dead for 2000 years. The Bellamy Salute has been dead for 80. It's the Hitler salute now. Even your 90 year old father got the memo. Elon was not confused.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 12:43:20 AM

[dead]

by 486sx33

7/25/2026 at 1:53:36 AM

[flagged]

by BurningFrog

7/25/2026 at 2:36:06 AM

I can: thinking that a far-right industrialist at a far-right victory celebration making a far-right hand gesture, with perfect form, in duplicate, didn't mean it.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 2:26:48 PM

Well you can start by correcting the point that it was a far-right victory celebration or that a far-right guesture was made.

by mlindner

7/26/2026 at 2:03:18 AM

Why would I correct myself? I'm already correct on both counts.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 2:39:20 AM

What about trying really, really hard to believe that a guy with a Nazi tattoo on his chest didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo?

by parineum

7/25/2026 at 2:49:11 PM

You know we forced that guy to withdraw his candidacy, right?

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 4:41:42 PM

After it came out that he might have raped someone.

by parineum

7/25/2026 at 5:21:59 PM

There were a lot of people on the left noting that a totenkopf was a big red flag warning of others lurking. The centrist consultants tried to push past it, as they often do, and that's one of the big issues I have with the Dem establishment.

Meanwhile, the Republicans elected and continue to rabidly support a court adjudicated actual rapist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-car...) to the Presidency, who appointed someone with similarly questionable tattoos to be the SecDef (https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5191413/peter-hegseths-...). I think I'm comfortable with the contrast.

by ceejayoz

7/25/2026 at 2:11:26 AM

Such highly-public but deniable signals of support are actually a very, very common tactic of extremist movements.

But at the end of the day you know what you saw. Reflects very poorly.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 2:40:12 AM

Citation please.

by parineum

7/25/2026 at 12:23:08 AM

Double Sieg Heil at a US inauguration, buying twitter to boost nazis, sabotaging his US competitors by pulling up the subsidy ladder he just finished climbing, gleefully dumpstering the peanut butter rations for the starving African kids. "Favorite" isn't the word.

by smallmancontrov

7/25/2026 at 12:27:56 AM

[flagged]

by tuhx

7/25/2026 at 12:43:24 AM

… says a post from a 25min old bot account?

Snark aside, I’m curious: what about the comment you replied to is a “Reddit lie?” Pretty much everything act mentioned is well documented. Do you disagree with the assumptions made about motivations for the acts?

by mrexroad

7/25/2026 at 2:37:59 PM

I wonder if Elon has hired people to defend him in social media?

by tim333

7/25/2026 at 12:32:09 AM

My eyes don't lie.

by smallmancontrov

7/24/2026 at 11:49:38 PM

[flagged]

by maxlin

7/25/2026 at 12:03:18 AM

100%

by tuhx

7/25/2026 at 12:11:55 AM

Do you include spreading lies on twitter about Paul Pelosi as part of "what it takes?"

by mjcl

7/25/2026 at 12:03:04 AM

I apply this mindset to Trump/politics too.

I fucking _loathe_ Trump. I still hope he makes America better. But god I fucking hate him. I think his policies are garbage, but I'd love to be proven wrong. All I see is bribery and nepotism... but yknow, he (finally) nominated Jared Isaacman. I'll fucking take it.

Musk is anathema. But yknow, I'm glad he's started the companies he has.

by AlexErrant

7/25/2026 at 12:13:04 AM

Not me! I'm rooting against SpaceX lol

Starship is the SpaceX Cybertruck - lots of impressive engineering, but still doomed by terrible design choices from you-know-who. Stainless steel is just such a terrible choice for a rocket this large. Doomed the whole enterprise.

I know launches are exciting. Landings, doubly so. But eight launches to get to the moon is not a good rocket. Sorry.

by y0ssar1an

7/25/2026 at 12:29:12 AM

which rockets have you worked on? are you in the aerospace industry?

by amazingamazing

7/25/2026 at 12:15:12 AM

Your takes are hotter than a launch pad with all 33 raptors firing!

by enraged_camel

7/25/2026 at 12:24:54 AM

and costs taxpayers billions compared to our working models 60 years ago. Great innovation

by Garrrrrr

7/25/2026 at 12:32:44 AM

I remember the Saturn V being caught by chopsticks in mid air too.

Starship is fantastic value for money compared to Artemis!

by FL33TW00D

7/25/2026 at 6:17:14 AM

Saturn V didn't take 8 launches and 9 orbital fueling operations to get to the moon.

by y0ssar1an

7/25/2026 at 1:17:26 AM

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by PopePompus

7/25/2026 at 12:27:59 AM

>> Stainless steel is just such a terrible choice for a rocket this large.

Honest question, but what do they usually use?

by at-fates-hands

7/25/2026 at 1:12:41 AM

Aluminum alloy and carbon fiber, because both have high strength to weight ratios. Steel is denser, so its specific strength isn't as high. But it retains strength at both lower & higher temperatures, and it's much cheaper. It's also cheaper/quicker to modify a steel design, as welding is easier than aluminum (at least for low carbon steels used in Starship). And if the same structure were made of carbon fiber, it would likely have to be fabricated from scratch.

I think choosing steel has helped Starship, as it allowed the ship to survive reentry and land in the ocean despite heat shield failures. Had the ship been made of aluminum, I'm certain earlier missions would have broken up when the aluminum heated up and lost its strength.

by ggreer

7/25/2026 at 6:26:40 AM

you should come back to this comment in 10 years. stainless steel starship will not have left LEO.

by y0ssar1an

7/25/2026 at 7:21:48 AM

Does this mean you think Starship HLS will fail? It will use a steel structure and is planned to be part of future Artemis missions.

Also are you willing to stake money on that claim? How about this: If before July 25th, 2036, any version of Starship made primarily of steel (HLS, future Mars versions, etc) has an apogee above 2,000km, you pay me $1,000. If not, I pay you $1,000. If you like, we can bet some other amount up to $10k. And if you prefer, the loser could donate the amount to a non-profit/charity of the winner's choosing.

by ggreer

7/25/2026 at 3:37:58 AM

Just watching the live-stream, does SpaceX only hire young guys in their 20's?

by pupppet

7/25/2026 at 6:41:02 AM

I got a job offer in May and I'm about to be 40 in a week, so you can definitely get hired if you are older.

by Anzix

7/25/2026 at 3:39:12 AM

>Just watching the live-stream, does SpaceX only hire young guys in their 20's?

Basically. It's a rough work-life balance at SpaceX and as people get older, they want to live their lives and not live at work.

by m348e912

7/24/2026 at 11:52:49 PM

earth is looking beautiful

by andsoitis

7/25/2026 at 12:08:13 AM

spacex is a really cool company

by moomoo11

7/24/2026 at 11:25:42 PM

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by andsoitis

7/25/2026 at 12:10:32 AM

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by CurbStomper

7/25/2026 at 12:22:31 AM

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by plazmatic