RushingSquirrel

Fully reusable falcon 9 have been scrapped a very long time ago because they realized it wasn't the right hardware for that. Starship will be and way way more capable. The test flight that exploded never intended to survive. Hoped? For sure. Intended? Absolutely not. It was a test prototype, not a rocket in the sense you make it.

Turnaround for space shuttle was 54 days at best before the explosion of challenger, 88 days since. Falcon 9 is down to 32 and keeps going down. 32 vs 88 is not almost the same. Second stage will never be reused neither will parachutes on Dragon landing. SpaceX wanted propulsion landing, NASA refused. One day they might change their mind (NASA) with starship.

You keep pointing at possibilities that might have been discussed or even said at some points, and I understand your frustration, but none of these were signed deals, they were possibilities or goals to try to achieve while developing the technology, then realising a better solution works (like catching the fairing halves vs. grabbing them from the ocean).

The timeline that's over confident is for the sales pitch, that's for sure.

Sources are from Wikipedia articles for both starship and Orion as well as an article from the planetary society on the cost of SLS.

The trajectory was chosen by NASA because the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket do not have enough efficiency to be on a low regular lunar orbit while landing and bringing back astronauts. This trajectory has nothing to do with SpaceX.

When comparing the one rocket to land on the moon to the 15 launches (thank you for writing launches and not rockets, as Destin Sandlin wrongly did) is because the mass delivered to the surface is gigantic compared to Apollo. Why? Because we do not want to say "we did it!" We want to say "we live there!".

Can people stop saying SpaceX rockets explode? They do not. Super rarely they have, but that's not something that happens on a regular basis and happens as rarely to all other companies. Explosions are either caused by landing first stages (nobody does that, the mission success, they are pushing the limits to reuse parts and they haven't exploded in a very long while, while adding capacity no other company has) and prototypes that are meant to rapidly test limits and new technology explode, that's actually the goal: push further, test, improve, nice on to next new system. It's just a completely different approach from other rocket companies. Instead of spending years and years in research and development, they spend months, test, boom, months, test, boom. What that brings is huge innovation.

When comparing SLS to Starship, check how long has SLS taken and how much it costs while looking at its capacity:
$24B for the first rocket, 4+ per next rocket
$20.4B for Orion
11 years to get the first rocket
16 years to get the first capsule
Can bring 690ft³ of payload

As of now, and evolving for Starship:
$7B cost, 4 from NASA for the first 2 missions
11 years for the first tests, still no rocket
Can bring 220,00lb and 35,000ft³ to the moon
And they still and up with a rocket NASA can continue to use at very low price (less than 25% than SLS per mission)

With decent range, you can charge once or twice a week at a fast charger (while doing groceries or posting video games) or there are public chargers every couple of blocks. No need for a home charger (though it's definitely more convenient).

At least it's different. I can't tell one truck from another. GMC, Ford, Ram, Chevrolet, they look exactly the same.

And why do you want to join a hate train? Love trains are better ❤️

I know it's not a common opinion here, but there's nothing remotely close to Tesla in terms of bang for the buck (whole experience, features, autopilot, charging infrastructure, power, range).

What are the ones you have in mind?

This is why AI is a solution, not coding everything. How does one learn how to react in these situations? Either you've learned from watching your parents, by taking lessons, reading the code or by simply following the others. The goal of an AI is to be able to do just that. Coding every single use case is way too complex.

I know Tesla has worked on improving emergency vehicles situations, but I don't know how and what's the current state.

Why are you being downvoted?

To me, autonomous vehicles are like AI (it actually is AI in the case of Tesla): the public perception is that it's way better than it really is because it's really good in 80% of cases. But to get to 90-95% will take many many years still. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use them, neither abandon them. To progress, we have to keep using them with caution. Learn the limits and work within it. Don't start firing people to be replaced with AI because in a few months and years you'll realize that the 20% left to improve will be hurting more than your thought. The same way you shouldn't remove drivers just yet.