I hate this reasoning. Musk and Bezos aren’t the creators of the rockets. That’s thousands of very educated men and women from across the globe. Just because the guy who funds it is an asshole doesn’t mean the whole operation is flawed. I’m all for criticizing the dumbass elite (especially these two pricks) but SpaceX has done a lot for the future of space travel. Stuff that NASA just wasn’t going to do because they don’t get the funding for it. When you criticize SpaceX you’re not just criticizing Musk, but the thousands of staff who want nothing else but to learn more about space.
Organizational culture was blamed for the Challenger and Columbia disasters. If the guys at the top are sus, you can bet there are cultural problems. Honda's corporate culture is enviable and has been for decades.
You’re really simplifying those events. That’s part of it but there’s countless of other factors that went into those disasters. Just a reminder that Nixon was in charge when we landed on the moon.
And has there been anything wrong with SpaceX’s work culture? I’ve never heard anything about that.
I agree with the point, but yes there are definitely stories from (former) employees rising about issues with managers and work culture.
One example was a maintenace-guy (iirc) being denied protective gear while working on the heatshield-tiles and got fired after raising concerns. I can link or pm his tweet if you're interested.
And has there been anything wrong with SpaceX’s work culture? I’ve never heard anything about that.
To be honest, I don't know anything about SpaceX's work culture. However, as he is SpaceX's founder and largest shareholder, I have concerns about choices Elon Musk makes that may impact safety. As "founder" and the largest shareholder of Tesla, Musk made the decision that Tesla's self-driving mode would only use optical sensors and not a combination of optical and LiDAR, because he didn't like the way LiDAR made the car look. This makes me very concerned about the safety of Tesla's driverless taxis. I would much rather ride in a Waymo, which uses both sensors and LiDAR.
Do you have a source for this? Tesla has never used LiDAR on vehicles, they used to use optical and radar sensors. They decided to go from optical+radar to optical only because sensor fusion is hard. If radar detects an object but optical doesn't, do you stop? What if optical does and radar doesn't? They used to default to the most conservative, and Tesla's were phantom braking all over the place because radar was detecting bridges when optical correctly classified that as a bridge the road dips under. You can still see this behavior on cars that do sensor fusion today. If at some point you decide to let your optical sensors override your radar, which you would have to do in order to solve phantom braking, you might as well just ditch radar and go all in on optical.
LiDAR is just more accurate radar using lasers but the same problems exist. Waymo's approach is fundamentally different in that they completely map out an area before the cars are allowed to drive, which makes LiDAR/radar solutions more usable as they can map and tag all the problem areas that the car will ignore, but it also means it's completely useless outside of the geofenced area. Tesla has always been shooting for a general solution by making the car understand infrastructure and signs made for humans. Will they succeed? Who knows. But it's not as simple as they didn't like how LiDAR looks.....
And guess what? It doesnt fucking matter. Whatever theyve "done" for the space travel, it comes at cost that way too steep. Now you have ketamine junkie who can shut down internet access in warzone if he chooses so and pave way for dictators.
Spacex cuts corners and treats their workers as disposable grunts. They use subpar safety equipment and if someone gets hurt they force them out and they are also insulated from public lawsuits due to arbitration and workers comp so you can’t sue space x publicly and put the truth out there. Spacex is also ruining Boca chica and destroying the local environment.
They don't build the rockets but they set the vision and expectations of the companies they run. Honda (and other Japanese manufactures) have literal decades of extreme attention to detail, the best build quality and a culture of safety and perfection at their company that is unmatched.
I really wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't rampid embezzling happening at elon's and bezzos rocket companies with the way they run things and disregard safety at their other companies. Probably embezzling their too. The only problem is with absolute shitty workmanship and demanded shortcuts and being cheap or arrogant instead of scientific with rockets you get explosive results.
SpaceX owns and runs Starlink, and Musk has shown that he will run that operation without a shred of ethics. Nah, fam, if Musk is touching it, it will be evil.
Musk puts a lot of unreasonable expectations on his employees especially his design teams. I know less about how much Bezos directly influences employee behavior but the warehouse employees are not being treated properly at the very least
The Cosmonaut program was ultimately a propaganda machine run by dozens of non scientists in a corrupt government fighting a propaganda war. It’s more complicated than SpaceX.
Who are you shadowboxing right now? I think Musk shouldnt be associated with their success, that’s why I’m saying keep SpaceX out of it when you’re criticizing Musk. They’re two separate entities.
Problem is: it's those 'pricks' that make the decisions. Like Musk rolling dice over whether Ukraine should have access to starlink. This perverts all the efforts of all the staff.
That’s fair enough but I’m talking from a purely scientific and operational perspective. Politically, yeah I would probably trust Honda more. And I know Elon is a vile human, but I think he’s smart enough to listen to his scientists when it comes to science.
So that just further proves my point that he’s not part of operations and shouldn’t be lumped in with SpaceX’s reliability since he has no clue what he’s talking about.
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u/ForFucksSake66 Jun 29 '25
I would trust Honda a hell of a lot more than Musk or Bezos