If you had asked my opinion of SpaceX on Septmeber 26th, 2016, I would have told you that I loved them, and that I was excited and happy to see posts relating to their projects, launches, and the like. If you ask me today, I’ll tell you I still like the company, and some of their projects and goals, but I absolutely despise the fanbase and many of the far-reaching plans that SpaceX has.
What happened. Why did my opinion change? The answer is simple: the fan base.
No, I won’t stop sharing this photo, because it so perfectly encompasses the very point I make constantly.
What I didn’t know on the 26th of September, 2017 is that the following day SpaceX would announce its “Interplanetary Transport System.” What I didn’t know what that my one comparison of it to the failed Soviet N-1 booster of old would bring out a torrent of hate that made absolutely no sense to me. What I didn’t know was that much of the SpaceX fan base seems to treat it like a religion, defended against all reason.
What I didn’t know of was that there was, in effect, a Cult of SpaceX.
I’ll go into this further in another article, but all I said was that, basically, with more engines there was a greater chance of catastrophic failure – that with more engines you have a higher chance that one of those active engines might explode, taking the vehicle with it.
No one wanted to hear that. Again, I’ve got a more detailed article in the works on this, but suffice it to say, the sheer rate at which people would comment, defending SpaceX and stating, in some cases almost literally that nothing would or could go wrong, was insane. I couldn’t reply to comments quickly enough, but it didn’t matter – people didn’t read between the lines. They didn’t care, SpaceX is perfect to them and anyone who says otherwise must be destroyed. They are wrong, we are right.
A cult mentality if I ever saw one.
Over the past year, I’ve noticed this strongly. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it originally – maybe I was partially in on this – it wasn’t until the ITS that I began to realize SpaceX is leading the cart before the horse, and planning way outside of reasonable scale, setting end goals far beyond what was reasonable.
It’s one thing to have a goal of landing on Mars. It’s another thing to say before you’ve even sent anything that way that you have some super-massive booster, far beyond the scale of anything ever flown, that will do all the things the ITS is supposed to, and will do it flawlessly. Such is insanity.
The N-1, showing its 30 first stage engines.
As the year has progressed, as SpaceX lost the luster it had with me, I noticed that the fan base surrounding SpaceX didn’t just leave their cult-like behaviour to SpaceX content, but it was put everywhere.
Other launch providers, posts from space news sites regarding launches, and pretty much any other current rocketry subject will invariably have comments from someone in the Cult of SpaceX, always making some snarky comment about 1st stage recovery, re-use, or on launch costs, or how SpaceX is “the way of the future” and how perfect they are. This will be on posts that have zero to do with SpaceX beyond being a rocketry related subject.
Almost constantly, be it YouTube, Facebook, or probably even Twitter replies, you can and will find this. Discussion with these people, attempts at discourse, can go good or bad, so some of them are at least reasonable people, but they still will very much defend SpaceX against any criticism or even basic analyses you bring to the table. They won’t admit where SpaceX falters, and that’s the problem – they can’t admit SpaceX isn’t perfect. They won’t acknowledge that re-usability isn’t as great as it sounds.
Last I checked, a Proton Rocket launch had virtually nothing to do with SpaceX.
They won’t think rationally about things on a whole – they have “drank the Kool-Aid” so to speak and are a part of the Cult of SpaceX. In a greater scale, this extends to a cult of Elon Musk, but that’s another story.
Coming up I’ll try to go into more detail on all of this. This was intended to be a quick article and it became somewhat of a monster. At least it’s from the heart – this is honestly what I see and experience.
Want to prove me wrong? Stop treating SpaceX like it’s perfect, and stop commenting all the time about them. If you don’t like what I have to say, then stop giving me reason to say it.