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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Just to add some context: the entire space shuttle program, over its entire life from 1972 to 2010, was reportedly 200 Billion.

    In 2010, the yearly U.S. military budget was ~650 billion. And they killed the shuttle for being too expensive because that wasn’t spread over enough lunches. (meaning it cost 1.6Billion per launch).

    In 2024, even adjusted for inflation, Starliner has already blown past 1.6 Billion per launch (total cost is about 5.8 Billion)

    Only Crew Dragon, at 2.4 Billion, has reached parity with what the shuttle cost per launch (inflation adjusted). (Dragon 1, which flew 23 cargo missions, was drastically cheaper).

    And both of these are dramatically simpler designs than the space shuttle was.

    So it appears that the trajectory is correct, space travel is getting cheaper, but it took a shitload of work to get there, and that’s building on top of what the Shuttle program taught us.
















  • The Cage, the original pilot, was filmed and screened in 1965. It was reworked into “Menagerie”, which contained a lot of the original footage, but aired in 1966.

    So you’re saying the original timeline, well call it the Pike Prime timeline, is the real timeline, and that the show containing Kirk & Co, and everything from 66 onward, is fiction.

    That’s a good head canon, I like that.