>>13173402Newfag here, what's so special about SpaceX / Starship?
Looking at the history of rocket innovations, it seems like the private space industry is mostly walking in the steps of NASA minus 50 years. What's with the Starship hype, but it doesn't even have an interior design, yet people are constantly talking about it?
Additionally, innovations rates across all fields of industry are stagnating, and that the costs are increasing exponentially.
>Our robust finding is that research productivity is falling sharply everywhere we look. Taking the US aggregate number as representative, research productivity falls in half every 13 years: ideas are getting harder and harder to find. Put differently, just to sustain constant growth in GDP per person, the United States must double the amount of research effort every 13 years to offset the increased difficulty of finding new ideas.Paper: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find
Pic related is important too.
Paper: A possible declining trend for worldwide innovation.
So if innovations are crashing, what's the point in going to Mars or the Moon, especially when there are problems at home? I can understand if you're just a space enthusiast instead of a futurist, but the two obviously have significant overlap. Seems like a waste of government money (especially if NASA is subsidizing SpaceX with contracts).
