The ISS is a government project that's heading towards EOL, it has no incentive to heavily optimize anything because the people who built it don't get rich by doing so. SpaceX is what optimization looks like, not the ISS.

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cogman10 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> has no incentive to heavily optimize anything because the people who built it don't get rich by doing so.

Optimization is literally how contractors working for the government got rich. Every hour they spent on research was directly billed to the government. Weight reduction being one of the most important and consistent points of research.

Heck, R&D is how some of the biggest government contractors make all their dough.

SpaceX is built on the billions in research NASA has invested over the decades. It looks like it's more innovative simply because the USG decided to nearly completely defund public spending in favor of spending money on private contractors like SpaceX. That's been happening since the 90s.

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jeltz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

By the same token SpaceX has no reason to optimize Starship. That is also largely a government project.

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b112 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a private company, is profit motivated, and thus has reason to optimize. That was the parent poster's point.

Starship isn't largely a government project. It was planned a decade before the government was ever involved, they came along later and said "Hey, this even more incredible launch platform you're building? Maybe we can hire SpaceX to launch some things with it?"

Realistically, SpaceX launches far more payload than any government.

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habinero 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Haha no. SpaceX survives entirely on money from the US government. It's always been that way.

	▲	s-y an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Where are you getting this from?
	▲	lightedman an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Entirely? lol not even close. Source: I am out of LEDs and LASERs and now handle aerospace solar for a private company. Guess who almost everyone in the private sector flies on?
	▲	thinkcontext 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		A puzzling statement, could you explain? Most of their revenue now comes Starlink which is mostly private clients. Also it's trivial to look at their launch history and see they have plenty of private clients. For sure the USG is their most important client but "entirely" is flat out wrong.

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pineaux an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

that is true. They would have failed after their first failed launch. The US government saved them.