SSSSSSenpai!

The argument for piracy is quite simple: conscience and morality.

The masses simply don’t care if a few pirates can’t reconcile it with their conscience that the respective provider acts like a piece of shit and treats its customers like shit under their shoe. Those providers just have to make sure that there aren’t too many pirates and therefore scrape the shit off the sides of their shoes from time to time.

All the other arguments are tangible. But they are often already essentially solved.

That’s a little nugget we’d call “Realer Irsinn” (“Logical Lunacy”) in germany.

Same for SLS, except way more expensive and way more far behind schedule.

Did some googling (go verify these numbers yourself if you want to):

• SLS Dev.Costs so far: around $11.8 Billion (numbers from 2023 report), development started in 2011, reuses actual space shuttle parts instead of developing something on their own. Costs per launch estimate: $4.1 Billion
• Starship Dev.Costs so far: $5 Billion, started somewhere in 2019, based on Falcon technology, which started in 2002. Cost per launch estimate: realistically somewhere around $100 Million (Falcon 9 costs ~$62Million per launch including profit). I’ll ignore SpaceXs delirious goal of $2-$3 Million per launch for now.

Both companies are far behind schedule and budget. I think SLS will put a lander on the moon first and SLS will land the bulk of the whole program on the moon afterwards. Sort of like comparing an F1 car with a Full-sized Truck. After that Starship 3 launch, which was mostly successful, I am quite sure they’ll make it work at some point in the future.