Elon Musk is an apartheid nepobaby fascist, but Gwynne Shotwell, and to a much greater extent the engineers actually doing the damn thing, seem to have their heads on straight
Mechazilla is objectively rad as fuck
I think that most hate for SpaceX is people actually hating on Elon Musk. While hating Elon Musk is fully understandable, from a technological perspective, SpaceX brings humanity forwards.
I’m also hating on allowing the rich to own things that should be state owned.
We are slowly trading wars for corpo wars.
I still think starlink should have been a publicly funded endeavor by NASA. We could have led the world by offering free connection to places that truly need it abroad.
Also, of less immediate concern but once asteroid mining takes off, I’d rather these rockets not be in the hands of private equity. Disparity will break this world, sooner or later.
I think that’s a pretty wild take given the state of NASA right now. The only way I could see anything like that happening would be the GPS model, where the DoD build out StarShield for military purposes, then realise it’d be a net good for civilians to have ubiquitus global internet services. Even then, that would compete with existing non-SpaceX services which is antithetical to NASAs principles and would be considered ‘socialism’ by half of America.
Asteroid mining is really in the hands of governments. While space is basically a free-for-all on an international level, each nation can levy whatever conditions and taxes they like on their own enterprise. If companies tried to ‘flag’ themselves with low-tax nations, then I think other nations could levy tariffs and prevent access to technology to make that unattractive. Either way, a significant portion should end up in government budgets.
I’d rather private equity invest in more forward looking technology than LLMs or finance. There just needs to be a balance where it’s still attractive for them to invest, but as much of the value as reasonable gets distributed in lifting up the quality of life here on earth.
It wasn’t meant to be realistic… my preference would have been for NASA to have been better and more reliably funded for the last several decades. Having private equity and the military industrial complex reap the rewards instead is the worst possible acceptable alternative with space imo. It is too noble an endeavor for the free market, to my old fashioned thinking.
“needs to be a balance” this is exactly the problem right. There is zero balance, to the extent that even projects that set out to be operated for the benefit of humanity (open AI, looking at you) get converted to just enrich the already ludicrously wealthy. The corporation is a lever to concentrate wealth. Really important projects being closely controlled by billionaires is the natural consequence of this. Their unfettered power puts us all at risk from their capriciousness.
that would be nice but if it was led by NASA (aka contractors like jpl, lockmart and boeing) there’s no way the sats could’ve been produced as cheaply and quickly imo, because NASA’s strengths lie in experimental/science focused things, not operational things
also they wouldn’t get the in house pricing for Falcon 9 launches that spacex gets, and spacex wouldn’t be able to use starlink launches to test out new boosters for crew launches
i mean there’s nothing stopping NASA from doing it (aka Congress funding it and telling NASA to do it), it’s not like spacex is going to turn down customers for their rockets
These same advances could be owned by all of us if we hadn’t spent every year since Kennedy whittling away at NASAs budget to do stuff. The space shuttle was only ever supposed to be temporary but Congress never funded the much better replacements.
SpaceX only brings its shareholders forward, with our tax money. The problem isn’t about the technology but who owns the tech.
I do think there’s a significant difference in approach. NASA has a focus on doing it once and doing it right, SpaceX has a focus on doing it as many times as physically possible and learning a tremendous amount from the many, many failures. Be honest, did anyone genuinely believe that rocket would be successfully captured on the first attempt?
If it had blown up, oh well. That’s SpaceX’s whole thing. If a NASA rocket blows up, it’s a big fucking deal, and suddenly we don’t show shuttle launches in schools anymore
That is again due to how they are treated and funding constriction. NASA has not received the same “grace” in failures that you are giving SpaceX. They’d love to do more missions and they’re also better about doing things right. You should know whether your rocket works before it’s launched just like a bridge needs to work as built. NASA also doesn’t get money from it’s missions. Whatever they put in orbit doesn’t generate revenue it is only for public data gathering.
That is such a crass reference to Challenger… SpaceX mishaps so far have not killed people. Will you still be giving them leeway when they do?
I don’t think I’m wrong at all to suggest that they have different philosophies when it comes to launching rockets. The reason behind that is worth talking about, but the fact remains that they have different philosophies. Personally, I would love for NASA to get funding exceeding SpaceX’s funds. We could certainly afford it. But no matter how much funding they get, Joe Public will get pissed about wasted tax dollars if NASA starts blowing up rockets. SpaceX, while partially publicly funded, is ostensibly a private company, which allows them some leeway in the eyes of the public when it comes to blowing up rockets.
SpaceX mishaps so far have not killed people. Will you still be giving them leeway when they do?
What kind of leeway do you think I’m giving SpaceX? What kind of leeway do you think I’m not giving NASA? Consider the fact that I’m morally consistent. Do you think you can answer your question yourself?
Which shareholders do you mean? SpaceX is private company, no shares.
Launch vehicle development by NASA is by their own admission slower and more expensive. It’s no coincidence that the whole industry started moving forward much faster when a driven private company with financial interests at heart and without strong dependence on politicians started their own serious development.
As for the tax money paid to SpaceX, NASA simply bought services. They also helped with development. But whatever the expenses were, they were much lower than they would be if NASA did it the old way. By the way, the old way is similar, but instead of SpaceX, the money went to Boeing, Lockheed Martin etc. and there wasn’t a limit on how much money it will be in advance. Now you know that if the costs exceed the agreed sum, it won’t be paid by public money, but by the company. As seen with Starliner, which went so badly that Boeing said they are never doing fixed-price contracts ever again. They are used to the excess money paid from the public budget. In exchange for these advantages to the public, SpaceX can use the vehcle developed unther the contract on their own, without NASA. Therefore you can get missions such as Polaris, Inspiration4 or Axiom. Your opinion on these may be different, but I think private missions and influx of private money into spaceflight is good for spaceflight in general. It makes it more financially sustainable and more efficient.
Private companies can and do have shares; it’s how ownership is distributed amongst individuals.
All it means is that those shares are not available for public trading on stock exchanges. Instead, the shares are owned and traded privately among a select group of investors.
Huh, good point, I never thought about that. Makes sense. I only ever heard about options to get shares when the company becomes publicly traded. Of course, publicly traded is what I meant.
Do the owners also get money based on the shares?
Correct; for private companies, any net profit after taxes can be distributed to shareholders as dividends.
Most companies will keep some cash on hand to cover a negative performing period (ie. when costs exceed revenue), so not all profits would be distributed every quarter.
