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After giving in to Putin/Xi's demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon's Space company with our national secrets

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[-] BMTea@lemmy.world 53 points 4 days ago

If you're going to rely on private firms for your aerospace espionage endeavors, maybe factor in their leader's sanity before you sign the contract with them.

Nah. Loads of things just shouldn't be privatised.

[-] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

What do you value higher - that one company's profits or the public? Why are you so selfish? Why can't you just be happy that that one company gets to hold the entire population hostage over the necessary good or service that they can then monopolise? It's so much easier to squeeze the poor for all they own when their very survival depends on the things you can hand out or hold back at a whim. Something something the free market will probably prevent abuse or something, so it's perfectly okay.

[-] Burninator05@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

I 100% agree with you but is there someone else in thr US who can reliably launch satellites? I know several othe companies are developing these systems but I don't think any are anywhere close to Space X's reliability or capability.

Space X is doing some awesome stuff and I hate that the awesome has to be tempered by the owner is a piece of shit.

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 4 days ago

They're only able to do it because they've received trillions of dollars from the federal government.

They should nationalize SpaceX before they ever let someone like Musk get the security clearance needed to be in that position.

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 days ago

SpaceX is wasting government money, they have almost spent all of the money they were given to land people on the moon, on building a rocket that can't do basic stuff.

That is not awesome.

[-] piecat@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

And somehow they want to make him in charge of government inefficiency

[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

A single launch of a Boeing rocket costs as much as the entire R&D for SpaceX rockets. Launches that cost $5 billion with Boeing, cost tens of millions with SpaceX. I can absolutely agree with you that SpaceX is wasting some of the money given to them. But the amount of taxpayer money spent on launches has been massively reduced by them providing an orders of magnitude cheaper and more reliable option.

There is definitely an argument to be made that they don't deserve the money, but in the grand scheme of government spending, they have very much reduced it compared to the traditional launch providers.

And their rockets still have capabilities that no other launch provider has achieved yet. Boeing still wastes all their rockets by making them single use, when SpaceX uses the same rocket many times.

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

Compairing SpaceX and Boeing is wrong when talking about savings.

Compare a SpaceX launch to a Shuttle launch yo be more accurate, and don't forget the inflation

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Damn, we don’t have enough zeros for that. That’s more like the Russian fine against Bozos

[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

There is an important fact about the Space Shuttle: it doesn't exist anymore. Even if it was cheaper - which it wasn't - it wouldn't have meant much today, because today all other existing options are much more expensive. I'm comparing options we have today, and more importantly comparing to the option SpaceX moved the government off of.

If NASA brings back the space shuttle and it's cheaper than SpaceX then amazing, let's go. But they didn't (because it wouldn't have been cheaper).

this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
503 points (99.2% liked)

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