Because American politicians would rather spend the money on engaging international wars. NASA will only get the funding it desperately needs if one of US' rivals one up them, like how the launch of Sputnik spurred the race to the moon.

It dying is better than it being in the hands of a billionaire fascist.

In an ideal world, starlink should be internationalized by the U.N.

We don't need half a dozen companies in every developed nation putting their own garbage in orbit just to provide rural internet for a minority of a minority of the planet. Those systems are in orbit, they can provide internet to the overwhelming majority of humans.

But instead we're gonna fuck up our ability to use a load of space telescopes needed to help see potentially dangerous asteroids, and all these satellites burning up in orbit are gonna fuck up the atmosphere, opening up the hole in the ozone layer even more.

Learn from SpaceX progress. Return to NASA risk aversion. Trial new designs in 20 years, repeat.

I took one look at you describing the "liberating" of Poland by the soviets because some of it belongs to different modern day countries and new you weren't arguing in good faith. Invading another country and stealing their land doesn't magically become """liberation""" just because it was stolen by someone else first.

You can use this same logic to excuse the nazi invasion of certain countries as well.

doesn't magically become """liberation""" just because it was stolen by someone else first

No, it becomes liberation when majority-Ukrainian regions oppressed under the Polish nationalist state without any mode of representation, recognition of their language, and under bourgeois rule, instead obtain Ukrainian representation and institutions and recognition of its language as an official language. I assume you would know this since you seem to care so much about Ukrainians?

Best time would've been when he pulled that stunt in Ukraine, second best time is now

What points are you talking about exactly?

Sending something one way into space isn’t hard. Having it come back is. Having it, and all the parts that it took to get it there and back, be safely returned to earth and able to be reused is stupidly hard.

Ideological reasons? You think nasa hasn’t made reusable self landing rockets and boosters because of ideological reasons?

So you think those privately funded politicians should be in charge of the state of SpaceX?

Throw Musk in prison for his many documented crimes, but don't support this kind of dictator shit.

They are years behind schedule and obscenely over budget on this testing. They're not even making new technology here, they are just cheaping out on the builds to funnel money into their own pockets.

I wouldn't nationalize anything long as the orange could possibly profit off it

If the government actually nationalized SpaceX, the precedent would be insane. You’d be telling every private company working in defense, infrastructure, or tech that if they become too essential, the government might just take it. Doesn’t matter how much risk or capital they fronted.

SpaceX isn’t just launching rockets for fun—it’s practically a branch of the U.S. space program at this point. GPS, Starlink for military comms, launching classified payloads, putting astronauts in orbit. If we nationalize that over a political pissing match between Trump and Musk, we’re basically saying innovation is conditional on obedience.

And let’s be honest—once you do this to SpaceX, you open the door to doing it to AWS, Tesla’s energy grid systems, Google’s AI infrastructure. Any private company that gets too important suddenly becomes “too critical to stay private.” That’s a fast track to killing private innovation in sectors where we need it most.

If Trump’s threatening funding, and Musk is threatening to walk, and the public’s response is “just take the company,” then we’ve officially politicized the tech-industrial base. That’s not governance, that’s dysfunction.

Nationalizing SpaceX would be a Cold War move in a modern economy. It might feel good in the moment, but long-term, it's a terrible idea.

SpaceX is getting the government funding NASA doesn't anymore.

Works is a strong word. It's a better choice than dialup or Hughesnet, but that's damning with extremely faint praise. If you need to rely on it you might be in trouble. There are still gaps in the coverage where you will be dropped for a while.

No, the private funding of politicians, which nowhere in the world happens as thoroughly or blatantly as in the US, is another issue to solve. It's companies pushing for privatization of services that they sabotage first to show that the government doesn't do well with them. It's like the postal service headed by that Trump appointee that was a big cheese in a transport firma. I forgot his name.

LEO does offer legitimate advantages not just to latency but also for minimizing the abandoned space junk left in orbit. The satellites will deorbit fairly quickly after running out of fuel.

Though I'm sure you're correct about the main reason for the choice.

Jacobin is a late 18th early 19th political spectrum. It is not relevant to this situation.