I think if you consider the cost to manufacture then bury a fibre optic cable for everyone who lives 10km from a town centre, I think it's still a net positive. It's not great for sure, but amortised over a huge population it's probably the best option we have at this time.

No this the one time I’m with the commies. Nationalize that shit. Like you said it’s all taxpayer money anyway. A little bit of Wall Street speculation, but who gives a fuck about those people

We just need to allow them to keep the money. They like money. Give them 10% as a finders fee and the Yes vote will be unanimous

Based? Then they can become regulated.

Ya like in Russia! When all the poor got tricked out of their shares and a billionaire class was made which continued to strangle the poor for 30 years

Post Soviet Russia. There’s a fun history lesson in there. They gave stock in all the companies to all the workers. Then a couple rich people got together and tricked all the people to accumulate all the stocks. Those people became the oligarchs. And we know what happened to the workers of Russia. They all died in a trench in Ukraine very happy story.

It’s a shame you commies don’t know history? Do you avoid it on purpose because it interferes with your ability to make shit up and try to sound intelligent

I doubt the Ukrainians would agree with you

Have a government run space agency, government constantly cuts funding. Awards contracts to incompetent military company to build over priced rocket. Crony capitalism and money disappears.

Private guy steals all NASA talent from budget cuts builds talented team, innovates new technologies for rockets and then goes full blown Nazi and you love him even more.

Great judgement cal here chief. You’re worse than the commies

With the amount of logical deduction, you just did here. You should just join the other commie I was posting under.

“ I don’t really know what the fuck’s going on so I’m just gonna make up some shit to fill in the blanks because it makes me feel better.”

"Who needs NASA anyway", "who needs to go to space anyway"
Very narrow-minded viewpoint. Like it or not spacex is cutting edge

I'll settle for whichever one annoys him the most.

NASA was always there and they couldn’t achieve what SpaceX has while simultaneously having a lot more capital to do so. I’m sorry but if there’s any proof that private sector’s self interest is a better driver of innovation than common interest SpaceX is it. This is a terrible idea that sounds like a good idea if you do not understand how good Musk was and is at cutting costs. That’s his actual real skill in business and is well documented. Doesn’t make him less of a prick but you also cannot downplay what he has achieved with this company.

Yes it does.

No matter how much you cut from NASA it always had more funding than SpaceX did and innovation in space exploration was dead until SpaceX came around.

Nationalization will make SpaceX yet another bureaucratic, money waster for the government to maintain. By being private if SpaceX becomes shit the government can just drop them at any moment.

Giving things to the state is a dumbass idea. Exhibit A: the entire current administration.

You mean the NASA who landed people on the moon?

So let's assume you aren't a moon landing denier and use that as a baseline, NASA is clearly capable of things given the right circumstances and budget.

SpaceX benefited from his reputation and money, because they sure as shit didn't benefit from his technical acumen.

Business wise he is successful because he's rich and influential and that works to mitigate how shitty he is at actually running an organisation, that doesn't mean he has skills as a business person that means he has money and influence, in his case originally from the mine, then from buying and bullying his was in to businesses that were technologically sound and boosting them with his money.

You could make an argument he's a relatively good investor, but he's an actively bad CEO.

it'll be sold to the highest bidder is my bet

I would find it funny that billionaires would pass off the opportunity of taking musk's position on a discount

Right? Like I’m assuming a lot of these people are self labeled progressives but they sure sound conservative to me. If any risk or collateral damage is unacceptable to make progress then we might as well just fucking go back to living in caves and be done with this civilization thing. I understand the disillusion with tech, and specifically the owners of said tech but you don’t have to swing to the other side and become a fucking Luddite or something. The problems are solvable through other mechanisms rather than just stopping tech innovation or this terrible terrible idea of nationalizing corporations.

These are the same people who complain about Trump having too much unfettered power btw. And here they are discussing giving him even more power. Ain’t that something?

They landed people on the moon and then did fuck all for decades.

When Musk started SpaceX he was not well known yet, SpaceX came before Tesla.

He was able to get into the businesses he has because he was rich yes, but you can find many accounts of engineers that worked under him speak of how good he was at finding ways to cut unnecessary costs.

He’s not a technical genius that’s for sure. But he has been a good CEO for SpaceX. Terrible one for Tesla though, mostly because he bought into his own myth and became a drug addict. But I refuse to simply wave away his achievements simply because I don’t like him. I can not like someone and still acknowledge they have done something good.