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.

The agency that landed people on the moon so long ago most of the people involved have died if old age, and the event will soon pass out of living memory?

The one where when they let a single rocket explode, one time, rocked the nation, because their record was so close to flawless?

The one that constantly gives us new sources for scientific data?

Yeah fuck them. They never made a dick rocket.

it’s all taxpayer money anyway

Good point.

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.

That government guy sure seems incompetent, I hope no one puts it in charge of a space company.

Private guy steals all NASA talent from budget cuts builds talented team, innovates new technologies for rockets

That private guy sure seems like he knows what he's doing, I bet he'd be great at running a space company.

and then goes full blown Nazi and you love him even more.

IDK where that's coming from, I never said that, you're just making stuff up now.

That's true but it doesn't solve the problem now.

True. We have a lot of public owned companies in Croatia, they are the most corrupt. Big comoanies are too, but not to that extent

Completely agree

Government agency starts multiple, multi-year, billion dollar projects, delays ensue, costs overrun, results are unimpressive. It has to rely on private contractors or other countries for the most basic things, spends $211 billion for a space shuttle program that goes nowhere and ends up costing $0.5 billion per launch.

Private company goes from nothing to a successful rocket launch in 10 years for less than $1 billion, half of which is private funding. In the next 10 years makes rockets reusable, lowers the cost to orbit by 30x, launches a viable commercial service people are willing to pay for.

Communists on lemmy:

Capitalists on Lemmy: private company is better just because it's private

Has US nationalized anything this millenia? I really don't see that ever happening

Quite ironic from people constantly accusing their political adversaries to be communists...

I’m not sure our idea of happiness aligns.

Yeah. Let’s give Trump that power.

So you wanna nationalize the whole telecom industry then?

all taxpayer money anyway

Yes but with very little to show for it. If the government just treated all undelivered orders as debt, it would end up deep in the red.