This is the thing, NASA is underfunded as it is, if we nationalized SpaceX, we wouldn't actually continue to fund it appropriately and it would simply die. Actually, with trump at the helm, nationalizing it would mean Trump immediately liquidating it. SpaceX is definitely the most successful rocket company in the US. It would be an awful shame for the space industry and for humanity's future in space.

I hate musk as much as the next guy, but I think the success of spaceX is undeniable. Their success with reusable rockets is not just impressive, it's ground breaking and important. Developing a fully reusable rocket is probably the most important challenge humans are working on in this era, and I only know of three companies attempting to do it. I don't want to kill the company that's furthest along.

Errr... am I mistaken? This is the first time I'm hearing about nationalizing SpaceX and it's from Jacobin....

Does Jacobin make a habit of calling people communists? Pretty sure they advocate for socialist positions usually....

big spiderman pointing at spiderman vibes if true

NASA is clearly capable of things given the right circumstances and budget.

Absolutely agree with this but there is no denying the innovation levels at spacex are higher (I'm not saying this is down to musk specifically. The man is a horror story of a human).

We were all in total awe when seeing booster stages land themselves successfully for the first time. It was such a giant leap forward and to the best of my knowledge no government funded space agency was even considering it before spacex.

Of course he was always a jerk, but I still think of a reality where Elon never went (officially) Nazi and just stuck with his otherwise important companies. Tesla being an important early mover in EVs, especially in such an oil-dependent country, and all the cool stuff SpaceX has been up to.

What do you mean little to show for it?

You guys are so stuck in the cult of personality. WE PAID FOR EVERYTHING SPACEX DID. IT BELONGS TO US.

Yes, absolutely. And power too

Lets reach a compromise. Impeach Trump (successfully) and then take away SpaceX from Elon. That way things would be fair.

And pharma. And O&G

Tax burdens for billionaires

How are there so many people in this thread talking with such confidence and yet know absolutely nothing? SpaceX is the reason NASA doesn't need to rely on Russia to get astronauts to and from the ISS, so that's one huge benefit.
And Starlink is in such a low orbit that their orbits are constantly decaying and will burn up in the atmosphere without any orbit corrections. So there will never be a chain reaction crash.

I mean you have to realize how important it will be to have fully reusable rockets and a significantly reduced price to get to space. The goal with starship is to reduce the cost of getting to orbit by at least an order of magnitude (but possibly much more than that). When that starts to happen it'll allow for new and exciting things to happen in space.

First, we can go back to the moon and to Mars, we can explore again. But more than that, it will make some new things possible. It will eventually become feasible for resource extraction and manufacturing to move to space. That would mean processes that produce harmful waste don't have to happen on our planet. Mining asteroids would mean again, minimal ecological impact compared to mining a mountain on Earth. And of course creating industry in space is the first step towards a future where people actually live in space, the first step towards humanity getting a real foothold off of earth.

But you literally can't get to any of those possibilities without reusable rockets first, it's just not feasible.

It's also frustrating that people keep saying SpaceX "relies on taxpayer money" as if we're just giving them money for no reason. It's all contracts! SpaceX only gets money for providing some kind of service. They're not being bailed out or anything. The Musk hate is justified but so misdirected.

Perhaps look into the DC-X program, fully 20 years before SpaceX Falcon: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

This is what happens when you meddle in politics

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

Indeed, all i was saying is that they were capable given budget and circumstances.

That budget and direction comes from the government.

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

I will admit, i thought spacex was just another company he bought his way in to, like tesla, seems i was mistaken about that.

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.

And you can equally find many accounts of having to distract him from the day to day operations because he's unreliable , unpredictable and chaotic (none of those meant in a good way).

He's also known for buying good press and using litigation to silence people.

He’s not a technical genius that’s for sure. But he has been a good CEO for SpaceX.

I doubt this, but that could just be bias, i don't have any actual evidence of the long term impact of him as CEO.

Recently though, he's provably been significantly more of a liability than a benefit, even if just from a PR and public sentiment point of view.

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.

Indeed, i push back on the myth that he's some self made tony stark genius, but it isn't like he's not achieved anything.

I would personally attribute most of that to neptoism, wealth, luck and opportunity, but that doesn't remove the achievement itself.

Well that's not really the case. Conservatives will accuse progressive of being communists, and claim any social services are examples of communism. But it's mostly those progressives here on Lemmy suggesting communist ideas.

So it's not really ironic, just unsurprising I guess.

Also losses. Gotta get that sweet, sweet too-big-to-fail bailout money.

Yeah, if they want to make satellites last longer, they could go a bit higher in their orbits. The option is there.

Just having such wealth and thus power in hands of singular humans is risk to all of humanity. With musk you are but big enough drug fueled temper tantrum away from pretty important infrastructure coming crashing down.