- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Has anyone considered funding NASA?
They made rockets that didn’t explode with duct tape and a TI-83 calculator.
Shouldn’t be incompatible with nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Just give it all to NASA, actually.
Yeah, let’s give the trump administration the power to seize companies it doesn’t like, that is a great idea that def won’t be abused all the time
The author probably forgot who runs the nation of usa.
We are already fucked. The choices given are siding with Trump, and end up like Russia, or side with Elon, and end up like Cyberpunk 2077
Only useless people side with those two.
Stop being useless.
…or organize, start/join unions, get involved with your local community and build up some real resistance that isn’t based off obscene wealth, lawfare or media brainwashing. Once you have experienced something real, it’s quite hard to understand how or why anyone would fall for the alternative.
We no longer live in a world where our biggest fear would be the government controlling high level corporations and their operators.
We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology. Right now it’s mostly tourism rockets and satellites, but now we see Skum weaponizing that technology, and/or using it as a bargaining chip. He has cut off Starlink in a war zone to benefit the county who defers to him, but is openly hostile to the US, and now he’s threatening to cut off our access to the space station. He is using tech that WE PAY FOR with government contracts and grants, to pursue his own diplomacy, for his own benefit, and against our interests.
Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn’t step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.
We paid for Skum’s technology, and he gets to control it as a courtesy. Just the threat of using it against us should be enough reason to declare him a national security threat, confiscate his American-taxpayer financed businesses, and imprison him.
We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology.
People have lived in that world for most/all of human history. Assuming you come from the west, you’re coming from a place where for the last couple of hundred years it’s been more cost effective to just buy the government instead. Is that better? Maybe, it’s a little more stable. I dunno if it’s good though.
Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn’t step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.
Bruh this has already happened over and over again. Nobody stops them because the most violence empire on the planet is leading the way. AFAIK the USA is the only state to have actually nuked people.
See also the zio regime. Imperial allies supreme.
First of all, America is not “the most violent empire on the planet.” America has the capability of being the most violent nation, but at the moment, our potential for violence is being eclipsed by other nations who are actively employing the same levels of violence that we are capable of. Nothing we are currently doing comes close to the violence that Russia and Israel are employing.
And yes, America is the only nation to have deployed nuclear weapons against human targets, but that was 80 years ago, and ended the worst war in human history. After demonstrating its power, just the presence of nuclear weapons in a nation’s arsenal has been enough to keep the most powerful, well-armed, violent nations (including America) from going too far.
I don’t think the majority of Americans understand what that means. They’ll just scream “commies!” And raise their maga flag.
But the idea of a starlink-like business owned by UN would be nice, and not an American corporation owned by a nepobaby Elmo.
In the USA space-x gets away with a lot. A few years ago they announced they were no longer going to bother with getting all the FAA approvals needed for their rockets because it took too long. Space-x still got government contracts.
Yeah I mean the tax payers have literally already paid for all of both SpaceX and Starlink. The public paid for it, the public should own it.
They’re just following in the footsteps of Comcast. The FCC gave SpaceX/Starlink $885.5 million to provide rural broadband after they gave Comcast over $1 billion less than 5 years ago to do the same thing. Starlink actually works out there from what I understand, so I guess that’s something.
The main problem is that starlink is not a viable ISP like Comcast. Relying on low earth orbit is extremely wasteful as you need to constantly launch more and more satellites. Starlink gives their satellites a 5 year lifespan where fiber can go on for 40 years or more. There are 7,500 starlink satellites, so we’re talking a constant replacement of satellites all falling into earth’s atmosphere, not being recycled.
Starlink is literal space trash waiting to happen.
You are right in how wasteful it is, especially since it turned out a lot of those satellites don’t even make it to 4 years.
However there is zero risk of space trash with Starlink. They orbit so low, it’s basically within the atmosphere still. They need to constantly boost themselves, otherwise they fall down and burn up. So these satellites are coming down within years all on their own, even without any controlled disposal.
It’s insanely wasteful, but it keeps SpaceX in business launching every week, which is kind of the point. But at least there isn’t a Kessler syndrome waiting to happen.
I didn’t realize how temporary and disposable Starlink’s satellites were. They incinerate 4 or 5 a day by de-orbiting them into the ozone. Here’s a pretty good CNET article that talks about how they “dispose” of them. IDK, doesn’t seem sustainable. They also mention the bandwidth gains are being diminished with the influx of new users, so their solution is more temporary satellites.
Step one Musk needs to be arrested and sent to El Salvador.
Hang on a minute, equivalents of SpaceX and Starlink could have naturally grown out of NASA, it was the obvious place for them to come from but NASA did not show that innovation and nationalisation of them might dilute their abilities. For clarity I am not suggesting the innovation came from Musk, he has no science or engineering, his talents are grifting, showmanship and taking credit for other people’s work, he is a natural figurehead though and seemed quite clear thinking until he lost his mind.
NASA has had it’s funding cut year after year for decades. It’s far easier to innovate when you have money to back up the r&d and testing.
I wasnt discussing underlying cause, whatever the reason for stifled innovation in some fields possibly evident in NASA it is likely preferable not to pull independent labs into NASA that are having success in these areas.
Starlink should be globalized. A planet only needs one low-altitude orbiting communications network. Better to standardize the technology and platform and let them contribute to one system than to have a dozen identical competing systems crashing into each other and fucking things up for everyone.
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I disagree.
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You already have a government space agency. Maybe give them more funding so they don’t have to rely on space-x to get their stuff into orbit?
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There’s a national telecom network already in place. It at least has the potential to be faster and more reliable, if it isn’t already… At least compared to low earth orbit satellite coverage.
There’s no good reason to continue providing Elon or his companies with any government handouts. Pull that funding and give it to… I dunno, students who have more debt than homeowners with a mortgage… NASA… Literally anything that helps people?
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You could always just fund the space agency you already have, instead of funneling money to a foreign billionaire.
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
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.
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.
I’m sorry… dick rocket? Your issue with SpaceX is that the rockets are… rocket shaped?
Like everything else notwithstanding, physics dictates the shapes of these things. That is why they all look rather… dick-ish
Yes im coming out against dick rockets here.
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.
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.
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.
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this the one time I’m with the commies
Are you against universal and free healthcare, education and retirement? Are you against improving worker rights, paid holidays, sick leave, guaranteed housing and guaranteed employment? Are you against unionisation of workplaces and collective worker decisions mattering in business? Are you against heavy regulation against climate change and pollution of the environment? Are you against anti-racism, feminism, anti-fascism and the redistribution of wealth from the richest to the poorest? I’m sure you have a lot more common ground with us commies than you think
*in theory
Most of those things I mentioned are/were a material reality in socialist countries such as Cuba or the Soviet Union, except for climate change and pollution and some things regarding feminism and homosexuality due to moral shortcomings of 20th century thought.
A tankie says what?
Yes, I’m a tankie, you got me. How about you address the actual argument though? In the 1970s Soviet Union there was:
Guaranteed employment, free education to the highest level, free healthcare for everyone, guaranteed housing for everyone and the abolition of homelessness, 45h working week, retirement with guaranteed pension at 61 for men and at 55 for women, paid holiday and sick leave, highest unionisation population in the world, more female engineers inside the Soviet Union than in the rest of the world combined, lowest level of wealth inequality in the history of the region, subsidised and affordable basics like energy access or public transit… The list goes on and on.
How about you try to refute any of these individual claims I made instead of dismissing the actual historical reality just because you dislike my political views? Spoiler alert: you won’t find reliable sources contradicting any of my claims and I can provide sources to all of it because I actually know what I’m talking about.
No thanks.
No I’m also with the commies on single payer health care and super high tax brackets for the rich. I do hate me a fascism, infact I hate all authoritarians.
I’m clearly for the workers rights we have fought for and established in this country. And while I can acknowledge the communist impact in these achievements, I would not go ahead and give you guys full credit nor say that these are policies that are specific to you. Most of this stuff is just center/left social welfare and human rights. Commies are the ones that like to do purity tests and isolate anyone that doesn’t agree with 100% of your policy points.
Pretty big jumps from liberal to leftist to self proclaimed communist ideas on how these ideas and policies look, so yes we agree on general principles and concepts. But we certainly don’t agree on how to bring them about.
Also, every single self-proclaimed communist is on the suspect list because you guys did a lot of campaigning against Joe Biden to help Donald Trump get elected so I’m just saying I don’t really fuck with you guys anymore. That’s my new purity test. Did you support Joe Biden and Kamala during the most important election in American history?
super high tax brackets for the rich
I’m a communist and I believe in the expropriation of their capital to eliminate super-richness, not in their taxation.
workers rights we have fought for and established in this country
Your country (the US judging by the comment) has miserable worker rights, as a western-European. Worker rights are bad here, but the US takes the cake.
I would not go ahead and give you guys full credit nor say that these are policies that are specific to you. Most of this stuff is just center/left social welfare and human rights
I’m not so sure. The legal abolition of homelessness and unemployment is far from being a centre/left welfare measure, as evidenced by the fact that the only countries that have achieved this are communist ones such as Cuba or the Soviet Union.
we certainly don’t agree on how to bring them about
We don’t agree on how to bring them about because the liberal method of bringing them about is proven ineffective in every single instance of liberal democracy. Worker rights and welfare are systematically being eroded in essentially all liberal democracies for the past 3-4 decades, home ownership rates decrease, unemployment increases, retirement age gets delayed (Denmark just rose it to 70 years e.g.), education and healthcare budgets get gutted, infrastructure crumbles, real wages diminish for the majority of the population, and little action is taken against climate change. There were only advancements in worker rights in Europe (and less so in the USA) because of the fear of communist revolution in the past century, hence the complete lack of progress and actual degradation of rights and democracy with the rise of the far right all over the Western World.
I’m not USian so I didn’t support any of your genocidal candidates. Funny how you talked of purity tests earlier in your comment and come up with that later. But as an outsider: the US liberal obsession with blaming the election loss on the progressives and not on, you know, the politicians enacting genocide and not doing anything about improving the living conditions of people in the US while in government seems pretty weird. If the Democrats can’t bring themselves to even remotely appear more appealing than LITERAL DONALD TRUMP to the average voter, what the fuck are they doing?
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.
You guys are so stuck in the cult of personality. WE PAID FOR EVERYTHING SPACEX DID. IT BELONGS TO US.
Not to mention that Musk himself contributed nothing to SpaceX’s technical achievements. All he did was insist that the audio of their launches and recoveries include employees cheering maniacally - easily the most annoying aspect of SpaceX.
You paid for services rendered. By your logic you should eventually own your neighborhood grocery store because that’s where you buy your bread.
If we do, we’ll definitely reach mars. I can imagine it now! Its 3055 and everything is totally fine now that we can escape to Mars in an inflatable city. A whole 4000 square feet of freedom soaring thru the sky with the last of us aboard ready for a whole new life and a good 7 in inflated cities for our children to live. She changes her name to Mother Gaia and His name is now Adam. One day in the distant future perhaps a large meteor would come roaring and reshaping our planet into livable space again.
Starlink should not just be nationalized but internationalized.
It is internet for everyone on earth, not everyone in the USA.Every larger nation deploying their own constellation would be a pointless waste of resources, and every smaller nation having to find reliable partner-nations to tap into for that internet access would inevitably lead to people ending up without access due to political games.
Low orbit satellite constellations are the perfect candidate for sharing, they would literally sit unused over most of their orbits otherwise.
We? No. USA can if it wants that shit.
American exceptionalism is so fucking annoying. Their country is failing to a point hopefully this first person shit rightfully corrects to third person.
It’s worse here than on Reddit, IMO.
we should probably invest in making sure people have affordable housing, food, and healthcare before worrying about militarising space.
Don’t buy into the grifts. Dismantle them.
