We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink
The slap fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has highlighted the absurdity of keeping so much of our space program and satellite internet infrastructure in the hands of a single oligarch.
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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.
If your want proof that the wealthy live by a different set of laws, look no further than the time Elon Musk, ceo of SpaceX, went on a podcast and smoked weed.
SpaceX has DOD contracts for launches, and somehow him blatantly violating federal law had no impact on the contracts his company fulfilled for the government.
Do I think weed should be classified like it is? No.
Do I think that everyone should be held to the same standard? Yes. And if anyone else had been involved in government projects while going on podcasts and smoking weed, they’d at the very least be fired.
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.
How long back was that? I genuinely didn't hear about that, but I believe that would happen. I tried googling "space x faa" but I'm getting results of FAA investigating rocket issues and approvals of rocket models.
Not sure if they followed thru but this was 4 years ago I remember reading about it.
You should familiarize yourself with Telsat Canada's LEO plans. Should be complete in less than 2 years.
They say this is for enterprise and government, and they talk about "terminals". This seems more like a Hughes network, and let me tell you, if it's that bad, you want nothing to do with it.
Can you imagine who would run those companies if they were government owned?
Yeah. A gov; be it the UN or a country.
Having worked and then contracted to regional and Muni govs, and worked for dotcoms, I can tell you one of them follows way, WAY more of the regs than the other.
It's like transpo & highways vs private roads and rail: one of them is way better-maintained when there is a comparison.
What even is this comment?
Not the person you commented on, but think about the reason why people are wanting SpaceX to be nationalised when NASA exists and is already Government owned.
SpaceX is light years, pardon the pun, ahead of NASA. If SpaceX was taken over by the government, SpaceX would likely end up like NASA as it would be taken over by the same people and have mountains more red tape in order to do anything. It would destroy SpaceX and put space exploration back decades.
SpaceX is getting the government funding NASA doesn't anymore.
Then the UN should start their own starlink-like company. Nothing is stopping them.
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.
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