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- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- technology@lemmy.zip
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The precedent that will set and the implications… No… We should not do this.
I’ve been saying this for years. the footprint that spaceX represents in national launch authority is out of whack to say the least.
When’s the last time the US nationalised something?
I think during world war 2. But things were worse then 15% unemployment and people still had massive economic leverage. I don’t think the US government is nationalizing anything anytime soon now. Neither party will participate in it because they are in the pockets of the oligarchs.
The automotive manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler were partially nationalized in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis as were several banks… these were less a full government takeover and more of a government guided restructuring, but the government owned large stakes in these companies. Before that, the only full nationalization of anything substantial was the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad and subsequent establishment of Consolidated Rail (branded as ConRail) the US’s only national freight rail company.
Conrail was later privatized into what is now the private companies CSX and Norfolk Southern. The collapse of Penn Central was the largest bankruptcy in history until Enron in the 1990’s. Amtrak, our national passenger rail corporation, is also a nationalized entity created around the same time as ConRail, for similar reasons, and is still nationalized (although the Trump admin wants to privatize it).
Racism. 1776.
Tiktok?
We should just fund NASA and let SpaceX and Starlink go bankrupt to competitors.
SpaceX has loads of capable engineers. If NASA gets a massive budget increase, they need to draw from that pool of talent.
NASA hasn’t take the slightest risk since Challenger. They wouldn’t have accomplished 1/20th of the launch capability SpaceX has developed in the last 5 years.
Generally NASA doesn’t “develop” rockets per se, they commission rockets to specification.
The oligarchs wouldn’t like that precedent but they might go for purchasing SpaceX since it is owned by a foreigner. Kind of like with TikTok…
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.
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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?
What even is this comment?
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.
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
Congress has always had this power. I’m personally for nationalizing telecomm companies.
The author probably forgot who runs the nation of usa.
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.
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
…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.
Only useless people side with those two.
Stop being useless.
Has anyone considered funding NASA?
They made rockets that didn’t explode with duct tape and a TI-83 calculator.
They didn’t, because someone got paid to write this article!
If that was actually their expenditure I don’t think they’d have their budget cut.
Where’s the grift tho? What’s the angle? How will this enrich an uber-privileged pale bro?
Looks like we found someone who believed it was financially necessary for the manufacture of the shuttle to be spread across the country.
Shouldn’t be incompatible with nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Just give it all to NASA, actually.
Sure, that’s the ideal.
Is it likely? Ehhhh
From this admin? Nah. It’ll be stolen and given to, idk, Thiel or Vance or whoever, but not nationalized, just reprivatized.
Step one Musk needs to be arrested and sent to El Salvador.
No thanks. We need to shut down all U.S. affiliation with prisons outside the U.S. Release those prisoners or transfer them back to the U.S. and have proper trials. Trump needs to stand trial for the fake electors and for every unconstitutional measure he has done before/since as an unconstitutional act that the Supreme Court deems unconstitutional should not be considered an official act. The President should be suspended from all duties until Congress performs an investigation draws up the articles of impeachment and it is tried by the Senate.
Musk should be tried for election interference and any other laws he may have broken but it should be done right here in the U.S. If anything freeze all of his accounts and require him to step down from any/all roles within his companies as part of his required bale terms, or otherwise he would be choosing to spend the time awaiting trial in jail.
These actions would ensure they aren’t trying to drag court cases out for years, they would want the court cases to move along faster.
Would Trump get convicted by the Senate, unlikely. That’s on us for voting terrible people into the legislative branch. But we can’t complain about those who break the law if we think it’s fine to break the law when it fits our wants. We need to update those laws legally or tear the whole thing down and say Musk and Trump didn’t break any laws because we didn’t think those laws mattered as well.
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.
I think every larger nation deploying their own constellation would reduce people losing access due to political games.
If there’s only one network with the same topology as Starlink, then the USA, China, or Russia will end up making a bunch of rules on everyone else just like Elon does today. Look how the USA abuses centralized internet infrastructure already. Multiple overlapping systems would be wastefully redundant, but reduces the risk of censorship.
We can’t get along and can’t have nice things.
You want a truly multinational organization responsible for it, nothing that can be controlled by a single nation, even one as (ex)influential as the us.
Something based on the UN perhaps.Combine that with making internet access a human right, to stop denying connectivity outright.
Ideally then you could’t enforce meaningful censorship, but more realistically you would route regions to their respective governments servers so they could censor as before on their territory.
That would not guarantee free access to the internet to everyone, but should be an acceptable compromise to basically all nations.After that, other doubting nations could still pull their own constellation, nothing is stopping that.
I would love if the internet program was uncensored, but that probably needs personal circumvention same as now, if such a program wants any degree of success.
It sounds like we don’t disagree that much, I just think other doubting nations is extremely likely.
Edit: but gosh darn that is nice to imagine. Everyone, everywhere, having free internet.
Yeah.
The maintenance of these conatellations is pricy, so perhaps if such an international program does prove itself trustworthy you’d see other national alternatives get retired.I mean it’s not like the US would do it anyway as things stand, more likely for such a program to get started independently and to end up outcompeting starlink down the line.
Lets reach a compromise. Impeach Trump (successfully) and then take away SpaceX from Elon. That way things would be fair.
Trump has been impeached successfully. Twice. What I assume you mean is that he hasn’t been removed from office. That could be the consequence of an impeachment, but not necessarily.
I honestly don’t care about Elon, just get Trump out.
For whatever reasons Musk has found himself as ceo of some wildly successful visionary companies. It has not changed that they are finally bringing the future to the present, disrupting old technologies in favor of newer and better, for a better world. And the musk from before his breakdown deserves a lot of credit.
At this point I no longer care about musk either, but SpaceX and Tesla are critical. Or at least SpaceX is. Tesla has not yet finished disrupting vehicle manufacturing , but if we’re content to let Chinese companies go ahead, they’re ready and willing. Legacy manufacturers have been slapped up the side of the face, but if they’re still not awake at this point it’s on them
I’m sorry, but credit for what? For being born privileged and buying talent? If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em, right?
Yeah, I guess he deserves praise for being a good liar and basically selling pipe dreams?
Tesla was started by a handful of really smart people with a great idea. Musk was ceo as it grew from an idea into the first new major automaker in almost a century. As it grew from a dismissed toy that no one would buy, into an industry-wide paradigm shift. Most of that time musk preached the gospel. You can’t disregard that influence, you can’t claim the guy in charge had nothing to do with it. You might decide his skill was more manipulative than visionary, but you can’t deny that him being the front man was part of the success. You might decide any engineering or problem solving ability was not real, but he was the guy in charge, he did make decisions, and Tesla has generally been a huge success (until recently).
We just need some drug rehab and find a way to reset the god complex ….
Sure, I mean technically paypal was a rather innovative idea for its time, but again, the guy basically associated himself with smart people that had bright ideas.
Yes, he does have a knack for growing businesses to a larger scale, but most millionaires/ billionaires do, cause they outsource brain matter and decision making to a select few.
I’m not sure if I ever liked the guy or his largely exaggerated marketing, but being a POS nazi isn’t helping either, so i’m biased towards nazi hate I guess. Either way, he will need a paradigm shift for people to accept him back into the decent human beings club. I do hope he will find a way, but doubt it really.
I mostly hope that his companies make it back into the “disruptive technology” club, regardless of him.
Sure, he gets credit for building hype and getting investors on board. He’s a decent salesman, and probably decent at business in general.
I don’t care if he’s rich or not, he’s relatively harmless when it comes to things I care about. Trump, on the other hand, is dangerous because he seems to work off vibes and compliments, and that’s scary.
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.
American exceptionalism definitely sucks, but this is not an example of American exceptionalism. The source is an article from an American magazine, published for an American audience.
It’s worse here than on Reddit, IMO.
Global communities reveal the disgusting chauvinism of the nationalist “we”. It’s cult speech.
Agreed. But also commies believe that when the state takes something, “we” will get it (and they fail to see why states sponsor their useful idiocy)
The point of communism is that things are state owned.
No thanks, demolish Leon Hitler’s space program and bury it. NASA should be the US leader for space missions and not a South African neo-Nazi sack of shit.
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.
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
it’s all taxpayer money anyway
Good point.
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.
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.
Reusable rockets are cool
Never lived up to the hype. Take almost as much effort to get ready for another flight as building another one.
I’m no Musk apologist, but this statement is nowhere close to being true.
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-elon-musk-falcon-9-economics
What do you mean little to show for it?
So you wanna nationalize the whole telecom industry then?
Well, now that you bring it up…
I fully agree. Any industry that can’t survive on its own and needs public funds, shouldn’t exist. If it’s an essential service it should be nationalized.
So you want Donald Trump in charge of the telecom industry and any other industries that have received some sort of public subsidy?
Yeah, maybe we can nationalize them with the clause that it kicks in when his heart stops beating
This is the same mistake everyone makes. They think Donald Trump is just a person. That he actually matters and we just have to get rid of him and everything will be okay.
It doesn’t work that way.
As fascism didn’t die with Hitler, it’s not going to die with Trump. All of the problems — all of the rifts in our society — will still be there when he’s gone.
lol you really threatened Lemmy with a good time
Yes please, maybe they’ll fix the shit they’ve been getting paid for decades to fix finally.
Yes, absolutely. And power too
And pharma. And O&G
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
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.
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.
let’s not forget the agency that launched the probe that passed the edge of the solar system and is still functional and doing valuable things…… in the 70s
and is still functional and doing valuable things in the 70s
Oh, wow, you might wanna sit down for this.
which part? it’s still transmitting right? and they got useful and interesting data from it only a few years ago
No, honey, it’s 2025.
I don’t know what happened to you, but im so fucking sorry.
Edit: you can down vote me all you want. It doesn’t change the truth. Odds are everyone you knew is dead.
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.
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.
SpaceX has an internal team that works to make sure Musk can’t interfere with anything, because he’s so bad at managing businesses. Gwynne Shotwell is the one in charge of SpaceX.
I am not surprised in the slightest. I mean if you have a bunch of smart, highly motivated people it sounds like keeping the crazy man at arms length is the kind of thing they’d organise very effectively.
Perhaps look into the DC-X program, fully 20 years before SpaceX Falcon: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
Absolutely agree with this but there is no denying the innovation levels at spacex are higher
Undeniably, they’ve been doing amazing work (at least from my rocketry technology peasant point of view).
That’s true but it doesn’t solve the problem now.
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.
I’m sorry… you don’t think employees who are achieving world firsts are allowed to celebrate?
You must be fun at parties
You must be fun at parties
This meme is even more annoying than SpaceX employees being ordered to cheer.
You paid for services rendered. By your logic you should eventually own your neighborhood grocery store because that’s where you buy your bread.
You’re talking to someone on lemmy, there’s a very high likelihood they think exactly that.
Us? Do you own NASA? Do you have any say on how funds are assigned to NASA? No? Then it doesn’t belong to “Us” it belongs to the government, a distinct organization with different goals and motivations than “Us” the people.
Let’s say I bought you a car, I paid for it in full and then gave it to you, and in return you sometimes drive me around.
Let’s say I get tired of this arrangement, should I repossess the car just to drive it into the ocean? What would be the point of that? Sure, it’s rightfully mine, but what good does it do to destroy it?
“IT BELONGS TO US” is not a very compelling argument for arbitrary distribution.
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.
I hear you, why can’t we be in that timeline?
