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Comment by atrus | Hacker News Reader

And has SpaceX?

From wiki article on SpaceX:

The first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket (Falcon 1) to reach orbit (28 September 2008)

The first privately funded company to successfully launch (by Falcon 9) Orbit and recover a spacecraft (Dragon) (9 December 2010)

The first private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the International Space Station (25 May 2012)

The first private company to send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit

Both Uber and SpaceX are technically 'transportation companies' in a loose sense. None of the things you listed above really further any field in basic science and academia. SpaceX's achievements simply sound cooler because it is with big rockets and more tangible to write down for record keeping. They are essentially using rocket tech in a new, different way that employs a new business model for success - which, surprise surprise, is exactly what Uber does as well but with terrestrial transport vehicles.

None of those things has had any affect on my life or the lives of anybody i personally know (yet).

I booked a ride on Uber just the other day.

edit: typo

That's not a front though, that's just doing it with a different revenue stream.

There was a lot of "first" in the previous comment, which might as well be synonymous with "front" in this context.

As an example, Linux wasn't the first UNIX-like kernel or the even the first free UNIX-like kernel, but it (with GNU) was the first free UNIX-like kernel to bring a UNIX-like kernel to the mainstream PC world and span the entire vertical range of computing scale from microcontrollers to TOP500 supercomputers. I'd call that expanding the technological front.

Edited for GNUtical correctness, which makes it quite a bit harder to read

>There was a lot of "first" in the previous comment, which might as well be synonymous with "front" in this context.

Not really. It's literally doing what was done before, 30 years ago.

Re-usable rockets are pretty meaningful. And SpaceX is a couple of launches away from achieving them.

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