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Never heard of it until I heard everybody else making fun of it. But yeah America can't innovate. Everything is doomed. Hide under your pillow. Google can't create a self-driving car! SpaceX can't land reusable rockets! America can't innovate guys!!!

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SpaceX benefits from some very patient Nasa contracts.

Yes it does, and you'll note that I support public funding for science as stated above. My contention with this idiotic article is that it implies that America cannot innovate. Even though SpaceX may rely upon contracts for NASA (and idk how much of that is a given), you cannot claim that America is not innovative when it's a private company in the United States building REUSABLE ROCKETS. That is innovation.

Patient contracts?

I mean they have contracts with Nasa and that Nasa have been very patient with SpaceX fulfilling their obligations.

The self driving car relies on computers, GPS, sensors (eg LIDAR) and algorithms. Computers were developed for the military, LIDAR was developed for government-funded atmospheric research projects. GPS wouldn't exist without military funding. The military funded a lot of computer vision research. SpaceX took a lot of government money, too.

And? I don't see how this relates to what I've said? Do these things make America not innovative?

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