Hacker News Reader

At this point any kind of business that does repeatable and sustainable space flights is good, is even if it's for the entertainment of the billionaires. Slowly and surely the process will get improved and the cost will go down and maybe some of those taxpayers will see space after all.

View on HN

As I've stated elsewhere in this thread, this is not true. It is quite possible to do actual damage to our future if we allow corporate monopolization of the resources or means of getting into space. Work like this is too important to leave to privatization, but funding of our space program has lagged so grossly that the only option left is billionaire charlatans who want to stake their claim on the stars in a race to monopolize the resources of space.

I think we can wait to argue about who gets the space resources until we can reliably get to space. Currently the resource being exploited by the "charlatans" is pretty views from upper atmosphere. As long as they don't leave trash in orbit, which this is very far from, they can do it all day long for all I care.

Also this whole focus on the billionaires is misguided. Up until very recently only large nation states could afford to have a space program that is any more ambitious than delivering a satellite to orbit. Now it's eccentric billionaires. Tomorrow it'll be small cap companies. Elon Musk is not getting Mars, don't worry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com