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Comment by rizzaxc | Hacker News Reader

not by accident, but getting rich clearly wasn't his goal when he dumped all his money into the start ups. why aren't we glad the richest man in the world got there by using his resources for futuristic ideas instead of something like oil and gas

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I actually am glad of that - I think Elon is one of the less-bad billionaires. His views are stupid and most of his ideas are too, and billionaires shouldn't exist at all, but I am glad that he made his money building companies that are doing important things. Well, SpaceX and Tesla are - the Boring Company and Neuralink seem like boondoggles, to say nothing of Hyperloop.

SpaceX is interesting, but are they really doing anything important? Maybe if starlink goes global, but until then it doesn't seem to change anything in my or many peoples lives by not existing.

They are working on interesting problems though, far more interesting to me than most companies (including Tesla)

> SpaceX is interesting, but are they really doing anything important?

I'd say it's the most important company on the planet seeing as it's the only one that's truly carving a path for us to one day become a spacefaring civilization and doing so at a seemingly 10x faster pace than competitors

Spacefaring? Hopefully you mean Marsfaring (at best, if you can find a good reason to set up a colony there)

The average stellar density around our sun is about 0.004 per cubic light year, so definitely don't get your hopes up on some Star Trek scenario for the next few hundred years at least.

What is SpaceX's value again? P.S. Musk himself admits that SpaceX wouldn't be a thing if it hadn't been saved by a phone call from NASA. You know, the government, the same entity that Musk worshipers seem to dismiss as the lesser party when it comes to ingenuity and forward-progression.

I said SpaceX is moving us towards that goal, not that it will turn us into a spacefaring civilization

Whether it was saved by a phone call from NASA doesn't detract from its merits

> SpaceX wouldn't be a thing if it hadn't been saved by a phone call from NASA

I believe you, but when I tell other people that they don't believe me. Do you have something I can show them.

I don't see that at all. We're never going to spacefare on chemical rockets, unless you mean maybe going as far as the asteroid belt.

Reusable rockets are about satellites and maybe the space station. But until we see something use the cheap launches to improve life on earth, it's meaningless.

That said, I'd invest in SpaceX for the Starlink potential if it was public.

SpaceX has drastically lowered cost/mass to put something in orbit with Falcon 9. If they are successful with Starship they will do so again. Already lowering cost to orbit is increasing access to space for companies, universities, and governments. This is huge. Their success has lead to a number of new companies trying to innovate in a similar way and even. altering how governments plan to run future space programs.

I'm asking what is good about cheaper orbit. I get telecommunications, but other than that, what's the point. Any examples?

Because if all we're going to do is launch a few probes every few years, than the cost of the launches is a minor improvement.

Lower cost to transportation is key for pretty much any economic growth. People and companies have significantly more plans than just a couple probes every few years. Exploration, mining, tourism, scientific research, manufacturing are a couple things that come to mind. There are probably many more ideas than what i can think of and that’s the point. Make it cheaper for people with ideas to make them a reality. When only the largest of governments can afford to put something into space then we won’t see much innovation/economic growth.

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