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Comment by schiffern | Hacker News Reader

  > My hunch is that if Elon keeps pushing it this direction it will be nationalized in order to bring it under government control.

Absurdity. Governments have plenty of ways to bring companies under control short of nationalization.

"Nationalize SpaceX" is a fantasy engineered in a clickbait lab to exploit the Rocket Man Bad hype.

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Yes, there are many tools to get company under control, but US Government is not shy about doing forcing the change of control for the sake of national interests.

Example:

> The U.S. government has requested that Max Polyakov, a wealthy Ukrainian tech entrepreneur, sell his stake in the rocket company Firefly Aerospace Inc., citing national security concerns.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-29/firefly-o...

Book: "How Heavens Went On Sale" by Ashlee Vans talks in details about the raise of commercial space in recent years and ways government deals with the corresponding issues.

Momentus (YC S18) founder/CEO Mikhail Kokorich eventually wasn't even allowed to look at his own company's technology and was forced to sell his stake in another space company, despite living in the US. So now he's in Switzerland which has a much more favorable environment. Subjecting "technical data" to export controls produces ridiculous outcomes!

> US Government is not shy about doing forcing the change of control

... when the problem is the nationality of the owners (ala Firefly). That's not an issue here. It's also not the same thing as "nationalizing," btw.

Nationalizing SpaceX remains firmly in the realm of (hate fueled) fantasy.

The fact something is fantasy today doesn’t mean it won’t happen - as recent years have shown.

Elon is actively working against his own PR. Fantasies like this one are one of the consequences.

this and capability to launch ICBMs that return the launchers!

I sometimes speculate on what some weapon designer has up on their whiteboard using an F9 booster as a weapons platform. What is the range of a Tomahawk launched at 80,000' and Mach 3? Or a cluster of 9? Kind of scary when you think about it.

Tomahawks have air breathing turbojets that wouldn't function at 80k feet nor at speeds much above 5-600 mph. They're also not stealthy - they're designed to fly low to evade detection, and have conventional warheads. IMO, SpaceX rockets don't really have,any advantage for delivery of ordinance vs existing systems, and using them for attacks in anything less than a full on world war just makes every civilian launch into a potential flashpoint for war.

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