Hacker News Reader

Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

What ever you may think of the US, it is also home to SpaceX which is doing some amazing things wrt to "space". Producing a successful privately funded "space" company, to me, sounds like success as in, the economic model is, at least in some regards, a success. Sure, in come the socialists, and I agree with them and like living in Europe... Still, Europe is not fertile ground for companies like SpaceX. Please don't take this comment as Europa or the US is superior. I'm just saying they're different.

View on HN

Not sure any large government contractor can really be described as privately funded. If Europe had the same level of defense funding it might look very different there, too.

You can't throw a stone in America without hitting a government contractor. Doing work for the government and getting paid for it doesn't disqualify them as being a private company. The government isn't an investor, they've paid the company for services.

Or do you think that if I pay a plumber to install a toilet, I've now invested in his plumbing business?

Exactly my point - a lot of funding from there for a lot of things. SpaceX derives a lot of revenues from government and defense business and there is way less of that in Europe to go around.

But SpaceX is a private company. Sure, we can argue the environment of America produces more such companies than anywhere else but at the end of the day it's a man with billions of dollars dragging a country to space.

It makes no sense that the government equivalent is NASA and each launch is expensive and slow. The US govt is seeking contracts with a private entity because NASA simply does not have the ability to go to space quick and cheaply.

NASA isn't the government equivalent of SpaceX, NASA just commissions launch vehicles from the private sector and does the missions that use those launch vehicles.

Space Shuttle? United Space Alliance, Thiokol/Alliant Techsystems (for the SRBs), Lockheed Martin/Martin Marietta (for the external tank), Boeing/Rockwell (for the orbiter).

Apollo? Boeing (first stage), North American Aviation (second stage), Douglas (third stage), North American Rockwell (CSM), Grumman (LM).

IIRC, NASA have never made their own complete launch vehicle in-house.

Governments send people to space more as a matter of national pride than serious technological or human progress. That was why we stopped moon landings after Apollo, and the Shuttle was hamstrung. And it's why the Chinese have put on only token efforts.

If it's finally profitable to do space, it's up to a private company to do it. NASA's version is just more flag waving. The best it can hope for is to be a jobs program for technologists. Which is awesome and undoubtedly has benefits, but it's no surprise that it isn't profitable or gutsy.

> And it's why the Chinese have put on only token efforts.

China's got two rovers up there, returned 1.7kg of moon rocks in 2020, has another sample return scheduled this year, and another rover in 2026.

> at the end of the day it's a man with billions of dollars dragging a country to space.

SpaceX was originally funded, and still is funded, by tens of billions of dollars worth of NASA contracts. It's not a billionaire dragging the country to space, it's the people of the country paying for a service.

It's not hard to find out this isn't true. Wikipedia might help

Reply on news.ycombinator.com