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Comment by nullindividual | Hacker News Reader

Private companies will never save us. They exist only to extract wealth. SpaceX is no exception, surviving off of taxpayer funds.

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This is pretty shortsighted.

Private money is perfect to make the same cheaper. Then consultants bring the knowledge to other companies. 20-50 years and everything is a commodity.

After some time in kind of free markets the common people win.

I think with corporations becoming bigger and bigger the common people will win less. Markets only work with meaningful competition.

> After some time in kind of free markets the common people win

Any time now!

It's a very elegant idea, but maybe not the most empirically robust.

SpaceX already is cheaper than NASA

Cheaper how? NASA doesn’t fly their own rockets or spaceships, so there’s no comparison.

Cheaper compared to what NASA used to spend (in R&D and/or launch costs) to put one of their astronauts or 1 kg of mass into orbit.

Not sure, are you comparing the costs of technology 50 years ago with the costs of today's technology? That's not a very valid comparison, to say the least. Not only technology as a whole evolved a lot to give you waaay more bang for the buck, but also everything done today is built on the shoulders of the giant investments made at the start of the space age. So please, let's not bring unfounded arguments for the sake of ideology.

Not 50 years ago. See SLS for example. NASA is paying $146m PER engine (and the rocket has four, and fuel tanks, avionics , an upper stage, fairings, two solid rocket boosters ... ). An entire Falcon Heavy launch is <$100 million.

Sort of, except not always. Compare to medical insurance in the US. Medical care in the US is both one of the most expensive and most privatised in the world.

You have an insane view of the world and SpaceX will be wildly profitable

No private company has saved me yet.

We've all been waiting. For more than 100 years. Private companies will save us... like we'll have Linux on the Desktop.

Any year, now.

Lol. Life is so much better than it was 100 years ago I don't even know what you're talking about.

Of course it is, we have things like Social Security. Totally 100% attributable to companies.

Social Security doesn't even make the top 100 of why it's better than a 100 years ago.

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