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Comment by fourseventy | Hacker News Reader

Just give the whole contract to SpaceX already

SpaceX faces the same risks of becoming a monopolist and then declining. To give the whole contract to him maybe is a good short term solution, but long term it will end badly.

Indeed. Iirc Falcon Heavy has the capability right.now. They time/effort only needs to be spent on the lander and getting back.

Has SpaceX even been outside low earth orbit with anything meaningful?

They regularly have missions to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, but I assume that’s not what you’re talking about.

Not yet, but I believe the Artemis 3 manned moon landing is still a planned for 2026.

"Launches to higher-orbits have included DSCOVR to Sun–Earth Lagrange point L1, TESS to a lunar flyby, a Tesla Roadster demonstration payload to a heliocentric orbit extending past the orbit of Mars, DART to the asteroid Didymos, Euclid to Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, and Psyche to the asteroid 16 Psyche." Per wikipedia, not sure if those count as meaningful. Plus Europe Clipper in a few months.

If you mean human spaceflight, current Boeing has less experience flying humans to anywhere in space than SpaceX, let alone beyond low earth orbit. If you mean general spaceflight, SpaceX has launched more lunar and interplanetary payloads than Boeing has in the past decade or two.

Boeing and its proponents love to talk about things like "spaceflight heritage", but none of that means anything when most if not all of those employees are gone and nothing was done to transfer the knowledge.

It was Rockwell. It was always Rockwell. Boeing's heritage is that they bought it.

Sure, let’s give the richest man on earth who spends more time trolling on Twitter than working more taxpayer dollars for his self enrichment

Does this somehow disqualifies SpaceX as a contract supplier?

"This service is awful, let's switch to the better one"

You: "and give them money in exchange for services rendered?!!?"

The whole thing is a boondoggle and running a deficit to redistribute more wealth to the top should disgust people. Your strawman is meaningless.

Where's the strawman? You're whining about giving money to SpaceX in exchange for asking SpaceX to build something to the specifications of the program. That's not redistributing wealth to the top, that's purchasing a service.

You literally made up a quote that I did not say to create a nonsensical argument. Taking taxpayer money and spending it on something that doesn’t benefit taxpayers, but does benefit people with equity in Spacex, is wealth redistribution. All fiscal policy is wealth redistribution when it comes down to it.

Musk is only really rich because he owned Tesla and SpaceX and those were only successful because they produced better stuff and transformed their industries. The system is kind of working as intended. Do you think things would be better if Musk never happened and we had relied on GM and Boeing?

They didn't complain about SpaceX itself getting money, they complained that some of that money will go to Musk.

That's a meaningless distinction though. What's the logic of not choosing the most reliable supplier in the industry just because the owner is rich?

> That's a meaningless distinction though.

Just because there's currently no way to separate the two financially doesn't mean the complaint is invalid. There are multiple plausible ways for those finances to become untangled.

> just because the owner is rich

Him being just "rich" (7-8 figure threshold) is barely a factor. It's the extreme level and the way he acts.

This is why I mentioned 'reliable'. People love to whine about how extreme they perceive Musk to be, but SpaceX has continued to be as reliable as ever and hasn't shown any of the urges conspiracy theorists love to imagine they will have.

"SpaceX is reliable" and "I don't want Elon Musk to get money" are completely compatible thoughts to hold at the same time.

Complaining about a choice doesn't mean you think it's the wrong choice.

Note that I'm not really concerned with how mcmcmc feels in detail, I'm just commenting on their initial post and your response to it. They weren't objecting to money for services rendered.

So in a thread about how abysmal and over budget the only competitor is, you have decided that we should cut off the most innovative space company in of the past 20 years and our governments sole proven launch provider because you don't like the owner on a personal level?

No, I think the government should not be continuing to rack up debt for a toy program that does nothing for the welfare of the average American. If Spacex is so successful and innovative surely they can survive without government funding. I’ve never met Elon so how would I dislike him on a personal level? I dislike how blatant he is about using his companies and political dark money to curry favor. I dislike that he has faced zero consequences for market manipulation and lying to investors and the SEC.

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