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Comment by EcommerceFlow | Hacker News Reader

Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with. The evidence for this in regards to space is very clear IMO. SpaceX, with 8,000 employees and a fraction of government space budgets, now controls 95%+ of all orbit launches worldwide. They outcompete entire continents.

There is no risk structure within government research, and NASA's results of the past few decades shows this. No one paid the price for the SLS being so overpriced, delayed, etc.

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What you're missing is that SpaceX could do this because NASA had already done all the difficult research. SpaceX is so successful because it does what private industry does really well: start with something that has already been proven possible and make little improvements on the fringes to streamline and profit from it.

What SpaceX has done is very valuable - let's make no mistake about that. But without decades of NASA experience and subsequent hand-holding with SpaceX engineers, SpaceX wouldn't exist.

NASA is a vehicle for pure scientific research, which is something private industry is absolutely terrible at. Let's be real: as much bluster as Elon has about going to Mars, it's going to take an organization like NASA to do it first before a private company like SpaceX ever attempts to do so.

> Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with.

I'd agree that's generally true when a profit motive is identifiable.

Absent that, if left to the private sector, the research simply doesn't get done at all.

> The evidence for this in regards to space is very clear IMO

You have an incredibly narrow view of what space "research" involves. It's not just about putting payloads in LEO. Were it up to the private sector, the HST wouldn't exist at all.

Whether that's good or bad is a philosophical discussion, but personally, I believe science should be about more than just what is profitable.

(and that's ignoring that, as others have pointed out, SpaceX stands on the shoulders of government-funded giants)

The reality is there's room for both government-funded and private research, and to imply otherwise... well, let's just say we're living in a time of extremely narrow, black-and-white, polarized thinking, and this is an excellent example.

If SpaceX had to distribute their spending like NASA across states/senators/political influence, I doubt they would be anywhere near were they are today. I wouldn’t call this a failure of public science/research/development per se. It‘s a failure of democracy, but maybe it’s also a feature?

> Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with.

This ignores political goals (Moon landing, DARPA, state funding of education) - what does space exploration look like in the 50s, 60s ?

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