SpaceX Sues Government to Break US Air Force’s National Security Launch Monopoly

I don’t think that there is such a thing as being “against weapons” though. Some people don’t think that one should profit from the use of deadly force; in that case, not using a significant portion of that company’s profits to repair damages from misused weapons would be callous. In most cases, weapons manufacturer are direly aware of the issue with what they sell, and try to make better quality devices to prevent them. Namely, a policeman friend told me that Glocks (could be another brand, I know very little about firearms) were appreciated by her colleagues who do a lot of pursuits because they don’t tend to accidentally fire when they drop from their holster, a rare but potentially tragic event. Glock makes money from that fear, hopefully invest to mitigate it.

I know government processes better, and as someone who could be seen as a socialist, I agree with Musk on one thing: government is expensive. Unlike him, I think it’s generally cheaper than private companies or charity. However, in the industries where Musk operates (transport), his entrepreneurial talent makes his contribution much cheaper. He doesn’t like public money to be wasted — that’s his publicly stated “political leanings” and one that has motivated SpaceX existence. I don’t think it’s very controversial, actually (no one likes to waste money) but it is relevant. What he asks for is to have the ability to lower it.

Therefore: yes, his leanings matter. In that case, and probably a majority of his projects that are government-funded, they are so because it is cheaper to have Musk’s company do it. Which is good. I’m not a US tax payer, so I shouldn’t care so much, but I would say: there isn’t a contradiction with trying to improve what you think is broken. If he was asking to prevent competitors from entering the market for government-contract, there I could see an issue.

"The IMPROVED CRYSTAL's sophisticated electronics provides sharper images than the KH-11, comparable in quality to the best of the film return satellites, with a resolution approaching ten centimeters. "

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/kh-12.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

If you want to change what government does, do everything you can get away with to change it. That's how the people who actually get their way do it.

Most of them are only a rehash of the original new, without any additional information. Sometimes it’s worst, and every rehash lost a part of the information and add some hype. The guidelines advice to submit the original version.

The problem is that a lot of interesting technical new are only submitted once, and they are lost in the infinite streaming of almost-dupes.

In the last days I saw a few: “Earthlike planet”, “Fuelband”, “Codebabes”, “Atari ET”

It is an effective way of removing content. Deleting it would cause uproar, but that way the story fades almost unnoticed even to the commenters who noticed it.

There are also similar methods employed for specific users.