this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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A private company shows up that gets federal funding while the space agency gets funding consistently cut while having to support multiple, multi-year, billion dollar projects.
A private company whose survival is 100% reliant on government money.
Capitalists on Lemmy: private company is better just because it's private
This is a poor understanding of how the system works. SpaceX is company that provides a service. This service is open to anyone who wants to use it, but this happens to mostly be the government. The reason is because it's services are cheap, safe, and reliable. SpaceX does what it does very well, and the government chooses their services because it's economical.
NASA and other agencies provide a service, they're not companies. They're research agencies who's job is to advance scientific knowledge and developed new technology. Their goal isn't to create a sustainable business, but to conduct research that's beyond the capacity of the private sector or individual researchers.
The public and private sector compliment each other. They do things that the other isn't good at. It's an ecosystem. Getting rid of one will cause the whole system to collapse... and that's not a good thing.
No matter how much you cut from NASA it always had more funding than SpaceX did and innovation in space exploration was dead until SpaceX came around.
Nationalization will make SpaceX yet another bureaucratic, money waster for the government to maintain. By being private if SpaceX becomes shit the government can just drop them at any moment.
Giving things to the state is a dumbass idea. Exhibit A: the entire current administration.
Government agency starts multiple, multi-year, billion dollar projects, delays ensue, costs overrun, results are unimpressive. It has to rely on private contractors or other countries for the most basic things, spends $211 billion for a space shuttle program that goes nowhere and ends up costing $0.5 billion per launch.
Private company goes from nothing to a successful rocket launch in 10 years for less than $1 billion, half of which is private funding. In the next 10 years makes rockets reusable, lowers the cost to orbit by 30x, launches a viable commercial service people are willing to pay for.
Communists on lemmy: