We should just fund NASA and let SpaceX and Starlink go bankrupt to competitors.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I don’t think the majority of Americans understand what that means. They’ll just scream “commies!” And raise their maga flag.
But the idea of a starlink-like business owned by UN would be nice, and not an American corporation owned by a nepobaby Elmo.
In the USA space-x gets away with a lot. A few years ago they announced they were no longer going to bother with getting all the FAA approvals needed for their rockets because it took too long. Space-x still got government contracts.
If your want proof that the wealthy live by a different set of laws, look no further than the time Elon Musk, ceo of SpaceX, went on a podcast and smoked weed.
SpaceX has DOD contracts for launches, and somehow him blatantly violating federal law had no impact on the contracts his company fulfilled for the government.
Do I think weed should be classified like it is? No.
Do I think that everyone should be held to the same standard? Yes. And if anyone else had been involved in government projects while going on podcasts and smoking weed, they’d at the very least be fired.
Step one Musk needs to be arrested and sent to El Salvador.
Yeah, let's give the trump administration the power to seize companies it doesn't like, that is a great idea that def won't be abused all the time
The author probably forgot who runs the nation of usa.
We no longer live in a world where our biggest fear would be the government controlling high level corporations and their operators.
We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology. Right now it's mostly tourism rockets and satellites, but now we see Skum weaponizing that technology, and/or using it as a bargaining chip. He has cut off Starlink in a war zone to benefit the county who defers to him, but is openly hostile to the US, and now he's threatening to cut off our access to the space station. He is using tech that WE PAY FOR with government contracts and grants, to pursue his own diplomacy, for his own benefit, and against our interests.
Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn't step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.
We paid for Skum's technology, and he gets to control it as a courtesy. Just the threat of using it against us should be enough reason to declare him a national security threat, confiscate his American-taxpayer financed businesses, and imprison him.
We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology.
People have lived in that world for most/all of human history. Assuming you come from the west, you're coming from a place where for the last couple of hundred years it's been more cost effective to just buy the government instead. Is that better? Maybe, it's a little more stable. I dunno if it's good though.
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We are already fucked. The choices given are siding with Trump, and end up like Russia, or side with Elon, and end up like Cyberpunk 2077
..or organize, start/join unions, get involved with your local community and build up some real resistance that isn't based off obscene wealth, lawfare or media brainwashing. Once you have experienced something real, it's quite hard to understand how or why anyone would fall for the alternative.
Only useless people side with those two.
Stop being useless.
Has anyone considered funding NASA?
They made rockets that didn't explode with duct tape and a TI-83 calculator.
Shouldn't be incompatible with nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Just give it all to NASA, actually.
Sure, that's the ideal.
Is it likely? Ehhhh
From this admin? Nah. It'll be stolen and given to, idk, Thiel or Vance or whoever, but not nationalized, just reprivatized.
They didn't, because someone got paid to write this article!
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No thanks, demolish Leon Hitler's space program and bury it. NASA should be the US leader for space missions and not a South African neo-Nazi sack of shit.
imagine how many more rockets we could reuse if the NASA subdivision formerly known as SpaceX did literally any of the standard, rigorous fault-checks.
If we do, we'll definitely reach mars. I can imagine it now! Its 3055 and everything is totally fine now that we can escape to Mars in an inflatable city. A whole 4000 square feet of freedom soaring thru the sky with the last of us aboard ready for a whole new life and a good 7 in inflated cities for our children to live. She changes her name to Mother Gaia and His name is now Adam. One day in the distant future perhaps a large meteor would come roaring and reshaping our planet into livable space again.
Starlink should not just be nationalized but internationalized.
It is internet for everyone on earth, not everyone in the USA.
Every larger nation deploying their own constellation would be a pointless waste of resources, and every smaller nation having to find reliable partner-nations to tap into for that internet access would inevitably lead to people ending up without access due to political games.
Low orbit satellite constellations are the perfect candidate for sharing, they would literally sit unused over most of their orbits otherwise.
I think every larger nation deploying their own constellation would reduce people losing access due to political games.
If there's only one network with the same topology as Starlink, then the USA, China, or Russia will end up making a bunch of rules on everyone else just like Elon does today. Look how the USA abuses centralized internet infrastructure already. Multiple overlapping systems would be wastefully redundant, but reduces the risk of censorship.
We can't get along and can't have nice things.
You want a truly multinational organization responsible for it, nothing that can be controlled by a single nation, even one as (ex)influential as the us.
Something based on the UN perhaps.
Combine that with making internet access a human right, to stop denying connectivity outright.
Ideally then you could't enforce meaningful censorship, but more realistically you would route regions to their respective governments servers so they could censor as before on their territory.
That would not guarantee free access to the internet to everyone, but should be an acceptable compromise to basically all nations.
After that, other doubting nations could still pull their own constellation, nothing is stopping that.
I would love if the internet program was uncensored, but that probably needs personal circumvention same as now, if such a program wants any degree of success.
It sounds like we don't disagree that much, I just think other doubting nations is extremely likely.
Edit: but gosh darn that is nice to imagine. Everyone, everywhere, having free internet.
Yeah.
The maintenance of these conatellations is pricy, so perhaps if such an international program does prove itself trustworthy you'd see other national alternatives get retired.
I mean it's not like the US would do it anyway as things stand, more likely for such a program to get started independently and to end up outcompeting starlink down the line.
NOW they complain about giving Musk money?
Most of the 38 billion was given by Biden.
We? No. USA can if it wants that shit.
American exceptionalism is so fucking annoying. Their country is failing to a point hopefully this first person shit rightfully corrects to third person.
American exceptionalism definitely sucks, but this is not an example of American exceptionalism. The source is an article from an American magazine, published for an American audience.
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Lets reach a compromise. Impeach Trump (successfully) and then take away SpaceX from Elon. That way things would be fair.
Trump has been impeached successfully. Twice. What I assume you mean is that he hasn't been removed from office. That could be the consequence of an impeachment, but not necessarily.
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