SpaceX and Starlink should have to be broken up. xAI’s purchase by SpaceX never should have been allowed. The contracts for NASA should have always required ownership of the investments made and the amount of rented tech never should have been allowed critical mass. Starlink should have been allowed a monopolistic ownership of its spots in space and should have been for forced to create an open interoperability standard from the jump.
The fact that “SI” is how SpaceX is talking about those AI projects shows they are very much still a government contractor even in this phase, just looking at different pots of money. Contracts that Musk’s massive ties to corruption should be viewed as last resort, at least until they cut him out of the company (while he is charged and tried for his corruption).
Imprison Musk for treason and nationalize spaceX
nationalize as in purchase? or steal?
when countries nationalize a company they actually purchase it.
so you want the government to pay Elon literal trillions, for what exactly?
prioritize health care, housing and reducing inflation, ignore shitty people in orbit for now.
Pay him? Fucking imprison him for his DOGE crimes alone, then seize his assets and utilize them for the national good.
That sounds very communist. US doesn’t nationalize companies. US wages war against countries known for doing that (right now it’s Iran).
And Elon is more like an Edison than a Tesla so there will be no inter-agency co-operation for sure.
nationalize the everlasting fuck out of this company.
Imagine if we’d funded NASA amd taxed billionaires propely to pay for it all along.
Who would have guessed that spacex would squeeze nasa the very first chance they got. No one saw that coming.
NASA does not need SpaceX. Never will. What NASA needs is for the rich white assholes in DC to stop fucking them over with predatory contractors for five goddamn minutes.
And also proper funding
It’s why they need SpaceX…
They don’t have funding, their rocket program has been discontinued, the amazing reusable shuttle has been retired, and it’s all been done on purpose to make them dependent on the “private industry”.
Obviously if they have the right budget, they won’t need anyone. That’s the point.
the amazing reusable shuttle has been retired
In all fairness, the shuttle was more “refurbishable” than reusable. It needed to be almost completely rebuilt after every flight. Over its service life it proved to be both the most expensive and most dangerous way to get to space. It killed over 4 times more astronauts than any other spacecraft.
The shuttle was awesome, it was truly a great achievement! It made building the ISS possible. But… I’m glad it’s retired, we’re better off with more traditional rockets for many reasons.
we should nationalize spacex. it’s footprint to launch represents a real national security risk. it was literally built on federal contracts. it’s tech was pioneered by nasa and shittons of former nasa folk work there. it’s executive is erratic and unhinged and that’s a clear issue for national security. it’s utility in war - from ukraine to the middle east - needs to be controlled by the national security interests. Finally, spacex’s remit should be launch, not folding in x, grok, tesla and a bunch of other junk to inflate garbage stocks.
Broken up and and dismantled
This is why you don’t privatize space exploration and research
Or maybe it is why you should not use NASA as a piggy bank for politicians.
privatize space expiration
Dear god
Fixed, I still can’t find a good mobile keyboard
Four of my faves (in the order of what I imagine to be norminess):
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.menny.android.anysoftkeyboard/
Boring, reliable, stable, mature, has almost every language or feature that a standard keyboard can have.
https://f-droid.org/packages/tribixbite.cleverkeys/
New, and its biggest feature is its sophisticated and configurable swipe typing engine. I am not a huge fan of swipe typing per se, but this is a solid keyboard regardless. Works well in a terminal.
https://f-droid.org/packages/juloo.keyboard2/
Works very well in a terminal, reliable, solid, mature, programmer oriented but great for casual use as well.
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.dessalines.thumbkey/
My current fave, it’s for single finger speed typing. Do you want to compete with touch typing using only one thumb? This baby is for you. This keyboard requires modifying your typing habits. It’s a pita up front, however, once you learn the thumbkey way, every other keyboard is almost obsolete after that. I do say almost, because some games benefit from ctrl-alt-fn modifiers and a qwerty layout, vim keys are easier on a qwerty, things like that. But thumbkey is a beast jusf for doing fast one finger input.
Futo if your on android ticks (most) boxes for me.
Thanks!
I tried it a few months ago, the issue is I cut the end of my right thumb off when I was a teenager so soft keyboards are a problem. I have issues on iOS but its generally better
Ah shoot, that would do it.
Guessing that swipe typing is OK? I remember way back when it was first introduced as a 3rd party keyboard on Android I started using it, but quickly gave up.
Huh I wasn’t aware starlink is bringing in so much money.
In addition to the consumers using it, they’ve been making bank on commercial sales like airlines and cruiseships. But ya, it’s a money maker even accounting for having to renew the constellation every 5 years.
Also don’t forget starshield, so they’re taking in government money all around the world too
There’s a massive number of people for who the options are Starlink, or no Internet.
A lot of users here really can’t wrap their head around just how remote some people are. And then there’s vessels at sea etc.
yea we use Starlink at home, otherwise it’s ADSL that barely works -and I mean barely- and costs the exact same.
We had Starlink for a few months when we moved into our house. It was a new build and we were one of the first in the neighborhood, so the telecoms hadn’t laid out wire yet.
It was honestly great. We’d get almost a gig down and never really had any connection issues unless it was heavy snow.
My in laws live in the middle of nowhere and they went from I want to say hughsnet to Starlink and it’s been night and day for them.
Starlink has also been huge for vanlifers wanting to remote in to their jobs, but live on the road.
Revoke launch licenses until NASA gets what they need. Export ban on company and tech. Nationalize launch assets if absolutely necessary. Or at least threaten these things. SpaceX needs starlink, the kind of AI revenue they’d otherwise need is never going to materialize. Force them to play ball.
Sure, those are all things the government could do in a world where this wasn’t the intended outcome.
NASA is being fed to SpaceX like a prime rib.
All of these are rational national plans, if only the administration is rational and working on national interests.
If it was built with public money, it should be appropriated to public use.
They generally weren’t given money.
They won contracts and provided services. They did it almost entirely with fixed base price contracts as well. None of the cost plus, which was typical in space, and leans more into handouts as people intentionally try to milk the government by going over.
Its like if the US government buys billions of pieces of paper a year from paper suppliers and you expect them to own the paper companies that sell them the paper because they took government money for a sale. Many even own their own mills, but thats now a government mill since the government bought their paper.
This analogy falls apart in several ways. The majority of all funding for SpaceX comes from the government. This isn’t like a paper company that has massive contracts outside of the government. Furthermore a paper company is a dime a dozen and probably not a national security issue like the sole provider of needed launches.
Governments would probably never need to take over a mundane company like a paper producer, but they most certainly would need to take over a critical supplier of national security needed services because it is run by a space Nazi.
Doesn’t really matter if the government is the main source that gets it off the ground.
Maybe a upstart paper company was able to snag a contract and they could undercut existing companies because they found an abandoned mill that they got for pennies on the dollar.
National security is definitely an issue, but again nothing to do with how it was built. Thats entirely outside how something is funded.
Edit: just to clarify the majority of all early funding. Today its starlink, government money isnt the main thing now.
Musk also desperately needs that starlink revenue to continue until he can merge Tesla and SpaceX to cover for dropping Tesla sales.
Yeah that’ll happen. I’ll just stay standing while holding my breath until it does.
And who will make these restrictions? Until someone shoots trump, that’s not going to happen. Hopefully it happens soon.
SpaceX needs NASA contacts now now than ever. The jerk’s AI business has been shoved into SpaceX, and that’s a money burning machine. Should NASA take one too many contracts away from SpaceX, the huge red numbers will come out.
I think this is the right take.
SpaceX may believe they’ve discovered a business model without NASA, but when the bubble pops they’ll be singing a different tune.
This is also a good reason to not nationalize spaceX as so many in this thread are calling for. I don’t want to be financially responsible for the AI mess they’re investing in now. Let them eat those losses.
NASA helped keep SpaceX alive when it couldn’t make payroll, then spent decades making it indispensable. Now Musk has discovered that launching AI servers pays better than launching astronauts. Outsourcing your space program to one billionaire was a bold leap for mankind, straight into a monopoly with rocket engines.
Not just that. They helped them create everything they’ve made. NASA freely helped them design their rockets and gave them their information on technologies that would help them. SpaceX should be, at least in part, if not wholely, publicly owned.
I don’t think it was intentional on NASA, Boeing couldn’t really deliver with starliner and SLS isn’t as good as they hoped either.
SLS is a congressionally mandated jobs program.
NASA was forced to use existing shuttle infrastructure instead of developing new hardware with partners. If they had been given freedom, I’m sure we wouldn’t even need SpaceX for anything.
@Zron @technology True, #NASA was forced to use the Shuttle engines but part of the reason was the US had no capability to design and manufacture a similar rocket motor. We were entirely dependent on using the Russian Proton engines. This was one factor in support for helping SpaceX — to recreate a U.S. capability to build rocket motors. At the time, we needed a new launch system engine for smaller uncrewed spacecraft missions. That decision had nothing to do with the Lunar/Mars human spaceflight ambitions. The alternative proposal on the table was to refurbish stored ICBMs for this purpose. The Earth-to-Orbit ISS resupply need came later. (I know this because I was there and involved.)
True, NASA is basically a jobs program — for the southern states; this is where most of the money goes. LBJ did that to get the votes for the appropriations needed and to keep the southern state Democrats in the party. Part of the political culture at NASA HQ is to “efficiently distribute money to Congressional districts.” The NASA centers in Houston and Huntsville had a corresponding sense of entitlement, at least when I was working with them at the beginning of the Constellation program. Now that Senator Shelby (Alabama) is no longer the ranking head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, maybe things will start to change in the human spaceflight area. Huntsville’s NASA centers had/have responsibility for the remaining space shuttle’s engines.
Both are failed companies, but Musk has more money on hand and can keep the lights on for longer.
I need a comic of a man struggling to raise a child, then the child grows big and strong (roided up and addicted to debt) then punts the aging man off a cliff.
You type like an ai, why
Nationalize Space X after all these pedophiles are in prison, lol.
This result was inevitable the monent that the government decided to outsource their space exploration/scientific endeavors to a private company.
You don’t need to be Cassandra to be able to recognize 100% predictable outcomes.
Great article. Evil billionaire monopolizes the space launch industry with help from the Federal Government, could be alternate headline…It also sounds like a made for TV movie from the 80/90’s. So is NASA going do anything about it or are they really hoping that New Glen comes online rapidly to provide an alternate? There are several satellite companies, like AST Space mobile, that are also waiting to hitch a ride that seem to be cast to the side now with the recent change at Spacex to focus solely on Starship and stand down their workshorse F9.
This is why he’s wrapping all his other companies into SpaceX
