- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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we should probably invest in making sure people have affordable housing, food, and healthcare before worrying about militarising space.
I disagree.
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You already have a government space agency. Maybe give them more funding so they don’t have to rely on space-x to get their stuff into orbit?
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There’s a national telecom network already in place. It at least has the potential to be faster and more reliable, if it isn’t already… At least compared to low earth orbit satellite coverage.
There’s no good reason to continue providing Elon or his companies with any government handouts. Pull that funding and give it to… I dunno, students who have more debt than homeowners with a mortgage… NASA… Literally anything that helps people?
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You have NASA FFS. Just fund it.
Don’t give bail-outs to billionaires.
literally nasa
Yeah I mean the tax payers have literally already paid for all of both SpaceX and Starlink. The public paid for it, the public should own it.
They’re just following in the footsteps of Comcast. The FCC gave SpaceX/Starlink $885.5 million to provide rural broadband after they gave Comcast over $1 billion less than 5 years ago to do the same thing. Starlink actually works out there from what I understand, so I guess that’s something.
The FCC revoked that award before the money was handed over because starlink wasn’t meeting the speeds they needed to meet for the deadline 3 years in the future and they didn’t think they would make it. The speeds that money was supposed to help them achieve launching the satellites required to meet it.
No one else had that made up requirement put on them in advance.
The goal that was 3 years in the future, which would have been around now or early 2026, required them to meet their speed (100d + 20u) and latency (<100ms) goals for 40% of the 650k rural users.
They had 1.5 million US customers at the start of 2025, not sure how many are part of this rural 650k but id imagine the majority are, and only 260k of the rural ones have to meet the requirements.
Ookla did a post about starlink in Maine where it shows many of the users are meeting those requirements
https://www.ookla.com/articles/above-maine-starlink-twinkles
Median DL: 116.77 (over the required 100)
Media UL: 18.17 (just shy of the required 20)
90th Percentile DL: 250.96
90th Percentile UL 27.17
If Maine is a representative example, then they are probably meeting their 40% target of 260k rural users despite not getting the money which would have accelerated things and made launches more focused on meeting the goals.
Edit: extra details.
Edit: I was just looking up more info on the program, and the deadline to report would have been in January 2025, so it would have been with the 1.5 million users they had at the start of the year, not around now, or 2026 as I’d said. That Ookla report was December 2024. We should get a report from the FCC (this summer?) that outlines how many others met their respective 40% target.
Works is a strong word. It’s a better choice than dialup or Hughesnet, but that’s damning with extremely faint praise. If you need to rely on it you might be in trouble. There are still gaps in the coverage where you will be dropped for a while.
We should just fund NASA and let SpaceX and Starlink go bankrupt to competitors.
SpaceX has loads of capable engineers. If NASA gets a massive budget increase, they need to draw from that pool of talent.
SpaceX and Starlink basically have no competition, and if they did, said competitor would also need to be heavily subsidized.
These last few years they’ve had very little successes, but the point is it should stay competitive and not be automatically handed to these doofuses. Even the USSR maintained a competitive rocketry sector.
How has spacex had very few successes? Their Falcon 9 rocket is basically operating like clockwork. They launch more rockets than the rest of the world combined.
The starship failures are higher profile but even those failures are typical when testing new vehicles, especially one as experimental and complex.
They weren’t as typical with previous SpaceX models, Starship is easily their least successful project.
Since SpaceX is launching large quantities of commercial satellites, big whoop, do you also celebrate when companies buy back stocks?
Why would I celebrate stock buybacks?
Also spacex lost like 20 or so Falcons before their first successful mission. Maybe they will explode as many Starships, but they have hit that number yet.
It’s ok to hate Elon, and there are many valid criticisms to make regarding spacex, but they’re the best in the world right now and it isn’t even close.
The biggest issue with Spacex is that Elon needs to be removed before he ruins it like he ruined Tesla.
SpaceX and starlink have had very little success the last few years? What have you been smoking?!
Compared to previously SpaceX has been seeing more and more failed launches, Starlink is banned in a number of countries and there are already other low orbit internet satellite providers popping up.
You say “failed”, engineers say “ok what have we learned and what can we improve/fix from this?”. These launches are tests. Every single launch is testing every single part of the hardware and software. Tests failing isn’t a bad thing, as it helps you fix problems and make things better.
They are years behind schedule and obscenely over budget on this testing. They’re not even making new technology here, they are just cheaping out on the builds to funnel money into their own pockets.
You have any links to support that it’s just cheap materials causing the failures?
NASA hasn’t take the slightest risk since Challenger. They wouldn’t have accomplished 1/20th of the launch capability SpaceX has developed in the last 5 years.
Generally NASA doesn’t “develop” rockets per se, they commission rockets to specification.
It’s the specification process that’s the thing, nobody there would have gone out on a limb the way SpaceX has with their recovery systems. Look where they are on a shuttle replacement: the Apollo capsule with more room.
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!
If that was actually their expenditure I don’t think they’d have their budget cut.
What “they made” 50 years ago is of little value now. Expertise matters, and it’s lost with time passing.
Still - yes. Nationalization is a bad solution because it gives the state power to nationalize. Seems a truism.
Just let NASA work in its normal role. Instead of replacing that with SpaceX contracts.
You could always just fund the space agency you already have, instead of funneling money to a foreign billionaire.
No this the one time I’m with the commies. Nationalize that shit. Like you said it’s all taxpayer money anyway. A little bit of Wall Street speculation, but who gives a fuck about those people
So you wanna nationalize the whole telecom industry then?
Well, now that you bring it up…
I fully agree. Any industry that can’t survive on its own and needs public funds, shouldn’t exist. If it’s an essential service it should be nationalized.
So you want Donald Trump in charge of the telecom industry and any other industries that have received some sort of public subsidy?
lol you really threatened Lemmy with a good time
Yes, absolutely. And power too
And pharma. And O&G
Yes please, maybe they’ll fix the shit they’ve been getting paid for decades to fix finally.
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
it’ll be sold to the highest bidder is my bet
I would find it funny that billionaires would pass off the opportunity of taking musk’s position on a discount
I’ll settle for whichever one annoys him the most.
NASA was always there and they couldn’t achieve what SpaceX has while simultaneously having a lot more capital to do so. I’m sorry but if there’s any proof that private sector’s self interest is a better driver of innovation than common interest SpaceX is it. This is a terrible idea that sounds like a good idea if you do not understand how good Musk was and is at cutting costs. That’s his actual real skill in business and is well documented. Doesn’t make him less of a prick but you also cannot downplay what he has achieved with this company.
You mean the NASA who landed people on the moon?
So let’s assume you aren’t a moon landing denier and use that as a baseline, NASA is clearly capable of things given the right circumstances and budget.
SpaceX benefited from his reputation and money, because they sure as shit didn’t benefit from his technical acumen.
Business wise he is successful because he’s rich and influential and that works to mitigate how shitty he is at actually running an organisation, that doesn’t mean he has skills as a business person that means he has money and influence, in his case originally from the mine, then from buying and bullying his was in to businesses that were technologically sound and boosting them with his money.
You could make an argument he’s a relatively good investor, but he’s an actively bad CEO.
NASA is clearly capable of things given the right circumstances and budget.
Absolutely agree with this but there is no denying the innovation levels at spacex are higher (I’m not saying this is down to musk specifically. The man is a horror story of a human).
We were all in total awe when seeing booster stages land themselves successfully for the first time. It was such a giant leap forward and to the best of my knowledge no government funded space agency was even considering it before spacex.
Perhaps look into the DC-X program, fully 20 years before SpaceX Falcon: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
Absolutely agree with this but there is no denying the innovation levels at spacex are higher
Undeniably, they’ve been doing amazing work (at least from my rocketry technology peasant point of view).
SpaceX has an internal team that works to make sure Musk can’t interfere with anything, because he’s so bad at managing businesses. Gwynne Shotwell is the one in charge of SpaceX.
I am not surprised in the slightest. I mean if you have a bunch of smart, highly motivated people it sounds like keeping the crazy man at arms length is the kind of thing they’d organise very effectively.
They landed people on the moon and then did fuck all for decades.
When Musk started SpaceX he was not well known yet, SpaceX came before Tesla.
He was able to get into the businesses he has because he was rich yes, but you can find many accounts of engineers that worked under him speak of how good he was at finding ways to cut unnecessary costs.
He’s not a technical genius that’s for sure. But he has been a good CEO for SpaceX. Terrible one for Tesla though, mostly because he bought into his own myth and became a drug addict. But I refuse to simply wave away his achievements simply because I don’t like him. I can not like someone and still acknowledge they have done something good.
They landed people on the moon and then did fuck all for decades.
Indeed, all i was saying is that they were capable given budget and circumstances.
That budget and direction comes from the government.
When Musk started SpaceX he was not well known yet, SpaceX came before Tesla.
I will admit, i thought spacex was just another company he bought his way in to, like tesla, seems i was mistaken about that.
He was able to get into the businesses he has because he was rich yes, but you can find many accounts of engineers that worked under him speak of how good he was at finding ways to cut unnecessary costs.
And you can equally find many accounts of having to distract him from the day to day operations because he’s unreliable , unpredictable and chaotic (none of those meant in a good way).
He’s also known for buying good press and using litigation to silence people.
He’s not a technical genius that’s for sure. But he has been a good CEO for SpaceX.
I doubt this, but that could just be bias, i don’t have any actual evidence of the long term impact of him as CEO.
Recently though, he’s provably been significantly more of a liability than a benefit, even if just from a PR and public sentiment point of view.
But I refuse to simply wave away his achievements simply because I don’t like him. I can not like someone and still acknowledge they have done something good.
Indeed, i push back on the myth that he’s some self made tony stark genius, but it isn’t like he’s not achieved anything.
I would personally attribute most of that to neptoism, wealth, luck and opportunity, but that doesn’t remove the achievement itself.
That’s true but it doesn’t solve the problem now.
This is the thing, NASA is underfunded as it is, if we nationalized SpaceX, we wouldn’t actually continue to fund it appropriately and it would simply die. Actually, with trump at the helm, nationalizing it would mean Trump immediately liquidating it. SpaceX is definitely the most successful rocket company in the US. It would be an awful shame for the space industry and for humanity’s future in space.
I hate musk as much as the next guy, but I think the success of spaceX is undeniable. Their success with reusable rockets is not just impressive, it’s ground breaking and important. Developing a fully reusable rocket is probably the most important challenge humans are working on in this era, and I only know of three companies attempting to do it. I don’t want to kill the company that’s furthest along.
You guys are so stuck in the cult of personality. WE PAID FOR EVERYTHING SPACEX DID. IT BELONGS TO US.
Not to mention that Musk himself contributed nothing to SpaceX’s technical achievements. All he did was insist that the audio of their launches and recoveries include employees cheering maniacally - easily the most annoying aspect of SpaceX.
I’m sorry… you don’t think employees who are achieving world firsts are allowed to celebrate?
You must be fun at parties
You must be fun at parties
This meme is even more annoying than SpaceX employees being ordered to cheer.
You paid for services rendered. By your logic you should eventually own your neighborhood grocery store because that’s where you buy your bread.
You’re talking to someone on lemmy, there’s a very high likelihood they think exactly that.
Us? Do you own NASA? Do you have any say on how funds are assigned to NASA? No? Then it doesn’t belong to “Us” it belongs to the government, a distinct organization with different goals and motivations than “Us” the people.
Let’s say I bought you a car, I paid for it in full and then gave it to you, and in return you sometimes drive me around.
Let’s say I get tired of this arrangement, should I repossess the car just to drive it into the ocean? What would be the point of that? Sure, it’s rightfully mine, but what good does it do to destroy it?
“IT BELONGS TO US” is not a very compelling argument for arbitrary distribution.
Of course he was always a jerk, but I still think of a reality where Elon never went (officially) Nazi and just stuck with his otherwise important companies. Tesla being an important early mover in EVs, especially in such an oil-dependent country, and all the cool stuff SpaceX has been up to.
I hear you, why can’t we be in that timeline?
Arrest Musk on violation of controlled substances acts, file immigration violation charges, invalidate his ownership shares due to securities fraud, as he falsified education and naturalization forms.
Or just emminent domain the shit. The Law is just made up right now.
Such an effort would be likely to fail AND take longer than the current administration is likely to exist.
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
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.
It’s hilarious seeing all these “anti oligarch” people come out of the woodwork now that it’s a catchphrase of their political party, despite that party being run by oligarchs.
Like you said, this is how the world has been essentially forever. People are only against it now that their teams oligarchs are upset that they aren’t in as much control as usual.
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.
I am not saying that I don’t agree with you. But this country is still not even close to considering nationalizing its own telecommunication infrastructure. Much less a privately held space company and a service of communication satellites. A large chunk of America believes that a for-profit business model for every good and service possible in life is the best course of action.
A lot of people are calling this a bailout for Elon, but in reality it would be a seizure. Elon doesn’t want to let go of Starlink and the US likely wouldn’t pay him what it’s worth to take it over.
What people seem to be missing is the precedent this would set. It’s all well and good when we empower the office of the president to seize a private company we don’t like, but after we give them that power what’s to stop them from seizing other businesses?
XYZ company refuses to get rid of their DEI policy because the shareholders voted to keep it? Well now the orange man can seize it.
Let’s not forget that previously it took 2/3rd majority to confirm presidential appointments, but the Senate under Obama decided to change that rule to 50% to get past Republican objections. The result of this is all these shit appointments Trump has passed with 51% of the Senate, none of them would have gotten by if the Democrats hadn’t made a precedent for changing the rules.
If not Musk should be forced from his roles in these companies. You cannot be a defense contractor and do ketamine.
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.
You should familiarize yourself with Telsat Canada’s LEO plans. Should be complete in less than 2 years.
They say this is for enterprise and government, and they talk about “terminals”. This seems more like a Hughes network, and let me tell you, if it’s that bad, you want nothing to do with it.
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Then the UN should start their own starlink-like company. Nothing is stopping them.
Can you imagine who would run those companies if they were government owned?
Yeah. A gov; be it the UN or a country.
Having worked and then contracted to regional and Muni govs, and worked for dotcoms, I can tell you one of them follows way, WAY more of the regs than the other.
It’s like transpo & highways vs private roads and rail: one of them is way better-maintained when there is a comparison.
What even is this comment?
Not the person you commented on, but think about the reason why people are wanting SpaceX to be nationalised when NASA exists and is already Government owned.
SpaceX is light years, pardon the pun, ahead of NASA. If SpaceX was taken over by the government, SpaceX would likely end up like NASA as it would be taken over by the same people and have mountains more red tape in order to do anything. It would destroy SpaceX and put space exploration back decades.
SpaceX is getting the government funding NASA doesn’t anymore.
