Our space launch program was nationalized for decades and decades. Yeah there were private contracts but the really expensive research that loses money was all done by the government and the private contracts were mostly just there to line pockets and to put money in certain districts for political reasons.

If you have something that is universally desirable and needs to be built at scale you generally need to do it with the government one way or another. This is why I transportation network is almost entirely paid for by the government. Even the little boxes of metal we putz around on the network with are mostly paid for by the government in the form of heavily subsidized gasoline and electricity.

It's not just a lack of outsourcing it's the fact that space travel, at least until very very recently, was a public good and a national utility.

That's nothing compared to ignorance on the topic. Starlink satellites re-enter the atmosphere within about 5-6 years. They leave zero space junk and don't contribute to Kessler Syndrome. They are in too low of an orbit.

Also give the low orbit, the relative efficiency of spacex launches, and the number of satellites in a payload per launch it turns out each Starlink satellite produces 340/25/5 = 2.72 Tonnes CO2 / year, or about half as much as your car. The entire Starlink program produces less emissions than a tiny tiny country town near bumfuck nowhere, Wisconsin.

There's so many problems with Starlink, how did you pick the two things that are completely irrelevant to complain about?

Tell us you don't know what we're talking about without telling us.

The JWST is not space launch or service industry. It's a single product, and there's no limit of who can launch it.
The JWST is also not "US". It's an international joint project by multiple countries (including agencies like the ESA, CSA and NASA) collaborating to develop a telescope.

By the way there is one good example in the JWST of what we're actually talking about: The JWST was launched on an Ariane-5. The Ariane-5 is wholly manufactured in Europe which just like the USA it limits it outsourcing to prevent any external parties manufacturing components for launch vehicles, and that launch proceeded from an a European territory.

Go watch the two Patrick Boyle videos on the subject he covers it in detail but they have basically maxed out their addressable market

Basically anyone who needs launch services is already either using SpaceX or somebody else and there is no additional people who need launch services on the horizon except maybe starlink except that starlink has all the customers it's going to get because there's only so many people in the world who have $100 a month for high-speed internet and don't already have wired or already have starlink.

Now if SpaceX created a magic rocket that could defy the laws of physics and do launches for a fraction of the cost sure go ahead. A drastic reduction in the cost of launching satellites and rockets would increase the number of customers. But there really isn't any sign of that. Even if they get that fully reusable rocket working exactly as planned the cost reductions aren't enough to create whole new markets. It's not a paradigm shift it's a solid improvement. And that again assumes all of musk's promises come true and he has a very very bad track record of making promises. I mean how many cybertrucks do you own? How many $40,000 so I have a trucks do you own?

Kudos to you for realizing the AI stuff is just a scam but assuming you believe the rocket company isn't a scam where is the addressable market that's going to justify the valuation? How are you going to get your money out of that company either in the form of dividends or stock increases? Is this a case where you expect the price to shoot up like Tesla did so that even though the company isn't fundamentally sound you'll be able to sell the stock off? In other words greater fool theory? If not where is the money going to come from to pay the dividends you're going to need in order for your investment to be profitable, again assuming you take out the AI stuff? Because the reason they are doing the AI stuff is that well, all the reasons I listed above. SpaceX and starlink are not profitable enough to justify the valuation and they do not have the growth potential to become that profitable even without the AI anchor dragging them down

Because they eventually come back down. That is a huge problem because it becomes a very large Capital cost to keep starlink in business.

On paper it's nice for SpaceX because it keeps having to send rockets up but in practice since the two companies are owned by the same people and since they're only so many people in the world who give a rat's ass about satellite internet and can't afford it it ends up just being a sunk cost.

One of the core things that was supposed to make SpaceX and starlink profitable was that it would become so cheap to send rockets up because of musk magic that the capital expenditure of replacing the satellites wouldn't need to be factored in so much. This did not happen. It is also why the SpaceX IPO docs keep talking about ai and not rockets. If you're investing in a rocket company that only ever claims to be an AI company then you should have already figured out something is deeply deeply wrong.

I don't think anyone even the musk faithful is going to buy into SpaceX except for a handful of people who think that they can greater fool their way into some quick profits. But I don't think anyone's going to have a choice. Again if you go watch the youtube videos from Patrick Boyle on the topic of SpaceX the way the IPO is structured it is part of nasdaq's top 100 so every single major index fund and investment fund is more or less forced to buy it. There are rules to prevent this but there's so much money to be made on this scam that NASDAQ waived the rules for SpaceX.

People get so excited about a reusable rocket but like I've mentioned before I could keep my old 94 Honda Accord running if I really really wanted to but past a certain point it cost more to keep it running than it was worth. There is a reason why NASA gave up on reusable rockets and that's it. You can't put something under that much stress and keep sending it up into space over and over again without a shit ton of expensive maintenance and if you skip the maintenance the rockets just blow up and if you don't skip the maintenance you might as well have just built another rocket.

The thing I keep seeing though is the faithful don't show up on this website or any other forum that isn't heavily moderated to prevent them from seeing wrong think. The right wing has completely retreated into safe spaces and anyone who is still on board with Elon Musk has joined those safe spaces and the right wing with them because they pretty much have to protect themselves from reality in order to see Elon Musk as anything but a skeezy grifter getting ready to steal their retirement money.

The billionaires are planning on replacing us with robots and machines and AI. So they aren't going to need us to be productive in order to generate wealth. That's the entire point of AI.

The problem AI solves is paying wages. But what that means is you have a machine doing work that you used to have to pay wages for. That means the people you used to pay wages no longer have any bargaining power over you. They cannot threaten to withhold their labor.

Now they could threaten to start their own businesses but you have limitless money so you can just run them out of business.

And finally they could threaten to kill you but well, you have thugs and militaries and automated killbots and a surveillance State and drones that can bomb them into pulp.

I mean Christ they took out Black Wall Street with a freaking biplane and you're going to go up against guys with drones with your semi-automatic assault rifle that you modded to be fully automatic?

The ruling class know about all the things that the working class can do to interfere with their techno feudal hellscape future and they are taking steps to make sure you can't interfere with it. Meanwhile about 40% of the working class is deeply, deeply concerned about ethics and game journalism, trans girls in sports and satanic heavy metal music.

Personally I think we are boned.

Because right now that is literally the only thing I am looking for in a politician. If they are just not an open fascist then hey that's good news.

Also none of you fuckers give a shit about Trump fucking kids so you can piss right off with your infidelity bullshit.

Everything is performative wishes as long as guys like you keep voting for Trump and telling us you didn't. You're not the silent majority you're the silent minority with voter suppression making sure you get to pick your guy. Or rather billionaires pick your guy and you follow along.

I will remind everyone that the $22 an hour minimum wage for fast food workers which is boosted wages for all workers in California was signed by Gavin newsom. And he absolutely could have vetoed it.

Never let perfect be the enemy of good. Newsom is a huge step up from where we are right now.

If done properly under a doctor supervision. Every single sport is using steroids they're just pretending they don't. And we pretend with them. In wrestling they call it kayfabe.

I noticed it when I noticed that the trans women athletes were getting their asses handed to them if they had been on their hormones for any length of time. It's because the hormones that correct their medical condition also conflict with the steroids they need to be competitive and they quickly get to a point where they can't compete. It's why trans women in sports is a complete non-issue.

The reason I bring this up isn't for more dumb woke politics but to illustrate that no matter how tiny or insignificant the sport seems, like women's College swimming for Christ's sake, the athletes are taking steroids.

The main opposition right now to steroids is that it's not fair because it should be a natural competition. But like most drugs making them illegal just puts them underground and makes them less safe.

And if everybody is taking the steroids and taking them under medical supervision then at the very least the playing field is genuinely level.

And if you don't like it there are leagues that are certified steroid free that do actual testing methodologies that catch anyone doping and kick them out. It's not actually hard to do and we know how to do it. If you look at the steroid free bodybuilding competitions though you're going to find those guys are a hell of a lot smaller. They are however a hell of a lot less likely to die in their thirties.

We could for example allow steroids in the broader bodybuilding competitions but use the tactics for catching abusers to catch people who are not doing it safely. So you could have people no longer dying in their 30s but still competing the way people want to see. There would still be health problems from that kind of steroid use but if you cut it off around your mid 30s or your career ends inevitably you can undo most of the damage. Kind of like how some sumo wrestlers go on diets after their career. Still a shitload of damage to their bodies but you can mitigate it.

Also reading comprehension.

I'm talking about the entire electric grid the entire human race. In this context the word immediate is still 10 to 20 years. In the sense of a project of that size the word immediate still applies. But it doesn't mean it happens in 2 weeks like how peace with Iran happens in 2 weeks.

This is the problem we have. Any sense of nuance goes out the window and you have to be so damn fucking blunt with everybody.

There was a push called The Green New deal that was going to be this huge jobs program to transition to clean energy and energy independence. A bunch of dumb lefties in US House of Representatives did a preamble bill which is just a bit of flowerly language that doesn't mean or anything or do anything and included a bunch of mentions of social justice. It killed the entire real bill. People hate social justice so out the window went everything with it even though the nonsensical preamble bill was just there to cater to the left wing base... It meant nothing and it did nothing and the green New deal which was a huge jobs bill that would have had a lot of benefits for everybody involved died.

I don't know what the fuck you do with that. When something is stupid as a bunch of dumb Congress critters doing something dumb and turn the public against the bill that benefits the public that easily. It's that inability to understand nuance or read between the lines that's dooming us.

Human beings have not adapted to modern living.

The problem with Newsom is that he's pretty, but also incompetent.

Unfortunately incompetence doesn't seem to be an impediment to being elected.

Athletes used to use amphetamines for sports before it was illegal. People died.

The amphetamines let you push through the pain, but pain can be a signal that you're in trouble and shouldn't push more.

We already had that thanks to Russia. When Europe showed the world fossil fuel dependence on foreign nations isn't a viable strategy, THAT is when a major acceleration to energy independence starts. And ever nation has light and wind.

Yeah like I said positive effect, but one already known. Any country who were looking towards hedging any kind of bet on energy already got the hint a few years ago. Those who didn't are unlikely to be moved this time.

Yeah sorry but that's a scenario that only happens in your head, especially given how a simple file server could actually be admin'd by a simple LLM manual. Look for another article to rage at the young generation rather than making up scenarios irrelevant to this one.

It's cleaner and better organized than Linux. It's actually easier than Linux.

The only hard part is getting the hardware to work, since there's less driver support for FreeBSD than for Linux. (Admittedly, that's a serious drawback if it impacts you, but nothing if it doesn't).

These are the words of someone who never liked Star Wars to begin with, and wants it to die.

In reality Star Wars is a fine universe, and all it takes is one good story set in that universe to bring life to it. I'd like to see how Palpatine can truly be defeated (who is more the Sith ideology than a character).