After giving in to Putin/Xi’s demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon’s Space company with our national secrets
After giving in to Putin/Xi’s demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon’s Space company with our national secrets
In what would be an unprecedented move, the US needs to nationalize SpaceX in the name of national security.
It’s not unprecedented, though.
They don’t need to go that far. Just force Musk to divest. (And prosecute him for any crimes he’s committed, but that might be asking too much of the government.)
No, not everything needs to be nationalized. That’s a lazy excuse to solving problems and often just leads to different issues. Look at the fights we have for NASA’s current miniscule budget slice for a perfect example. Our government is dog shit at allocating and running departments like this, primarily because of politics.
Remember that neither NASA or the military actually build anything themselves, everything is outsourced to companies like SpaceX, Lockheed, Boeing, etc. So you’re advocating all of that to be brought into the government bureaucracy machine with no existing infrastructure to manage it, for it to be smothered to death by politicians trying to “prove” that government doesn’t work.
Instead, they just need to demand that Elon not have any decision making position at the company to continue getting contracts, blacklist him. As it is, daily SpaceX operations run without Elon. Gwynne Shotwell actually runs the company, regardless of specific titles. Elon doesn’t actually do the engineering work either, so while he may be involved in major decisions, it’s more the overall vision, the company would operate just fine whether he’s there or not. HE is the problem, not SpaceX as a company, and not the entire C-Suite team, just him. Get rid of him and the place runs just like it does now, works towards the same goals, and daily operations and contracts continue as normal,
Lol what? You think that would be easy? Like when Michael tries to “declare bankruptcy” in The Office?
Good thing no one said everything, just a rocket company that NASA wouldn’t need to outsource to anymore since they would have the facilities to make all the rockets they wanted themselves.
Problem is that if SpaceX becomes part of NASA, then it’ll be like the space shuttle. It’ll need parts made by every small company that contributed to some random representative in every state, so we’ll end up with 300+ contractors all building critical components.
Why can’t it source those things the same way SpaceX does now?
It could, but that’s not how these types of programs get run. They’re as much about making jobs in specific areas as they are about solving a problem.
That’s not a very convincing argument. The U.S. has never nationalized a company like SpaceX before. We have no idea how it would be run.
I don’t find the libertarian “everything the government does is inefficient and corrupt” ideas very compelling.
they wouldn’t need to take SpaceX. just replace Musk’s ownership/control with Some Advisory Board™️staffed by project managers that know the fuck they’re doing. SpaceX wouldn’t necessarily need to be closed- just a change in ownership.
Granted, that’s pratically a pipe dream since congress has been intent on privatization instead of having NASA be in that role.
after about a decade, the government then sells its stake off slowly; probably reaping a rather huge profit while it’s at it.