tfm

SpaceX came to prominence and it's not because their rockets are always falling apart.

Ok, please tell me one thing they did to advance space exploration. And please don't say reusable rockets that bring down costs, because this is still a pipe dream.

Hell, the whole reason we're now talking about a European space industry is because of Starlink, so clearly capitalism was able to innovate that.

We already had satellite internet long before Starlink. In fact, Starlink is a bad idea if you consider astronomy and space exploration.

https://www.space.com/satellite-megaconstellations-spacex-starlink-interference-astronomy

The only reason Starlink was created is that Elon wanted to play online games while on some island and didn't get the latency down for it to work well. (Source: my dog)

Jokes aside, why do you need ultra-high-speed internet always and everywhere? For emergencies or normal usage, it definitely doesn't matter if a request takes 10ms or 250ms.

Taking something from a proof of concept in a lab into factories all over the world and then continuously improving it is innovation.

But does it need private institutions for that? Innovation, at least in my opinion, means making possible something we previously thought was impossible. Production and distribution aren't.

If something is truly wanted or needed, people will manufacture and distribute it easily without the need for private corporations to tell us what we need.

continuously improving

If you think that money is the driving factor, how would you explain the entire open-source ecosystem?

That seems more of a problem with lack of spine than anything else.

Huh? Of whom? The billionaire-sponsored politicians?

but putting it in state hands encourages stagnation and will eventually leave you unable to compete globally.

NASA sent people to the moon in the seventies. SpaceX must be happy if their rocket gets into low earth orbit without falling apart.

It's a widespread myth that capitalism is best at innovation. Quite the contrary is true. Most (real) innovations get developed with public resources in public institutions and private companies then take it and commercialize on it.

The internet, the touchscreen, computers, heck even AI, all developed with public money.

Also if someone tries to do stupid shit like Elon you can just nationalize the company or enforce some other harsh consequence.

And as we see it doesn't and will never happen in our current system.

He does shit like this because he knows nobody can punish him.

And that's the reason why no unelected individual should have control over so many resources which usually only countries have.

Critical infrastructure shouldn't be in private hands. As Musk perfectly demonstrates right now.

Und wenn das Geld aus der Politik verschwindet!

Sicher ist es traurig und ich würde das Geld auch lieber im Sozialsystem anstatt der Aufrüstung sehen. Aber welche alternativen gibt es? Einfach nichts machen und wenn die Russen dann anklopfen mit runtergezogener Hose dastehen?

Ich lebe gerne in einer Demokratie und wie wir alle hier im Fediverse auch meine Meinungsfreiheit.

Bevor Russland nicht zu einer echten und vollständigen Demokratie wird, wird Russland IMMER auf Eroberungskurs gehen und wir müssen uns verteidigen können. Das hat die Geschichte schon immer gezeigt.

Commercial/private spaceflights are dumb and shouldn't exist. Just more trash that flies at bullet speed in our orbit.

TIL

It should

!TooDumbToImagine@europe.pub

All of them are wrong. But he is the wrongest

That's never wrong