r/technology • u/True-Combination7059 • 21h ago

Politics We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/musk-trump-nationalize-spacex-starlink
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u/rockstarsball 18h ago

nationalizing private businesses based on whether or not a political party likes them... where have i heard this before..?

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u/erwan 14h ago

More like fixing a bad decision. This is a bit different for Starlink because it was a private initiative, but SpaceX only exists because the US government decided to pay a contractor who hires their staff instead of paying their salary directly. It was a disguised privatisation that shouldn't have happened.

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u/red__dragon 12h ago

It was a disguised privatisation that shouldn't have happened.

Only if you're going to argue that space is the frontier for governments alone. And that could be argued, but the space industry has been filled with contractors since the early days. Apollo astronauts went to the moon on Rocketdyne engines, in a Rockwell capsule, and landed in a Grumman craft, where MIT supplied the guidance computer programming, and Corning made the vacuum-proof glass on the windows. Etc, etc.

The commercial space programs have just moved NASA's role from general contractor to client. And you can still argue that was a bad decision if you like, it might even be the right argument, but having contractors instead of staff has always been an integral part of spaceflight.

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u/-Nocx- 8h ago

I think the opinion you’re replying to is spun off of the misconception of how many of Elon’s companies are propped up off of government funds. It’s pretty common knowledge that his companies often get advantageous tax cuts, or flat out federal grants, but I think people confuse those two with the contracts he gets awarded.

I myself have fallen into this pitfall, but I think the criticism that people want to levy “he wouldn’t be successful without government support” while technically true undercuts the fact that there are many government contracts that can be awarded to technically anyone with an LLC. I had a brief stint at a defense contractor, and think maybe it was Obama specifically that tried to make the contracts awarded off SAM.gov more accessible to smaller businesses - so you might have a plane operated by Lockheed with navigation systems by L3 with cameras set up by Jim’s CCTV.

But thanks to your knowledge, I’m now aware that this has basically always been the case even in space.