[throwawaylinux]

Not the OP but are you talking about Lockheed, Rockwell, etc.? I think they're criminal arms traffickers and war profiteers who did achieve some amazing things, but only as a means to extract vast amounts of the nation's wealth. In other words, they did as little constructive work as they could with each tax dollar given to them.

SpaceX at least doesn't appear to be building a business model based on being a barrel for pork with a board that functions as a pension fund for military generals.

[rtkwe]

SpaceX has been doing a number of NRO secret launches and wouldn't exist without NASA contracts like CRS and Crew Dragon. They may not be boarded by ex military but they're part of the same industry surviving the same way.

[throwawaylinux]

Great, they're destroying the pork barrel industry's monopoly in space and providing a service at competitive prices that's exactly what we want.

From my comment, you didn't suppose I believed government space capabilities and projects should be entirely shut down, or that they should be left to old space companies to continue extorting taxpayers, did you?

Providing a service to the government is not a problem. This is not some kind of libertarian purity test I'm concerned about. It is about ripping off tax payers with lobbyists and the military industrial political revolving doors.

[wolverine876]

Why is SpaceX any different than the other companies, and why will they be any different?

[pixl97]

Because they are the first company to significantly decrease launch costs in decades. In addition, they are the first company working on massively increasing payload sizes in decades.

I mean it really is a pretty bad question because you've not taken even 60 seconds to learn the first thing about SpaceX

[throwawaylinux]

Have you done any research of your own on this? I'm trying to get an idea of where to start. If yes, then in what way do you believe they are similar contrary to what my comment said or implied?

[lvs]

Your second paragraph is premature. There isn't enough history yet to compare them fairly.

[throwawaylinux]

> Your second paragraph is premature.

It isn't.

> There isn't enough history yet to compare them fairly.

I compare them on what they provide for what cost right now, and the kind of company that they appear to be building as of now. Hopefully it was clear that I wasn't making predictions about the future.

[LightG]

If you think Spacex isn't in bed with the US military, and won't be increasingly so in future for the usual reasons, you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

[throwawaylinux]

I haven't seen much indication that their business model relies on lobbying for war or pushing for gargantuan "aid" into unstable regions which may only be used for buying weapons, or buying politicians and generals so they can sell sub standard and over priced projects.

Maybe SpaceX does, maybe it will. But providing launch services to the military and undercutting the companies that definitely do those things is not a problem to me. This wasn't a military = bad rant.

[pixl97]

The point is "AND SO".

Yes, that is how they fund their operations. No one else is giving out billions of dollars to build rockets.

At the same time they are using that money to

1. Create full reusabilty.

2. Drop launch costs 10 to 100 fold.

3. Massively increase payload and launch capability.

Which is the point of this particular thread. The other launch groups have pocketed (hundreds of) billions of dollars and changed almost nothing over the past few decades.

[newbie789]

https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-building-military-rocke...