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Ask HN: How can we make an Open Source version of SpaceX?
2 points by colesantiago 6 days ago
Next week on June 12th, SpaceX will begin its journey by being owned by Wall Street.

This will ultimately lead into enshittification since SpaceX is losing billions and new investors expect regular earnings reports pressuring SpaceX of endless growth, steering them away from their original mission.

Unfortunately, this IPO is just one big giant dump on retail investors, pensions and all the rest of it, just to force the entire world's capital to invest in SpaceX.

I think it is best to start working on an open source version of SpaceX that isn't owned by Wall Street.

What would you like to see in an Open Source SpaceX owned by the community.
4 comments
not_your_vase 6 days ago
SpaceX is a rocket company, ISP, AI developer and social network operator also. Which one should be open sourced? And how would it work exactly?

I imagine if some parts could be kicked off as an OSS project, there would be no problem with getting contributors. But for example rockets require a lot of work from a lot of people, but the amount of people who benefit from them isn't particularly big. Maybe their number is only single digit.

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PaulHoule 6 days ago
See https://www.futureconscience.com/smi2le-the-futurism-of-timo...
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minimaxir 6 days ago
It's sorta hard to open-source building a rocket on GitHub.
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PaulHoule 6 days ago
I guess you could document all the technology in great detail but it is controlled for a reason.

Makes me think of how the Verein für Raumschiffahrt had just managed to get some land where they could fire rockets and then the Nazis told them "You've got to stop that, someone could get hurt!" then it dawned on the Nazis that they liked the sound of that.

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gus_massa 5 days ago
Software is nice because you can git clone && configure && make and test it mad fix the problems.

Cheap hardware like Arduino is more difficult.

For interplanetary rockets, probably only 2 or 3 guys can try the blueprints, and perhaps that's too optimistic.

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jschveibinz 6 days ago
Step 1: get billion dollars Step 2: everything else
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