Governments: spend 80 years developing space tech with public funding, allowing humanity to walk on the moon, have global positioning satellites, and essentially kickstart the computing industry from a necessity to build computers for orbital calculations
Yes, government funded endeavors are sometimes the only way to do things that don’t have a clear ROI but they are also incredibly inefficient and as such should be kept only until it becomes viable for the private sector to take over.
Private companies: *mostly disappear and waste shareholder money, like Virgin or like Bezos’ attempts at space
That’s the beauty of the private sector, pure meritocracy, if you suck - you die. If those were public initiatives they would have been kept regardless of the costs or the results, wasting the taxpayer’s money instead of the shareholders’.
one company with public funding raking in those 80 years of publicly-funded research to itself
If it was that easy NASA or all the failed companies you mentioned would have done it themselves. SpaceX has done an absolutely incredible job at innovating in the industry that has been in stagnation since the 80s, designing rapidly reusable rockets, lowering the cost per kg to LEO from $72k in today’s money, from the space shuttle days to $2500 and planing to reduce it to $10 with starship.
The public funding part doesn’t mean free money from the government, the government pays SpaceX for fulfilling contracts because NASA can’t do it themselves, at least not as efficiently as SpaceX. Right now majority of SpaceX’s revenue comes from starlink which mainly serves private consumers so it’s reliance on the government contracts is being overstated.
underpaying and exploiting its engineers
SpaceX $155K-$247K/yr ($117K - $175K/yr base pay + $39K - $72K/yr stock)
NASA $113K - $158K/yr
lowering the costs at the expense of safety due to cutting in safety measures thay will never be tolerated when humans ride those rockets
As of 2025, SpaceX is the only U.S. company with a human-rated rocket system certified by NASA for regular flights to the International Space Station. NASA completed the certification of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket in 2023, marking the first time a commercial system was certified for human spaceflight.
Dumbass liberal lemmitor: pRiVaTe Is ClEaRlY sUpErIoR
Yes.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is such a childish take. The private and public sectors are not opposites and they don’t contradict each other. They serve different purposes in the economy, and they compliment each other quite well. It’s an ecosystem where one covers the gaps of the other. We need both.
NASA as well as the other American space agencies absolutely floor the global competition and it’s not even close. When it comes to China, they will always have cheaper prices because they are poorer country with a weaker currency, which means they’ll have a stronger purchasing power. In real terms, Chinese labor is much cheaper than American labor, Chinese materials are cheaper than American materials, Chinese manufacturing is cheaper than American manufacturing. China’s space expenditure is actually around as the US as percentage of GDP (both are around 0.5%), but China’s economy is smaller per capita and therefore they have a smaller budget to work with. This is why the US has the biggest, the most advanced, and the most flashy projects while China seems to be able to do a lot with less.