this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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you're right. I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with you, sorry to come off that way. I just think that any money from the public treasury given to an entity associated with Elon Musk is going in the wrong direction.
I understand that having lousy internet service sucks. I'd just prefer if no part of public spending whatsoever was going to an individual as malodorous as Elon Musk, who already has abundantly more than his fair share.
That's alright, I was just a little unsure about the mixed tone. As far as public funding goes, I'd much rather NASA funding go to SpaceX than Boeing, especially since unlike the cost plus development contracts that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin have gotten as the United Launch Alliance, SpaceX's payments are almost mostly contracted purchases. That package you linked pays for specific flights to the ISS, as well as paying for a propulsive lunar lander as part of Artemis Project.
I mean, I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but none of this money is going to him. Compared to pouring money into the telecoms or aerospace companies owned by less vocal billionaires, and then watching them go back for seconds without doing anything, I'd much rather see something productive come of public funding.
As an aside, Starlink has never received public funding, so this really isn't the project to complain about that. It was tentatively approved for 900 million to be awarded after delivering gigabit speeds to 99.7% of rural America, but the money would only have been awarded after completion, and the funding was pulled a month after Viasat (another satellite internet company) pressured the FCC, a decision that the FCC Commissioner publicly declaimed, which was kinda funny.