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A comment on NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission. Parent comment

Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by jmyeet on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @05:20PM (#45661864)
I expect China to be the other major player in global space industries for the simpel reason that they're the only ones with the means and resolve to undergo such an endeavour. China is a command economy and they engage in long-term projects all the time. You can see with with all the intercity rail and metro systems they've built in the last 2 decades. It's crazy. As is all their power generation (hydro, solar).

the US may have gone to the Moon 50+ years ago but a lot has changed. There's no big enemy to rally behind as we manufactured in the Cold War. We don't have titans of industry anymore. We have titans of finance who coast on the inertia of early successes while raising prices, cutting costs and engaging in rent-seeking behavior.

There are serious design issues with Starship as a platform for going back to the Moon.

I'm not at all convinced the US can build anything anymore.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by dfee on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @05:32PM (#45662000)
> I'm not at all convinced the US can build anything anymore.

But it has! Look at all of our private industry! That's the point!

> We don't have titans of industry anymore.

What?!

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by testing22321 on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @05:39PM (#45662061)
SpaceX and to a much lesser extent Tesla are good examples. Excluding those for a minute, what else does the US have world-leading manufacturing of?

Semiconductors? Nope.

High speed rail? Nope.

Auto industry? Nope.

Major infrastructure projects like bridges, tunnels, airports, etc? Nope.

Electronics (phones/laptops/etc)? Nope.

?????

The US is not exactly a manufacturing powerhouse.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by ks2048 on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @06:44PM (#45662681)
Why mention Tesla in here?

They produce 1.8M cars/year while GM and Ford produce 6M and 4M, respectively. (2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacture...)

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by testing22321 on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @08:22PM (#45663534)
GM went bankrupt, and are not producing anything that would sell globally. They’re a dead company walking.

If the Chinese EV tariffs are dropped, or if BYD start manufacturing at scale in the US, all the old US auto manufacturers are dead.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by tayo42 on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @10:35PM (#45664318)
Americans like f1/2/350 to much
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by GolfPopper on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @05:52PM (#45662193)
It is a rent extraction/wealth transfer powerhouse.

At least for now.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by shdh on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @07:57PM (#45663310)
Can you elaborate how SpaceX is an extraction/wealth transfer powerhouse?
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by jmyeet on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @08:13PM (#45663448)
I'm not sure which company you're referring to here but I do here this claim a lot about SpaceX and while i'm anti-rent-seeking I don't see SpaceX as a rent-seeking company. Yes it has gotten some grants to develop particular programs and promises from the US government to buy services but all up we're talking about (IIRC) $10-20 billion.

We just gave $40 billion to Argentina for pretty much no reason whatsoever.

Now the US government has spent a whole lot more on SpaceX but they're buying services.

SpaceX is an incredible bargain compared to the alternatives like ULA.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by hollerith on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @05:56PM (#45662235)
The production of cutting-edge semiconductors requires a global supply chain. The US's main contribution to that supply chain is (very expensive) software required in the design of an IC.

The US is second in manufacturing and far ahead of numbers 3 and 4 (Germany and Japan IIRC).

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by heavyset_go on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @06:12PM (#45662389)
Anyone can write software, the idea that we're uniquely capable in that domain is foolhardy
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by MostlyStable on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @06:26PM (#45662520)
Anyone can do any of those above industries as well, what's your point?
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by heavyset_go on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @06:59PM (#45662808)
See the grandparent's comment about global supply chains. Everyone requires everyone else in those industries, no one does it all on their own.

I posit that software has no such supply chain dependency, literally anyone can do it, and thinking the US is unique in their ability to produce software isn't accurate.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by parineum on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @10:46PM (#45664383)
Why doesn't everyone else simply start their own silocon valley!?
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by heavyset_go on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @11:28PM (#45664642)
ByteDance, Alibaba, Baidu, three of Silicon Valley's most famous companies responsible for uniquely American successes like TikTok.
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by parineum on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @11:05AM (#45670276)
> literally anyone can do it

Doesn't it seem odd to you that only the two largest economies in the world are doing something so lucrative if literally anyone can do it?

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by heavyset_go on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @04:00PM (#45674386)
I only need to list one other example to illustrate American exceptionalism is not an exception.
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by renewiltord on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @12:06PM (#45671242)
> The US's main contribution to that supply chain is (very expensive) software required in the design of an IC.

EUV tech is from American universities, licensed by choice by the US Government. In a world where Nikon was a much smaller optics player, they'd be the ones building EUV machines, and we'd be pretending Japan was the source of this tech.

The US's main contribution is doing the research required to make this whole thing possible.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by getpokedagain on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @07:05PM (#45662892)
Teslas are built like shit compared to other cars.
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by sollewitt on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @08:42PM (#45663655)
Data centers.
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