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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 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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