taway_scott

Sure if you want to be pedantic. My response to the parent comment was more around trying to provide a possible answer to a natural question of "Why spend so much money on anything new while there are several million problems to be solved on Earth?".

And I don't think 50-70 miles is going to be the norm. This is more of a "test" flight, which is pretty normal. Everything has to start somewhere with a baby step.

I think you should read this: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

I had similar views until 5 years ago and questioned almost every new investment/endeavour by people that required significant upfront capital investment but I think this letter has changed a lot of my thinking process.

Wow this is borderline slander.

> The state should procure an entirely open source / public domain cloud stack that would commeditize the "cloud" space allowing any org to run data centers with a standardized interface. The state should then run their own data centers in-house with the stock design rather than outsourcing those operational costs

Cloud space is already commoditized through AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle and other smaller players right? Is this more of a NIH thing?

> This would be far better for society. Compute-for-all.

Can you expand on why/how would this be better for society than what we have available today?