| ▲ | breadwinner 4 days ago |
| SpaceX is a private company, but a significant part of the funding for the development of its Starship spacecraft, especially for lunar missions, comes from U.S. taxpayer money via NASA contracts. The Starship rocket is the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed. If controlled by a maniacal megalomaniac it could be turned into a powerful weapon. Hopefully that won't ever happen. But it raises the question: should a private citizen ever be in control of such powerful technology whose development was funded by taxpayers? |
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| ▲ | caymanjim 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Do you think Musk is going to build a secret volcano lair and stockpile nuclear warheads? The entire US military arsenal is constructed by corporations, doing far more dangerous things than Musk has any access to. |
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| ▲ | sephamorr 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "significant" is doing a lot of work here. spaceX appears to have spent ~$10B on development and infrastructure for Starship so far. NASA has been invoiced for ~50% of their $2.9B contract, so the taxpayer has paid ~15%. |
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| ▲ | maest 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't know about the broader point the GP is making, but 15% funding is significant by most measures. |
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| ▲ | orochimaaru 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Which maniacal megalomaniac are you talking about? |
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| ▲ | simonh 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Since it’s US tax payers money footing the bill, maybe whoever is in charge of spending US tax payers money at the moment? Or maybe whoever is building the vehicle? I’m not sure which is worse. | |
| ▲ | ivape 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Uh, the richest one (ever), forgot his name. Almost bought a whole department in the government, nice calm guy. | | |
| ▲ | orochimaaru 3 days ago | parent [-] | | In case you’ve noticed said rich person is out of favor with the chief megalomaniac. |
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| ▲ | fabian2k 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm not comfortable with the power Elon Musk has, given his behaviour and views. But I don't think weaponizing SpaceX rockets is a big concern. The ability to manufacture rockets like this would of course be very valuable to anyone developing ballistic missiles for military purposes. But there are also big differences as those use mostly solid fuel. Selling this information to other countries could be a potential national security risk. Musk's rockets are inside the US, he would probably be able to launch one rocket on a target before the US military would stop any further launches. So I don't think any direct threat here by Musk would be that worrisome. |
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| ▲ | simonh 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | He’d also need to persuade everybody involved in the launch guidance, and presumably also the payload development, transfer and integration to commit treason, and for none of them to break silence. | |
| ▲ | breadwinner 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | No one thought Musk would abuse his ownership of Starlink either, but in 2022 Musk personally ordered the shutdown of Starlink satellite coverage over key parts of Ukraine. Supposedly he was motivated by concerns that a successful Ukrainian advance might provoke a Russian nuclear response. He is not a head of state, but gets to make such decisions? (FWIW he later denied intentionally turning off Ukraine's Starlink terminals). | | |
| ▲ | SnuffBox 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > He is not a head of state, but gets to make such decisions? Starlink is his property, he doesn't need to be head of state to suspend a free service and that's how it should be. | | |
| ▲ | breadwinner 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Right... so he could also, for example, decide that Starship will only take MAGA astronauts to the moon. And that's why taxpayer funds should not be used for developing Starship. | | |
| ▲ | rockemsockem 4 days ago | parent [-] | | No he can't because the US is paying for that, it is the government's mission. And fwiw now the gray area of free starlink in Ukraine also taken care of, the US government is handling that contracting like they do with all weapons systems. Before starlink was made available for free in Ukraine for humanitarian purposes, but the military also obviously found good uses for it before the gray areas were resolved. |
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| ▲ | fabian2k 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have no idea what Musk might do, so I'm not excluding anything. But to do anything with a SpaceX rocket he would need co-conspirators, and in the end he would only get a single shot. So the result would be similar to a larger terrorist attack. I would assume that the risk here is similar to that of many other companies or persons that use large amounts of explosives or other tools that could be weaponized. Musk has a delivery system that is superior to just driving a truck with explosives somewhere, but in many cases that doesn't matter much. There are some scenarios I could imagine, but they're really more like movie scripts than reality. Musk doesn't have the power to prevent retaliation, and he also couldn't threaten or demand ransom as he couldn't defend his rockets against the US military. |
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| ▲ | monkaiju 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| No it should not, this is one of the primary moral hazards we get from neoliberalism. |
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| ▲ | shortrounddev2 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Neoliberalism is anything I don't like! | | |
| ▲ | monkaiju 4 days ago | parent [-] | | What makes you say that? I don't like a lot of things that aren't neoliberalism, is there some trend where people are doing this? I could make it clearer: Neoliberalism, specifically it's distinguishing trait of having governments foster markets via public money without getting public ownership, leads to concerning situations like the op was discussing. Edit: Interestingly Trump's thing about getting the government getting a 10% stake in Intel is not neoliberalism! I don't like Trump, but that's still not neoliberalism | | |
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