Starbase, TX

Giga Texas

Giga Nevada

Terrafab

etc

There's plenty of examples of this company building these types of projects and following through.

Why do you think this one would be any different?

Yeah, I hate modern science fiction. It's almost all terrible. Sci-fi written in the time of actual ongoing world wars and the Cold War's constant threat of instant nuclear annihilation was far more optimistic, and far more imaginative.

That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing.

You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying.

Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.

Mussolini and other Italian inventors-of-Fascism figures were closely allied with the Futurism movement and Marinetti.

https://www.booksontrial.com/mussolini-and-marinetti-a-timel...

That’s Italian futurism, which was a specific movement. I think the term was being used more broadly here.

Go find some Soviet space art, or mid century American “space age” stuff, or less dark forms of cyberpunk / cyber culture from the 80s and 90s. None of that is fascist yet all of it is popularly called “futurism.” I’ve even seen the term associated with solarpunk.

As popularly used it means more or less the idea of trying to use human intellect to build or create something fundamentally new, or roughly that. It’s not a precise term more of a vibe.

> Feels like the early stages of societal collapse.

Strongly agree, there is hardly any intelligent discussions with diverging opinions left anymore. People are too deep into their own propaganda, agenda, and echo chambers. Peak bullshit is near.

Okay but Musk himself deliberately and continuously uses his companies and wealth to participate in the culture war so it's no surprise it comes up when his companies do.

He could switch off and stick to building rockets and electric cars. It's very easy (notionally) to just not post on Twitter.

You think SpaceX is shopping out their infrastructure to individual contractors?

hundreds of millions unpaid and zero investigative journalism to try to get at the truth, besides "liens filed therefore Elon Musk is a cheapskate".

They're also the folks working on the largest co2 -> methane converters in the world. Because that's how they'll need to make fuel on Mars, and no one else on earth wants to fund an expensive technology to replace an inexpensive gas pumped from the ground. By definition, these reactors will have to be capable of producing enough fuel for a rocket in order to be fit for purpose. That opens the door for carbon neutral operation. It's tough to imagine a greener rocket than a fully reusable one that's carbon neutral running on methane. Sure beats spewing hypergolics or solid rocket fuels.

They put themselves in that situation, the US admin, not me. I'm just commenting. Or is any of what I said wrong? I mean there's something called ITAR that requires American workers, but that doesn't mean the impact on inflation isn't real

ITAR proves it’s possible to have immigration enforcement.

That's a very narrow view of inflation. If you increase wages, there's more demand for goods, more demand means higher prices which means higher inflation. Same with tariffs, they are paid when importing goods, which is passed onto the consumer, resulting in higher prices and thus inflation.

That’s a very, very narrow definition of inflation

Could you find a source of someone saying this?

Nope, it won't. Won't stop the government from advertising the failed California high speed rail, either. But I think Musk is more likely to deliver on Optimus.

The construction is temporary but what are the economic impacts of having a fully operational spaceport that launches 20,000% more tonnage to orbit than the Florida Space Coast?

Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.

yeah but that site is huge, that's a multi-decade construction project.

>It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over.

The issue with Datacentres is that you cant model the advantage of lower colo costs on jobs in the area.

The problem is that some people dont want to permit anything unless they can measure the benefits, when the market doesnt always work like that.

The whole "temporary jobs" line is completely irrelevant nonsense. Sure, it's correct, but who cares? The alternative is zero. It's not like there is only a limited amount of undeveloped land and a bunch of people bidding for it. And of course those jobs don't stick around after construction is over. They're construction workers. They move on to the the next construction job.

It has a political valence when one party is campaigning on punishing and stopping them from building. "Should" is a meaningless word unless I have agency to change that, and I don't.

> The people who build rockets and computers and the Internet are the good guys of history

Does no one read history anymore?

IBM and the Holocaust

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

The V-2 rocket

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket

"The V-2 rocket (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit. 'Vengeance Weapon 2'), with the development name Aggregat-4 (A4), was the world's first practical, modern ballistic missile and suborbital launch vehicle.[4] The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities."

Nazi's are the good guys only when they work for the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

> Elon Musk has fascist leanings

Fascists aren't known for cutting government spending.