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Serious question: can applicants be assured that the project won't be used to kill people? One can never be too sure when government grants are paying the bill
by jMyles 11y ago
Serious question: can applicants be assured that the project won't be used to kill people? One can never be too sure when government grants are paying the bills.
- askafriend 11y agoWhatever assurances they can give you today cannot be generalized to tomorrow.
- jMyles 11y agoWell, something like a, "look at the ethical guidelines in our bylaws" might be helpful, even amidst inability to predict the future.
- outworlder 11y agoGetting a "Won't be" assurance is probably going to be next to impossible. Anything could happen in such an unspecified amount of time. A "isn't currently intended to" would likely be easier to get. That said, with so many viable missile platforms, why would Blue Origin be used for that?
- jMyles 11y ago> That said, with so many viable missile platforms, why would Blue Origin be used for that? I know very little about the vertical. As a matter of principle, I typically avoid gigs that involve government funding. However, this one is more interesting than most.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pzb 11y agoHow do you do that? Where do you draw the line? Basically every company I've worked for has, at some point and to varying levels, taken government funding. It could be buying off the shelf products in the same manner as every other customer, it could be the company creating a modified product for the government, or it could be taking funding in the form of R&D tax credits.
- jMyles 11y ago> It could be buying off the shelf products in the same manner as every other customer What do you mean? The only company I've worked for for any length of time that was funded in part by government funds was WNYC, which was a blast! Public Radio to me is one of those times where the broken clock happens to show the right time of day. Sure, it's government funding, but the content we created was really stellar. I mean, on some higher political level, there's always the "you use the roads" argument, but I'm talking about having to report to someone in the government about how their funding is being used. That's what I object to.
- gaze 11y agoIt will almost certainly be used to kill people... eventually.
- venomsnake 11y agoRest assured - any form of technological progress will be used to kill people eventually. "Now we are all sons of a bitches." It is the world's nature.
- mkramlich 11y agoGeorge Clinton quote? rang a bell. won't google, more natural.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoProbably a bad bet. Blue Origin intends to build an orbital launcher, and they will almost certainly end up launching military satellites, including those which directly aid combat operations. That might be too much across the line for some people.
- wiz21c 11y ago'cmon its aprivate company, its Bezos, its capitalistic. So at any point in time, if one has to choose between death of some and company survival, you'll hear : "sorry, but this year finacial results are not in line with investors' expectations; we must, although we're not happy with it, broaden our scope to military applications in order to avoid many layoffs"... Standard 20th century business procedure...
- Symmetry 11y agoNobody has wanted to use cryogenic liquid fueled rockets to kill people since rockets that weren't like that were invented. It takes hours to get one ready to fire which might have been worthwhile[1] for the first ICBMs in the era before satellite surveillance but any modern military would be crazy to use one. But if you're worried about launching military communication satellites, well, they probably will be at some point. [1] Not my view of what's worthwhile of course.