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Public money saved him.
by kome 13y ago
Public money saved him.
- cromwellian 13y agoAnd that means what? Public money has saved a lot of companies. The next time you fly somewhere, thank defense contracts and US postal service contracts for subsidizing the development of commercial air travel. Aerospace, especially space, is tightly linked with government spending, period. Also, does the fact that Musk bet his entire fortune means he's a freeloader on corporate welfare?
- reubenmorais 13y agoAnd also, you know… the entire field of computer science.
- adventured 13y agoThere are two sides to that coin. Without an opportunity and potential like SpaceX, all the public money would have are cases like Solyndra. The reality was, NASA needed SpaceX as much as SpaceX needed NASA.
- jasonlingx 13y agoNASA needed Musk. Musk doesn't need anybody.
- bsilvereagle 13y agoDid you watch the news clip? And the Department of Energy (not mentioned) was huge in getting Tesla to where it is today.
- rayiner 13y agoThat's ridiculous. There are tons of successful developments using public money besides SpaceX.
- adventured 13y agoYes, and my "like" in the "like SpaceX" was meant to acknowledge that fact. Thus, not ridiculous at all.
- prawn 13y agoHe saved the public money.
- madsushi 13y agoGood, I am glad that some of my taxpayer dollars went to something that is changing the world.
- melling 13y agoWell, you didn't think his clients were going to be your average HN reader, who won't spend money to buy expensive developer tools or who daily ask how to get around a paywall because they believe everything should be free? A few large companies and governments were his obvious targets. Just like large defense contractors exist on "public" money.
- kome 13y ago> A few large companies and governments were his obvious targets. Just like large defense contractors exist on "public" money. Exactly. The military-industrial complex lives mostly on public money.
- melling 13y ago"Exactly. The military-industrial complex lives mostly on public money." That's what I said. Is there some other point that you're trying to make? Getting a government contract isn't taking donations. You deliver a service or a product and you get paid for it. The US government spends a lot of money. Cray Supercomputer sold systems to the government too, for example. I imagine that if Elon wants to build his electric jet someday, one of his best business planes would be to build electric jet drones for the US government.
- kome 13y agoThere were cheaper alternatives, especially for light rockets (Soyuz, Dnepr, PSLV, Vega, etc). Financing him has been a political choice.
- melling 13y agoHow much cheaper? We already have a small problem with Russian being the only way to get US astronauts into space. The privatization of space has been discussed for decades. Spending money on private companies is the logical choice. Jeff Bezos also got a small amount of Nasa funding. I would imagine that his company will also get future contracts. Sorry if you don't agree with the decision but at this point we're just debating politics.
- emersonrsantos 13y agoPublic money doesn't save incompetent people: read about Eike Batista from Brazil who had a net worth of 30 billion dollars in 2012 and now has a negative net worth (reported by Bloomberg in January 2014).
- zacharypinter 13y agoKudos all around! To those within the government with the foresight to bet on Musk (or those like him) and to Musk for actually pulling off something great with the opportunity.
- snowwindwaves 13y agoI would prefer the government stay out of the business of picking winners
- InclinedPlane 13y agoPublic money allowed his company to develop faster than it did, but even with only non-governmental commercial contracts SpaceX still would have developed along the same lines, just much slower for a while.
- kelvin0 13y agoAre you channeling Ayn Rand?
- kelvin0 13y agoI like the gray tone, it highlights my mustache.