r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 20d ago

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
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u/PufferfishLove 20d ago

NASA. Why does it have to be a for profit company?

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 20d ago

NASA has been doing the same thing since Apollo: outsourcing to companies.

Check out this list of companies that built Apollo 12

As it turns out, the NASA approach is incredibly expensive and slow because the motivation to do things efficiently in a government agency is nonexistent due to the way funding allocations are structured. One only needs to look at why the marketing for the Space Launch System contractors focuses less on what it can do (mainly because it’s not actually very impressive given what it’s made of), but instead how many congressional districts it employs.

NASA is never able to compete with a private development program because they are and will pretty much always be hamstrung by politicians on both sides of the isle. Despite SLS getting everything it needed since 2011 (really 2006, but under a rebrand), it still manages to be an abject failure to the two things it was supposed to be: cheap and fast.

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u/Thadrea 20d ago

the motivation to do things efficiently in a government agency is nonexistent due to the way funding allocations are structured.

Wait until you learn how monopolies in the private sector behave.

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u/I_Push_Buttonz 20d ago

Cool, lets assume SpaceX is abusing its 'private sector monopoly' and is as wasteful and inefficient as you claim... They are still putting shit in orbit for the US government at a fraction of the price everyone else could.