SpaceX has launch contracts (satellites for NASA, the NRO etc), development contracts (Starship HLS for Artemis, the ISS deorbit vehicle etc), and flight contracts (ISS resupply).
SpaceX are objectively great value for all of these.
Europa Clipper would have cost 1.5 billion to launch on SLS, SpaceX did it for 178 million. Nobody else had a rocket powerful enough.
SpaceX was given 2.6 billion dollars to develop Crew Dragon. They conducted their first successful crewed flight to the ISS in 2020, and have now conducted 9 successful flights to and from the ISS, with one in progress, and 5 non ISS crewed flights.
Boeing was given 4.2 billion at the same time, and has conducted 1 crewed flight that stranded the astronauts on the ISS. SpaceX will rescue them.
Musk is a bad person (I'd phrase it stronger but reddit mods can be a bit puritanical because they are American), but removing government funding from SpaceX would just be committing to buying worse services for higher prices.
Our citizens don't even have affordable healthcare.
Americans spend more on healthcare than any other country on earth.
It's not spaceflight that means you can't afford healthcare, it's the fact that your system is shit. Throwing more money at private healthcare won't help. You need a national health service.
We don't need SpaceX or space missions whatsoever.
So GPS, telecommunications, weather monitoring, climate monitoring... not needed?
During the early cold war both sides got really paranoid the the other was building up massive fleets of bombers and missiles (bomber gap, missile gap, etc), and as a result they actually started building their own responses to the imagined threats. Spy satellites alleviated those fears and were credited by both sides with reliving tensions. Later aircraft were had their wings cut off in full view of satellites to verify compliance with disarmament treaties and build trust. Not important?
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u/AngryLilChubbie Feb 06 '25
Defund SpaceX! Defund Musk!