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Privately built lunar lander makes history with successful moon touchdown (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This argument gets made a lot when talking about privatisation. Lots basic and essential services have gotten privatised over we decades, and none of them got better or cheaper.

The only way you can benefit from privatizing something is when you make others pay for it. In this case, SpaceX is burning other people's venture capital like rocketfuel. I prefer that over spending public money, but unfortunately, they've also spent 1.9billion on a moon lander, with nothing to show.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Lots basic and essential services have gotten privatised over we decades, and none of them got better or cheaper.

This seems like a rather broad statement. Are there really zero cases where a privatized service got cheaper? Do you disagree with the example of NASA’s CRS and CCP programs in my previous comment?

but unfortunately, they’ve also spent 1.9billion on a moon lander, with nothing to show

I think stating that they have nothing to show is slightly disingenuous. They've done multiple successful suborbital hops with upper stage prototypes, and two (partially successful) launches of the full stack. I'm eagerly awaiting IFT-3, which could happen as early as March.