(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . We Should Be Pretty Concerned About SpaceX [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-13 I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this... Seeing the image of Elon Musk sitting at the super bowl with Rupert Murdoch brought this topic back to front-of-mind for me. That image tells us quite a bit about Elon’s political leanings these days. We can choose to buy EVs other than Tesla, and those choices are increasing rather rapidly. And we can choose to avoid Twitter. But SpaceX is now in a position to dominate a substantial portion of our ability to access orbit, and that’s worrisome. It also holds major roles in maintaining the International Space Station and in the Artemis program. And a lot of their market power is coming via US taxpayer dollars. Elon Musk owns a controlling 48% of SpaceX. Their competition is, unfortunately, rather limited right now. Yes, the Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy are both technologically cool. Partial re-useability is one of the keys to less-expensive access to space. But I don’t think we should let that cool technology blind us to the risks of putting too much dependence on this one company. Having NASA as a reliable customer has been a boon to SpaceX. This is an example of taxpayer dollars funding development of proprietary capabilities. It’s not like the days of Apollo, when the design specs and capabilities of much of the hardware were held largely in the public domain and the details part of every press package. Sure, private companies built the hardware, but NASA ran the show. A lot of SpaceX technology is held close to the vest. Falcon 9 currently provides the only US access to the International Space Station. That will change with Boeing’s long-delayed CST-100 becoming available later this year. Multiple options are a good thing. SpaceX also launches a substantial portion of our national security payloads these days, including very large payloads with the Falcon 9 Heavy. Older heavier-lift boosters are being retired, but there will be competition from the new ULA Vulcan Centaur. The Department of Defense should ensure that competition stays healthy in the delivery of military payloads. Project Artemis will be dependent on SpaceX both for development of the Human Landing System and for Gateway logistics missions to lunar orbit. Falcon Heavy will be used for the resupply missions. The HLS is currently envisioned as a variant of the SpaceX Starship upper stage. Gateway resupply could conceivably be handled by other boosters, but the lander has a unique and critical role. And the proprietary technical expertise gained at taxpayer expense will further enshrine dependence on this one company, controlled by one man with questionable motivations. Add Starlink to my list of concerns. We are already seeing Elon’s influence in when capabilities are provided and/or withheld from the Ukrainian military. Starlink is likely to become a major provider for rural broadband. How comfortable are we with Elon Musk controlling such an important link in the global Internet? I’m not comfortable at all. I don’t know of a lot of near-term solutions for the issue of SpaceX dominance. I do think we need to lean on our lawmakers to keep Elon Musk from getting an even bigger piece of the pie than he already controls. One man controlling so much of such a critical set of technologies is concerning. Either the role of SpaceX needs to be more limited, or the control of the company needs to be less concentrated. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/13/2152676/-We-Should-Be-Pretty-Concerned-About-SpaceX Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/