Why would anyone want their money, nay, their labor spent on sending something to space if they are not going to get something back from it?
They wouldn't.
SpaceX, and private space companies have an incentive to go to Space, which is profit, which is also the incentive to the employees, as they get paid. If the company does not make money, they do not get paid.
However, there is no such deal under a nationalized space program. What does the worker get out of sending something into space? Nothing.
Copapasta'd from (you)r statism thread: First, without the space race, nearly all new technology since WWII wouldn't exist. Second, if we don't establish permanent human habitation both extraterrestrially (and eventually extrastellar), we will go extinct as the result of a catastrophe or the sun going red giant and sterilizing earth's biosphere. Third, if humanity fails to pursue a lofty goal such as space colonization, the human soul itself will be smothered by crushing ennui and autistic purposelessness.
Most of which was developed by American private companies, there were few, soviet innovations. It is true what will happen to the sun, in about 5 billion years, it is very unlikely that human civilization would even be around to see such a period. A worker is not going to work on something that will not affect him at all - nor his children - nor any one in his foreseeable future. It would be slave labour for reasons of "we want to explore space". Again, this does not give any incentive for the worker to work 40 hours per week.
Brody Cox
Developed by a combination of public money and private companies, the takeaway being that capital can and does drive technological innovation provided that profitability is high and the economy is stable, as it was after the war. An incredibly complex and resource-intensive task that will not benefit 99.9% of Earth's existing population; depending on your interpretation of climate change human extinction is either so far in the future as to not be an issue, or so close to happening that any attempt at 'preserving the species' in space wouldn't happen in time anyways. Accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart, faggot.
Andrew Brown
You get it. There is no motivation at all, for anyone to work in a factory to build a rocket unless there is an incentive - which there is none under a communist regime.
Carter James
Knowledge is worthy of pursuit for its own sake. In fact, pursuit of profit is in conflict of pursuit of knowledge. Not all good things are profitable. Not all large scale projects worth doing have immediate or even near term profit incentives. Space exploration is a public good. Time and again, it has been demonstrated that public goods are poorly served by markets. Markets exist solely to generate profit for the trader with the most leverage. If I have leverage over you in a contractual arrangement, it matters little to me what your needs or desires are. As soon as those needs or desires conflict with my profit motive, I will stop providing for them. The profit I generate off of you gives me more leverage, and the more leverage I have over you, the less likely your needs and desires comport with my ability to profit off of you.
The money for private space travel still comes from the same source, taxpayer money. Now, however, private parties are taking a cut and there is less public accountability. It's just more grift coupled with less efficiency, like privatization always is.
John Jackson
spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html Being anti-space is incredibly dumb. NASA is 0.01% of America’s budget, but has done more good for all of humanity than any other american government program.
Gabriel Howard
Meme. There is no such thing as a private space industry, since the sole "customer" in the entire "industry" has always been, is, and will for the foreseeable future always be, the government. Also, let's not forget that aside from the massive amount of science done by government labs (JPL, Los Alamos, etc.), public researchers (universities, etc.), most of these "private companies" originated as privatized spinoffs of preexisting public entities. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation#1950s Why not just kill yourself right now and get it over with, given that attitude? Think of the reason people worked for generations on pyramids, cathedrals, and every other megaproject. Think of why people raise children, write poetry, why people get out of bed in the morning. What makes us human. Yes, there are class demands historically, and instincts for self preservation, but there is also something more.
Functional people desire a legacy, and working on a legacy fills one's heart with meaning.
No. Capital is directed toward "blue sky" science when those in control of it consciously decide to do so. Are we individuals, families, societies, memeplexes? Depending on your definition of humanity, space exploration will benefit 100% of Earth's existing population. There is no interpretation of AGW that could ever render humanity extinct. Even nuclear war couldn't do that. Lame, inspiring enough, suffering/death cult overtones, would not dedicate life, 0/10.
Pretty poor reasoning user. No one said they were. So by your own admission they all have a profit incentive, which a nationalized project does not. No one has said it is not. Disagree, time and again it has been demonstrated that government spending is poorly managed and wasteful. NASA pays for SpaceX because they can do it cheaper than NASA can do it themselves. No, they are not to underfunded to do this themselves NASA pisses away billions of dollars of funding on launch towers that lean, on projects that get cancelled after they have just been completed and tested.
>Meme This is some big brained shit right here.
Adrian Thompson
Gee, I wonder why? >paying a company to do something cheaper than you can do itthat funnels profits to porky instead of keeping the money yourself is a meme not to mention the little fact that such NASA activity was funneled through similar single-customer contractors for decades before, so most of the hype over the likes of SpaceX and Bigelow is just porky vs. porky against the likes of Lockheed or Northrop. Ah, question answered.
Basically every single instance of privatization in history serves the sole purpose of shifting profit-free public activity to profit embezzling private porkies, especially in natural monopolies like space, military, and utilities.
Gabriel White
Probably because NASA is busy pissing away their money inefficiently as most government agencies do. This is a strawman. Incorrect. Every single instance of privatization - especially space privatization - has benefited the public greatly, to such a degree that we have seen the cost of per kilo to orbit space travel more than halved. There is an incentive for each worker to go to work each day, which is their pay cheque at the end of the week. Why would I ever want to do this under a communist government? Sure, I want to see space exploration continue, but this does not mean that I want to work at a rocket factory. In fact, I would say very few people want to work in a rocket factory. The only thing that would keep them there, would of course, be an authoritarian rule.
Ayden Cox
Again, meme. The space program has always had a large amount of money sent out of government coffers into catspaw single-customer "contractors", the current Silicon Valley wave of "private" space industry is absolutely nothing new. Ask the rooskies & chinks, since they punch way above our weight in space spending as GDP/capita.
James Foster
Jeeze, sounds an awful lot like you're advocating for a return to slavery user.
Eli Anderson
Private space isn't viable right now. Possibly in the future (asteroid mining or whatever) but the economy will probably implode first. SpaceX and similar projects are fueled entirely by speculation (which won't pay off since the timeline is so long, causing them to crash before they accomplish much), possibly space tourism although afaik nobody's been to space who wasn't an astronaut yet, and fucking government contracts.
John Rodriguez
A utopian space age isn't going to happen if climate change fries us first regardless of how many techfags swindle money out of the government. lol
Jonathan Miller
In the early 000s a space tourist went to the ISS
Austin Hall
That's presumably what you meant by "communist". Or perhaps you just mean "when the government does stuff", in which case the 99% taxpayer-funded burgerstani space sector is and always has been just as "communist".
As for your question of why someone would choose to work in a rocket factory? My grampa worked in a rocket factory, not only for a (union represented) paycheck, but out of patriotism. My father then went on to do engineering work for NASA, before and after being evaluated for the astronaut program.
But really, your question is ludicrous, given the fact that all funds originate out of the taxpayer's purse. If citizens now vote for space exploration, knowing they're the ones paying for it, and then a subset of those citizens are paid from that money work in the space industry they and their fellow citizens voted for, how is that any different at the fundumental level from any conception of socialism you choose to imagine?
Nearest term thing would probably be microelectronics fabrication. Due to cheap vacuum, lack of vibration, and zero-G, I've seen estimates that it would actually beat terrestrial fabs with current tech even in LEO.
navigational technology communication infrastructure scientific discoveries And future: Cheap rare earth minerals, helium 3.
Matthew Moore
Oh nothing much, just abundant cheap carbon-free renewable energy. So abundant that it can be used to re-sequester some of that extra CO2 and maybe save civilization from extinction.
Leaving aside the curious idea that GPS, satellite Internet relays, electronics, and power are useless to common men Learn the difference, it could save your life
I was mocking you. China is a literal totalitarian slave state which is the workers motivation - that or die.
You're admission here is that there is no reason for anyone to go work in a factory. I don't want to do it, nor do you. I wouldn't do it out of pure patriotism and I doubt many people (certainly not enough to run a country, let alone a rocket factory) would.
If a private space company such as space X can perform a service cheaper than NASA (it does) then why shouldn't it? NASA is horribly ineffective at doing their job.
Angel Martinez
I'm afraid to be the one to tell you this, no one likes to work for these things. The only reason people go to work is to "get ahead". Something impossible under communism as it punishes success.
Bentley Richardson
To get the things that come out of factories, like rockets (and the riches of orbital services and scientific data, plus potentially raw materials and land, that those rockets give access to). When was or is this mythical era in which NASA did "their job" distinct from the people who work solely for them? You realize the USSR had essentially the same dynamic as NASA's and the US military's own space programs, which are larger than NASA's right now contractors with the various design bureaus taking part in their space program, right?
Elijah Gomez
...
Oliver Johnson
Then why do taxpayers keep saying they want to give NASA more of their money?
Factory work is awesome when it isn't one of those sweat shops. All you do is keep your head down and make things. You get a workout. You talk to friends. Then, when your shift is over folks are usually in the mood to go out and have fun. It is not the pointless drudgery and relentless politics that being a cubicle monkey is.
Joseph Garcia
Completely useless to an everyday communist. He doesn't "own it". He helped build it, sure. But that's it. He can't use that rocket to gain from it, nor can he use anything that the rocket might collect to gain from, so again this is useless to him.
Shit, I haven't even begun to touch on the subject that the worker might think that exploring space is completely and utterly a waste of time and we should be devoting this time towards something else - even if he was motivated to work (he wouldn't be). What? It was different to NASA, as NASA had one 'lead' structure which prevented arguments (something that became a well documented issue among the soviet space program).
John Reed
Nope. I never said that. Never said that either. Subjective. Most government run programs cost more to develop goods, the energy I have is cheap already, that's implying that I actually care about the environment anyway (this might shock you, people don't). So yeah pretty much is useless to an ordinary worker. an entrepreneur however could use these things to start a business to bring down power prices, or perhaps he sees a gap in environmentalism?
Asher Nelson
People love space exploration, they don't realize how inefficient NASA is compared to private space.
However, just because someone loves something, doesn't mean they will work for it for free.
Robert Robinson
I guess open source freeware isn't a thing then.
Easton Price
Why do you imagine a "communist", whatever that means to you, wouldn't appreciate all the products and services from spaceflight scientific fallout, nor the wealth and adventure waiting in the stars? You seem to believe that NASA and its contractors could/can/will be meaningfully distinguished in some way, when in fact they are and always have been a single, vertical, closed entity. Ohohoho! What's this, did the USSR have too much, dare I say, competition for you, comrade capitalist?
Like healthcare, where even the US's ridiculously inefficient (by global standards) Medicare/Medicaid/VA system blows the shit out of private insurers? Remember NASA is pretty much "single-payer space exploration": healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20110920.013390/full/
How does "for free" even make sense in a moneyless economy? If people got a comfortable amount of consumer goods and services as a matter of course, do you imagine they would simply fall limp?
Your "hurdurr without porkbux to roll in my trough, I won't do or enjoy any activity" autism reminds me of an interesting set of studies on how, above a what's needed for a reasonably comfortable standard of life, money (especially for intellectual tasks) ceases to be the top motivator for productivity, and even becomes a demotivator at higher levels.
He would appreciate it, he just wouldn't want to work for it at no benefit to himself. The individual. NASA can be distinguished though. NASA's poor management (in the last 20 years especially) has lead to delays and cancellations, always due to NASA's management. Something at NASA needs to change. Literally what? The USSR was bickering because it couldn't decide on the direction in which communist rocketry should go - some wanting to focus more on missiles, others more on space. This problem never arose in the US as they had a clear and stable leadership which didn't let people bicker like children. It is of no benefit of the worker to get "ahead'. Punishment of success disincentives the worker.
James Stewart
Perhaps, due to funding being yanked and priorities being changed without warning, and biased statements by OMB? That's not NASA's mismanagement, that's congress, at the behest of lobbyists from rivals. Ahaha… So, you're saying the USSR wasn't sufficiently authoritarian, whereas the command economy in the USA was more rigid. The worker doesn't get ahead under capitalism, either. Porkies like Gates, Bezos, and Musk make the big bucks, while the scientists and engineers that actually create patentable ideas for them (not to mention the laborers that actually build the results, and the technicians that operate them) get the merest of scraps.
Under socialism, this alienation between the men and their work would no longer exist, giving creators the entirety of their product.
Adam Davis
Without NASA and similar agencies, we wouldn't have the means to keep an eye on things like climate change and we wouldn't even have several meteorological services (weather prediction, etc). The USSR developed back then the most affordable space program and to this day several agencies (including private ones) rely on russian technology and their space program for both meteorological services and space exploration.
It was that bourgeois sack of shit Gorvachev and Soros (and this is not even a conspiracy from r/the_donald) who helped crash the USSR economy. This is not even a tankie apology to the soviet union (I'm neither a tankie, nor an apologist); this is merely pointing out facts.
They are not even willing to fix climate ghange, much less terraform/colonize another planet for the benefit of the proletariat. Why would they give a shit about space exploration?
Also, space X is a fraud. They actually tried to create a martian base in order to create a shitty reality show that nobody but faggy tumblr kids gives a fuck about. Elon Musk is a massive cocksucking faggot and he's in bed with wall street and goldman sachs. Quite far from being "private sector", don't you think?
Tl;dr: Of all the government programs, NASA is by far the most benefical, second only to public schools. Under socialism, be it "state" socialism or anarcho-communism, we'd continue to maintain a public space program, for the benefit of the working class and humanity, not for the bourgeois scumbags.
If you wanna complain about wasteful government spending, perhaps you'd like to adress corporate welfare/subsidies and endless military spending, because they take by far the biggest chunk of annual public spending.
Now drop off your LARPing already, "an"cap. This isn't the board for you.
Jayden Anderson
Who cares? Certainly not anyone in my community that's for sure. I don't either. Few of my friends do. If it could save effort, they would not bother working on projects that are dedicated to climate change. Why? Because they see it as a non-issue. This is wrong. This happens when space research is hindered due to excessive regulation. Since 2015 we have seen an absolute boom in investment in Space. Do you know why? Obama signed a declaration that allows private companies to "own" whatever they bring back from space. Why would the proletariat do it for themselves anyway? It's a lot of unneeded effort when there is nothing wrong with earth - and won't be for the next million years. That wasn't SpaceX you idiot. That was MarsOne, which Elon actively said was a bad idea and wouldn't work.
Connor Cooper
You are in a minority, and in a direct democracy you would get out voted.
Than why does the US still use the Soyuz?
The reason there’s private investment into space is because Eylon's ego won’t stroke it’s self. Also the media attention gives him free advertisement for his car company. Most of his “inventions” were done 95% by wither NASA or the Soviet Space Program, all he did was the extra 5%.
Why did the Europeans want to create colonies in America when their was nothing wrong with Europe and won’t be for the next million years.
Thomas Perez
If you're not a tankie you shouldn't apologize for them then. Gorbachev saw what had been done to his people and took action.
Robert Adams
Your understanding of, well, human nature, is a bit threadbare.
Even if this is true - which I'm not saying it's not - how many of those 51% that do care are willing to build something for climate science? Due to NASA's dreadful management they awfully underfunded the Comercial Crew Program. It is much cheaper to use Elons Dragon 2 capsule than it is the Soyuz - especially since the Russians have hiked up the price 372% per passenger on it since the Space Shuttle finished (Yes, they hiked the prices up exactly as the shuttle ended). It costs them $80million per astronaut now (And they can only launch 3 at a time)
Profit is antithetical to the worker (labour), the more the worker is paid, the less that profit is realised.
Workers in capitalism are never paid what their work is worth, if a worker is overpaid, the company loses money and if a worker is paid what their work is worth, then the company can only break even. For a company to profit, you must do more work than what you're paid, you'll never be paid what your work is worth under capitalism.
