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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

Let's talk about the "why not" for a second.

The incumbents have 200 years of collective head start over SpaceX, which started from scratch in 2002. They had 18 years to use that advantage to beat everyone else to reusable space access while remaining in the cherry procurement positions. Instead, they mismanaged, wrecked their quality culture, and lobbied for more handouts.

Unable to compete on merit, schedule,or price, ULA is reduced to buying another congressman, who's implying SpaceX is a security threat via the China card.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-s...

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Innovator's dilemma. For quite awhile the only way ULA could make more money was by convincing congress to perform more launches. It makes sense that that is exactly what they became good at.

Even though consolidation is natural in this type of industry, the lack of competition is why there was no creative or progressive development. Why burden yourself with risk and investment if the current system pays you as-is?

> Unable to compete on merit, schedule,or price, ULA is reduced to buying another congressman, who's implying SpaceX is a security threat via the China card.

That's quite the leap, although I can see your logic.

Ultimately Musk should have seen this coming because it's obvious. He's tied a huge amount of his net worth to the favour of the CCP and involved himself with a program of national importance to a country that is at odds with the CCP.

What's worst, Musk has zero respect for any sort of arms length separation between his companies, so it's almost guaranteed that the CCP has some level of access to SpaceX IP as they expand their grasp on Tesla through Shanghai.

This was all easily avoidable if Musk didn't insist on thinking that if he didn't personally come up with the idea, the idea must be idiotic.

If some separation between companies is lacking, perhaps that's a contributing factor to the successes of all of them. It's very hard to argue against success by using an ad-hominem.

Could you outline what you felt like was an ad-hominem?

Yes, the topic of arms-length vs IP sharing in a global setting would be a fascinating discussion we should have!

But after opining there should be separation, instead of arguing the merits of that plan, GP uses a personality characterization instead, leaving the comment lacking support.

IMO the level of seperation between Tesla and SpaceX is both material and heavily influenced by Elon Musk's decisions here. They aren't saying something like "Elon Musk is a narcissist so we should assume he'll give CCP access". That would be an ad-hominid.

So if I fall your logic correctly then Boeing, which is part of ULA, is also in CCP's pockets. They produce planes there, a lot. Just one example.

This. Embracing level of argument. Lets ignore the fact also that the US had a 50+ year standing relationship with China and it encouraged its companies to work there, including China in the WTO and so on.

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