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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

> SpaceX saved the tax payers a ton of money by reducing launch costs.

Do the tax payers really need anything launched?

I don't entirely understand why people are debating this point. The taxpayer doesn't pay for what he needs, he pays for what the government does. There are endless benefits to space for the consumer, but even if there weren't he's still paying for them.

Don't like endless wars? Thanks for your feedback, now give me 30% of everything you earn so I can pay for them.

Yea they do. Science experiments, future commerce, national defense, etc.

> future commerce

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

> national defense

Yeah yeah, I've been hearing that ever since Ronnie Ray-gun 40 years ago.

Weather monitoring. Got anything against that too?

Not per se, but it does seem like the volume of stuff launched into space vastly exceeds the need for it. And the environmental effects on the upper atmosphere of the increasing number of rocket launches is worrisome.

I’m excited for the Methane leak scanning project. There’s probably a lot of little projects like that that wouldn’t have been possible before the current launch market.

Tax payers seem to enjoy their Uber / Uber Eats type services which depend on GPS.

This tax payer doesn't.

If you don't think GPS as it's own thing is a net good, value adding part of the world, the problem might be you, not things in space.

I was talking about Uber / Uber Eats.

Oh thank goodness. Enthusiastic agreement.

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