Well, you can make things yourself worth 365 x 100 million and decide to use them for something else.

Fortunately, the rules in well-functioning societies do not allow anyone other than the owner of something to decide how it should be used.

If you spend your own money sure why not, I couldn't agree more, but it's the taxpayer's.

This very same individual was until recently trying to highlight frivolous government spending, surprisingly coming up short, obviously it'd be very cynical of me to suggest even a hint of hypocrisy let alone a conflict of interest so I'll leave it.

SpaceX is not financed by taxpayer money and I believe its contracts are paid on reached milestones.

Musk said it himself "that's $100mm every time but it's the taxpayer footing the bill and they should get value for money" (paraphrasing), I can't remember the show but it may have been his Rogan appearance.

Sorry to burst your bubble on that, even if it is just carrying Starlink satellites it's still at public expense, not limited to the rocket itself but the infrastructure, and oversight from third parties.

There was a seriously sour grapes quality to that comment thread. I wouldn't give it too much weight without hearing from actual SpaceX employees.

Norwegian here. People collectively lost their minds after the 2024 election. The USA is a great country, embodying values that bring out the best in humanity. You don't deserve this hate.

Nation-state politics often devolves to the level of children on a playground. This was one of those occasions.

Not always. That third guy, the on the left, behaves himself like a responsible adult should.

America did used to have real diplomacy, in the sense that there was an active dialogue between diplomats in America and their counterparts abroad. During the unipolar moment, they gave that up. That's beyond dangerous and frankly suicidal.

> The energy policy of most European countries was clearly mismanaged

Still is. That Germany continues to leave their nuclear fleet fallow in the face of this is absolute insanity.

Germany’s energy policy has unfortunately shaped the EU one to the catastrophic level it is now.

I don’t know enough about local politics to categorise the reason why though. But a lot of the damage is now irrevocable, and residual for millennia.

I mean I'm real content to blame the environmentalist movement on this, which very obviously bifurcates into "pragmatists" and "anti-nuclear". The anti-nuclear people will pay lipservice to everything else, but it's abundantly clear that their top priority at all junctions was eliminating nuclear power regardless of consequences and they'd believe convenient lies to that goal ("the natural gas is just temporary. We'll definitely stop using Nordstream voluntarily...")

Nah the anti-nuclear power people are not environmentalists. Those people would know that nuclear waste is handled far better than any other waste from power production. Instead the anti-nuclear power people are the immense number of people who are scared to have nuclear power plants anywhere near them. It doesn't matter how safe the plants actually are, people think they are crazy dangerous compared to other ways that power is generated.

Going back on shutting down nuclear would cost more money and energy than building out sustainable energy - just see how well UKs or Frances most recent nuclear experiments went - tens of billions over budget and nothing to show for it after a decade

Another way of phrasing the situation is that Quantas _very inconveniently_ chose to put their flight path straight through the projected trajectory of rocket debris.

Tesla will win this, followed by Cruise.

Waymo isn't scalable.

In most European countries, you are only ever allowed to be in possession of a gun in public if you are travelling to or from the shooting range.

Just ensure that there’s good a insurance system to finance the rare health issues, and the market will take care of the hubcaps and spoilers.

Solving e.g. male pattern baldness or bone loss from peridontitis means guaranteed billionaire from out-of-pocket treatments alone.