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BFR 1 day ago
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the-pi-guy said:
BFR said:

"Pretty much every private company spends "unnecessary" money on extraneous employee benefits"


     We are talking about the federal gov't spending our tax dollars wastefully, not about private company wasteful spending.

I already did say the money was wasteful. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying we can talk about the other layers to this. 

But I'll go even further and say, being able to "waste" money is kind of an important good part of government. Being able to invest in helpful technologies that private industry wouldn't because they're not profitable is important. We wouldn't have space exploration without it. SpaceX wouldn't exist without NASA existing. 

The vast majority of space firsts were done by government programs.

Being able to invest in green technologies, is an important government responsibility right now. 

Pi, nobody loves the US space program more than me.

It is true that SpaceX wouldn't exist like it does today, if NASA didn't award it a contract under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program to send supplies to the ISS.

I am a huge supporter of ARPA-E, the DOE's version of DARPA, which invests in risky, but potentially rewarding green technologies.

In fact, during Obama's first term, I even wrote a letter to the White House proposing the creation of such an agency, only I named my concept as "EARPA".

Last edited by BFR - 1 day ago