I don’t see how any of those private activities hurt in any way.
by being private in the first place. necessarily, private corporations do not have the interests of humanity in mind, they are obliged and gladly prioritize money. simply put: i will never trust a private corporation to do the right thing if it has a profit incentive to do otherwise, because corporations are not benevolent or altruistic entities and never will be. anything they do which can be ascribed as either label should be understood as either coincidental or an intentional and cynical play to keep scrutiny and regulation off of their back. these statements i think are especially applicable to space travel.
Frankly, neither do public endeavors. Public endeavors have the interests of the politicians first and foremost, and NASA funding is, for all practical purposes, another pork program intended to draw in votes in Florida and Texas, with any gains for humanity as a positive side effect to be exploited in campaign ads. In the past 50 years this model has failed to deliver improved access to space. SpaceX has managed to reduce costs (and, by extension, increase accessibility) by a hundred fold. I know everyone hates Musk, and he is well and truly an asshole, but the current space renaissance is due to SpaceX.
by being private in the first place. necessarily, private corporations do not have the interests of humanity in mind, they are obliged and gladly prioritize money. simply put: i will never trust a private corporation to do the right thing if it has a profit incentive to do otherwise, because corporations are not benevolent or altruistic entities and never will be. anything they do which can be ascribed as either label should be understood as either coincidental or an intentional and cynical play to keep scrutiny and regulation off of their back. these statements i think are especially applicable to space travel.
Frankly, neither do public endeavors. Public endeavors have the interests of the politicians first and foremost, and NASA funding is, for all practical purposes, another pork program intended to draw in votes in Florida and Texas, with any gains for humanity as a positive side effect to be exploited in campaign ads. In the past 50 years this model has failed to deliver improved access to space. SpaceX has managed to reduce costs (and, by extension, increase accessibility) by a hundred fold. I know everyone hates Musk, and he is well and truly an asshole, but the current space renaissance is due to SpaceX.