The economy is unravelling. Interest rates are up and going up still further. Productivity is moribund and hopes of resurrecting it are just pipe-dreams. Housing is unaffordable and unlikely to become more affordable this side of 2050. The deficit and debt is up and won't come down in our or our kids life-times. The old two party square dance is coming to a close and there's every chance we will end up with a PM who is wholly unsuited to the job.

And the beat goes on.

But yesterday we saw the future and the future looks unbelievable. Yesterday SpaceX put their 'Ship' into orbit. On their first attempt. This is a vehicle that makes previous space launches look puny. It measures Height: 52m Diameter: 9m. Its payload is potentially 100 tons.

Yesterday it launched 20 V3 satellites which revolutionise internet traffic and cell phone connectivity. Future launches will carry 60 V3s. SpaceX are planning on have 10s of 1000s of these in service. The entire planet will be connected irrespective of where you live and at speeds that we once used to dream of.

The successful launch means that NASA's aims for a manned moon mission in 2027-8 are on track.

It also means that Musk's aims for having space based data centres is easily within reach making the whole silly data centre argument current taking place, obsolete.

Most of us on OLO won't see the full fruits of this revolution but our kids and grandkids will. And we can pass into history knowing that the future of mankind is rosy.

Maybe living in the present would be more advantageous mhaze.

Can technological abundance actually be converted into social abundance, or will technological progress merely increase the wealth and capabilities of those who already control capital, land and infrastructure?

That Australia may or may not be in a debt crisis is not the argument , but that governments are allowing a relatively favourable debt position to deteriorate while simultaneously failing to resolve structural problems such as housing affordability and weak productivity.

So tge rosy future looks very faded really when mhaze mistakes technological possibility for social progress. Starship may tell us that humanity’s technological future is extraordinary; it tells us nothing by itself about whether our social future will be equally successful. A civilisation can put 100 tonnes into orbit while failing to put a secure roof over the heads of people on Earth. The real question is not whether the future of technology is rosy, but whether our social institutions are capable of converting that technological abundance into a better life for ordinary people.

It's very hard for ordinary individuals to see how this Dan Dare stuff will improve their lives and deliver them from debt and the Albanese government.

Living in the present (DD) and revisiting the past to see what we have lost is a much better idea.

I'm just overjoyed.

So how long till Skynet becomes self-aware?

"After the first Falcon 1 rocket exploded 33 seconds after launch in March 2006, Elon Musk did something that his employees did not expect. He personally called the family members of the engineers who had worked on the rocket.

Not the engineers. Their families.

The engineers were at the launch site. They had watched their work explode in the sky. They were processing the failure in real time with their colleagues. They had each other.

Their families were at home. Their spouses and parents had watched on a livestream or heard the news secondhand. They had no colleagues. They had no context. They just knew that the thing their husband or wife or child had spent 3 years building had just been destroyed in 33 seconds and they didn't know if anyone was hurt.

Elon called to tell them everyone was safe. That the failure was a known risk. That the team would try again. That their family member had done extraordinary work and the explosion was not a reflection of their ability.

One engineer's wife said the call lasted 4 minutes. She said Elon sounded tired but calm. She said he didn't minimize the failure or exaggerate the optimism. He stated the facts and said "your husband is brilliant and we are going to fly again."

The engineers learned about the calls later. Several described it as the moment they decided to stay at SpaceX. Not because the CEO called their families. Because the CEO understood that the family at home absorbs the weight of the failure without any of the camaraderie that makes it bearable for the team.

The rockets get the headlines. The families hold the weight in the dark. He called the families."

"Can technological abundance actually be converted into social abundance, or will technological progress merely increase the wealth and capabilities of those who already control capital, land and infrastructure?"

Yes and Yes.

History teaches us (or at least those who learn from history) that technological advances lead to societal advances. Not always immediately and not always seamlessly but always eventually.

And yes it will increase the wealth of those that lead the technological revolution. It always has. BUT it will also advance the lives and wealth of the rest of society. Not by as much and not equally, but by a measurable amount. The rich will get richer AND the poor will get richer.

People in our current society appear hard done by. But they are significantly better off than their grandparents. Today's poor live lives that are vastly better than the wealthiest of society from 150 years ago - more and better food, more and better accommodation, longer lives, better health, more leisure, less workload. I know that the naysayers will gripe that things today aren't perfect and therefore reject it. But remember that perfect is the biggest enemy of better.

The new world that we saw last week won't be perfect. But it'll be immeasurably better for all concerned .

Vladislav Haze, Elons Tsar of “managed Democracy”. Ho *F* Ho.

The only positive fall out for the homeless surfs, will be the fallout fragments which fall on the Australian continent.

Albanese has already bent over for Elon with a promise to clean up that mess: And that with an additional very coincidental pledge to kick start Australia’s own Astronaut training program, with a pledge of $100m taxpayer dollars.

Would it be too cynical to suspect most of the dowry lands at the feet of Elon

http://x.com/KenKirtland17/status/2105872062921216278

"SpaceX has launched every rocket in their lineup, 3 different vehicles, from 4 different pads, in 3 different states this week.

They also lifted basically every “category” of payload. Starlink, Crew, Commercial, and Military.

WHAT. A. WEEK."

"The only positive fall out for the homeless surfs, will be the fallout fragments which fall on the Australian continent."

So mankind shouldn't reach for the stars because there are still homeless in Australia?? !!

I think that's the reason the aboriginals didn't invent the wheel. They refused to advance while there were still people without a roof over their head.

The nub of the argument is:

When governments support or contract with the space industry, the argument becomes, #taxpayers have a legitimate interest in asking whether scarce public resources are being allocated to the greatest social benefit#.

Nobody is saying humanity must stop exploring space. The question is whether society’s priorities are defensible when people are sleeping on the streets. Elon Musk’s space ventures consume enormous private and public resources, while homelessness represents a failure to meet a basic human need. Technological achievement isn’t automatically socially valuable simply because it is technologically impressive.

We should ask what those resources could accomplish if directed toward housing, health, infrastructure or other immediate human needs.

Albaneses realities and proposals:
* Australia is considering supporting Katherine Bennell-Pegg, Australia’s first astronaut, on a potential European Space Agency mission to the International Space Station.
* The ~$100 million figure is an estimated cost/contribution, not a confirmed $100 million Albanese Government appropriation. The ABC reported that a UWA space expert estimated such a partnership could be in the vicinity of $100 million.
* More recently, reporting has put the potential mission at $120–160 million, with the Federal Government seeking state/territory participation.
* Separately, the Albanese Government has committed substantial money to the broader space sector. Its National Reconstruction Fund has invested almost $200 million across six space-related companies, according to the government, while an additional $21.7 million was recently provided for Australian Space Agency operations.
* And in 2024 the Government committed $42 million to Australia’s “Roo-ver” lunar rover

Progress isn’t just about how far we can travel into space; it is also about how well we treat people who are already here!

"Nobody is saying humanity must stop exploring space. "

No, you're just saying that we should stop any advancement of the human project until the problems that are dear to your heart are solved.

History tells us that the advances in space fuel advances on earth....

"NASA’s Apollo programme created unprecedented demand for reliable, compact, high-performance computing. Trajectory calculations, real-time guidance, and life-critical systems required computers far beyond 1950s mainframes. NASA became one of the earliest and largest customers for integrated circuits, buying millions of chips from Texas Instruments and Fairchild in the early 1960s. This volume purchase drove down costs, improved yields, and accelerated the shift from discrete transistors to microelectronics—the foundation of modern computers.
Spacecraft computers also forced radical miniaturisation and ruggedisation. The Apollo Guidance Computer, one of the first to use silicon integrated circuits, demonstrated that complex digital systems could fit into tight, high-reliability packages. Techniques developed for fault-tolerant software, real-time operating systems, and rigorous testing (including formal verification practices) later migrated into civilian industries.
Beyond hardware, the programme trained a generation of engineers and programmers who moved into the commercial sector. Technologies refined for space—semiconductor processes, memory systems, and digital signal processing—fed directly into the microprocessors and minicomputers of the 1970s that made personal computing possible and eventually the internet revolution".

If only NASA had spent the money on housing ....

Let me burn down your straw man.

Im not arguing “NASA should have built houses instead.”

Im arguing:

When government chooses where scarce public money goes, competing social benefits should be OPENLY compared.

That’s a perfectly legitimate public-policy argument.

And my argument becomes particularly strong when discussing commercial or entrepreneurial space ventures. There is a difference between:
1). publicly funding fundamental research with demonstrable strategic or scientific objectives
and
2). government subsidising a commercial sector on the assumption that technological and economic benefits will eventually trickle through to society.

2). deserves much closer scrutiny!

Yes, space exploration has produced extraordinary benefits on Earth. That is precisely why the issue should be evaluated on evidence rather than treated as an article of faith.

The existence of technological spillovers from Apollo doesn’t establish that every contemporary space expenditure has comparable social returns.

That is the critical distinction.

Progress isn’t just about how far we can travel into space; it is also about how well we treat people who are already here.

SpaceX doesn't receive government support. It used to, but that was long ago and the money was given to help them achieve things the US government wanted.

And it most certainly doesn't receive Australian government support.

I am not claiming Australia directly subsidises SpaceX. I am saying Australian taxpayers are funding an expanding commercial space ecosystem, some of whose activities use SpaceX’s commercial launch services. That is a legitimate expenditure-of-public-resources question!

My objection is not to space exploration; It is to the government’s allocation of additional discretionary public resources when Australia is experiencing a recognised housing shortage, a substantial social-housing waiting list and homelessness pressures.

Every dollar of public expenditure has an opportunity cost. The question I am entitled to ask as a taxpayer is whether expanding Australia’s participation in commercial space activities should take priority over addressing immediate and demonstrable deficiencies in housing and homelessness infrastructure.

That is not an argument against technological progress. It is an argument for proportionality and priorities!

Landline this weekend carried a story about Australia hoping to launch, via one of the various launch vehicles, satellites to monitor fires and to remotely try to use new technology to measure the flammability of forests throughout the country and therefore predict how ferocious fires might be. They also hope to use the satellite data to direct early responses to any fires. Finally they are hopeful that if they can get it working then they'll be able to sell the technology overseas.

Is that an appropriate use of federal funds?

lawful expenditure is not necessarily optimal expenditure.
The question is this, whether the allocation of taxpayer dollars in space technology et al represents a defensible priority.

With Government investing taxpayer funds into Social housing;

The government investment in social housing produces a tangible asset — land, buildings and associated infrastructure — that can remain useful for decades.

The returns aren’t confined to the eventual sale value of the property. They can include:

* long-term accommodation for multiple households over the asset’s life;
* rental income;
* preservation or appreciation of the underlying asset;
* reduced pressure on emergency accommodation and homelessness services;
* greater housing stability, potentially improving employment and health outcomes;
* an enduring public asset rather than a one-off consumption expenditure.

And importantly, the government can actually identify and measure much of the asset and its continuing use.

Whereas with;

Space investment

The government’s prospective return is different. It may include:

* technological spillovers;
* commercialisation;
* skilled employment;
* private investment;
* strategic capability;
* scientific discoveries;
* future tax revenue.

BUT many of these returns are forecast rather than guaranteed, and some may take decades to materialise. Some benefits may accrue primarily to private companies and investors.

So the legitimate question becomes:

Why should government prefer an investment whose principal returns are prospective and uncertain over an investment that creates a tangible, long-lived public asset while simultaneously addressing an immediate social deficiency?

So no investment as to how to better fight fires until all homeless are homed. Got it!

Well mhaze, do you want to play with the toddlers building strawmen or engage with the real adult world?

That’s not my argument at all.

You’ve replaced “government should compare competing claims on scarce taxpayer funds” with “government must do nothing else until every homeless person is housed.”

Those are entirely different propositions.

Of course governments must invest in firefighting, defence, infrastructure, research and many other areas simultaneously. The question is how much should be allocated to each, and on what evidence.

My argument is about the government’s obligation to justify discretionary investment by considering:

• the certainty and timing of the expected return;
• who actually receives the benefits;
• the risks borne by taxpayers;
• whether the investment creates a lasting public asset;
• and the opportunity cost of choosing one investment over another.

Social housing illustrates the point because public expenditure can create a tangible, long-lived asset while addressing an immediate social need.

That doesn’t mean “no space investment until homelessness is eliminated.” It means that “investment in the future” isn’t a sufficient justification by itself.

If you disagree, address the actual argument: what is the expected public return from the expenditure, how was that return assessed, what risks are being carried by taxpayers, and why was that allocation considered preferable to competing uses of the money.

DD,

My original point was that the Starship flight opened up all sorts of possibilities for humankind. One of those might be the ability to monitor and better combat forest fires and other disasters.

But you've adopted the view that other issues should be funded rather than this advancing technology. That's fine. You can set whatever priorities you want.

But those in the space industry are also allowed to set their priorities. Since Starship and SpaceX aren't using public funds and most definitely not Australia public funds, they are allowed to spend their own money where they want. And they want to spend it on making mankind a multi-planetary species.

I suspect that in 100 years time when the history books talk about 2026 they will be talking about the pivotal time in the advancement of humankind, and not about how many people were sleeping rough in Sydney.

I don’t think we’re actually disagreeing mhaze, about the value of technological advancement.

I readily accept that Starship could open extraordinary possibilities for humanity — including Earth observation, disaster monitoring, communications and technologies we cannot presently foresee.

Nor am I arguing that SpaceX shouldn’t pursue its own ambitions. If it wants to spend its private capital pursuing a multi-planetary future, that is entirely its prerogative.

But that isn’t the argument I made.

My argument concerns the separate question of government spending of taxpayer money.

Whether Starship ultimately proves to be one of the great technological turning points of human history tells us nothing, by itself, about whether a particular Australian Government expenditure represents the best use of scarce public resources today.

There is also a factual qualification to your claim that SpaceX isn’t using public funds. SpaceX is a private company, but it continues to receive substantial US government payments for services. NASA’s September 2026 award of three additional crew missions brought the total value of its Commercial Crew contract with SpaceX to $5.92 billion. Those payments are government procurement rather than necessarily “subsidies”, but they are certainly public expenditure.

And I am not claiming Australia is directly subsidising SpaceX.

I’m asking a much simpler question:

When the Australian Government chooses to commit taxpayer funds to developing the space economy, on what basis should that expenditure be preferred over other competing public investments — particularly investments that create tangible, long-lived public assets such as social housing?

But governments don’t have the luxury of allocating today’s scarce resources on the assumption that every projected benefit will materialise.
Your 100-year prediction may ultimately prove correct. It may even prove spectacularly correct.
They have to make the case for the expenditure today.

That’s the distinction I’m making: private ambition is one thing; public expenditure requires public justification.
.

DD,

Your original complaint was that funds were being spent on space when it should have been spent on the homeless.

Your assertion now is that Australia spending money on space when we have homeless is questionable. Frankly I'd agree that most discretionary spending by Australian governments is questionable. How can we spend billions on the Institute of Sport but quibble over spending a small fraction of that on getting a mechanism to monitor forest fires from space.

But the point is that the people doing the work on space AREN'T Australia. We have been left far behind. And its these people, not us, who are ushering in a new age for mankind, including those currently without a room over their head and they are doing it without any assistance from the Australian government and precious little assistance from any other government.

Trains were invented in the early 19th century. Likewise the invention and initial implementation was all done without government assistance. Yet trains changed the world. Hell, even the homeless now use them!

http://x.com/Starlink/status/2107486879935545743/video/1

These are satellites the size of a bus being launched from a space craft the size of a 17 storey building.

What a time.

I accept that I have not established that the Australian Government has directly invested in SpaceX. That’s not the point I need to establish. The Australian Government is demonstrably investing hundreds of millions of dollars in developing Australia’s commercial space capability and connecting Australian projects to the international space industry. The question I am raising is whether those public investments represent the best allocation of scarce taxpayer resources relative to competing priorities

My original argument is about the Australian Government’s decision to allocate Australian taxpayers’ money to space-related objectives at all, and whether those expenditures have been adequately justified against alternative uses.

There are two propositions:

Australian taxpayers have funded Australian space projects that use SpaceX

And Yes

Australian taxpayers are funding development of a commercial space ecosystem in which SpaceX is a major international participant.

The Australian Government has spent substantial public money developing Australia’s space sector. The Australian Space Agency says the government had invested more than $700 million in the civil space sector since the Agency’s establishment in 2018.
* In 2022, the government announced $32.5 million specifically to procure spaceflights for Australian technology and $32.3 million for spaceport development.
* Australian Government-supported projects have actually flown on SpaceX rockets. For example, the Australian Space Agency supported the SpIRIT satellite, which launched on a SpaceX mission from Vandenberg in 2023.
* The government’s current policy explicitly aims to develop Australia’s commercial space industry and connect Australian companies with the global space economy

DD,

I get that you'd rather Australia spend money in areas other than space. I disagree but its really immaterial to my original point.

Australia dealt itself out of the space industry years ago and we are just going to be spectators for the next few decades as the US and SpaceX and, to lesser extent, China reap all the benefits available in LEO (low Earth Orbit) as well as on the Moon and asteroid mining. Within a decade, the data centres which Australia spends so much time fretting about will be in LEO and running on free solar power. And as such they'll be beyond the jurisdiction of bit players like Australia.

The good news for Australia is that, as we've seen in the past, the material benefits the big boys attain for being at the forefront of these new adventures do eventually filter down to the bit-players. Already something approaching 1 million Australians use Starlink for their broadband which puts them largely beyond the reach of the government's censorship apparatus.

As an aside, SpaceX just did a crew swap on the ISS....

http://x.com/SpaceX/status/2108220101614850436

Mhaze.

The fundamental differences in opinion are irreconcilable so I’ll summarise my last response:

I think we’ve now identified the real difference between our positions.

You are concerned that Australia will miss out on the future benefits of space development if it fails to participate. That’s a legitimate concern, and I accept that technological advances can produce benefits far beyond their original purpose.

But the possibility of future benefits doesn’t settle the question of how Australian taxpayers’ money should be allocated today.

Your argument assumes that the benefits will eventually flow down to Australia and that participation now is worth the cost. Those are propositions that require evidence, not simply confidence in technological progress.

My argument is not that Australia should abandon space. It is that government investment in commercial space development should be assessed against its expected public return, the risks carried by taxpayers, who captures the benefits, and the opportunity cost of competing public investments.

Nor does the fact that Australia might lag behind the US or China mean that every attempt to catch up is economically justified.

We agree that technological progress matters. We differ over what that establishes about government spending.

The potential value of a technology is one question. Whether a particular expenditure of public money is justified is another.

That distinction remains my original point!

"You are concerned that Australia will miss out on the future benefits of space development if it fails to participate. "

No that's not my position at all. Australia has already been left behind and won't caught up for decades if ever. It'd be nice if we used the new lower costs of putting stuff in space to help solve some of our problems but I'm not fused either way.

My position is about humanity in general, not Australia in particular. Humanity took a giant leap forward with Starship 13 and I was simply pointing that out. And it was all done by the private sector. And its going to accelerate. SpaceX is now building, with private funds, a gigantic factory to make many many more Starship which will result in many many more launches of these history changing rockets.

What Australia does about this new world wasn't my point. If Australia decides it'd rather spend money elsewhere and let the space revolution pass it by, so be it. The world that SpaceX is creating will move on and Australia will look on, askant

Fair enough: Your original point was that Starship represents a potentially historic advance for humanity, achieved through private-sector initiative, and that its development will continue regardless of what Australia chooses to do.

I don’t dispute the potential significance of that achievement, nor the right of private enterprise to pursue it.

My argument was and still is, how governments should allocate scarce taxpayer resources when technological ambitions such as this current example, compete with immediate social needs.

Equally, the fact that a technological development may benefit humanity doesn’t, by itself, settle the separate question of whether a government should fund particular activities associated with it. That is a personal decision.

Perhaps then, the distinction is simply this: You’re interested in the possibilities Starship may open up for humanity, whereas I’m interested in the public-policy choices governments make in response to technological developments.

Those are different questions, and we need not to resolve one in order to acknowledge the significance of the other.

I'm not advocating for government, either here or overseas, to get into funding of the space industry in general or SpaceX in particular. Indeed I'd want government to stay out of it as much as possible.

The main reason why SpaceX has been wildly successful while NASA and the European Space Agency and the various Chinese space organisations are struggling to keep up, is that SpaceX was determined to do it without government 'help' which too often becomes government interference.