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.