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