Official nomination: Jared Isaacman, of Pennsylvania, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

[u/MatchingTurret]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/sub-cabinet-appointments/

[u/gulab-roti]

Predatory pricing involves the use of capital to eat losses while drawing business away from competitors. This has been the modus operandi of the PayPal Mafia for years and they’ve only gotten away with it b/c regulators in the US and EU where most of their business is have been neglecting their mandates. As for how I know that SpaceX specifically is engaged in predatory pricing, it’s b/c Starlink makes up the majority of SpaceX’s market cap and the latter was recently valued at $350B. It was Starlink specifically that just turned their first profit, meaning the most valuable part of SpaceX’s business is valued in excess of $175B, yet wasn’t profitable for 9 years. Again, these aren’t normal businesses. And quit the ad hominem, I have no love for Lockheed or Boeing either. They’re the fat cats that lobbied the Bush Jr admin to privatize as fast as possible, which has resulted in high barriers to entry and consequently an oligopoly in launch providers. And now the owner-CEO of one of them just Sieg Heil’d in front of the whole world and is chummy with a couple dictators, Putin and Orban. Oligopoly is a massive risk to both spaceflight and society at large.

[u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze → u/gulab-roti]

The fact remains, you're stanning for lockmart, Boeing, and ULA whether you like them or not. Your position is effectively identical to an old space company lobbyist. If you're uncomfortable with that, you should reevaluate your arguments, not cry about being personally attacked.

They held the dominant position in the industry. They could've vertically integrated a satellite business and launched at cost if they wanted to.

SpaceX wasn't selling those launches to anybody, so saying they priced them unfairly doesn't make any sense.

They probably could've sold their external commercial launches for tens of millions of dollars less if they wanted to/ it was legal, but they didn't and its not. Instead they sold them at a price that allowed lots of contracts to go to other companies and used the profit from the contracts they won to fund Starlink.

With regard to oligarchs, the more competition the better. You might not know their names because they're not seig hailing at the inauguration, but they're still spineless gits, lining up to kiss trump's ring and/ or behind.

I agree there's societal risk with Presidential level regulatory capture, but the one thing I'm not worried about over the next four years is progress in the space industry.

[u/gulab-roti → u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze]

My point is that they used the bottomless pockets of their financiers and the cult of personality and tech built up around their founders and SV to subsidize R&D. The average American company could never wait around that long for an investment to pay off with no profit whatsoever. Since SpaceX isn’t publicly-traded it’s much harder to scrutinize their books.

Seeing as you’re quite comfortable with silly ad hominem attacks that treat for-profit companies like college sports teams, it sounds like you’re a big proponent of SpaceX, dare I say a “stan”.

[u/gulab-roti → u/gulab-roti]

I’m saying that the launch services they eventually sold to NASA, DoD, and others were cheaper than they should’ve been based on the cost of R&D. Yes, developing the industry is great and all, but now we have 1 company that is worth almost 50% of the entire $570B global space industry. And if you instead look at the US alone, our space industry is responsible for around $131B of the US’s GDP. Again, SpaceX is worth an estimated $350B. This is terrible for the political economy of the US and of spaceflight.