While consuming my daily news feed for the day, my wrath was awakened by a tiny article on slashdot. For those not in the mood to click through and read, the article described how citizens in New Mexico had supported, and were now adopting, a new extra tax to allow them to build the first commercial spaceport.
I really don't get what's commercial about spaceport that is being paid for by taxpayers monies. If you ask me that makes it at least partly public. Obviously then, this is just a way to sugarcoat ripping of some poor taxpayers for the benefit of a few corporations that can't be arsed to make serious investments in their own future infrastructure. And if this new facility was in any way going to benefit the people that are now paying towards it, that would perhaps mitigate this atrocity, but with an intended price tag of $200,000 per flight ( the intended price for a short space hop with Virgin Galactic), this service is obviously not going to have any real meaning to 99% of the people paying for it.
Another fine example of the failures of democracy. The right marketing will have people vote in favour of the most stupendous ideas.
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I assume they mean "commercial" in the sense that government will start the ball rolling and it will be self-sustaining after that. You know, like the bus system...
Um, OK, bad example. I'm actually kind of ambivalent about this sort of thing. On the one hand, I don't like to see government funding stuff that should be truly commercial, but on the other hand this is probably a better use of money than a new football stadium.
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