Intuitive Machines—known for its Moon landers—will become a military contractor

"They've been Ford Aerospace, Space Systems/Loral, Maxar, Lanteris, and now it'll be Intuitive Machines."

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[fensox]

"its core competency of Moon missions" ... hmmm

 

[Prostetnic]

Ford Aerospace was also known as Fraud Aerospace, and Space Systems/Loral were the ones who helped China figure out how to make their Long March rocket (ICBM) not blow up. Great resume.

 

[Ted.Starchild]

It never ceases to profoundly disappoint me that engineers will use their hands and minds, their uniquely human talents, in order to construct weapons of war for the ruling class.

Unfortunately sometimes you need weapons to keep foreign ruling class to their side of border.
Ukraine is horrible example what can happen in case of naive demilitarization...

 

[Astra Architect]

It never ceases to profoundly disappoint me that engineers will use their hands and minds, their uniquely human talents, in order to construct weapons of war for the ruling class.

The history of humanity is not a record of humans being nice to each other. It is a record of never-ending warfare for control of resources. You win or you get conquered...or killed.

See any Sumerians or Akkadians or Romans or Incans or Aztecs or Persians or Mayans or Mongols running around as citizens of their own nations/empires? See any independent Greek city-states? How about a China led by an emperor or an Egypt led by a pharaoh?

Pretty much all of the technology you enjoy today was initially developed for war, or only advanced due to war. Early aircraft development was massively funded by WWI and WWII. Jet airline travel would likely not exist without WWII and Cold War funding - only the military could make a business case to pay for an engine that needed replacing as often as early jet engines did (we're talking about 10-50 hours of operating time). Only the military could make a business case to throw money at developing more reliable jet engines. Because speed is life in 20th century aerial combat.

Computers? Useful for computing artillery flight times for time-on-target barrages. Then useful for cracking ciphers. Then useful for guidance, navigation, and control of NASA rockets...and ICBMs. It was NASA and the USAF and USN that paid for transistors to be developed past their initial stage of unreliability because only they had hard-and-fast requirements for space and weight and power usage for their computers. Private companies could just build bigger computers.

The internet? Evolved from ARPANET, which was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA) that was part of the DoD. Yes, it was created as a way to connect researchers to geographically scattered computers and not, as some claim, to create a command and control network resistant to nuclear attack...but what kind of research do you think ARPA was paying for? It wasn't research they thought would have no potential military application...

GPS? Relied on by ships, aircraft, trains, trucks, surveyors, and private citizens? Created for the military.

The interstate highway system? Exists because the 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, which traveled from D.C. to San Francisco and took 62 days, included a brevet lieutenant colonel (assigned and paid as a major at the time, IIRC) named Dwight D. Eisenhower. His experiences with that convoy and then with autobahns in Germany during WWII caused him to push Congress to pass Public Law 627, also known as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, also known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. Eisenhower saw the highways as vital aids to the economy, but with an intended dual purpose of providing the U.S. military with ways to quickly move troops and materiel in the event of another world war. To be clear, Eisenhower actually opposed the bill as passed - he wanted the highways to be funded via bonds, not taxes - but it was his initial statements on the creation of the highway system that spurred legislation.