this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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Pretty sure the engineers at SpaceX who do all the work would happily take a better deal elsewhere if say Europe gave them the opportunity. I'm sure Elon and his 20yo hacker friends will do fine by themselves, they're like an MCU Iron Man dream-team according to his fans.
EU would need to compete on comp but I am sure many Americans are willing to make switch for a price that enables them the same or better life in EU.
Why would anyone have any loyal to SpaceX? It is just an example of NASA getting privatize and it will continue.
There's pretty much no way any rocket engineer will get the same salary in the EU.
American professionals will always get more money because there is hardly any wealth distribution and social safety nets are nonexistent. Just to illustrate it: the top 10% of Americans have the same gross income as the top 1% of Europeans in wealthy nations (UK, Sweden, Germany...). This is before tax by the way, so the difference is even greater in practice. EU VAT is a further 20% and more safety regulations cause prices to be generally higher, especially for homes.
Any engineer at SpaceX will definitely live a better life by staying in the US. They'd have to want to live in a social democracy over a fascist oligarchy.
That might be true for the American professional class as a whole, but Europe could still outbid the USA in industries it decides to focus on.
If for example the EU wanted to headhunt Spacex engineers, it could easily offer every one a bigger salary. Spacex's budget is still significantly smaller than the ESA's.
Not that the EU is likely to try that tactic in particular, although spending more money on space seems possible as part of avoiding reliance on the Americans.