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$50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

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31–40 of 181 posts

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#32

Wait until they hear about the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of all sorts of stuff sitting idle that has been purchased by the DoD and USG paid for by tax money.

Prime example: the NRO donated two unused spy satellites to NASA, each more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-...

I love this story. Reminds me of Contact, one of my favorite movie quotes of all time:

'First rule of government spending: why build one when you can have two for twice the price?'

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#33

Wait until they hear about the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of all sorts of stuff sitting idle that has been purchased by the DoD and USG paid for by tax money.

Waste in government is a huge problem, there's no need to conflate it with military readiness to make it look larger.

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#34

> State government documents put the final price tag at $958,600,000 for the property, building construction and equipment. The cost for the equipment alone is close to $300 million. What a staggering number. How does our government get away with wasting so much money without any accountability?

They count on a few things:

* you don't hear about all the millions of times this happens

* You will still hear about thousands of times that it happens, and it happens so often you feel that can't possibly fight it all

* you don't have alternative options to vote for

* any alternative option is crushed with voter suppression and/or the massive campaign chests of the incumbents

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#38
post #13

I'm slightly confused; is the story that the state of New York bought equipment for Tesla worth $300 million dollars, and a sixth of it is currently unused (meaning five sixths of it is being used currently)?

Considering that Tesla will longer make solar cells in that factory (Panasonic is ending the relationship and withdrawing by September) I’d guess that it will all be unused shortly; this is just what has obviously been relocated so far.

What am I missing here? Is there any reason why another company can't just take over, seeing as they could probably get the equipment at a great discount?

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#39
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me how the US continually produces tanks despite the armies recommendations, to the point where we have enough tanks to essentially fight WW3 with purely tanks and still have some left over, just so some congressmen can keep jobs in their constituency. At least that was the situation in the 2000s, no idea if that wackiness is still continuing

To be fair, they've just massively upgraded the M1s to where they're nothing like the original tanks at all: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/armys-new-tank-here-c... It isn't as though they've been building the same old thing since the 2000s, they've been incrementally and steadily improving them as technology and materials science improves.

I think the point is tanks in general have little use in the vast majority of modern American battles.

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#40

Wait until they hear about the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of all sorts of stuff sitting idle that has been purchased by the DoD and USG paid for by tax money.

Prime example: the NRO donated two unused spy satellites to NASA, each more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-...

Unless they also donated launch costs, and $90 million per year to run it[1], it's no surprise that they're not actually using it. It's small compared to the overall budget, but not free.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy_2018...

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