SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

US government space funding, as a percent of GDP, is the second highest in the world. The only country which beats the US at %GDP government space funding is Russia; but in absolute terms government space funding in the US is 7 times that of Russia, due to how much bigger US GDP than Russia's is. SpaceX has received a lot of business from the US government (both NASA and military) and is hoping to receive a lot more in the future.

US arguably has the world's easiest access to venture capital. Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well.

A low regulation, low corruption business environment. Trying to start something like SpaceX in many other countries, the government will force you into various inefficiencies – using politically favoured suppliers, etc. The US has comparably little of these problems.

The comment about 'Canada blocking foreign investment out' is basically not correct.

Also, Telecoms, Banking and Communications are protected industries in every country, Canada is not special there.

If Canadian Telecoms Bell, Rogers and Telus went up for grabs, and even if Canada realistically had the same access to US markets - do you think Telus would be buying AT&T? Or the other way around?

It doesn't matter 'how well run' Canadian telecoms are (I don't think they are, but even if they were) - or how poorly US firms were run. The 'big' would eat the 'little'.

All of the 'good jobs' in Telecom like network planning, research, anything related to R&D, executive management - would go to the US. Canada would be left with 'Customer Service' and some local marketing.

There wouldn't really be that much gain for anyone, the net 'savings' would be marginal, and then, you'd be left with the Canadian government trying to regulate giant behemoths the size of entire sectors of the Canadian economy without much leverage.

That sector is verticalized with Entertainment and so with Bell, would go a whole bunch of TV / Cable stations etc.

Then AT&T/NBC would even more effectively be able to push their own programming, guests (who promote films, books, sports) and further push down anything remotely local towards hegemonic products.

So aside from the not-so-obvious economic advantages, there are quite a few externalities to worry about as well.

America in particular likes to push the concept of 'Free Markets' - because it has tremendous advantage in that context.

'Just Open Your Economy!' is the strategy of a 'Giant Economy' telling 'Little Economies' that 'We Will Devour Everything Of Value'. It's essentially a form of economic colonialism.

Adam Smith isn't exactly wrong, there can be many benfits to both sides, Canada has this kind of 'Gilded Cage' situation wherein it can maintain a very high standard of living by being next to the US, but it comes at the cost of losing the ability to do almost anything exceptional that in any way competes with the US.

The EU is not as unbalanced and they have different national constituents, with longer history and more potent foundational industries. Tiny Sweden makes Jet Fighters (!) which comes out of their cold war Air Force history of independence and a formerly relatively giant Air Force.

That America can have guys like 'Elon Musk' + Space X is a function of a few things, but at very least, it's scale.

The US is a huge market and only certain things can only be done at that scale. Most small countries do not have competitive automakers. Space X is essentially dependent on US Government contracts, at least indirectly.

Second, it's 'much bigger than it's peripherals'. This means that the US sucks all the talent and capital from neighbouring states into it's systems.

Think of the 'Silicon Valley' as not an 'American' place - think of it as an 'International Zone' that happens to be in the US. A 'super cluster' with a giant critical mass of talent.

Right now, arguably due at least partly to the inherent advantage that the Euro gives to Germany - Spaniards, French, Italians etc. are moving to Germany at considerably greater rates than in the other direction. That's where the industrial base will grow jobs from. Peripheral European states that don't manage to found their own competitive sectors will turn into places like Alabama and Louisiana where the talent vacates before it can establish into critical mass.

Third, another major artifact is inequality. Low-end jobs in American don't pay well, and they don't get benefits. The surpluses to the high side of the pyramid are huge. But when you take into consideration the 'off the books' economy, it's massive. California has almost 3 Million undocumented citizens, who are more likely to be young, more likely to be workforce participants, almost entirely working at the lowest end of the labour pool, and definitely earning far sub-minimum wage. Every manual activity from planting, to picking, to trucking, to food preparation and cleaning - everything but the 'front facing stuff' is often fulfilled by people 'off the books' and the consumer and corporate surpluses from that are gigantic. Add to that the downward pressure on wages ... and basically you have a giant wealth transfer machine with enormous surpluses floating into the hands of those with middle to upper class incomes.

Just consider what all of the US stats would look like if we accounted for those jobs, at those wages. What would GDP/capita start to look like, GINI coefficient, other measures of inequality and % 'uninsured', voting rights.

I'm not making a political comment here, it's a problem and a paradox, but pointing out the material advantages to the non-serfdom population.

This excess free cash-flow both on an individual level and corporate level enable so many things to happen, it's hard to fathom. It's so common in America for individuals to have hobbies i.e. drones, cars, travel, tech etc. that are 'really expensive', beyond the reproach of the middle class in other nations.

Relatively cheap energy, wide open spaces and relatively cheap land, especially compared to Europe for example, again, this has all sorts of 'unseen surpluses'.

So those are just a few of the differentiators and of course, there are so many more, it's complicated.

Those numbers are out of date now, they recently restarted production and it turns out each engine is about $150M now for the new production run for the SLS. (Which about the cost of a full expendable Falcon Heavy rocket launch along with all 27 of its Merlin engines.)

Reading some of these comments makes me wonder what it was like when explorers were trying to justify exploring the "New World".

Humans have been exploring forever. Why stop now?

You should run a comparison. If you could wave a magic wand and erase the startup costs with mining space resources to produce our heavy industry, would the operational costs (transport costs/etc) be less than they are right now? I think it would be, it's just the startup costs are ridiculously high. So it's likely to be the case that you never make back the initial investment. However if someone's driven and has the capital, they could get that set up and then beat out the rest of the industry.

Now I'm not saying it's a foregone conclusion that it'd be cheaper, but just that it maybe can be.