That telescope, which has had to go through over 300 automated or remotely controlled steps — in order — to open up from its fetal position crammed inside the oversized faring of a European-built Ariane rocket — was designed and built by scientists and engineers working on salary and launched on a rocket designed and built by a multi-European government agency. That is to say, nobody involved was a capitalist. Okay, the prime contractor for the satellite telescope is Northrop Grumman but that company is a Pentagon arms contractor, and as such, is actually as much a state-capitalist enterprise as any state enterprise in China or Russia. Payments are all sole sources by the government — in this case NASA — and pricing is what the government says it will be.

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