While courts have ruled source code is first amendment protected. Your statement is still very very wrong. Just because it's first amendment protected doesn't mean it can't be classified normally or made illegal to leak because of ITAR.
But go leak some of the source code from XKeyscore or a schematic of a pair of GPNVG if you'd like to test our code classification and ITAR systems.
I'm not taking about sealing some government secrets. I'm taking about building a fun hobby project with some sort of targeting system. Think a small rocket that drops a payload or a water balloon launcher.
Okay but that has no relevance at all to what the comment you were replying to was about. Companies contracted by the government and DOD specifically to create rockets are guaranteed to be covered by ITAR. Meaning open sourcing them would be impossible, regardless of the first amendment or anything else.
There's a massive massive difference between the software for a DOD contracted rocket like SpaceX makes, and hobbyist rocketry.
We gotta figure out a better way than strapping ourselves to a continuously exploding bomb and pulling some serious Gs for 8 minutes.
Wonder how some of those SSTO space plane projects are doing...there was a British one I can't remember. Used hybrid air-breathing scramjets, switching to internal oxidizer once it was going fast and high enough.
Space planes carry along heavy-as-fuck wings, control surfaces and a lot of other bullshit that's only useful inside the atmosphere, and which massively increase fuel consumption for every single maneuver while your space plane is actually where you want it to do stuff - in space. And the only benefit is that the atmosphere helps lift and fuel your vehicle to about 10% of orbital velocity. The other 90% it will have to accelerate just like any other rocket.
The SpaceX approach is much better: Land and reuse all parts of your rocket, but don't carry them with you further than where they're useful. Rockets leave the atmosphere where wings would work within a few minutes anyway.
Why not. If everyone has it, everyone will be afraid to use it, because they know everyone else has it, but what they don't know is how many have developed a working prototype.