4 ms·

Space: The Final Frontier of Profit?

16 points by grellas 17y ago

DannoHung 17y ago
I'm not sure that people are mentally prepared for the risks that human space flight will incur under private industry. People will die in the name of making manned space flight affordable. Is there going to be a public backlash from this? After both Space Shuttle disasters there were year long backoffs from Shuttle launches. A commercial entity will not have the luxury of just halting its mission for multiple fiscal quarters because of fatal engineering issues.
- philk 17y ago
  I'd actually say that commercial entities would be better off than the government, as the government is made up of people who: a) have to pretend to care [1] b) don't have any personal upside from space missions succeeding. [1] I'm not saying that they don't care, necessarily, it's more that pragmatism is not popular in political leaders.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  How many commercial fisherman died on the job last year? How many coal miners? Truck drivers? Electricians? The fact that you don't know (neither do I) says a lot about the risks some businesses take in stride. There's a business world outside of offices full of computers, and some of those jobs involve literally deadly risk. And yet those industries still thrive.
  - w1ntermute 17y ago
    How many commercial fisherman died on the job last year? How many coal miners? Truck drivers? Electricians? How many electricians don't know the basics of not electrocuting themselves? His point is that space is a new frontier, and we don't yet have standard safety protocols in place. The only way to develop them will be through trial and error, which will inevitably involve the loss of human life.
philk 17y ago
Most people don't realize that the major cost of a launch is labor. Fuel is less than 2%, while the standing army of people and infrastructure is well over 80%. Rather interesting that. I'd always thought the main expense was fuel. I still think it's a long way off, it's not enough for a half kilometer wide asteroid to be worth $20 trillion, the minerals within have to be less expensive than earth bound alternatives.
patio11 17y ago
[E]verything we hold of value—metals, minerals, energy and real estate— [is available] in near-infinite quantities in space. Yes, and there is a pot o' gold at the end of every rainbow. A pity you have to bring it back here to be able to get any use out of it. If there were a pot o' gold in earth orbit and I had a space shuttle ready to go up and snag it I'd be better off canceling the launch, letting the gold rot, and pocketing the money saved. It doesn't matter if that pot o' gold were the size of an aircraft carrier. How long before bored billionaires figure out that being on a souped-up jet with sucky cabin service has lost its $X-million-a-pop "story you can brag about to your friends" cachet, and we actually have to start extracting value out of space? Private industry is then going to go back to exploiting space via the only thing we can move without incurring fuel & etc costs: data, via satellites.
- jerf 17y ago
  I think you either grossly underestimate the value of gold or overestimate the cost of a flight. (Or have a really, really weird idea about economics and when you've made a profit.) Besides, even if you think you're better off sitting on your ass, that doesn't mean everyone will, or should. But your point is irrelevant, because we need those minerals anyhow. Remember the people who point out that we don't have enough platinum on Earth to make enough fuel cells for cars (and other things), or enough rare earths for other worthy green technologies? The value of those minerals is going up over time as we deplete our supply, the costs of spaceflight will go down. The question is when those curves cross, not if. There are some things that we can do a lot better with those resources that just "sitting on Earth" is not going to be a economically viable alternative to.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - _delirium 17y ago
    Gold is a weird case, in that we don't actually have much practical use for gold. Some, sure (electrical contacts and such), but the vast majority of its value is circular: it's valuable because people perceive it to be a safe store of value, and therefore lots of it is held in vaults. A sudden discovery of a way to get large quantities of gold to earth could cause its value to totally collapse to near-nothing.

16 points by grellas 17y ago

I'm not sure that people are mentally prepared for the risks that human space flight will incur under private industry. People will die in the name of making manned space flight affordable. Is there going to be a public backlash from this? After both Space Shuttle disasters there were year long backoffs from Shuttle launches. A commercial entity will not have the luxury of just halting its mission for multiple fiscal quarters because of fatal engineering issues.

philk 17y ago
I'd actually say that commercial entities would be better off than the government, as the government is made up of people who: a) have to pretend to care [1] b) don't have any personal upside from space missions succeeding. [1] I'm not saying that they don't care, necessarily, it's more that pragmatism is not popular in political leaders.
waterlesscloud 17y ago
How many commercial fisherman died on the job last year? How many coal miners? Truck drivers? Electricians? The fact that you don't know (neither do I) says a lot about the risks some businesses take in stride. There's a business world outside of offices full of computers, and some of those jobs involve literally deadly risk. And yet those industries still thrive.
- w1ntermute 17y ago
  How many commercial fisherman died on the job last year? How many coal miners? Truck drivers? Electricians? How many electricians don't know the basics of not electrocuting themselves? His point is that space is a new frontier, and we don't yet have standard safety protocols in place. The only way to develop them will be through trial and error, which will inevitably involve the loss of human life.

philk 17y ago

Most people don't realize that the major cost of a launch is labor. Fuel is less than 2%, while the standing army of people and infrastructure is well over 80%. Rather interesting that. I'd always thought the main expense was fuel. I still think it's a long way off, it's not enough for a half kilometer wide asteroid to be worth $20 trillion, the minerals within have to be less expensive than earth bound alternatives.

patio11 17y ago

[E]verything we hold of value—metals, minerals, energy and real estate— [is available] in near-infinite quantities in space. Yes, and there is a pot o' gold at the end of every rainbow. A pity you have to bring it back here to be able to get any use out of it. If there were a pot o' gold in earth orbit and I had a space shuttle ready to go up and snag it I'd be better off canceling the launch, letting the gold rot, and pocketing the money saved. It doesn't matter if that pot o' gold were the size of an aircraft carrier. How long before bored billionaires figure out that being on a souped-up jet with sucky cabin service has lost its $X-million-a-pop "story you can brag about to your friends" cachet, and we actually have to start extracting value out of space? Private industry is then going to go back to exploiting space via the only thing we can move without incurring fuel & etc costs: data, via satellites.

jerf 17y ago
I think you either grossly underestimate the value of gold or overestimate the cost of a flight. (Or have a really, really weird idea about economics and when you've made a profit.) Besides, even if you think you're better off sitting on your ass, that doesn't mean everyone will, or should. But your point is irrelevant, because we need those minerals anyhow. Remember the people who point out that we don't have enough platinum on Earth to make enough fuel cells for cars (and other things), or enough rare earths for other worthy green technologies? The value of those minerals is going up over time as we deplete our supply, the costs of spaceflight will go down. The question is when those curves cross, not if. There are some things that we can do a lot better with those resources that just "sitting on Earth" is not going to be a economically viable alternative to.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- _delirium 17y ago
  Gold is a weird case, in that we don't actually have much practical use for gold. Some, sure (electrical contacts and such), but the vast majority of its value is circular: it's valuable because people perceive it to be a safe store of value, and therefore lots of it is held in vaults. A sudden discovery of a way to get large quantities of gold to earth could cause its value to totally collapse to near-nothing.