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NASA is listed as one of the competitors, but really, NASA is also driving a great deal of this innovation through contracting rocket use (for ISS refueling, et

by arcanus 10y ago

NASA is listed as one of the competitors, but really, NASA is also driving a great deal of this innovation through contracting rocket use (for ISS refueling, etc.) to private companies. They are creating the market. A real question is: what is a viable business model that will necessitate these rockets? Aside from space tourism and placing satellites, what successful business ventures might exist at lower $/orbit capabilities? Even free access to orbit might not result in ancillary profitable businesses.

petewailes 10y ago
It's more useful to look at the current work being done as R&D for longer term missions to Mars, settlement of space, and asteroid capture/mining. There's significant value to be gained in putting things in space, but these are fundamentally long term plays.
sandworm101 10y ago
Someone is always talking about high-speed transport. Either rich people who really need to do london-new york in under an hour, or packages that for whatever reasons cannot wait for the Fedex truck. If SpaceX really can cut costs by 99+% (imho they cannot) then rapid delivery of people/packages might be viable.
larrydag 10y ago
Asteroid mining. New startups like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Ventures will want to send satellites and vehicles into orbit or deep space for exploratory research.
- aetherson 10y ago
  It is super unclear that even if you had extremely cheap access to orbit, you could make asteroid mining pay off. If cost to orbit was cheap enough, people might be interested in orbital solar power.
  - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
    Asteroid mining will pay off better if launch costs stay high. Anything produced in space has a huge cost advantage over something launched from the ground at a cost of thousands of dollars per kilogram. A kilogram of water or iron is literally worth more that its weight in gold once its in space.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      Okay, so there's a couple of dynamics that work differently here. There's asteroid mining to source materials for other stuff in space and then there's asteroid mining to source materials for the ground. If cost to orbit is low, then it becomes less worthwhile to source stuff in space for space stuff, because you could just source it from the ground for relatively cheaper. But if cost to orbit is low, it's also lower cost to actually set up an asteroid mining facility and perhaps more plausible that you might economically take stuff from asteroids down to the ground (though huge barriers remain, even for quite low costs to orbit). Also, if cost to orbit is lower, there is more plausibly other stuff actually happening in orbit that might make sense to consume space materials. Right now, the value of "a kilogram of iron" in space is essentially zero, because what you need is not raw iron but some kind of tool, and there's no way to turn raw iron into a tool in space. Water and other volatiles have some minor use, but as long as the number of people in space is, like, six, it's not that big a deal to get them water from Earth. If you had more stuff going on in space, there'd be more reason to try to get low-cost materials in space.
vermontdevil 10y ago
NASA also owns the SLS rocket. Granted they are not building it themselves, but it's 100% theirs. So in other words they would be competing with Falcon Heavy or the future MCT from SpaceX among others.

by arcanus 10y ago

petewailes 10y ago

It's more useful to look at the current work being done as R&D for longer term missions to Mars, settlement of space, and asteroid capture/mining. There's significant value to be gained in putting things in space, but these are fundamentally long term plays.

sandworm101 10y ago

Someone is always talking about high-speed transport. Either rich people who really need to do london-new york in under an hour, or packages that for whatever reasons cannot wait for the Fedex truck. If SpaceX really can cut costs by 99+% (imho they cannot) then rapid delivery of people/packages might be viable.

larrydag 10y ago

Asteroid mining. New startups like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Ventures will want to send satellites and vehicles into orbit or deep space for exploratory research.

aetherson 10y ago
It is super unclear that even if you had extremely cheap access to orbit, you could make asteroid mining pay off. If cost to orbit was cheap enough, people might be interested in orbital solar power.
- thescriptkiddie 10y ago
  Asteroid mining will pay off better if launch costs stay high. Anything produced in space has a huge cost advantage over something launched from the ground at a cost of thousands of dollars per kilogram. A kilogram of water or iron is literally worth more that its weight in gold once its in space.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    Okay, so there's a couple of dynamics that work differently here. There's asteroid mining to source materials for other stuff in space and then there's asteroid mining to source materials for the ground. If cost to orbit is low, then it becomes less worthwhile to source stuff in space for space stuff, because you could just source it from the ground for relatively cheaper. But if cost to orbit is low, it's also lower cost to actually set up an asteroid mining facility and perhaps more plausible that you might economically take stuff from asteroids down to the ground (though huge barriers remain, even for quite low costs to orbit). Also, if cost to orbit is lower, there is more plausibly other stuff actually happening in orbit that might make sense to consume space materials. Right now, the value of "a kilogram of iron" in space is essentially zero, because what you need is not raw iron but some kind of tool, and there's no way to turn raw iron into a tool in space. Water and other volatiles have some minor use, but as long as the number of people in space is, like, six, it's not that big a deal to get them water from Earth. If you had more stuff going on in space, there'd be more reason to try to get low-cost materials in space.

vermontdevil 10y ago

NASA also owns the SLS rocket. Granted they are not building it themselves, but it's 100% theirs. So in other words they would be competing with Falcon Heavy or the future MCT from SpaceX among others.