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This is on the heels of Stratolaunch deciding not to pursue the design and development of their own launch vehicle in January of this year.(1) Instead they piv
by aresant 7y ago
This is on the heels of Stratolaunch deciding not to pursue the design and development of their own launch vehicle in January of this year.(1)
Instead they pivoted to customizing their massive airframe to launching Norththrop's Pegasus XL rockets.
Editorializing I'd guess that Paul Allen's estate pushed the company to figure out if there was a short term commercialization opportunity with Northrop, found there wasn't, and is cutting their losses.
Tough to be a space faring startup without a billionaire sponsor bankrolling you as a passion project.
(1) https://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-abandons-launch-vehicle-program/ https://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-abandons-launch-vehicle-p...
- avmich 7y agoWe definitely need more billionaires interested in space. We need to inspire with space the "next" (heavily overlapping) generation, so those who'd succeed may have a chance to advance the space activities.
- soulofmischief 7y agoIn all seriousness, I think the next 100 years of climate deterioration will provide plenty of motivation to everyone.
- maxxxxx 7y agoNo matter how the climate develops earth is still leaps and bounds ahead of anything in the solar system. It’s not even close
- orbifold 7y agoYou would have more fun living in the Sahara dessert than on mars.
- nickpeterson 7y agoThe joke will be when we have to build domed villages here with all the research we thought we were going to need for Mars.
- mruts 7y agoWhat are you talking about?
- NikkiA 7y agoHe's implying that it'll ever be feasible or economically sound to terraform mars and move people en-masse there to ruin that environment, instead of just spending the vast sums of money it'd take, on improving this one.
- cr0sh 7y agoUltimately we need to get off this rock as a species; the Earth is fairly overdue (statistically as I understand it) for a major asteroid hit. We seem to have this hubris that we'll be able to "detect and deflect" - both of which are unlikely with our current technology for any size dire enough to care about. We don't even have the "detect" part in place - not in the way it needs to be. As more than a few recent incidents have shown, we're currently blind and a sitting duck, so to speak. Even a relatively small strike, depending on where it landed, could potentially trigger a nuclear launch depending on the political climate and such at the time. We need better eyes, if for nothing else than the avert that kind of "misunderstanding" which could lead to an existential crisis.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago>the Earth is fairly overdue (statistically as I understand it) for a major asteroid hit. What does this mean? Wouldn't the distribution of asteroid hits be essentially memoryless? That is, the fact that we have not had one in recent history has almost zero bearing on the probability of one happening in the future.
- idlewords 7y agoOh, the asteroids, they remember. They remember and they do not forgive!
- Baeocystin 7y agoMaybe, maybe not. There could be potential ultra-long-period impactors that share a similar origin, and therefore a similar period. Or perhaps crossing the galactic orbital plane changes the odds. The question of periodicity of mass extinctions (and what, if any, causes there are) is a valid line of inquiry, although there are no clear smoking guns. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/the-next-mass-extinction/413884/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/the-next...
- JKCalhoun 7y agoI suppose like flipping a number of heads in a row to get a coin "ready for tails".
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoWhat we need is more billionaires interested in shifting the political climate in regards to climate change.
- meruru 7y agoPersonally I want them to invest in reversing aging. We can worry about saving the planet/exploring space once I can live forever.
- geoka9 7y agoWould you want to live forever on a shitty planet though?
- richk449 7y agoStill sounds better than being dead.
- nothanksmydude 7y agoYou can't prove that
- meruru 7y agoI'm willing to spend an eternity fixing it.
- zambal 7y agoIf everyone on this planet can live forever before we have an escape plan, it'll become crowded really fast, so you might want to master that space exploring thingy first.
- xvilka 7y agoAnd life longevity research as well, along with medicine and genetics.
- momokoko 7y agoWhy? In what way do we need to even preserve humanity? There is such an assumption and gloss over with space exploration. Why? This doesn't mean humanity is terrible but all of life and simply matter evolves into new things. To attempt to infinitely preserve anything is just our human genetics projected. Things end. Do not let your personal intuition override that universal truth.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MaulingMonkey 7y agoWhat's the point of such a nihilistic viewpoint? Space exploration excites hopes and dreams, promising expanded horizons and to avail ourselves of new resources with which to improve our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, and their loved children, and their loved children, and so on and so forth. Do not let universal truths override your personal intuition as to the value and meaning of striving towards these goals, even if someday the eventual heat death of the universe will almost certainly put an end to it all.
- momokoko 7y agoBecause sometimes looking to the future steals important moments from today. There is a balance between today and tomorrow that should never be taken lightly.
- JKCalhoun 7y agoInteresting. If we could love the now, today, we might not have need for hopes and dreams of spaceflight.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoSome of us, maybe. Others would not stand the tedium, the stagnation. Think also how would the world look if we could have "loved now" 5000 years ago, and thus never developed past proto-agriculture.
- nashashmi 7y agoWhy? That centers power in the hands of the few. And what happens after they die, the project does with them. Imagine if he wasn't a billionaire and neither were any of the space expeditioners. They would probably be working together to come up with a more stable set of plans for space development.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoAlso hobby projects with abandunt money tend to push for the "Wow"-solution. Not the cheapest possible solution. Although that would have been solidboosters + spaceguns- and automated in orbit-assembly.
- classicsnoot 7y ago> centers power in the hands of the few Power inevitably becomes centered in a small group. This seems to be an immutable trait of either power itself or people-groups in general. Regardless, it is unavoidable everywhere except on paper, which is to say conjecturally. Also, billionaires dying don't kill industries. They might kill devastatingly expensive pet hobbies,but not industries. It always feels good to predict that humans would be getting along swimmingly if it weren't for a handful of bad actors, but there really isn't a case for this expectation based on history. What there is a case for, as has been demonstrated countless times in literally every human endeavor, is an ordered hierarchy pursuing a declared set of goals and reaping unintended/unexpected benefit and detriment along the way. It is like pushing a boulder from point A to B; sometimes it needs to be pushed up hill and other times it must be guided downhill. The idea that "it would be so great if we stopped pushing boulders up hill and only guided them downhill" (a metaphorical interpretation of the happy, co-equal group of like minded workers) ignores the topographical reality of effort, endeavor, intention, and challenge.
- vkou 7y agoWhat we need is more billionaires interested in dealing with climate change. And by 'dealing with', I don't mean 'flying off, and leaving the rest of us to deal with the shit.'
- njepa 7y agoChances are inspiration is overvalued today. Remember when Elon Musk was going to put a plant on Mars with an ICBM? Instead he managed to leverage the fact that the US has a space industry. He has pretty much argued this himself in that he used to think that "if there is a will, there is a way", but later realized that it was "if there is a way, there is a will".
- avmich 7y ago> but later realized that it was "if there is a way, there is a will" I don't think so. He was going to launch rockets anyway. And also the way was there for long time - yet SpaceX was the first company which successfully reached orbit among new space companies.
- njepa 7y agoAs far as I remember that is what he has said. The idea from the beginning was just to fund a launch. Here is someone else retelling the story: https://medium.com/@toledoalbert/starman-is-mars-oasis-realized-e733fd9920b9 https://medium.com/@toledoalbert/starman-is-mars-oasis-reali... Musk started at the same time as these other private space companies, just with a different approach. Most of it is there in these 2003 videos: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/?f%5Bauthor_person_facet%5D%5B%5D=Musk%2C+Elon&f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=11371530 https://searchworks.stanford.edu/?f%5Bauthor_person_facet%5D...
- avmich 7y agoThere are examples of Beal Aerospace, which closed not long before SpaceX founding, and Kistler Rocket, which also didn't survive around the same time. According to success of SpaceX, the way was there - but somehow not nearly everybody succeeded. Even Virgin Galactic was thought to be easy after successful demonstration of flights in 2004 - the was the way - but today in 2019 we have Stratolaunch closing and Virgin Galactic still not flying with regular passengers. I think reality is that doing business with space is tricky, and requires complex combinations of luck, money, perseverance, experience - approximately in this order, but still tricky.
- iscrewyou 7y agoIt used to be the government. When these individuals no longer want to do it, the government will step in again.
- spikels 7y agoYou got that backwards. The government didn't step aside because some billionaires wanted to do this important job. Post-Apollo, politically compromised NASA bet everything on dumb systems like the Shuttle and struggled managing its contractors. The result was going to be decades without a manned space flight capability. These super rich individuals are resurrecting our ability to send people into space from the ashes. If they no longer want to do it, it's unlikely NASA will suddenly become competent again.
- iscrewyou 7y agoMy assumption is that the US wants innovative space programs. You are right, the government became lackluster. Then the individuals stepped in. Now, you are assuming the government won’t step in even when the individuals no longer want to do it. Either they’ll revamp nasa or start handing out subsidies. Either way it’s the government stepping in. Unless there’s another way that I’m missing?
- garmaine 7y agoYour mistake is in assuming that the government handing out subsidies will result in a manned space program that works. It hasn’t. Go lookup the history of SLS/Orion.
- ekianjo 7y agoHave you seen how large the national debt is already?
- iscrewyou 7y agoHave you seen the military spending?
- dmix 7y ago> Tough to be a space faring startup without a billionaire sponsor bankrolling you as a passion project. I thought Allen still left quite a bit of money for his space projects? This most likely was just a rational business choice based on their research and market testing. The parent company Vulcan Inc is still likely to continue.