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>We wasted 50 years not going after space like we should have been. Let's get at it. NASA alone spends some 10X-20X every year what Bezos does, but some how a

• dwaltrip 7y ago
  More new players improves the game. SpaceX has already demonstrated such possibilities.
• rhacker 7y ago
  private/public/accountability makes a diff. look at spacex
  • heyflyguy 7y ago
    That's true and parts/services sourcing by/to multiple vendors improves the marketplace economics in favor of efficiency.
• NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  Falcon Heavy Flew 3x on a development budget of over 500 million, probably under a billion with dev -> launch time being around 6 years or so. SLS current dev budget is over 7 billion dollars in 8 years, and they haven't finished assembling their first stack.
  • criley2 7y ago
    Falcony Heavy only exists because NASA and the taxpayer have given billions to Tesla to develop it and fly it. To consider SpaceX as anything more than a small government contractor attached firmly to the side of the NASA budget is disingenuous. SpaceX itself is hailed as a NASA success for lowering the cost of launching, and an example of smart government spending.
    • NikolaeVarius 7y ago
      News indicates that no government funding was used for its (Falcon Heavy) development. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2466/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2466/1
      • criley2 7y ago
        This is pointless semantics. 1) Without the billions NASA has awarded Space X prior to Falcon, there is no SpaceX. 2) Without the billions NASA awarded them during Falcon development for other projects, SpaceX would have not gotten enough money from investors, who rightfully valued the company based on their NASA contracts
• t-writescode 7y ago
  Have you considered that rather than 22B vs 1B, this could be looked at as 22B + 1B?
• AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  Bezos is good at getting returns on capital.
• shiftpgdn 7y ago
  My NASA friends claim that NASA is full of layabout government employees and defacto corruption via bad contractor deals. It would make sense that money goes much further when a private entity is spending it.
  • criley2 7y ago
    I've been in enough bad companies and more than one well run government agency to know that this is a lazy comparison IMO. I've never been in a private business without its fair share of lazy layabouts and corrupt executives except maybe the startups I've worked for.
• ryanmercer 7y ago
  >NASA alone spends some 10X-20X every year what Bezos does, NASA has more than 17,000 employees that do - medicine and biomedical research - all sorts of earth science research including things like geology, climate, ozone depletion - astronomy - design new mission hardware - fund and maintain a portion of the ISS - maintain 10 field centers I mean, they have 46 current missions... https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/?type=current https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/?type=current Blue Origin is developing a rocket. Pretty big difference.
• Bjartr 7y ago
  NASA's goals get jerked around every few years as administrations and balances of political power change. So an entity that had a more consistent approach might be able to do more with less.
  • spaceflunky 7y ago
    Even though NASA's total budget is a lot bigger than most private space exploration companies, it seems as though space exploration is one small aspect of many things that NASA focuses on. For example, why is NASA so involved with climate change? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't seem to have much to do with space exploration. It could be possible that actual NASA funds devoted solely to space exploration are a lot lower than the total spent by billionaires on space exploration.
    • Bjartr 7y ago
      > why is NASA so involved with climate change? They've actually written an article explaining that https://climate.nasa.gov/nasa_science/history/ https://climate.nasa.gov/nasa_science/history/