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You think NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc can build the ISS but they can't raise it to a higher orbit? Honestly, this cheering for privatization of space research is

You think NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc can build the ISS but they can't raise it to a higher orbit? Honestly, this cheering for privatization of space research is getting out of hand.

WalterBright 6y ago
I'm saying that the bill for NASA doing it would be 10x what a free market operation could do it for.
- lordlic 6y ago
  It's not too expensive for governments to do it, and it doesn't have to be private enterprise. Neither of those things are true. Nor is it even clear that it would be cheaper to contract with some private provider to boost the ISS than for the space agencies to figure it out themselves with the launch vehicles they have. How do you think NASA, ESA, etc build rockets anyway? They contract with Lockheed, Boeing, Airbus, Northrop, and others to build them. Having the whole operation be under the auspices of SpaceX doesn't do much other than make other governments more reluctant to help fund it.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Government contracting is not at all indicative of how the free market works. Also, the free market would never have built a design like the space shuttle. Pushing very heavy wings and landing gear into space doesn't make sense and never did.
    - NewLogic 6y ago
      It was actually the side-mount design that made the least sense. It left the heatshield completely exposed to ice and insulation strikes.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        To be fair, the magnitude of that risk was not realized in the design phase. Though one could hardly miss the giant, heavy wings & landing gear and the heavy structure to support it. That was obvious to me at the time, and I often wondered why no article about the shuttle ever mentioned it. Musk figured out a far better way to make a reusable rocket. All it needs is a bit of extra fuel that is burned at the last second. (Playing the Lunar Lander game in college, I soon realized that the minimum fuel burn to land it was to fall ballistically and go to full power as late as possible, hitting 0 fps just as one touched down.)
      - blackrock 6y ago
        Could they have mounted 2 space shuttles, bottom to bottom, instead? Where the 2nd space shuttle was the fuel tank, and it lands somewhere down range, and is then transported back to the launch center by barge.
        krallja 6y ago
        Yes, a crewed fuel tank was one of the designs considered, as was three shuttles (2 crewed tanks + 1 ship) in a triangle. Visit the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum Annex in Virginia if you ever get a chance, there’s an exhibit on all the proposed designs. We got the worst possible one.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        Another set of heavy wings and landing gear to push up.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  In 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way to send a man to space is to use a Soyuz, for a cost of 19-22 million dollars per person. This is of course a communist design launched by a public space agency built by a majority public ownership factory. I think it might be time to accept that in these cases its pretty often not the inherent efficiency of the free market - which can often be less efficient than alternatives - but the ineptitude of the US government and it's agencies as far as doing things efficiently. There are US politicians and functionaries that admitted publicly that they made the government less efficient for ideological reasons to make the free market look better.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > 19-22 million dollars per person That doesn't mean it was profitable. The price could have been set for political reasons. Or it could have been set by the marginal cost of the launch, ignoring entirely the development cost that was written off when the USSR collapsed. Or it could have been enough to simply pay for the weight of the astronaut in a rocket that was going up anyway, like a hotel will sell rooms at a deep discount just to not lose as much money if it cannot otherwise. If communism produces goods and services cheaper than the free market, we'd be awash in Soviet goods. The US government produces goods and services at "cheap" prices, but the losses are made up for by the taxpayer. > which can often be less efficient than alternatives I'd like to see a case of that.
    - mdiesel 6y ago
      > If communism produces goods and services cheaper than the free market, we'd be awash in Soviet goods. Which we aren't, because they're undercut by Chinese goods...
      - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        No. Communism and planned economy are not capable of producing consumer goods. Source: I actually lived in the USSR.

You think NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc can build the ISS but they can't raise it to a higher orbit? Honestly, this cheering for privatization of space research is getting out of hand.

WalterBright 6y ago

I'm saying that the bill for NASA doing it would be 10x what a free market operation could do it for.

lordlic 6y ago
It's not too expensive for governments to do it, and it doesn't have to be private enterprise. Neither of those things are true. Nor is it even clear that it would be cheaper to contract with some private provider to boost the ISS than for the space agencies to figure it out themselves with the launch vehicles they have. How do you think NASA, ESA, etc build rockets anyway? They contract with Lockheed, Boeing, Airbus, Northrop, and others to build them. Having the whole operation be under the auspices of SpaceX doesn't do much other than make other governments more reluctant to help fund it.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Government contracting is not at all indicative of how the free market works. Also, the free market would never have built a design like the space shuttle. Pushing very heavy wings and landing gear into space doesn't make sense and never did.
  - NewLogic 6y ago
    It was actually the side-mount design that made the least sense. It left the heatshield completely exposed to ice and insulation strikes.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      To be fair, the magnitude of that risk was not realized in the design phase. Though one could hardly miss the giant, heavy wings & landing gear and the heavy structure to support it. That was obvious to me at the time, and I often wondered why no article about the shuttle ever mentioned it. Musk figured out a far better way to make a reusable rocket. All it needs is a bit of extra fuel that is burned at the last second. (Playing the Lunar Lander game in college, I soon realized that the minimum fuel burn to land it was to fall ballistically and go to full power as late as possible, hitting 0 fps just as one touched down.)
    - blackrock 6y ago
      Could they have mounted 2 space shuttles, bottom to bottom, instead? Where the 2nd space shuttle was the fuel tank, and it lands somewhere down range, and is then transported back to the launch center by barge.
      - krallja 6y ago
        Yes, a crewed fuel tank was one of the designs considered, as was three shuttles (2 crewed tanks + 1 ship) in a triangle. Visit the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum Annex in Virginia if you ever get a chance, there’s an exhibit on all the proposed designs. We got the worst possible one.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Another set of heavy wings and landing gear to push up.
sudosysgen 6y ago
In 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way to send a man to space is to use a Soyuz, for a cost of 19-22 million dollars per person. This is of course a communist design launched by a public space agency built by a majority public ownership factory. I think it might be time to accept that in these cases its pretty often not the inherent efficiency of the free market - which can often be less efficient than alternatives - but the ineptitude of the US government and it's agencies as far as doing things efficiently. There are US politicians and functionaries that admitted publicly that they made the government less efficient for ideological reasons to make the free market look better.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > 19-22 million dollars per person That doesn't mean it was profitable. The price could have been set for political reasons. Or it could have been set by the marginal cost of the launch, ignoring entirely the development cost that was written off when the USSR collapsed. Or it could have been enough to simply pay for the weight of the astronaut in a rocket that was going up anyway, like a hotel will sell rooms at a deep discount just to not lose as much money if it cannot otherwise. If communism produces goods and services cheaper than the free market, we'd be awash in Soviet goods. The US government produces goods and services at "cheap" prices, but the losses are made up for by the taxpayer. > which can often be less efficient than alternatives I'd like to see a case of that.
  - mdiesel 6y ago
    > If communism produces goods and services cheaper than the free market, we'd be awash in Soviet goods. Which we aren't, because they're undercut by Chinese goods...
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
      No. Communism and planned economy are not capable of producing consumer goods. Source: I actually lived in the USSR.