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I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game. I really wish Europe would understand that you can’t beat capi

I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game. I really wish Europe would understand that you can’t beat capitalism on innovation and delivery. EDIT: I think a lot of the replies missed the point I was trying to make. I'm all for the free education, amazing healthcare, better regulation, etc that we have in Europe. But no state will ever beat private companies on innovation and delivery. If you want to sponsor a space industry, create public contacts that companies have to compete against and win.

nabla9 6y ago
SpaceX and Tesla are both great examples of big government involvement. US government created market for SpaceX and Tesla to get into. Neither of them would exist without government contracts, government subsidies or regulation. Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX – received $5 billion in government support in 10 year years 2005 - 2015. On top of that government contracts and regulation.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Which is a lot less than what their competitors received. So did big government hurt or help?
- addicted 6y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, but both Tesla and SpaceX only exist because of government policy. Strangely enough, I would argue that SpaceX probably could have existed without government policy (but maybe not so soon). Tesla, OTOH, is completely a product of the government. Elon Musk himself said (before he turned into some strange version of libertarian), that it was government funds that allowed Tesla to survive right after the financial crisis. And for over a decade, Tesla's biggest money maker is ICE companies paying Tesla for renewable credits required by the government.
  - fastball 6y ago
    I'm not sure "surviving because of the government" and being a "product of the government" are at all the same thing.
  - nickik 6y ago
    > I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, but both Tesla and SpaceX only exist because of government policy. This is not true. > Elon Musk himself said This is wrong. You are remembering this wrong, Musk has corrected this often. The reality is in 2008 SpaceX got saved by Daimler. Later they did get a DoE investment for Model S manufacturing but that did not save the company. They could have raised the money without the government but it would have been more difficult. > Tesla's biggest money maker This is again, wrong. In terms of total revenue its a small part. It is true that Tesla would make less profit without those credits but they would still be a hypergrowth company and would still be successful. Also, those credit system exist for all manufactures and there is an equal playing field.
ericmay 6y ago
Well, yes and no. Let me start by saying generally I'm 100% with you. I'm a huge fan of capitalism and I think that to get the best of both worlds you need people who demand accountability and action from their government. My view is usually capitalism isn't to blame, lack of the will of the people is. With that being said, SpaceX is where it is today by partnering with the government for contracts, which helped it build out and develop. I view this as a good thing - government can and should bootstrap companies and industries like this. It's good! SpaceX wouldn't be where it is today if the path forward was just, uh, figure it out... being able to win contracts to deliver value for NASA and the government was/is instrumental to its success and from here it can go on to do additional work for other countries or in the private sector. This means employment for Americans and lots of money spent to push the frontiers of science and space development. Unfortunately, it seems so much of this has become politicized to the point that it's nonsensical. Depending on who you ask, Elon is a capitalist pig, or a communist getting free hand-outs from the government. It's so stupid. I think in this case it was a win-win all around.
- rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
  NASA also has an operational mandate that limits what they can and cannot do. Much of the science NASA produces is tremendous stuff, but they can’t just be given a budget - even with the friendliest administration - with permission to go nuts. For better or worse, private industry fills these gaps. Any well-capitalized space company could “go nuts”, and as long as the higher-ups (execs, board, shareholders, etc.) are happy then there is a wide open space (forgive the pun) to innovate in.
  - lottin 6y ago
    On the contrary, a business needs to turn a profit in order to survive, and this largely limits the activities it can do to those that are economically profitable.
    - rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
      Right, and like I said, if the higher ups are happy to make big investments in long-shot projects, then that is what will be done, regardless of whether or not the result is profitable. This is not unlike biomedical engineering: invest in big expensive projects expecting several to fail and a few or one to recoup the costs for the rest and then some.
TakawaraJu 6y ago
Government is part of the innovation equation, the private space sector would not exist without US vs USSR Space Race. Where Europe and others continually drop the ball is due to short sightedness and a reactionary mindset. They want to back alternative options to today’s market environment rather than planning for, incentivising and investing in future market making solutions.
- fastball 6y ago
  It would not exist in its current form, but a space industry would almost certainly still exist without the Cold War. Space is too useful to just ignore, regardless of whether or not it was another venue for a geopolitical boxing match.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Yeah, that's something I have been wondering - how would things look like if the main driving force behind spaceflight was entrepreneurs of the Goddards generation, not military mainly trying to get good ICMBs and spy sat launchers ? A lot of the current status quo of single use state of the art super-expensive hyper-optimized launchers can be IMHO traced back to ICBMs and spy sat launcher where accomplishing the given military mission was the most important goal, whatever the cost (both monetary and in general sustainability). I wonder if it all was instead financed by private and commercial money from the start, we might have perhaps ended up with cruder (partially ?) reusable rockets much sooner, not to mention with a more robust in-space infrastructure (propellant depots, etc.) that simply does not make sense if you just want to lob nukes one way or launch a couple expensive spy sats per year & don't care about anything else.
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      You can look at optical astronomy for how the "market" would look like if it was only science driven: all innovation happening on government funded projects, with very few companies worldwide having some manufacturing capability. In any case, calling Goodard a entrepreneur seems pretty strange: he was a professor interested in rocketry firstly as a means of recording the state of the atmosphere at very high altitudes. To the extent the market gave him any attention it was as a source of cheap entertainment by making people laugh at him.
Hamuko 6y ago
Was it that Americans pay the most for and get the least healthcare?
- thehappypm 6y ago
  You talk of health care, how is the pandemic going in Europe?
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Ironically, that’s largely due to the EU being a bit too free market. The EU is almost the only country/bloc to allow unrestricted export of covid vaccine; indeed, it even exports to other vaccine producers. India was also a large exporter but seems to be tightening up. This is, broadly, a good thing; if it had taken the same approach as the US and UK then supply in many countries would be virtually zero. So far attempts to deviate from this haven’t really gone anywhere (though there’s currently talk about halting export to other major producers, primarily the UK. I’ll be somewhat surprised if this happens; the UK is so small relative to Europe that an extra ten million doses or so may not be worth the acrimony).
- nickik 6y ago
  Health care has been incredibly regulated in the US for a long time, from local to the federal level harmful regulation are enforced. In fact it is horribly regulated by any rational logic. But instead of looking at that and seeing the issues with it, the whole world just uses it to bash on capitalism, as if the US Health care system was some exemplar free market system. US politicians have no interest in reforming the system other then add more and more layers on top or keep the status quo. Funny enough medical care that doesn't fall under the insurance system is very effective in the US. Eye surgery or beauty operations can somehow be run with amazing capitalist efficiency but routine operations that are about the same in terms of complexity cost 10-20x more. Arguably one of the best system, Singapore, is more free market then US one. This is not to say that any system has the perfect combination, but a simple government run health care proves that government run everything is better, and use the US system as evidence is bad argument.
Shadonototro 6y ago
LOL medical research and sicentific breakthought were made without capitalism capitalism actually destroy everything it touches capitalism prevents innovation if old dated systems generates profits what works better is things brought to life by people with passion, no matter what system is currently in place, be it capitalism, socialism, communism, populism etc etc etc the people is what drive inovation and delivery capitalism is here to make sure those people don't gain too much power, and to make sure we can control competition in order to maintain power and profitability profits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything >>>> you, the people
brmgb 6y ago
> I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game. I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now. In the past five years, there is a country which erected multiple new trade barriers, put in place tariffs, enacted protectionist policies, publicly declared it was going to reassess its transaction with the world to put itself first and threatened repeatedly to leave the WTO. This country is the USA. A country notorious for using extraterritorial sanction to advantage its companies, a country abusing public subsidies to distort markets, a country refusing standards to protect its interest. Let this be my last post on HN. Everytime I think this site has reached rock bottom it succeed in hitting a new low. Edit: Anyway, let me try to add something of value to the discussion and add some perspective to the extremely poor article from ArsTechnica. The European space program is a direct descendant of the French space program which was first and foremost a military program. It was developed to put in orbit information satellite and break France depandency on US unreliable US information. This capability remains relevant now more than ever. The civil program is mostly a cost offset. If the EU has no share of the civil markets, it makes the military program more expansive. From this point of view, it makes sense to invest both as a way to develop know how and because it might not cost more than maintaining the existing knowledge anyway.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bryananderson 6y ago
It’s important to understand how SpaceX got to where it is, because it’s often reduced to a “commercial versus government” narrative that is not really accurate.[1] I say this not to take away from SpaceX’s very real entrepreneurial spirit, but simply to fill in the rest of the picture and make the point that “get government out of the way” is not the answer here. SpaceX received government funding in its early days from DARPA, who hoped to spur the development of small launch vehicles. This money was essential in getting the company to the launch pad. SpaceX ultimately abandoned its small Falcon 1, but a DARPA official said much later that the government had more than gotten its money’s worth from helping jump-start SpaceX.[2] In 2006, NASA started an innovative program to fund private contractors to develop systems to deliver cargo to ISS. This is sometimes looked at as a dramatic departure from past “government run” NASA programs, but the truth is that all those old programs like the Apollo CSM/LM and Saturn V were also contracted out to private companies. What NASA did differently with Commercial Cargo (and later Commercial Crew) was that it contracted on a fixed-price basis rather than the usual cost-plus system which more or less incentivized the contractors to make things cost more money and take more time (except in special cases like Apollo where there was serious political pressure on the companies to deliver on-time and on-budget). SpaceX ultimately won one of these development contracts, which allowed it to start developing the larger Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule. In 2008, after SpaceX first launched Falcon 1 successfully, the company actually still nearly ran out of money. It is not easy to find customers to fly their expensive satellites on a barely-proven new rocket. Fortunately, they won the contract to operate supply deliveries to the ISS (the follow-on to the 2006 development contract). This money saved the company. Even Elon Musk (who isn’t the biggest fan of sharing credit and who will happily call out the government when he’s mad) will tell you that SpaceX would not be here without NASA. Since then, SpaceX has won the Commercial Crew contract in addition to Commercial Cargo. In addition, SpaceX has launched numerous satellites for NASA and the military. It’s important to note, contrary to the company’s detractors, that this government money was not some kind of corrupt “giveaway” to SpaceX. NASA and DARPA paid SpaceX to develop and operate useful services for the government. We all benefit as taxpayers from the savings that SpaceX has delivered over the legacy contractors. The lesson for Europe here is definitely not to stop letting the government plan anything. Commercial cargo and crew capabilities exist in the United States today because the government planned for it. And they also exist because the government was flexible with its plans and partnered with whoever had the most promising ideas instead of insisting on doing everything through the same legacy contractors with the same ineffectual contracting methods. That’s been a really hard lesson to learn, and Congress mostly still hasn’t learned it (larger NASA programs like SLS and Orion are still done the old cost-plus way with the same gravy-train lobbyist-heavy contractors; Commercial Cargo and Crew barely slipped through because they were small and not taken seriously by the space-industrial complex). It will be hard for Europe too, who has a symbiotic relationship with legacy job-machine contractors like ArianeGroup. I really hope they can learn it, because humanity will benefit when cheap reusable launch is common around the world. [1] Eric Berger, the author of this article, does a good job of painting this full picture (in fact he just wrote a great book about the early days of SpaceX called “Liftoff”), but journalists who aren’t as familiar with the industry tend to miss the picture. [2] Again see “Liftoff” by Berger.
imtringued 6y ago
Obviously, the private market is about going above and beyond, in exchange for money. The government's goal is to provide a baseline of service for everyone. We don't want people to starve but that doesn't mean they get to eat out in an expensive restaurant.

nabla9 6y ago

SpaceX and Tesla are both great examples of big government involvement. US government created market for SpaceX and Tesla to get into. Neither of them would exist without government contracts, government subsidies or regulation. Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX – received $5 billion in government support in 10 year years 2005 - 2015. On top of that government contracts and regulation.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
Which is a lot less than what their competitors received. So did big government hurt or help?
addicted 6y ago
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, but both Tesla and SpaceX only exist because of government policy. Strangely enough, I would argue that SpaceX probably could have existed without government policy (but maybe not so soon). Tesla, OTOH, is completely a product of the government. Elon Musk himself said (before he turned into some strange version of libertarian), that it was government funds that allowed Tesla to survive right after the financial crisis. And for over a decade, Tesla's biggest money maker is ICE companies paying Tesla for renewable credits required by the government.
- fastball 6y ago
  I'm not sure "surviving because of the government" and being a "product of the government" are at all the same thing.
- nickik 6y ago
  > I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, but both Tesla and SpaceX only exist because of government policy. This is not true. > Elon Musk himself said This is wrong. You are remembering this wrong, Musk has corrected this often. The reality is in 2008 SpaceX got saved by Daimler. Later they did get a DoE investment for Model S manufacturing but that did not save the company. They could have raised the money without the government but it would have been more difficult. > Tesla's biggest money maker This is again, wrong. In terms of total revenue its a small part. It is true that Tesla would make less profit without those credits but they would still be a hypergrowth company and would still be successful. Also, those credit system exist for all manufactures and there is an equal playing field.

ericmay 6y ago

Well, yes and no. Let me start by saying generally I'm 100% with you. I'm a huge fan of capitalism and I think that to get the best of both worlds you need people who demand accountability and action from their government. My view is usually capitalism isn't to blame, lack of the will of the people is. With that being said, SpaceX is where it is today by partnering with the government for contracts, which helped it build out and develop. I view this as a good thing - government can and should bootstrap companies and industries like this. It's good! SpaceX wouldn't be where it is today if the path forward was just, uh, figure it out... being able to win contracts to deliver value for NASA and the government was/is instrumental to its success and from here it can go on to do additional work for other countries or in the private sector. This means employment for Americans and lots of money spent to push the frontiers of science and space development. Unfortunately, it seems so much of this has become politicized to the point that it's nonsensical. Depending on who you ask, Elon is a capitalist pig, or a communist getting free hand-outs from the government. It's so stupid. I think in this case it was a win-win all around.

rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
NASA also has an operational mandate that limits what they can and cannot do. Much of the science NASA produces is tremendous stuff, but they can’t just be given a budget - even with the friendliest administration - with permission to go nuts. For better or worse, private industry fills these gaps. Any well-capitalized space company could “go nuts”, and as long as the higher-ups (execs, board, shareholders, etc.) are happy then there is a wide open space (forgive the pun) to innovate in.
- lottin 6y ago
  On the contrary, a business needs to turn a profit in order to survive, and this largely limits the activities it can do to those that are economically profitable.
  - rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
    Right, and like I said, if the higher ups are happy to make big investments in long-shot projects, then that is what will be done, regardless of whether or not the result is profitable. This is not unlike biomedical engineering: invest in big expensive projects expecting several to fail and a few or one to recoup the costs for the rest and then some.

TakawaraJu 6y ago

Government is part of the innovation equation, the private space sector would not exist without US vs USSR Space Race. Where Europe and others continually drop the ball is due to short sightedness and a reactionary mindset. They want to back alternative options to today’s market environment rather than planning for, incentivising and investing in future market making solutions.

fastball 6y ago
It would not exist in its current form, but a space industry would almost certainly still exist without the Cold War. Space is too useful to just ignore, regardless of whether or not it was another venue for a geopolitical boxing match.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Yeah, that's something I have been wondering - how would things look like if the main driving force behind spaceflight was entrepreneurs of the Goddards generation, not military mainly trying to get good ICMBs and spy sat launchers ? A lot of the current status quo of single use state of the art super-expensive hyper-optimized launchers can be IMHO traced back to ICBMs and spy sat launcher where accomplishing the given military mission was the most important goal, whatever the cost (both monetary and in general sustainability). I wonder if it all was instead financed by private and commercial money from the start, we might have perhaps ended up with cruder (partially ?) reusable rockets much sooner, not to mention with a more robust in-space infrastructure (propellant depots, etc.) that simply does not make sense if you just want to lob nukes one way or launch a couple expensive spy sats per year & don't care about anything else.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    You can look at optical astronomy for how the "market" would look like if it was only science driven: all innovation happening on government funded projects, with very few companies worldwide having some manufacturing capability. In any case, calling Goodard a entrepreneur seems pretty strange: he was a professor interested in rocketry firstly as a means of recording the state of the atmosphere at very high altitudes. To the extent the market gave him any attention it was as a source of cheap entertainment by making people laugh at him.

Hamuko 6y ago

Was it that Americans pay the most for and get the least healthcare?

thehappypm 6y ago
You talk of health care, how is the pandemic going in Europe?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Ironically, that’s largely due to the EU being a bit too free market. The EU is almost the only country/bloc to allow unrestricted export of covid vaccine; indeed, it even exports to other vaccine producers. India was also a large exporter but seems to be tightening up. This is, broadly, a good thing; if it had taken the same approach as the US and UK then supply in many countries would be virtually zero. So far attempts to deviate from this haven’t really gone anywhere (though there’s currently talk about halting export to other major producers, primarily the UK. I’ll be somewhat surprised if this happens; the UK is so small relative to Europe that an extra ten million doses or so may not be worth the acrimony).
nickik 6y ago
Health care has been incredibly regulated in the US for a long time, from local to the federal level harmful regulation are enforced. In fact it is horribly regulated by any rational logic. But instead of looking at that and seeing the issues with it, the whole world just uses it to bash on capitalism, as if the US Health care system was some exemplar free market system. US politicians have no interest in reforming the system other then add more and more layers on top or keep the status quo. Funny enough medical care that doesn't fall under the insurance system is very effective in the US. Eye surgery or beauty operations can somehow be run with amazing capitalist efficiency but routine operations that are about the same in terms of complexity cost 10-20x more. Arguably one of the best system, Singapore, is more free market then US one. This is not to say that any system has the perfect combination, but a simple government run health care proves that government run everything is better, and use the US system as evidence is bad argument.

Shadonototro 6y ago

LOL medical research and sicentific breakthought were made without capitalism capitalism actually destroy everything it touches capitalism prevents innovation if old dated systems generates profits what works better is things brought to life by people with passion, no matter what system is currently in place, be it capitalism, socialism, communism, populism etc etc etc the people is what drive inovation and delivery capitalism is here to make sure those people don't gain too much power, and to make sure we can control competition in order to maintain power and profitability profits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything >>>> you, the people

brmgb 6y ago

> I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game. I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now. In the past five years, there is a country which erected multiple new trade barriers, put in place tariffs, enacted protectionist policies, publicly declared it was going to reassess its transaction with the world to put itself first and threatened repeatedly to leave the WTO. This country is the USA. A country notorious for using extraterritorial sanction to advantage its companies, a country abusing public subsidies to distort markets, a country refusing standards to protect its interest. Let this be my last post on HN. Everytime I think this site has reached rock bottom it succeed in hitting a new low. Edit: Anyway, let me try to add something of value to the discussion and add some perspective to the extremely poor article from ArsTechnica. The European space program is a direct descendant of the French space program which was first and foremost a military program. It was developed to put in orbit information satellite and break France depandency on US unreliable US information. This capability remains relevant now more than ever. The civil program is mostly a cost offset. If the EU has no share of the civil markets, it makes the military program more expansive. From this point of view, it makes sense to invest both as a way to develop know how and because it might not cost more than maintaining the existing knowledge anyway.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bryananderson 6y ago

It’s important to understand how SpaceX got to where it is, because it’s often reduced to a “commercial versus government” narrative that is not really accurate.[1] I say this not to take away from SpaceX’s very real entrepreneurial spirit, but simply to fill in the rest of the picture and make the point that “get government out of the way” is not the answer here. SpaceX received government funding in its early days from DARPA, who hoped to spur the development of small launch vehicles. This money was essential in getting the company to the launch pad. SpaceX ultimately abandoned its small Falcon 1, but a DARPA official said much later that the government had more than gotten its money’s worth from helping jump-start SpaceX.[2] In 2006, NASA started an innovative program to fund private contractors to develop systems to deliver cargo to ISS. This is sometimes looked at as a dramatic departure from past “government run” NASA programs, but the truth is that all those old programs like the Apollo CSM/LM and Saturn V were also contracted out to private companies. What NASA did differently with Commercial Cargo (and later Commercial Crew) was that it contracted on a fixed-price basis rather than the usual cost-plus system which more or less incentivized the contractors to make things cost more money and take more time (except in special cases like Apollo where there was serious political pressure on the companies to deliver on-time and on-budget). SpaceX ultimately won one of these development contracts, which allowed it to start developing the larger Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule. In 2008, after SpaceX first launched Falcon 1 successfully, the company actually still nearly ran out of money. It is not easy to find customers to fly their expensive satellites on a barely-proven new rocket. Fortunately, they won the contract to operate supply deliveries to the ISS (the follow-on to the 2006 development contract). This money saved the company. Even Elon Musk (who isn’t the biggest fan of sharing credit and who will happily call out the government when he’s mad) will tell you that SpaceX would not be here without NASA. Since then, SpaceX has won the Commercial Crew contract in addition to Commercial Cargo. In addition, SpaceX has launched numerous satellites for NASA and the military. It’s important to note, contrary to the company’s detractors, that this government money was not some kind of corrupt “giveaway” to SpaceX. NASA and DARPA paid SpaceX to develop and operate useful services for the government. We all benefit as taxpayers from the savings that SpaceX has delivered over the legacy contractors. The lesson for Europe here is definitely not to stop letting the government plan anything. Commercial cargo and crew capabilities exist in the United States today because the government planned for it. And they also exist because the government was flexible with its plans and partnered with whoever had the most promising ideas instead of insisting on doing everything through the same legacy contractors with the same ineffectual contracting methods. That’s been a really hard lesson to learn, and Congress mostly still hasn’t learned it (larger NASA programs like SLS and Orion are still done the old cost-plus way with the same gravy-train lobbyist-heavy contractors; Commercial Cargo and Crew barely slipped through because they were small and not taken seriously by the space-industrial complex). It will be hard for Europe too, who has a symbiotic relationship with legacy job-machine contractors like ArianeGroup. I really hope they can learn it, because humanity will benefit when cheap reusable launch is common around the world. [1] Eric Berger, the author of this article, does a good job of painting this full picture (in fact he just wrote a great book about the early days of SpaceX called “Liftoff”), but journalists who aren’t as familiar with the industry tend to miss the picture. [2] Again see “Liftoff” by Berger.

imtringued 6y ago

Obviously, the private market is about going above and beyond, in exchange for money. The government's goal is to provide a baseline of service for everyone. We don't want people to starve but that doesn't mean they get to eat out in an expensive restaurant.