8 ms·

Seems that between Musk, Bezos and Branson, we have in essence restarted a space race but this time it's billionaires in the private sector versus governments.

Seems that between Musk, Bezos and Branson, we have in essence restarted a space race but this time it's billionaires in the private sector versus governments. Some will surely say that they have better things to spend their money on (Bezos for sure) but I gave to say it's still mindblowing. I would imagine if you're one of those guys, you've basically have enough money to solve any problem, so these guys it seems are chasing harder and harder problems, space exploration seems to be top of mind among these problems.

jacquesm 5y ago
I don't see a race. I see one company that does space travel and two dilettantes, who may or may not one day actually do something useful.
- api 5y ago
  Blue Origin is the closest to actually developing useful orbital and beyond-orbital capabilities. They have their own new engine design that's not quite as impressive as Raptor but not bad and their own super-heavy lift booster in development. The thing you just saw fly is similar to "Starhopper." Virgin Galactic is an expensive carnival ride and has nothing close to orbital capability. For those that don't know: getting to orbit (let alone beyond) requires way more delta-V (energy) than getting past the Karman line. The German V-2 is (I think) the first vehicle to do that, but it was nowhere even near orbit capable. The first photo from space was done by the USA with a captured and modified V-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13
  - blhack 5y ago
    Virgin galactic does go to orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit They launched satellites earlier this year. The space tourism thing is just a part of what the company does.
    - JshWright 5y ago
      Virgin Galactic doesn't go to orbit, Virgin Orbit does.
    - api 5y ago
      Wow... I didn't even know about that. I stand corrected. SpaceX is still way ahead though.
      - JshWright 5y ago
        "Ahead" implies the same end goal... Neither Virgin Galactic (the suborbital space tourism company) or Virgin Orbit (the orbital small-sat launch company) have the same end goal as SpaceX. That's like saying Lockheed Martin (maker of the F-35) is "way ahead" of Textron (maker of the Cessna). They have different goals entirely.
  - JshWright 5y ago
    > The thing you just saw fly is similar to "Starhopper." I think you mean "Grasshopper" (the Falcon 9 VTOL test mule from a few years back). New Shepard is less than half the size of Starhopper, and the BE-3 engine has ~25% of the thrust of the Raptor engine.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  You're seeing the very first steps of a long race.
  - maverick-iceman 5y ago
    That's right. Up until we have 100,000 people living in space we are just winging it. Winner of the race will be the dominant company in said community of 100,000 or the most socially influential person. Bezos, Musk and Branson won't be alive to see that, so they are shooting for George Washington type influence, the one reserved for the founder, the guy who was at the beginning of it all and gets remembered .
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  There is a race, but the competitors are China and SpaceX.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
This is what "trickle down" technology looks like. We are watching space flight move a rung down the economic ladder. Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project -> ????? -> normal people (some steps omitted for brevity)
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Not sure if you're being facetious. If so, I'll point out that it didn't take long to get from the Wright Brothers to regular civilian jet passenger flights, and it won't take long to get from Musk and Bezos to regular civilian space flights. The wealthy early adopters provide the capital to refine and scale up the industry to make it practical and affordable for less wealthy late adopters.
- pdelgallego 5y ago
  Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project -> hobbyist (e.g. Copenhagen Suborbitals) -> normal people.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    when Copenhagen Suborbitals does this i'll cheer (and theiy're getting close). Bezos and his resources should be able to do better.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Nation state R&D -> billionare's pet-project PoC -> wealthy bigco Commercialisation effort -> Commercial service (for wealthy/business) -> Commercial service (for normal public) -> hobbyists & higher education
- afavour 5y ago
  But what’s the actual purpose? Space tourism I get. But beyond that I’m struggling to see the uses of normal people having access to space travel. By comparison people having access to air travel has clear benefits.
  - 5y ago
iso1631 5y ago
Mentioning Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin in the same breath as SpaceX seems disingenuous. It's like comparing an horse+cart with a modern car. Maybe Electron and Virgin Orbit are in the race, but these hop 100km (or 80!) up and about 5 miles downrange are nowhere near the same league.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Understanding the difference between orbital and suborbital space flight need not cause one to be cynical and negative about things. Especially since blue origin has a design that can scale up quickly, as SpaceX did with falcon 1 to 9
  - themgt 5y ago
    Falcon 1 put a payload into orbit though, so it's really not the same. Falcon 9's first flight was less than 2 years after Falcon 1 made it to orbit. For myriad reasons Blue can't just "scale up quickly" in any meaningful way from NS to New Glenn, hence why it's going to take them 8+ years between the first NS and first NG launches. Being realistic about this is not cynical and negative.
    - chasd00 5y ago
      that's a good point, i think orbit was the minimum planned for Falcon1. I don't believe SpaceX every just went to the karman line and back. I think all of their flights have been either crashes or fully orbital.
      - chippiewill 5y ago
        > Think all of their flights have been either crashes or fully orbital. Certainly applies to the operational launches of all their rocket vehicles, however they've also done suborbital test flights with with Grasshopper, F9R, Starhopper, Starship (and maybe Super Heavy soon as well depending on if they do a sub-orbital with that first). The important difference is that SpaceX has never considered the Karman line as a target in its own right (somewhat rightly, its only value is for "whelming" space tourism).
ethanbond 5y ago
"Space exploration" is lending way, way too much credence to this. These two flights were ~60mi altitude. The ISS, for reference, is at 250mi. We've launched people there more than a hundred times, never mind having to put it there in the first place. The moon, which we landed and recovered people from in 1969, is 240,000mi away. This is a hobby project, which is totally fine in that it's their money to spend, and it's kind of neat that we can generate enough wealth that private individuals could even imagine doing this, but let's not dress it up as more than that. Edit: Musk/SpaceX is definitely in a different category. That actually seems to be shooting for space exploration, which is pretty neat, though I still think there are earthly priorities that we'd see much higher ROI from.
- eevilspock 5y ago
  > it's their money to spend Not everyone agrees.
  - jpt1 5y ago
    Not everyone agrees the earth is round but we don't take their opinions seriously
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    Sure. I myself am not entirely bought into this position, but it is in fact the position of "our society." Figure we have to start by not calling these people explorers before making our way to questioning whether such extreme accumulation of wealth is optimal in the first place.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      > questioning whether such extreme accumulation of wealth is optimal in the first place But why is it anyone's choice? People are already taxed disproportionately, why can't Musk spend his money, or the money people invest in him? The US is free to outlaw large accumulations of wealth, it would just lose a lot of people in the process (assuming emigration wasn't also outlawed). People in the US are, equally, free to move to places with fairer tax laws.
thereddaikon 5y ago
I don't think Blue Origin is currently in the same league as SpaceX. One is making money putting payloads in orbit, actively disrupting the industry and developing new hardware. They other has a sub orbital rocket that is only good for joy rides and otherwise is a lot of talk and little results. Rocket Lab is a more substantial player in the space industry right now than Blue Origin is. Maybe some day they will get off their ass and actually do something noteworthy.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  Space tourism will be noteworthy insofar as it will normalize more and more of the public to space travel, which in turn normalize the acceptance of the expenditure required.
  - double0jimb0 5y ago
    Consider if "space tourism" ends up having no product market fit. There is no data currently that it is a viable business. Sure, there are a bunch of pre-orders, and owners of companies now making maiden voyages, but that's it. A couple vaporized high profile customers will have a massive chilling effect on the industry. I think Musk's "we are going to Mars, people will die" is the most sober/realistic take. This messaging will do a much better job eliciting a customer base that understands the product and that will lead to sustainable industry someday.
purple_ferret 5y ago
> Some will surely say that they have better things to spend their money on Hasn't Branson essentially cashed out of Virgin Galactic for a huge payday? Even his flight was just a stunt to sell 500 million in stock.
LeifCarrotson 5y ago
The question every time space exploration comes up is whether the money and effort is better spent in space or on more terrestrial problems. With government-sponsored exploration, you at least ended up with public research and development that resulted in spinoffs that are useful on land. With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret. Also, when it comes to 'hard problems', physics is pretty predictable. Humanity has all kinds of social problems, which I'd argue are harder than these tech problems. For example, we'd have the capacity to eliminate hunger if it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret. Much of what is developed is in the public domain. Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove out. The satellite of industries that develops to support space flight is also not affected by whether the fights they're supporting are private vs government, and neither are the skills developed by the engineers working these projects. Private also has one distinct advantage: it can be self-sustaining, in being managed by an owner with a strong stake in the venture as a business unit.
  - aylmao 5y ago
    > Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove out. I'd argue this is, if we're talking about practicality, is just crumbs though. For example, scratch-resistant lenses were developed at NASA. Proving that it could be done wasn't the important factor that brought it to everyone's homes. What brought it to everyone's homes was the fact that NASA licensed As another example, single-crystal silicon solar cells were first developed after NASA sponsored a 28-member coalition to develop an unmanned, high altitude aircraft. Private companies don't create coalitions like this and are much less likely to license or waive patents. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#Scratch-resistant_lenses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#Scra...
drcongo 5y ago
It takes a special kind of awful person to think that this is the hard problem they should solve with their billions.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  "They should stop wasting money sending those ships around Africa" -Some dude in the 1400s
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Well, a million of us have more money than each of them and instead of exploring space or feeding the poor, I (a member of the million) am going to choose to buy a MacBook Pro. Our collective $2 billion is going to go to consumer devices.
  - dolmen 5y ago
    Worse: money is going to ephemeral people experiences. Restaurant, Dinseyland, theater, Netflix. And many of them have a negative environmental impact.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I can't help but thinking we've entered another Gilded Age.
Chris2048 5y ago
I hear those complaints, but aside from a snarky "then spend your own money on <whatever> then", they fail mention: - anyone can spend money on things, if enough sub-billionaires spend money on something the same amount can be raised - there's no reason a billionaire needs to do it. On the other hand, large focused projects like this are arguably harder to crowdfund from a management perspective. - The governments is richer than Musk. Taxation brings in more money, and is a much fairer way to contribute to these problems. - the government is more empowered to deal with social issues. There are some things a private corp/citizen cannot do, at least without government approval anyway. The issues being tackled here are mainly engineering, that is "free" to solve. The items that they would "better" to fix are highly political, with a heavy side of "damned if you do, damned if you don't". - throwing money at something can make it worse. A pipedream has no metrics that could prove this, so they can always be optimistic. When a "clothe the poor" drive kills local tailoring businesses, for example. - Billionaires pay taxes, usually more than most (generally, though they have more leverage to bargain for lower taxes. unfair? sure, but that's global free trade gets you). What remains is income - why should they fix the problems government could, but won't? - A major component of this is envy/belittling effort (Musk looks too happy in PR pics, so he's "playing around") or belittling the goal (spaceflight is useless) - i.e. grievance from the ignorant. There are a bajillion "useless" pastimes and occupations relative to some rando's pet social cause, yet billionaires are easy individual targets when everyone is equally to blame - at least Musk probably works hard.
- courtf 5y ago
  It's not really about the individual billionaires, that's missing the forest for the trees. That individuals can afford glamor rides to the edge of space in personal rockets is merely a symptom of gross inequality that has many more downsides than upsides. Life expectancy is dropping, climate change is accelerating and while we can't solely blame any individual billionaire, they have as a group profited astronomically [:)] from the collapse of our institutions and middle classes, and from the wholesale destruction of livelihoods during the pandemic. The government is more corrupt, more attuned to the needs of the rich than ever, so you don't need to wonder why the government has failed to attend to the needs of the majority. The same class of people currently culminating in rockets launches toward space have been directing the flows of tax dollars for decades.
boringg 5y ago
The Space Race is still happening, but it's happening on other planets and with government money (see: Mars and further afield exploration). All these initiatives have been possible by the heavy lifting of NASA and other international government agencies over the last 6 decades. Theses newcomers have drawn in attention and effort and are trying to reframe space as a business being funded by revenue - which has trade offs but in general is a positive development. The really challenging work without the glamor is still being down by the scientists and research agencies with the government. I do tip my hats to the accomplishments of all three of the new comer organizations. I just dispute that the narrative that they are driving the future. I think they are complementary. To be clear - they don't have enough money to "solve" space exploration - it takes deeper capital than they have - though they are bringing a new business model to potentially stretch their capital deployments.
- AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
  In my opinion, they are still doing incredible work. SpaceX and Blue Origin can both bring their rockets down - no government space agency can do this today (and govt space agencies had a 60 year lead) Privatization helps because NASA cannot afford failures today, but private companies can. And since space is a new and risky frontier, failures will happen. That's why I believe that privatization is a good thing overall
  - boringg 5y ago
    I agree privatization is a benefit - i believe that was my final statement in that they are complementary. I think that the bulk work is still done by public agencies, however the privatization part capitalizes from a revenue perspective on the work done by the public agencies. It's not dissimilar to how most energy technology makes its way to the private companies. DOE research labs do most of the work with college collaboration and then it gets released through private equity into the public domain.
  - nickik 5y ago
    NASA could have done this long ago. And had test project that proved as much. Suborbital human flight is just not very interesting for anything other then tourism.
noelsusman 5y ago
Bill Gates is chasing harder and harder problems, not these guys.
- nostromo 5y ago
  Gates is doing great work, no doubt. But are they "hard" problems to solve? Most of the projects Gates takes on have already been solved in the developed world. He's primarily trying to distribute those successes to the developing world. In any case, we can have both: rich people building the tech of tomorrow, and rich people trying to apply existing tech to the underserved. Both are good; both have utility.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
solidasparagus 5y ago
I believe Bezos has been obsessed with space since before he even started Amazon. Apparently he even talked about this dream during his high school graduation. I always thought that Amazon was just the way to make his space dream possible.
bamboozled 5y ago
I'd say climate change would be the real hard problem, considering we've already been to the moon. Jeff Bezos' company has contributed significantly to the problem, I get his plan is to manufacture things in space, but who is that really designed to benefit. The real hard thing to do would be to invest his personal billions into the issue, today.

jacquesm 5y ago

I don't see a race. I see one company that does space travel and two dilettantes, who may or may not one day actually do something useful.

api 5y ago
Blue Origin is the closest to actually developing useful orbital and beyond-orbital capabilities. They have their own new engine design that's not quite as impressive as Raptor but not bad and their own super-heavy lift booster in development. The thing you just saw fly is similar to "Starhopper." Virgin Galactic is an expensive carnival ride and has nothing close to orbital capability. For those that don't know: getting to orbit (let alone beyond) requires way more delta-V (energy) than getting past the Karman line. The German V-2 is (I think) the first vehicle to do that, but it was nowhere even near orbit capable. The first photo from space was done by the USA with a captured and modified V-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13
- blhack 5y ago
  Virgin galactic does go to orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit They launched satellites earlier this year. The space tourism thing is just a part of what the company does.
  - JshWright 5y ago
    Virgin Galactic doesn't go to orbit, Virgin Orbit does.
  - api 5y ago
    Wow... I didn't even know about that. I stand corrected. SpaceX is still way ahead though.
    - JshWright 5y ago
      "Ahead" implies the same end goal... Neither Virgin Galactic (the suborbital space tourism company) or Virgin Orbit (the orbital small-sat launch company) have the same end goal as SpaceX. That's like saying Lockheed Martin (maker of the F-35) is "way ahead" of Textron (maker of the Cessna). They have different goals entirely.
- JshWright 5y ago
  > The thing you just saw fly is similar to "Starhopper." I think you mean "Grasshopper" (the Falcon 9 VTOL test mule from a few years back). New Shepard is less than half the size of Starhopper, and the BE-3 engine has ~25% of the thrust of the Raptor engine.
BurningFrog 5y ago
You're seeing the very first steps of a long race.
- maverick-iceman 5y ago
  That's right. Up until we have 100,000 people living in space we are just winging it. Winner of the race will be the dominant company in said community of 100,000 or the most socially influential person. Bezos, Musk and Branson won't be alive to see that, so they are shooting for George Washington type influence, the one reserved for the founder, the guy who was at the beginning of it all and gets remembered .
sebzim4500 5y ago
There is a race, but the competitors are China and SpaceX.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

This is what "trickle down" technology looks like. We are watching space flight move a rung down the economic ladder. Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project -> ????? -> normal people (some steps omitted for brevity)

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Not sure if you're being facetious. If so, I'll point out that it didn't take long to get from the Wright Brothers to regular civilian jet passenger flights, and it won't take long to get from Musk and Bezos to regular civilian space flights. The wealthy early adopters provide the capital to refine and scale up the industry to make it practical and affordable for less wealthy late adopters.
pdelgallego 5y ago
Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project -> hobbyist (e.g. Copenhagen Suborbitals) -> normal people.
- chasd00 5y ago
  when Copenhagen Suborbitals does this i'll cheer (and theiy're getting close). Bezos and his resources should be able to do better.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  Nation state R&D -> billionare's pet-project PoC -> wealthy bigco Commercialisation effort -> Commercial service (for wealthy/business) -> Commercial service (for normal public) -> hobbyists & higher education
afavour 5y ago
But what’s the actual purpose? Space tourism I get. But beyond that I’m struggling to see the uses of normal people having access to space travel. By comparison people having access to air travel has clear benefits.
- 5y ago

iso1631 5y ago

Mentioning Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin in the same breath as SpaceX seems disingenuous. It's like comparing an horse+cart with a modern car. Maybe Electron and Virgin Orbit are in the race, but these hop 100km (or 80!) up and about 5 miles downrange are nowhere near the same league.

gameswithgo 5y ago
Understanding the difference between orbital and suborbital space flight need not cause one to be cynical and negative about things. Especially since blue origin has a design that can scale up quickly, as SpaceX did with falcon 1 to 9
- themgt 5y ago
  Falcon 1 put a payload into orbit though, so it's really not the same. Falcon 9's first flight was less than 2 years after Falcon 1 made it to orbit. For myriad reasons Blue can't just "scale up quickly" in any meaningful way from NS to New Glenn, hence why it's going to take them 8+ years between the first NS and first NG launches. Being realistic about this is not cynical and negative.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    that's a good point, i think orbit was the minimum planned for Falcon1. I don't believe SpaceX every just went to the karman line and back. I think all of their flights have been either crashes or fully orbital.
    - chippiewill 5y ago
      > Think all of their flights have been either crashes or fully orbital. Certainly applies to the operational launches of all their rocket vehicles, however they've also done suborbital test flights with with Grasshopper, F9R, Starhopper, Starship (and maybe Super Heavy soon as well depending on if they do a sub-orbital with that first). The important difference is that SpaceX has never considered the Karman line as a target in its own right (somewhat rightly, its only value is for "whelming" space tourism).

ethanbond 5y ago

"Space exploration" is lending way, way too much credence to this. These two flights were ~60mi altitude. The ISS, for reference, is at 250mi. We've launched people there more than a hundred times, never mind having to put it there in the first place. The moon, which we landed and recovered people from in 1969, is 240,000mi away. This is a hobby project, which is totally fine in that it's their money to spend, and it's kind of neat that we can generate enough wealth that private individuals could even imagine doing this, but let's not dress it up as more than that. Edit: Musk/SpaceX is definitely in a different category. That actually seems to be shooting for space exploration, which is pretty neat, though I still think there are earthly priorities that we'd see much higher ROI from.

eevilspock 5y ago
> it's their money to spend Not everyone agrees.
- jpt1 5y ago
  Not everyone agrees the earth is round but we don't take their opinions seriously
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Sure. I myself am not entirely bought into this position, but it is in fact the position of "our society." Figure we have to start by not calling these people explorers before making our way to questioning whether such extreme accumulation of wealth is optimal in the first place.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    > questioning whether such extreme accumulation of wealth is optimal in the first place But why is it anyone's choice? People are already taxed disproportionately, why can't Musk spend his money, or the money people invest in him? The US is free to outlaw large accumulations of wealth, it would just lose a lot of people in the process (assuming emigration wasn't also outlawed). People in the US are, equally, free to move to places with fairer tax laws.

thereddaikon 5y ago

I don't think Blue Origin is currently in the same league as SpaceX. One is making money putting payloads in orbit, actively disrupting the industry and developing new hardware. They other has a sub orbital rocket that is only good for joy rides and otherwise is a lot of talk and little results. Rocket Lab is a more substantial player in the space industry right now than Blue Origin is. Maybe some day they will get off their ass and actually do something noteworthy.

stronglikedan 5y ago
Space tourism will be noteworthy insofar as it will normalize more and more of the public to space travel, which in turn normalize the acceptance of the expenditure required.
- double0jimb0 5y ago
  Consider if "space tourism" ends up having no product market fit. There is no data currently that it is a viable business. Sure, there are a bunch of pre-orders, and owners of companies now making maiden voyages, but that's it. A couple vaporized high profile customers will have a massive chilling effect on the industry. I think Musk's "we are going to Mars, people will die" is the most sober/realistic take. This messaging will do a much better job eliciting a customer base that understands the product and that will lead to sustainable industry someday.

purple_ferret 5y ago

> Some will surely say that they have better things to spend their money on Hasn't Branson essentially cashed out of Virgin Galactic for a huge payday? Even his flight was just a stunt to sell 500 million in stock.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago

The question every time space exploration comes up is whether the money and effort is better spent in space or on more terrestrial problems. With government-sponsored exploration, you at least ended up with public research and development that resulted in spinoffs that are useful on land. With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret. Also, when it comes to 'hard problems', physics is pretty predictable. Humanity has all kinds of social problems, which I'd argue are harder than these tech problems. For example, we'd have the capacity to eliminate hunger if it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret. Much of what is developed is in the public domain. Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove out. The satellite of industries that develops to support space flight is also not affected by whether the fights they're supporting are private vs government, and neither are the skills developed by the engineers working these projects. Private also has one distinct advantage: it can be self-sustaining, in being managed by an owner with a strong stake in the venture as a business unit.
- aylmao 5y ago
  > Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove out. I'd argue this is, if we're talking about practicality, is just crumbs though. For example, scratch-resistant lenses were developed at NASA. Proving that it could be done wasn't the important factor that brought it to everyone's homes. What brought it to everyone's homes was the fact that NASA licensed As another example, single-crystal silicon solar cells were first developed after NASA sponsored a 28-member coalition to develop an unmanned, high altitude aircraft. Private companies don't create coalitions like this and are much less likely to license or waive patents. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#Scratch-resistant_lenses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#Scra...

drcongo 5y ago

It takes a special kind of awful person to think that this is the hard problem they should solve with their billions.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
"They should stop wasting money sending those ships around Africa" -Some dude in the 1400s
renewiltord 5y ago
Well, a million of us have more money than each of them and instead of exploring space or feeding the poor, I (a member of the million) am going to choose to buy a MacBook Pro. Our collective $2 billion is going to go to consumer devices.
- dolmen 5y ago
  Worse: money is going to ephemeral people experiences. Restaurant, Dinseyland, theater, Netflix. And many of them have a negative environmental impact.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

I can't help but thinking we've entered another Gilded Age.

Chris2048 5y ago

I hear those complaints, but aside from a snarky "then spend your own money on <whatever> then", they fail mention: - anyone can spend money on things, if enough sub-billionaires spend money on something the same amount can be raised - there's no reason a billionaire needs to do it. On the other hand, large focused projects like this are arguably harder to crowdfund from a management perspective. - The governments is richer than Musk. Taxation brings in more money, and is a much fairer way to contribute to these problems. - the government is more empowered to deal with social issues. There are some things a private corp/citizen cannot do, at least without government approval anyway. The issues being tackled here are mainly engineering, that is "free" to solve. The items that they would "better" to fix are highly political, with a heavy side of "damned if you do, damned if you don't". - throwing money at something can make it worse. A pipedream has no metrics that could prove this, so they can always be optimistic. When a "clothe the poor" drive kills local tailoring businesses, for example. - Billionaires pay taxes, usually more than most (generally, though they have more leverage to bargain for lower taxes. unfair? sure, but that's global free trade gets you). What remains is income - why should they fix the problems government could, but won't? - A major component of this is envy/belittling effort (Musk looks too happy in PR pics, so he's "playing around") or belittling the goal (spaceflight is useless) - i.e. grievance from the ignorant. There are a bajillion "useless" pastimes and occupations relative to some rando's pet social cause, yet billionaires are easy individual targets when everyone is equally to blame - at least Musk probably works hard.

courtf 5y ago
It's not really about the individual billionaires, that's missing the forest for the trees. That individuals can afford glamor rides to the edge of space in personal rockets is merely a symptom of gross inequality that has many more downsides than upsides. Life expectancy is dropping, climate change is accelerating and while we can't solely blame any individual billionaire, they have as a group profited astronomically [:)] from the collapse of our institutions and middle classes, and from the wholesale destruction of livelihoods during the pandemic. The government is more corrupt, more attuned to the needs of the rich than ever, so you don't need to wonder why the government has failed to attend to the needs of the majority. The same class of people currently culminating in rockets launches toward space have been directing the flows of tax dollars for decades.

boringg 5y ago

The Space Race is still happening, but it's happening on other planets and with government money (see: Mars and further afield exploration). All these initiatives have been possible by the heavy lifting of NASA and other international government agencies over the last 6 decades. Theses newcomers have drawn in attention and effort and are trying to reframe space as a business being funded by revenue - which has trade offs but in general is a positive development. The really challenging work without the glamor is still being down by the scientists and research agencies with the government. I do tip my hats to the accomplishments of all three of the new comer organizations. I just dispute that the narrative that they are driving the future. I think they are complementary. To be clear - they don't have enough money to "solve" space exploration - it takes deeper capital than they have - though they are bringing a new business model to potentially stretch their capital deployments.

AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
In my opinion, they are still doing incredible work. SpaceX and Blue Origin can both bring their rockets down - no government space agency can do this today (and govt space agencies had a 60 year lead) Privatization helps because NASA cannot afford failures today, but private companies can. And since space is a new and risky frontier, failures will happen. That's why I believe that privatization is a good thing overall
- boringg 5y ago
  I agree privatization is a benefit - i believe that was my final statement in that they are complementary. I think that the bulk work is still done by public agencies, however the privatization part capitalizes from a revenue perspective on the work done by the public agencies. It's not dissimilar to how most energy technology makes its way to the private companies. DOE research labs do most of the work with college collaboration and then it gets released through private equity into the public domain.
- nickik 5y ago
  NASA could have done this long ago. And had test project that proved as much. Suborbital human flight is just not very interesting for anything other then tourism.

noelsusman 5y ago

Bill Gates is chasing harder and harder problems, not these guys.

nostromo 5y ago
Gates is doing great work, no doubt. But are they "hard" problems to solve? Most of the projects Gates takes on have already been solved in the developed world. He's primarily trying to distribute those successes to the developing world. In any case, we can have both: rich people building the tech of tomorrow, and rich people trying to apply existing tech to the underserved. Both are good; both have utility.

deleted 5y ago

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solidasparagus 5y ago

I believe Bezos has been obsessed with space since before he even started Amazon. Apparently he even talked about this dream during his high school graduation. I always thought that Amazon was just the way to make his space dream possible.

bamboozled 5y ago

I'd say climate change would be the real hard problem, considering we've already been to the moon. Jeff Bezos' company has contributed significantly to the problem, I get his plan is to manufacture things in space, but who is that really designed to benefit. The real hard thing to do would be to invest his personal billions into the issue, today.