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>It's how we get to the moon We already did that. Why not just support NASA?

jhgb 5y ago
Sadly NASA didn't do what people in the Age of Exploration did, namely settling there.
fighterpilot 5y ago
Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. Government is good when the public externalities are large, the private benefit is small and there's an extremely large capital requirements. This is not the case any longer for rocket tech, and so it makes zero sense to have the government do it. It'd be like asking the government to make smartphones, which is an obviously ridiculous proposition.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. I don't think anyone is proposing that government employees (or politicians) actually design the rockets themselves. The question is, can governments oversee and fund the development of innovations like VTOL rockets? And the answer to that question is "yes"[0]. As for why innovation in that field stopped, and had to be picked up again by private companies, I think it's worth asking whether large companies have undue influence over the sorts of projects that governments choose to pursue. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
- weare138 5y ago
  > Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. What? That makes no sense. We already had a reusable vehicle for space flight. We've had it for decades now. It's called the Space Shuttle. NASA developed it in 1981. Just support NASA and science for the public good. Do you really want a handful of billionaires in control of space exploration? They do it for their own benefit not ours.
cbm-vic-20 5y ago
Because NASA can't get funding unless the right Congresspeople can spread the pork around their districts.
openforce 5y ago
Privatization spurred tremendous increase in efficiencies. SpaceX rocket material is much more fuel efficient, significantly more re-usable. Even the blue origin rocket landed on it's feet yesterday.
BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
NASA is the one making those Moon/Mars missions actually happen. Companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin are just vendors that help NASA to have greater flexibility and do more with less. It's the same reason your company is able to move faster by leveraging pre-built solutions like Stripe/Twilio/Okta/etc. instead of re-building every one of those services in-house.
aeternum 5y ago
NASA is beholden to congressional funding, and congress is supposed to act in the interest of their constituents. Even if we assume everyone is rational and the system works as-designed, NASA must work to keep each state and even district within that state happy. That means hundreds of small contracts and explosions of complexity in order to do some of the work in each state. NASA's mission designs for the last 50 years have been a mess of complexity and ridiculously expensive, and rarely happened as a result. Only now with the commercial contractors are things starting to change.

jhgb 5y ago

Sadly NASA didn't do what people in the Age of Exploration did, namely settling there.

Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. Government is good when the public externalities are large, the private benefit is small and there's an extremely large capital requirements. This is not the case any longer for rocket tech, and so it makes zero sense to have the government do it. It'd be like asking the government to make smartphones, which is an obviously ridiculous proposition.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. I don't think anyone is proposing that government employees (or politicians) actually design the rockets themselves. The question is, can governments oversee and fund the development of innovations like VTOL rockets? And the answer to that question is "yes"[0]. As for why innovation in that field stopped, and had to be picked up again by private companies, I think it's worth asking whether large companies have undue influence over the sorts of projects that governments choose to pursue. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
weare138 5y ago
> Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. What? That makes no sense. We already had a reusable vehicle for space flight. We've had it for decades now. It's called the Space Shuttle. NASA developed it in 1981. Just support NASA and science for the public good. Do you really want a handful of billionaires in control of space exploration? They do it for their own benefit not ours.

cbm-vic-20 5y ago

Because NASA can't get funding unless the right Congresspeople can spread the pork around their districts.

openforce 5y ago

Privatization spurred tremendous increase in efficiencies. SpaceX rocket material is much more fuel efficient, significantly more re-usable. Even the blue origin rocket landed on it's feet yesterday.

BHSPitMonkey 5y ago

NASA is the one making those Moon/Mars missions actually happen. Companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin are just vendors that help NASA to have greater flexibility and do more with less. It's the same reason your company is able to move faster by leveraging pre-built solutions like Stripe/Twilio/Okta/etc. instead of re-building every one of those services in-house.

aeternum 5y ago

NASA is beholden to congressional funding, and congress is supposed to act in the interest of their constituents. Even if we assume everyone is rational and the system works as-designed, NASA must work to keep each state and even district within that state happy. That means hundreds of small contracts and explosions of complexity in order to do some of the work in each state. NASA's mission designs for the last 50 years have been a mess of complexity and ridiculously expensive, and rarely happened as a result. Only now with the commercial contractors are things starting to change.