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Look at the numbers. SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year. That’s chump change compared to the money being spent on, let’s say professional baske

Look at the numbers. SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year. That’s chump change compared to the money being spent on, let’s say professional basketball. Not picking on basketball it’s my favorite spectator sport. But saying, if you want to find something less worthy than “improving the earth”, you have about a hundred better targets than space exploration.

h0l0cube 5y ago
> SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year One can project from SpaceX's launch history that as the commercialization of space intensifies, this figure is going to continue to grow exponentially https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year
- midasuni 5y ago
  Good. Maybe it will eventually reach the amount spent on causing brain damage to teenagers.
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    For the amount of downvotes I received, is this the best rebuttal anybody can come up with?
    - throwaway316943 5y ago
      I think it sums it up nicely. The fact that a company makes a lot of money isn’t an argument against them and we spend a lot of money on many nonsensical things so spending more on something that drives technological advancement is a good thing.
      - h0l0cube 5y ago
        > The fact that a company makes a lot of money isn’t an argument against them I wasn't making an argument against companies making a lot of money. I was merely pointing out that the commercialization will be sinking capital investment far greater than just 2 billion, contrary to the poster's claim. I don't speak of the counterfactual, i.e., where that excess money would go otherwise, but I do share the OP's lament that we should be trying to fix problems on Earth. If Space tech can help in some way, I'm all for that. > spending more on something that drives technological advancement is a good thing Technologies are amoral. Whether or not the advancement or deployment of any particular technology is a 'good thing' is a matter of subjectivity.
    - practice9 5y ago
      There is nothing to rebut. Financially and ecologically this is not worse than manufacturing products in China and shipping them all over the world, or usual stuff like tourism, cloud computing etc. I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets, as it requires a cleaner fuel than Falcon (methane vs kerosene) and should be fully reusable (i.e. no tossing the rocket in the ocean and hoping it will sink). If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident.
      - h0l0cube 5y ago
        > There is nothing to rebut. And yet nothing in any response so far counters my claim that capital expenditure on space projects will likely increase exponentially. The only claim I made, and the one I was downvoted for. > I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Rocket-Emission-Totals-1536x864.jpg https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Roc... > If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident. Not 100% self-evident. Apart from how infeasible this is from the outset, once deployed at scale it would require transporting millions of tons of goods and raw materials back and forth against the gravity of the earth. Not my domain, but I'm not sure there's a combustible fuel that could have the energy density to do this and not pollute the atmosphere (happy to be corrected on this). It seems we need to find a completely new means of propulsion (or offsetting with carbon capture) before we could have a green space industry.
        thinkcontext 5y ago
        > Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. Methane can be manufactured to be carbon neutral. The cost is prohibitive for everyday on the ground energy use but not so for rocket launches, since fuel is such a tiny portion of the cost of a flight. Musk has mentioned the possibility of doing this.
- clucas 5y ago
  So your argument is... we should limit the money we spend on commercial space flight, because the current trend is exponential growth, and if that continues without leveling off, then space flight will require greater and greater resources, eventually drawing from other, more worthy projects? Did I get that right? First of all, just because the trend is exponential now doesn't mean it always will be. That's silly. Second of all, the number of launches may be increasing at that rate because the launches have been made exponentially cheaper - why don't we look at % of GDP being put into space flight? I bet it would be flat or trending down. Am I missing something here? I just don't think your implicit concerns are well-founded.
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    > So your argument is... Well, I made no such argument, the GGP did, and I'll quote: > Look at the numbers. SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year. That’s chump change compared to the money being spent on, let’s say professional basketball. ... but I think if the poster wants to make the argument about relative costs they should at least make a fair assessment. > First of all, just because the trend is exponential now doesn't mean it always will be. That's silly. Silly why? Silly as the amount of processors that are sold every year?[0] How would a 'wealth creating' technology reaching economies of scale with a variety of use-cases not continue to grow? It is possible there's some sort of saturation point... but I can only see space industry as something that will spur it's own demand by creating industries that never existed before. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266973/global-semiconductor-sales-since-1988/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266973/global-semiconduc... > Second of all, the number of launches may be increasing at that rate because the launches have been made exponentially cheaper - why don't we look at % of GDP being put into space flight? I bet it would be flat or trending down. And I was wondering if someone would make this argument, because it is flawed. Even if costs do 'reduce exponentially' they are reducing towards a lower limit, not to zero. At some point the cost reductions per year will start to become insignificant, much in the same way that regular flight isn't becoming exponentially more economical every year. So after the low-hanging fruit has been tackled (e.g., rocket re-use, mass production), the number of launches will correlate pretty well with costs, especially now that a whole bunch of use cases now become profitable.
nolroz 5y ago
I try not to think about this too much. It's staggering and embarrassing to think of. Baseball, basketball, lipstick, the list goes on.
- ralfd 5y ago
  Global lipstick market is 13 billion USD today and wish forecasted to grow to 20 billion in 2027.

h0l0cube 5y ago

> SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year One can project from SpaceX's launch history that as the commercialization of space intensifies, this figure is going to continue to grow exponentially https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year

midasuni 5y ago
Good. Maybe it will eventually reach the amount spent on causing brain damage to teenagers.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  For the amount of downvotes I received, is this the best rebuttal anybody can come up with?
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    I think it sums it up nicely. The fact that a company makes a lot of money isn’t an argument against them and we spend a lot of money on many nonsensical things so spending more on something that drives technological advancement is a good thing.
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      > The fact that a company makes a lot of money isn’t an argument against them I wasn't making an argument against companies making a lot of money. I was merely pointing out that the commercialization will be sinking capital investment far greater than just 2 billion, contrary to the poster's claim. I don't speak of the counterfactual, i.e., where that excess money would go otherwise, but I do share the OP's lament that we should be trying to fix problems on Earth. If Space tech can help in some way, I'm all for that. > spending more on something that drives technological advancement is a good thing Technologies are amoral. Whether or not the advancement or deployment of any particular technology is a 'good thing' is a matter of subjectivity.
  - practice9 5y ago
    There is nothing to rebut. Financially and ecologically this is not worse than manufacturing products in China and shipping them all over the world, or usual stuff like tourism, cloud computing etc. I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets, as it requires a cleaner fuel than Falcon (methane vs kerosene) and should be fully reusable (i.e. no tossing the rocket in the ocean and hoping it will sink). If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident.
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      > There is nothing to rebut. And yet nothing in any response so far counters my claim that capital expenditure on space projects will likely increase exponentially. The only claim I made, and the one I was downvoted for. > I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Rocket-Emission-Totals-1536x864.jpg https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Roc... > If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident. Not 100% self-evident. Apart from how infeasible this is from the outset, once deployed at scale it would require transporting millions of tons of goods and raw materials back and forth against the gravity of the earth. Not my domain, but I'm not sure there's a combustible fuel that could have the energy density to do this and not pollute the atmosphere (happy to be corrected on this). It seems we need to find a completely new means of propulsion (or offsetting with carbon capture) before we could have a green space industry.
      - thinkcontext 5y ago
        > Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. Methane can be manufactured to be carbon neutral. The cost is prohibitive for everyday on the ground energy use but not so for rocket launches, since fuel is such a tiny portion of the cost of a flight. Musk has mentioned the possibility of doing this.
clucas 5y ago
So your argument is... we should limit the money we spend on commercial space flight, because the current trend is exponential growth, and if that continues without leveling off, then space flight will require greater and greater resources, eventually drawing from other, more worthy projects? Did I get that right? First of all, just because the trend is exponential now doesn't mean it always will be. That's silly. Second of all, the number of launches may be increasing at that rate because the launches have been made exponentially cheaper - why don't we look at % of GDP being put into space flight? I bet it would be flat or trending down. Am I missing something here? I just don't think your implicit concerns are well-founded.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  > So your argument is... Well, I made no such argument, the GGP did, and I'll quote: > Look at the numbers. SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year. That’s chump change compared to the money being spent on, let’s say professional basketball. ... but I think if the poster wants to make the argument about relative costs they should at least make a fair assessment. > First of all, just because the trend is exponential now doesn't mean it always will be. That's silly. Silly why? Silly as the amount of processors that are sold every year?[0] How would a 'wealth creating' technology reaching economies of scale with a variety of use-cases not continue to grow? It is possible there's some sort of saturation point... but I can only see space industry as something that will spur it's own demand by creating industries that never existed before. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266973/global-semiconductor-sales-since-1988/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266973/global-semiconduc... > Second of all, the number of launches may be increasing at that rate because the launches have been made exponentially cheaper - why don't we look at % of GDP being put into space flight? I bet it would be flat or trending down. And I was wondering if someone would make this argument, because it is flawed. Even if costs do 'reduce exponentially' they are reducing towards a lower limit, not to zero. At some point the cost reductions per year will start to become insignificant, much in the same way that regular flight isn't becoming exponentially more economical every year. So after the low-hanging fruit has been tackled (e.g., rocket re-use, mass production), the number of launches will correlate pretty well with costs, especially now that a whole bunch of use cases now become profitable.

nolroz 5y ago

I try not to think about this too much. It's staggering and embarrassing to think of. Baseball, basketball, lipstick, the list goes on.

ralfd 5y ago
Global lipstick market is 13 billion USD today and wish forecasted to grow to 20 billion in 2027.