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I think a lot of people view the billionaire space race as just another version of them comparing super-yachts. At least with the super-yachts, nobody's pretend

I think a lot of people view the billionaire space race as just another version of them comparing super-yachts. At least with the super-yachts, nobody's pretending it's an altruistic endeavour.

agar 5y ago
Calling it a "billionaire space race" always makes me laugh. If orbit is a marathon, two billionaires have made it to about the 10 mile mark, while the third one has run 112 successful marathons in a row.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Yeah, SpaceX is a long way in the lead, and much less like a vanity project compared to the others.
api 5y ago
Super yachts are not pushing the boundaries of what is fundamentally possible and contributing to the opening of a new frontier or building infrastructure that helps us more profoundly understand our universe. That's a distinction people are really missing here. Super yachts aren't doing that much to push anything forward besides super yachts. Maybe a bit of interesting tech for ocean going vessels gets prototyped there but nothing anywhere close to the magnitude of what SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  How does commercial space flight build infrastructure to help us understand the universe? I don't think space exploration is super important at this point in our civilisational development. I get the aesthetic appeal from scifi but lack of multiplanetary life isn't really a bottleneck for us right now. So it's not all that different from flexing with yachts. I like Elon's more environment oriented projects (solarcity and tesla) but broadly speaking he's a pretty insufferable tech bro billionaire.
  - api 5y ago
    Commercial space flight leads to innovations and economies of scale that radically reduce the cost of accessing space, which means we can do a lot more space science for less money. Reusable rockets alone are incredible in this regard, and if Starship really flies then we will be able to put up space telescopes much larger than Hubble and JWST at significantly less cost. Air travel was only for the rich and governments at first too, but if they hadn't funded it it would never have become cheaper. I don't accept the "we have too many problems on Earth" argument about space, though I do understand where people are coming from. I think if we wait for major problems to be solved here, we'll never go. There will always be huge problems. That's life. That and space is far less than 1% of global GDP. If we were spending loads of money on space people might have a point, but we spend more on porn than NASA. (Not really exaggerating... look it up...) As for Elon being an "intolerable tech bro," I don't care. He's human. Lots of amazingly productive or innovative people also have huge personal flaws. Look at some of our favorite musicians.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      It wasn't supposed to be an argument against space flight in general, but against Musk's specific arguments about "making humanity multi planetary to avoid existential risk" being one of the major things we need to be doing right now. It's no good having a few thousand people on Mars if climate collapse causes critical destabilisation of our society. The tech bro thing isn't really about personality and more about ideology. The hyperloop and the boring company stuff is pretty dumb and clearly based on a disregard for public transit and publicly funded infrastructure, but I'm still glad he's investing in solar power and electric cars. The neuralink monkey stuff is pretty sickening too, but overall he's one of the less-bad billionaires.
      - relativ575 5y ago
        > "making humanity multi planetary to avoid existential risk" being one of the major things we need to be doing right now If not right now, then when? what should we wait for? space exploration is very hard. It takes very long time and huge investment to make any meaningful progress. Even if we start now it'd be a long time before a sustainable presence in Mars can be established. It's also annoying to use space exploration as scapegoat for the lack of progress on Earth. You, being a HN visitor, is likely a tech savvy person who probably plays video games. Do you ever ask yourself if video games are a huge resource hog? and if we all stop playing games and devote our time and money to solve problems here on Earth, how much progress would we be able to make?

I think a lot of people view the billionaire space race as just another version of them comparing super-yachts. At least with the super-yachts, nobody's pretending it's an altruistic endeavour.

agar 5y ago

Calling it a "billionaire space race" always makes me laugh. If orbit is a marathon, two billionaires have made it to about the 10 mile mark, while the third one has run 112 successful marathons in a row.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Yeah, SpaceX is a long way in the lead, and much less like a vanity project compared to the others.

api 5y ago

Super yachts are not pushing the boundaries of what is fundamentally possible and contributing to the opening of a new frontier or building infrastructure that helps us more profoundly understand our universe. That's a distinction people are really missing here. Super yachts aren't doing that much to push anything forward besides super yachts. Maybe a bit of interesting tech for ocean going vessels gets prototyped there but nothing anywhere close to the magnitude of what SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing.

beaconstudios 5y ago
How does commercial space flight build infrastructure to help us understand the universe? I don't think space exploration is super important at this point in our civilisational development. I get the aesthetic appeal from scifi but lack of multiplanetary life isn't really a bottleneck for us right now. So it's not all that different from flexing with yachts. I like Elon's more environment oriented projects (solarcity and tesla) but broadly speaking he's a pretty insufferable tech bro billionaire.
- api 5y ago
  Commercial space flight leads to innovations and economies of scale that radically reduce the cost of accessing space, which means we can do a lot more space science for less money. Reusable rockets alone are incredible in this regard, and if Starship really flies then we will be able to put up space telescopes much larger than Hubble and JWST at significantly less cost. Air travel was only for the rich and governments at first too, but if they hadn't funded it it would never have become cheaper. I don't accept the "we have too many problems on Earth" argument about space, though I do understand where people are coming from. I think if we wait for major problems to be solved here, we'll never go. There will always be huge problems. That's life. That and space is far less than 1% of global GDP. If we were spending loads of money on space people might have a point, but we spend more on porn than NASA. (Not really exaggerating... look it up...) As for Elon being an "intolerable tech bro," I don't care. He's human. Lots of amazingly productive or innovative people also have huge personal flaws. Look at some of our favorite musicians.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    It wasn't supposed to be an argument against space flight in general, but against Musk's specific arguments about "making humanity multi planetary to avoid existential risk" being one of the major things we need to be doing right now. It's no good having a few thousand people on Mars if climate collapse causes critical destabilisation of our society. The tech bro thing isn't really about personality and more about ideology. The hyperloop and the boring company stuff is pretty dumb and clearly based on a disregard for public transit and publicly funded infrastructure, but I'm still glad he's investing in solar power and electric cars. The neuralink monkey stuff is pretty sickening too, but overall he's one of the less-bad billionaires.
    - relativ575 5y ago
      > "making humanity multi planetary to avoid existential risk" being one of the major things we need to be doing right now If not right now, then when? what should we wait for? space exploration is very hard. It takes very long time and huge investment to make any meaningful progress. Even if we start now it'd be a long time before a sustainable presence in Mars can be established. It's also annoying to use space exploration as scapegoat for the lack of progress on Earth. You, being a HN visitor, is likely a tech savvy person who probably plays video games. Do you ever ask yourself if video games are a huge resource hog? and if we all stop playing games and devote our time and money to solve problems here on Earth, how much progress would we be able to make?