4 ms·

I sense an underlying assumption along the lines of "industry is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than government" the truth

I sense an underlying assumption along the lines of "industry is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than government" the truth of which depends on many things, including - how "better" is defined, - the timescale of the product/service, - the value creation/capture equation of the product/service, - the robustness of the product/service to disruption - the delivery cost vs profit margin distribution (some customers cost more to serve than others, think rural mail delivery vs urban) On any number of these, it isn't clear that the development of space tech from say 1935 to 2000 would have been faster if private industry was in charge. vs. now, when lots of the basic tech exists (Musk's rockets are based on Soviet missile tech, if I remember) ALONG WITH a proven market for that tech, yes, it does become more feasible for a commercial venture to leverage that existing tech/knowledge to create a product for the existing market.

kiba 5y ago
Or you know, who your boss is? vs. now, when lots of the basic tech exists (Musk's rockets are based on Soviet missile tech, if I remember) ALONG WITH a proven market for that tech, yes, it does become more feasible for a commercial venture to leverage that existing tech/knowledge to create a product for the existing market. IIRC, Elon Musk tried to buy soviet rockets, but otherwise all the engineering works are his company's own creation. As far as standing on shoulder of giants, they likely stand more on NASA's than on Russian rocket designs.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  All rocket technology is based on German WWII rocket technology.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Well not Goddard's work. Probably solid rockets have a different lineage, too.
    - hungryforcodes 5y ago
      Braun definitely was.
    - StillBored 5y ago
      Ah, and a tourism tip for the serious engineer/nerd/machinist. If you ever find yourself in Roswell, after enjoying the alien museum or when you get tired of the "crowds", walk a couple blocks north to the quiet little Roswell art museum. Buy a ticket and ask where the Goddard exhibition is. I was blown away! They have what appears to be most of his actual workshop on exhibition in a recreated workshop, as well as a number of his rockets (well a lot of pieces and a couple never flown/incomplete ones). Plus, loads of the usual pictures/documents/etc you would expect of a museum. I spent at least an hour standing in that workshop looking at the different tools he was using to build his rockets. Its crazy cool, and pretty much no one knows about it because "Art museum". https://roswell-nm.gov/1259/Roswell-Museum https://roswell-nm.gov/1259/Roswell-Museum (ah and here is a link to the gallery description: https://roswell-nm.gov/348/Robert-H-Goddard-Dreamer-Tinkerer-Pionee https://roswell-nm.gov/348/Robert-H-Goddard-Dreamer-Tinkerer... )
      - dnautics 5y ago
        Damn I passed through Roswell three times and never knew about it!
  - adolph 5y ago
    The date reporting the first use of true rockets was in 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at war with each other. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_roc... But to your point the turbopump was a key contribution of the Nazis: In mid-1935 Wernher von Braun initiated a fuel pump project at the southwest German firm Klein, Schanzlin & Becker that was experienced in building large fire-fighting pumps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbopump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbopump
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    >All rocket technology is based on German WWII rocket technology. No. While von Braun and other German engineers received a lot of attention, his team at Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was one of three competing US efforts to launch a satellite in the late 1950s. The Navy's Project Vanguard was the second to launch a US satellite (and would have been the first had its December 1957 attempt succeeded). The formation of NASA brought the three efforts together; Project Mercury used ABMA's Redstone and Air Force's Atlas rockets. The Soviets took German scientists, too, but returned them to Germany in the 1950s. Sergei Korolev and other Chief Designers of the various USSR rocket-design bureaus (which, unlike NASA, did not come and continued competing against each other) were all native Soviets.
    - bogomipz 5y ago
      >"The Soviets took German scientists, too, but returned them to Germany in the 1950s." Interesting. Could you elaborate on this? Was there a specific incident or reason why Russia "returned them to Germany"?
      - TMWNN 5y ago
        Basically, the Soviets squeezed all they could out of them and didn't need them any more. They were very, very helpful—much more than the USSR liked to acknowledge—to the early Soviet rocket program, but even with their help, Russia had something like only four ICBMs capable of reaching the US during the "Missile Gap" that JFK in part won the presidency in 1960 over.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Yep. Russians being dicks to Musk got us to Starship. https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t... > The third and final meeting happened back in Russia. Musk flew there with Cantrell, prepared to purchase three ICBMs for $21 million. But to Musk’s disappointment, the Russians now claimed that they wanted $21 million for each rocket, and then taunted the future SpaceX founder. As Cantrell recounted to Esquire: “They said, ‘Oh, little boy, you don’t have the money?”
merpnderp 5y ago
"industry is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than government" At some level this is always true. Are there any countries with competitive industries that don't have corporations doing the actual work even if the government accounts for 100% of their revenues? Isn't this the basic premise behind the economic revolutions in India and China, that government industries are significantly less efficient than private industries?
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Rephrasing makes it clearer: An open market where anyone is allowed to compete is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than a single monopolist organization.
  - avmich 5y ago
    Remind you, NASA did Apollo project in Soviet Gosplan style, when all manufacturers were working on the same central plan, while USSR supported at the time former Sergey Korolyov's team (Korolyov himself died in early 1966), their fierce competitors under Vladimir Chelomey and Mikhail Yangel's bureau as well, the latter leading to resources being distributed much less focused. That also allowed Zond program (Chelomey's Proton and Korolyov's Soyuz spacecraft) and automatic Moon explorers (Lunokhods and three sample return missions), so diversity did bring some fruits, but the manned system - which wasn't that far from working - was scrapped and Energiya-Buran project was launched. It brought results, but too late to be used with the terminally ill country.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      The "Soviet Gosplan style" projects tend to work for the top 2-3 priorities of the country. The soviets did well in military power, international sports, and maybe one other thing, while the rest of society stagnated.
- simiones 5y ago
  I don't think any industry/free market can compare for example to the war-time mobilization of industry displayed in the USA and the Soviet Union during WWII. For huge scale production, centralized planning can't be beat, at least for a period of time. I believe the same is true of the early space race, or the Manhattan Project.
jvanderbot 5y ago
Of these, the value is key for this domain Industry didn't have the appetite for this until very, very recently. To get anything done, gov had to create expertise (initially) and a market (later) for space exploration technologies and hope for efficiency to pick up in the industry. For the longest time, NASA existed almost exclusively to demonstrate technology and to create an environment where talent and tech could mature in the US. Now, that talent can be leveraged directly by market, thankfully. Blanket statements like "It'd have gone better with Industry" are potentially true, but miss the issue entirely: No highly-funded market for pictures of Mars, Neptune, Venus existed, essentially ever, including today.

kiba 5y ago

Or you know, who your boss is? vs. now, when lots of the basic tech exists (Musk's rockets are based on Soviet missile tech, if I remember) ALONG WITH a proven market for that tech, yes, it does become more feasible for a commercial venture to leverage that existing tech/knowledge to create a product for the existing market. IIRC, Elon Musk tried to buy soviet rockets, but otherwise all the engineering works are his company's own creation. As far as standing on shoulder of giants, they likely stand more on NASA's than on Russian rocket designs.

hungryforcodes 5y ago
All rocket technology is based on German WWII rocket technology.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Well not Goddard's work. Probably solid rockets have a different lineage, too.
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    Braun definitely was.
  - StillBored 5y ago
    Ah, and a tourism tip for the serious engineer/nerd/machinist. If you ever find yourself in Roswell, after enjoying the alien museum or when you get tired of the "crowds", walk a couple blocks north to the quiet little Roswell art museum. Buy a ticket and ask where the Goddard exhibition is. I was blown away! They have what appears to be most of his actual workshop on exhibition in a recreated workshop, as well as a number of his rockets (well a lot of pieces and a couple never flown/incomplete ones). Plus, loads of the usual pictures/documents/etc you would expect of a museum. I spent at least an hour standing in that workshop looking at the different tools he was using to build his rockets. Its crazy cool, and pretty much no one knows about it because "Art museum". https://roswell-nm.gov/1259/Roswell-Museum https://roswell-nm.gov/1259/Roswell-Museum (ah and here is a link to the gallery description: https://roswell-nm.gov/348/Robert-H-Goddard-Dreamer-Tinkerer-Pionee https://roswell-nm.gov/348/Robert-H-Goddard-Dreamer-Tinkerer... )
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Damn I passed through Roswell three times and never knew about it!
- adolph 5y ago
  The date reporting the first use of true rockets was in 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at war with each other. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_roc... But to your point the turbopump was a key contribution of the Nazis: In mid-1935 Wernher von Braun initiated a fuel pump project at the southwest German firm Klein, Schanzlin & Becker that was experienced in building large fire-fighting pumps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbopump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbopump
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >All rocket technology is based on German WWII rocket technology. No. While von Braun and other German engineers received a lot of attention, his team at Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was one of three competing US efforts to launch a satellite in the late 1950s. The Navy's Project Vanguard was the second to launch a US satellite (and would have been the first had its December 1957 attempt succeeded). The formation of NASA brought the three efforts together; Project Mercury used ABMA's Redstone and Air Force's Atlas rockets. The Soviets took German scientists, too, but returned them to Germany in the 1950s. Sergei Korolev and other Chief Designers of the various USSR rocket-design bureaus (which, unlike NASA, did not come and continued competing against each other) were all native Soviets.
  - bogomipz 5y ago
    >"The Soviets took German scientists, too, but returned them to Germany in the 1950s." Interesting. Could you elaborate on this? Was there a specific incident or reason why Russia "returned them to Germany"?
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      Basically, the Soviets squeezed all they could out of them and didn't need them any more. They were very, very helpful—much more than the USSR liked to acknowledge—to the early Soviet rocket program, but even with their help, Russia had something like only four ICBMs capable of reaching the US during the "Missile Gap" that JFK in part won the presidency in 1960 over.
ceejayoz 5y ago
Yep. Russians being dicks to Musk got us to Starship. https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t... > The third and final meeting happened back in Russia. Musk flew there with Cantrell, prepared to purchase three ICBMs for $21 million. But to Musk’s disappointment, the Russians now claimed that they wanted $21 million for each rocket, and then taunted the future SpaceX founder. As Cantrell recounted to Esquire: “They said, ‘Oh, little boy, you don’t have the money?”

merpnderp 5y ago

"industry is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than government" At some level this is always true. Are there any countries with competitive industries that don't have corporations doing the actual work even if the government accounts for 100% of their revenues? Isn't this the basic premise behind the economic revolutions in India and China, that government industries are significantly less efficient than private industries?

BurningFrog 5y ago
Rephrasing makes it clearer: An open market where anyone is allowed to compete is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than a single monopolist organization.
- avmich 5y ago
  Remind you, NASA did Apollo project in Soviet Gosplan style, when all manufacturers were working on the same central plan, while USSR supported at the time former Sergey Korolyov's team (Korolyov himself died in early 1966), their fierce competitors under Vladimir Chelomey and Mikhail Yangel's bureau as well, the latter leading to resources being distributed much less focused. That also allowed Zond program (Chelomey's Proton and Korolyov's Soyuz spacecraft) and automatic Moon explorers (Lunokhods and three sample return missions), so diversity did bring some fruits, but the manned system - which wasn't that far from working - was scrapped and Energiya-Buran project was launched. It brought results, but too late to be used with the terminally ill country.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    The "Soviet Gosplan style" projects tend to work for the top 2-3 priorities of the country. The soviets did well in military power, international sports, and maybe one other thing, while the rest of society stagnated.
simiones 5y ago
I don't think any industry/free market can compare for example to the war-time mobilization of industry displayed in the USA and the Soviet Union during WWII. For huge scale production, centralized planning can't be beat, at least for a period of time. I believe the same is true of the early space race, or the Manhattan Project.

jvanderbot 5y ago

Of these, the value is key for this domain Industry didn't have the appetite for this until very, very recently. To get anything done, gov had to create expertise (initially) and a market (later) for space exploration technologies and hope for efficiency to pick up in the industry. For the longest time, NASA existed almost exclusively to demonstrate technology and to create an environment where talent and tech could mature in the US. Now, that talent can be leveraged directly by market, thankfully. Blanket statements like "It'd have gone better with Industry" are potentially true, but miss the issue entirely: No highly-funded market for pictures of Mars, Neptune, Venus existed, essentially ever, including today.