8 ms·

>Still, I do not understand this thirst at seeing a private company monopolising space travel. Probably because it's a dumb strawman you've created to knock do

by xoa 5y ago

>Still, I do not understand this thirst at seeing a private company monopolising space travel. Probably because it's a dumb strawman you've created to knock down. Strawmen do indeed tend to be hard to understand since they aren't actually real. There is no "thirst" to see a private company monopolizing space travel per se. What people are thirsty for is serious, cheap, effective, ambitious space travel in turn leading to serious space development and humanity (and life in general) moving beyond the cradle permanently. The irritation with government agencies is a matter of brutal raw fact: they have failed miserably at this, and they're getting WORSE, not better. Debacles like the SLS or Shuttle. Zero effort to drive down cost, rather the reverse with space being treated as a very shitty bit of pork. I don't even want to say "jobs program" because SpaceX and co will generate WAY more jobs via space development in the long term, but long term thinking isn't very fashionable in much of government anymore. Or at least not in this sphere. Everyone interested in space would be delighted at more competitive players. And there are indeed a number that might manage it alongside SpaceX, eventually. Smaller players like Rocket Lab are in fact launching for real cargo to orbit, and have reasonable plans to scale up. There is certainly room for another provider or two. But NASA, ESA, Russian, and other government efforts aren't even trying to go there yet and show no potential to do so. They are stupendously wasteful cash blackholes, which is coming directly out of money that could be doing awesome stuff. Awesome good government stuff even, the kind of blue sky research and infrastructure work that governments can do to really blaze the way and help industry. The billions being sunk worthlessly into SLS could be funding a true space station/shipyard/depot [0] designed around the capabilities of Starship, helping to further accelerate smaller hungry players with the capital they need to get into the medium-lift aspect, not to mention a lot of great science. You're confusing dislike for the gross waste and failures of old fat players and excitement with the incredible efforts and progress of young ambitious new players with some sort of silly "monopoly" thing. Try to research and think about things you don't actually know much about or follow yourself a bit more before forming an opinion perhaps? ---- 0: Including helping to figure out standards so that fuel depots can be used by multiple players fairly.

JaimeThompson 5y ago
With the highest level person at SpaceX worried about them going bankrupt it is in Europe's best interest for them to develop their own launch systems an capability.
- xoa 5y ago
  I want to say upfront that I have no issue with the latter half of your statement, but not the way intended by who I responded to. First though what I don't think is correct: >With the highest level person at SpaceX worried about them going bankrupt Um, no. That statement got very, very confused in the media and retellings. The "bankruptcy" has to do with SpaceX's ultimate Mars ambitions and the rapid viability of Starlink without further investment. Very correctly, Musk and everyone else at SpaceX wants it to be able to stand on its own two feet as fast as possible, and further be able to be printing enough money to fund the enormously long term and capital intensive vision of Mars development. That is the point of it after all, and ultimately that must happen for it all to work. However, that's not the same thing at all as saying that it won't actually be getting further funding. Musk has tens of billions worth of Tesla, a bunch of which he liquidated last year. He will indeed continue to pour money into it. The number of private investors who'd be happy to add in is not exactly tiny either, nor the public for that matter though both those of course bring some challenges around control and overhead. But that message was a rally-the-troops kind of thing, in stark contrast to Blue Origin for example. Musk doesn't want employees to think of SpaceX as a government too-big-too-fail contractor on safe cost-plus financing simply because it's backed by someone wealthy and dedicated. SpaceX's vision is too big even for him by itself. It needs to be a viable enterprise. It needs to stay hungry and fast even though it has earned the top spot in the current launch market, because they want to obsolete the current launch market entirely while expanding it by orders of magnitude. Starship (and future even bigger ships) has to work for all this, and for Starlink to work economically and help kick off the planned virtuous circle. And Musk is correct that the environment may turn hostile in unpredictable ways so who knows how many years SpaceX actually has to prove itself and really get bootstrapping. But it's still in a stupendously better position than the ESA, which isn't aiming humanity for the stars in the first place right now with Ariane. So all that said: >their own launch systems an capability This is certainly fine and yes I think it matters strategically. While I don't agree with much of what the EU has done, I also think much of it is wonderful and that fundamentally it's a great institution as well as Europe as a whole. Any entity on that scale should have a route to space in the future, just as the EU has Airbus for flight. And that will help the US as well. But the way to go about that isn't through Arianespace. The EU, yesterday (a decade or more ago in fact), needs to get their own commercial sector going. With proven examples they can go much faster than NASA did if they want. But they need to supply the vision, big incentives, cut regulatory obstacles, and provide good government infra support and so on then let private players work out the actual implementation servicing those goals.

by xoa 5y ago

JaimeThompson 5y ago

With the highest level person at SpaceX worried about them going bankrupt it is in Europe's best interest for them to develop their own launch systems an capability.

xoa 5y ago
I want to say upfront that I have no issue with the latter half of your statement, but not the way intended by who I responded to. First though what I don't think is correct: >With the highest level person at SpaceX worried about them going bankrupt Um, no. That statement got very, very confused in the media and retellings. The "bankruptcy" has to do with SpaceX's ultimate Mars ambitions and the rapid viability of Starlink without further investment. Very correctly, Musk and everyone else at SpaceX wants it to be able to stand on its own two feet as fast as possible, and further be able to be printing enough money to fund the enormously long term and capital intensive vision of Mars development. That is the point of it after all, and ultimately that must happen for it all to work. However, that's not the same thing at all as saying that it won't actually be getting further funding. Musk has tens of billions worth of Tesla, a bunch of which he liquidated last year. He will indeed continue to pour money into it. The number of private investors who'd be happy to add in is not exactly tiny either, nor the public for that matter though both those of course bring some challenges around control and overhead. But that message was a rally-the-troops kind of thing, in stark contrast to Blue Origin for example. Musk doesn't want employees to think of SpaceX as a government too-big-too-fail contractor on safe cost-plus financing simply because it's backed by someone wealthy and dedicated. SpaceX's vision is too big even for him by itself. It needs to be a viable enterprise. It needs to stay hungry and fast even though it has earned the top spot in the current launch market, because they want to obsolete the current launch market entirely while expanding it by orders of magnitude. Starship (and future even bigger ships) has to work for all this, and for Starlink to work economically and help kick off the planned virtuous circle. And Musk is correct that the environment may turn hostile in unpredictable ways so who knows how many years SpaceX actually has to prove itself and really get bootstrapping. But it's still in a stupendously better position than the ESA, which isn't aiming humanity for the stars in the first place right now with Ariane. So all that said: >their own launch systems an capability This is certainly fine and yes I think it matters strategically. While I don't agree with much of what the EU has done, I also think much of it is wonderful and that fundamentally it's a great institution as well as Europe as a whole. Any entity on that scale should have a route to space in the future, just as the EU has Airbus for flight. And that will help the US as well. But the way to go about that isn't through Arianespace. The EU, yesterday (a decade or more ago in fact), needs to get their own commercial sector going. With proven examples they can go much faster than NASA did if they want. But they need to supply the vision, big incentives, cut regulatory obstacles, and provide good government infra support and so on then let private players work out the actual implementation servicing those goals.