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Italy, Sweden and Turkey are paying their way. They are all military pilots. They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seat

Italy, Sweden and Turkey are paying their way. They are all military pilots. They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA.

wrsh07 3y ago
Tbh this seems good for all of those countries (and good for Axiom!) Feels pretty win/win. I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress
- kiba 3y ago
  Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck. Maybe that's true of Blue Origin, but you're going to need a lot more evidence to back up that claim in regards to SpaceX. The best estimate is that they make a >50% gross margin on Falcon 9 launches (at least for external customers). And while they spend a lot on Starlink launches, they're also making quite a lot of Starlink revenue at this point. It's certainly true that they're dumping a lot of R&D money into Starship. But that strategy is how they earned their current medium/heavy lift launch market dominance, so I can't really fault them for that. And if Starship does work out, it could set them up for a functional monopoly on launch for decades. Not to mention dramatically decreasing their internal Starlink costs.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. Elon and his people are extraordinarily good at finding ways to make all the dependent sub-projects profitable while working toward the larger goal. Which is as impressive as the engineering.
      - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
        Mars colonization is not their business. Launching commercial payloads is. Everything else is just marketing.
        timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
      - soperj 3y ago
        > With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. That's more just a out there goal to motivate people who are motivated by that. Still have had zero launches to Mars.
        timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Being a passion project doesn't preclude making a profit. Especially if you're not being stupidly short sighted. Plus, other companies are having a hard enough time competing already (even small launch is facing tough competition from the F9 rideshares), if SpaceX dropped their prices too low, it'd quickly run most of the launch market out of business, which is not in the interests of a company that wants to improve accessibility to space. This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload.
      - nordsieck 3y ago
        > Being a passion project doesn't preclude making a profit. Especially if you're not being stupidly short sighted. OK. But the comment I responded to call it a passion/prestige project and contracted it with a normal profit driven business. > This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload. Yeah. SpaceX hasn't said anything, but I tend to believe that they'll move to a capabilities based pricing model where customers pay by the KG and/or m^3. That way they can compete for small payloads while getting paid appropriately for large ones.
        kiba 3y ago
        OK. But the comment I responded to call it a passion/prestige project and contracted it with a normal profit driven business. If you want to just make money, there are far easier and less risky industries you can invest your money in than launch services and rockets. You can even just invest your wealth in an index fund and earn a return that is basically risk-free.
  - wilg 3y ago
    People should really look more at hacking capitalism to do big exciting things, like SpaceX, IMO.
    - wrsh07 3y ago
      I completely agree! I think it's generally related to the ai alignment problem, fwiw The trick is that we need to ban fraud aggressively and then reduce the profits from endeavors we want to discourage (not sure if there are good general mechanisms. I mean we use taxes for this sometimes. Imagine if one wanted to reduce the collection of user data if instead of gdpr you created a data tax!) I'm also very interested to hear what projects you think might be good candidates to do this with!
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    For Blue Origin it is true, they are not making money and a privately funded. For SpaceX it just so hilariously wrong. SpaceX did get seed money from Musk, about 90 million. The rest is venture funded just like every other successful company. SpaceX is a very normal capitalist company. Musk has not invested more of his own money into it. SpaceX is making money and raising money to fund future projects. One could maybe make an argument that Musk longer has ambitions to do passion projects, but he has never perused these without building the company in a capitalist way first. Because he knows that if the company isn't successful, non of the long term plans are possible. > not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck Every capitalist enterprise has owners, the owners decide what they should do. Often but not always this is 'making a buck'.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
  > Feels pretty win/win. Please develop this further, what Italy has to win? other than the scientific breakthrough that is to spend tax payer money to "buy a seat" > is helping us make really exciting progress us? you meant the USA? progress? like? I don't recall Italy working on any similar projects, how will these seats help italians get a return of investment? Sounds like an attempt at masking subsidies from the EU, at the expense of ESA I wonder who's in the lobby "SpaceX accuses Arianespace of unfair competition" - https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclusif-spacex-accuse-arianespace-de-concurrence-deloyale-992893 https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclu... "Elon Musk's company complains about subsidies from France and Europe, and calls on Washington to act." > I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress Oh, the irony! In the meantime: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station - https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate-60-Pro-is-the-world-s-first-satellite-calling-phone/topicId_280286/ https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog... - https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-rocket-test https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-roc...
  - ABS 3y ago
    1) go to https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research 2) click on the Italian flag 3) read about all the experiments, who funds them, why they will be run/what they hope to learn 4) go to 2 and change flag for the other countries you will find both public and private experiments/initiatives in there
    - WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
      Exactly, this further prove my point, masked subsidy from the EU ;)
      - ABS 3y ago
nordsieck 3y ago
> They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA. To be fair to those countries, it's typically ESA that barters with NASA, not the individual member countries. And it seems like astronauts are selected in rough proportion to national contribution (generally in line with the National Return policy). Paying for a private seat may be a more efficient way for smaller countries to get people into space.
- dmurray 3y ago
  Is Turkey even an ESA member? I don't think it's clear they'd be welcomed. This seems like a sensible way for them to dip their toes into having a space program.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    The Turkish one is essentially for propaganda, being "the first Turk in space" right before the elections(although he is supposed to run some experiments for the Turkish Universities). It's still nice though, maybe will inspire some kids to pursue careers in science but there's an ongoing debate in Turkey if he is just a space tourist(it's complicated). A fun thing is, He is from the secular demographic and his firsts words were to commemorate Ataturk and the islamists and seculars instantly switched place; Now the pro-government people say He is a space tourist and the secular opposition says he is a hero :)
    - atahanacar 3y ago
      >He is from the secular demographic This is an understatement. He was purged from the military and jailed by Islamists/Gülenists/Erdoğan using fabricated evidence and cultist judges, for "attempting a secularist coup". I don't think it is "essentially" for propaganda. This would happen regardless, propaganda is just a side-benefit. Saying that he's "just a space tourist" would be like calling scientists that go to Antarctica for experiments "polar tourists". It is definitely overblown by the government media though.
mezeek 3y ago
the difference is that NASA only has seats for 6-month ISS missions, not a couple weeks like Axiom missions. Totally different.

Italy, Sweden and Turkey are paying their way. They are all military pilots. They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA.

wrsh07 3y ago

Tbh this seems good for all of those countries (and good for Axiom!) Feels pretty win/win. I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress

kiba 3y ago
Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck. Maybe that's true of Blue Origin, but you're going to need a lot more evidence to back up that claim in regards to SpaceX. The best estimate is that they make a >50% gross margin on Falcon 9 launches (at least for external customers). And while they spend a lot on Starlink launches, they're also making quite a lot of Starlink revenue at this point. It's certainly true that they're dumping a lot of R&D money into Starship. But that strategy is how they earned their current medium/heavy lift launch market dominance, so I can't really fault them for that. And if Starship does work out, it could set them up for a functional monopoly on launch for decades. Not to mention dramatically decreasing their internal Starlink costs.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. Elon and his people are extraordinarily good at finding ways to make all the dependent sub-projects profitable while working toward the larger goal. Which is as impressive as the engineering.
    - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      Mars colonization is not their business. Launching commercial payloads is. Everything else is just marketing.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
    - soperj 3y ago
      > With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. That's more just a out there goal to motivate people who are motivated by that. Still have had zero launches to Mars.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Being a passion project doesn't preclude making a profit. Especially if you're not being stupidly short sighted. Plus, other companies are having a hard enough time competing already (even small launch is facing tough competition from the F9 rideshares), if SpaceX dropped their prices too low, it'd quickly run most of the launch market out of business, which is not in the interests of a company that wants to improve accessibility to space. This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Being a passion project doesn't preclude making a profit. Especially if you're not being stupidly short sighted. OK. But the comment I responded to call it a passion/prestige project and contracted it with a normal profit driven business. > This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload. Yeah. SpaceX hasn't said anything, but I tend to believe that they'll move to a capabilities based pricing model where customers pay by the KG and/or m^3. That way they can compete for small payloads while getting paid appropriately for large ones.
      - kiba 3y ago
        OK. But the comment I responded to call it a passion/prestige project and contracted it with a normal profit driven business. If you want to just make money, there are far easier and less risky industries you can invest your money in than launch services and rockets. You can even just invest your wealth in an index fund and earn a return that is basically risk-free.
- wilg 3y ago
  People should really look more at hacking capitalism to do big exciting things, like SpaceX, IMO.
  - wrsh07 3y ago
    I completely agree! I think it's generally related to the ai alignment problem, fwiw The trick is that we need to ban fraud aggressively and then reduce the profits from endeavors we want to discourage (not sure if there are good general mechanisms. I mean we use taxes for this sometimes. Imagine if one wanted to reduce the collection of user data if instead of gdpr you created a data tax!) I'm also very interested to hear what projects you think might be good candidates to do this with!
- panick21_ 3y ago
  For Blue Origin it is true, they are not making money and a privately funded. For SpaceX it just so hilariously wrong. SpaceX did get seed money from Musk, about 90 million. The rest is venture funded just like every other successful company. SpaceX is a very normal capitalist company. Musk has not invested more of his own money into it. SpaceX is making money and raising money to fund future projects. One could maybe make an argument that Musk longer has ambitions to do passion projects, but he has never perused these without building the company in a capitalist way first. Because he knows that if the company isn't successful, non of the long term plans are possible. > not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck Every capitalist enterprise has owners, the owners decide what they should do. Often but not always this is 'making a buck'.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
> Feels pretty win/win. Please develop this further, what Italy has to win? other than the scientific breakthrough that is to spend tax payer money to "buy a seat" > is helping us make really exciting progress us? you meant the USA? progress? like? I don't recall Italy working on any similar projects, how will these seats help italians get a return of investment? Sounds like an attempt at masking subsidies from the EU, at the expense of ESA I wonder who's in the lobby "SpaceX accuses Arianespace of unfair competition" - https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclusif-spacex-accuse-arianespace-de-concurrence-deloyale-992893 https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclu... "Elon Musk's company complains about subsidies from France and Europe, and calls on Washington to act." > I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress Oh, the irony! In the meantime: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station - https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate-60-Pro-is-the-world-s-first-satellite-calling-phone/topicId_280286/ https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog... - https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-rocket-test https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-roc...
- ABS 3y ago
  1) go to https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research 2) click on the Italian flag 3) read about all the experiments, who funds them, why they will be run/what they hope to learn 4) go to 2 and change flag for the other countries you will find both public and private experiments/initiatives in there
  - WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
    Exactly, this further prove my point, masked subsidy from the EU ;)
    - ABS 3y ago

nordsieck 3y ago

> They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA. To be fair to those countries, it's typically ESA that barters with NASA, not the individual member countries. And it seems like astronauts are selected in rough proportion to national contribution (generally in line with the National Return policy). Paying for a private seat may be a more efficient way for smaller countries to get people into space.

dmurray 3y ago
Is Turkey even an ESA member? I don't think it's clear they'd be welcomed. This seems like a sensible way for them to dip their toes into having a space program.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  The Turkish one is essentially for propaganda, being "the first Turk in space" right before the elections(although he is supposed to run some experiments for the Turkish Universities). It's still nice though, maybe will inspire some kids to pursue careers in science but there's an ongoing debate in Turkey if he is just a space tourist(it's complicated). A fun thing is, He is from the secular demographic and his firsts words were to commemorate Ataturk and the islamists and seculars instantly switched place; Now the pro-government people say He is a space tourist and the secular opposition says he is a hero :)
  - atahanacar 3y ago
    >He is from the secular demographic This is an understatement. He was purged from the military and jailed by Islamists/Gülenists/Erdoğan using fabricated evidence and cultist judges, for "attempting a secularist coup". I don't think it is "essentially" for propaganda. This would happen regardless, propaganda is just a side-benefit. Saying that he's "just a space tourist" would be like calling scientists that go to Antarctica for experiments "polar tourists". It is definitely overblown by the government media though.

mezeek 3y ago

the difference is that NASA only has seats for 6-month ISS missions, not a couple weeks like Axiom missions. Totally different.