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Seems a bit 20th century to ask Congress for money to do it, when people like Elon Musk have shown you can do pretty much anything NASA can do privately at a 10

Seems a bit 20th century to ask Congress for money to do it, when people like Elon Musk have shown you can do pretty much anything NASA can do privately at a 10th of the cost.

JumpCrisscross 13y ago
>when people like Elon Musk have shown you can do pretty much anything NASA can do privately at a 10th of the cost SpaceX replicates NASA's orbital launch capability with efficiencies to spare. The redundancy does not, however, extend to deep space exploration, landers and rovers, and sundry scientific and technological endeavours with limited near-term profit potential.
- melling 13y ago
  Yes, but the private business model seems to be the best way to get more money into the space program. Apple has almost $150 billion is cash, and they don't know what to do with it. Google, Microsoft, etc also have large cash surpluses. Now if we could have 3 or 4 companies, anywhere in the world, like SpaceX, then we'd have hundreds of billions of dollars in the space program. NASA's budget is less than $16.6 billion for 2014.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The cost of Apollo was about ~$170 billion 2005 dollars (about $200 billion adjusting for inflation since then). That's not including Mercury and Gemini (i.e. all the R&D necessary to get from where Space X is now, to where NASA was right before Apollo). Okay, so Apple and Microsoft and Google probably could bankroll a modern Apollo program. But doing so would be corporate suicide. There is absolutely no way it would yield returns in any time frame that would be acceptable to shareholders. This isn't the web, where capital investments are small enough that investors don't need a monitization story. If companies are committing tens of billions of dollars, there needs to be a compelling story of how they're going to recoup that investment and make a profit. Space X had one: launch contracts for commercial and government satellites. There is no such monetization story for the moon.
    - melling 13y ago
      I was saying that we need the equivalent of an Apple, Google, etc in the space program. I did mean to say that these companies should become involved in space. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a few more.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        I assume you mentioned Apple, Google, etc, because they're the few companies that have the cash to bankroll something like a moon program. Space X, Blue Origin, etc, certainly don't.
        melling 13y ago
        10 years ago Apple and Google didn't have the money either. The idea is for space companies to grow into the equivalent of these companies. It's not just the money, but the entire ecosystem to support the industry.
        nationcrafting 13y ago
        >It's not just the money, but the entire ecosystem to support the industry. Exactly. You could think of a project on the moon as building a platform, much in the way that the formation of the US was building a platform: creating something that allows other people to generate new wealth on top of it. The benefit to the originator companies of ownership over something like that would be enormous, without them having to do all the work.
    - nationcrafting 13y ago
      > Okay, so Apple and Microsoft and Google probably could bankroll a modern Apollo program. You're assuming the entire cost needs to be bankrolled by a single entity or company. No such assumption needs to be made. > There is no such monetization story for the moon. North America was less interesting to European monarchies of the 16th and 17th centuries than South America, because they didn't think they'd find any gold there. Never mind the millions of acres of fertile land, or the opportunity to build a platform that would allow millions of people to create new wealth with the right incentives. Confusing the concepts of wealth and money, they turned down the opportunity of acquiring wealth because it didn't look like money. I think you are making a similar mistake. It's not a personal criticism per se: just like it would have been perfectly normal to assume kings and queens were right not to be interested in North America at the time, it's perfectly normal to assume big corporations would be right not to be interested in the moon today.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
Going back to the moon will be orders of magnitude more expensive than what Space X is doing, and knocking a zero off that price tag isn't going to bring it within the reach of private industry without Congressional support. As it is, half of Space X's funding as of May 2012 came from NASA pre-payments on launch contracts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Funding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Funding. That said, I would love to see greater involvement of entities like Space X in a return to the moon. Space X has already proven it can do what NASA has already done, 50 years later, but at much lower cost. That's actually a pretty reasonable path to commercializing space. The problem here is lack of any market for the service. Space X worked because there was an existing market for launch services.
ceejayoz 13y ago
In fairness, Musk credits NASA for laying much of the ground work.
- nationcrafting 13y ago
  That's great. But w.r.t. going to the moon, the ground work has clearly been laid now. They did go there, after all. So, the task is not "getting them to do it again" but "doing it ourselves, better and at lower cost".
philwelch 13y ago
Anything? Really? So Musk built a space station, landed men on the moon, and launched a massive space telescope? He's landed robotic rovers all over the surface of Mars? He hasn't even put a human being in orbit yet.
- nationcrafting 13y ago
  No, he hasn't done all those things. That's kind of the point here: this is about going back to the moon i.e. doing things that have already been done. The point now is to do them in such a way that you can generate wealth while doing it. So, when private companies go to the moon, they will do it better, at a fraction of the cost, and generate wealth while doing it.

Seems a bit 20th century to ask Congress for money to do it, when people like Elon Musk have shown you can do pretty much anything NASA can do privately at a 10th of the cost.

JumpCrisscross 13y ago

>when people like Elon Musk have shown you can do pretty much anything NASA can do privately at a 10th of the cost SpaceX replicates NASA's orbital launch capability with efficiencies to spare. The redundancy does not, however, extend to deep space exploration, landers and rovers, and sundry scientific and technological endeavours with limited near-term profit potential.

melling 13y ago
Yes, but the private business model seems to be the best way to get more money into the space program. Apple has almost $150 billion is cash, and they don't know what to do with it. Google, Microsoft, etc also have large cash surpluses. Now if we could have 3 or 4 companies, anywhere in the world, like SpaceX, then we'd have hundreds of billions of dollars in the space program. NASA's budget is less than $16.6 billion for 2014.
- rayiner 13y ago
  The cost of Apollo was about ~$170 billion 2005 dollars (about $200 billion adjusting for inflation since then). That's not including Mercury and Gemini (i.e. all the R&D necessary to get from where Space X is now, to where NASA was right before Apollo). Okay, so Apple and Microsoft and Google probably could bankroll a modern Apollo program. But doing so would be corporate suicide. There is absolutely no way it would yield returns in any time frame that would be acceptable to shareholders. This isn't the web, where capital investments are small enough that investors don't need a monitization story. If companies are committing tens of billions of dollars, there needs to be a compelling story of how they're going to recoup that investment and make a profit. Space X had one: launch contracts for commercial and government satellites. There is no such monetization story for the moon.
  - melling 13y ago
    I was saying that we need the equivalent of an Apple, Google, etc in the space program. I did mean to say that these companies should become involved in space. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a few more.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      I assume you mentioned Apple, Google, etc, because they're the few companies that have the cash to bankroll something like a moon program. Space X, Blue Origin, etc, certainly don't.
      - melling 13y ago
        10 years ago Apple and Google didn't have the money either. The idea is for space companies to grow into the equivalent of these companies. It's not just the money, but the entire ecosystem to support the industry.
        nationcrafting 13y ago
        >It's not just the money, but the entire ecosystem to support the industry. Exactly. You could think of a project on the moon as building a platform, much in the way that the formation of the US was building a platform: creating something that allows other people to generate new wealth on top of it. The benefit to the originator companies of ownership over something like that would be enormous, without them having to do all the work.
  - nationcrafting 13y ago
    > Okay, so Apple and Microsoft and Google probably could bankroll a modern Apollo program. You're assuming the entire cost needs to be bankrolled by a single entity or company. No such assumption needs to be made. > There is no such monetization story for the moon. North America was less interesting to European monarchies of the 16th and 17th centuries than South America, because they didn't think they'd find any gold there. Never mind the millions of acres of fertile land, or the opportunity to build a platform that would allow millions of people to create new wealth with the right incentives. Confusing the concepts of wealth and money, they turned down the opportunity of acquiring wealth because it didn't look like money. I think you are making a similar mistake. It's not a personal criticism per se: just like it would have been perfectly normal to assume kings and queens were right not to be interested in North America at the time, it's perfectly normal to assume big corporations would be right not to be interested in the moon today.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

rayiner 13y ago

Going back to the moon will be orders of magnitude more expensive than what Space X is doing, and knocking a zero off that price tag isn't going to bring it within the reach of private industry without Congressional support. As it is, half of Space X's funding as of May 2012 came from NASA pre-payments on launch contracts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Funding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Funding. That said, I would love to see greater involvement of entities like Space X in a return to the moon. Space X has already proven it can do what NASA has already done, 50 years later, but at much lower cost. That's actually a pretty reasonable path to commercializing space. The problem here is lack of any market for the service. Space X worked because there was an existing market for launch services.

ceejayoz 13y ago

In fairness, Musk credits NASA for laying much of the ground work.

nationcrafting 13y ago
That's great. But w.r.t. going to the moon, the ground work has clearly been laid now. They did go there, after all. So, the task is not "getting them to do it again" but "doing it ourselves, better and at lower cost".

philwelch 13y ago

Anything? Really? So Musk built a space station, landed men on the moon, and launched a massive space telescope? He's landed robotic rovers all over the surface of Mars? He hasn't even put a human being in orbit yet.

nationcrafting 13y ago
No, he hasn't done all those things. That's kind of the point here: this is about going back to the moon i.e. doing things that have already been done. The point now is to do them in such a way that you can generate wealth while doing it. So, when private companies go to the moon, they will do it better, at a fraction of the cost, and generate wealth while doing it.