4595

and this is important why? This furthers our knowledge how?

Seriously, is this the metric by which things are measured nowadays? Sure, you hear it in the Sports world or in Hollywood. “So-and-so is the first ___________ to be nominated for Best Director.” “Joe Blow is the youngest left-hander to ever hit a Grand Slam.”

But who gives a shit about this in the scientific community, or in the real world?

4596

Except that no industry is willing to fund a $150 billion orbital research platform on the hope that maybe some so-far unknown technology might result. The ISS is really cool and all that, but it’s also a bit of a boondoggle. What have we gotten there for our investment of public funds? I’m not a zero-sum guy, so I don’t think it’s taking away from anything else and was probably worth doing anyway. But consider that we balk at spending a 1/3 as much on ITER, despite the much more clear benefit of research into fusion energy technology. And ITER remains a public project.

4597

Public projects tend to be far more expensive than their private counterparts.

Like I said before, folks who think they know what’s coming in the future are almost universally incorrect. And in this particular case, Bezos has a notably more successful track record of predicting what will be economically viable than most other people.

And since it’s not a public project… he’s not spending your money anyway. He’s spending his own.

4598

I mean, if you want to say “fuck you Jeff”, this part of his majesty’s post-flight comments seems a much better reason than all the what-will-the-future bring chit-chat:

4599

I’m very curious if private industry is prepared for the level of death that exploring new frontiers is typically associated with. I guess that’s a problem between them and their insurance companies though?

4600

Is this true? I know it’s a popular perception, but what has actually been done to compare them?

On its face, I find it kind of hard to believe that a government-worked project with no expected profit incentive would be more expensive than the same project worked by a private company with an appropriate profit markup.

4601

A lot probably depends on which corners the private industry is going to cut. Sub-minimum wage gig workers cost a lot less than full time employees with pensions.

4602

I think you are confusing some issues here.

The private corporation has a profit based incentive to lower its costs. Employees of private organizations will often get performance based bonuses based on things like coming in under budget, which is achieved by reducing costs.

Government programs rarely face such cost based pressures. Indeed, many government programs are actually disincentivized to reduce costs, because if they do not spend all of the money they are given, then their funding will be cut next cycle… and there is no reward at all for them coming in under budget.

Now, the other thing you are talking about here is what the price of the goods to the end user would be, which is different.

The private corporation will reduce costs in order to maximize profit, but they won’t reduce prices.

PRICE reduction comes through market competition. However, if costs are reduced by one organization, that cost improvement will often filter through the entire industry.

4603

Really the short/mid-term value in space manufacturing is not building stuff for the Terrestrial economy, but making more space things from other space things: mars bases, moon bases, large orbital stations, etc., made from space rocks. Maybe there is some call for zero-G mfg for hitech products which will be super expensive anyhow for on-Earth use, but not in huge volumes surely.

4604

Well, things like carbon nanotubes could actually be used to facilitate something like a space elevator.

4605

Yeah, a bit of a bootstrap challenge.

4606

I think the most feasible way to bootstrap such space industry would be development of a moon base. You wouldn’t need to bring all the materials with you, and it’s close enough that we already know we can successfully land there (and then leave again).

And once you’re there, you’d have access to lots of raw materials that would be way cheaper to get up into space compared to earth.

I’m pretty sure someone is gonna do that in the next few decades.

4607

I don’t see where the efficiencies would be, though. Build a moonbase for, let’s say 200 Billion, and then it has a run rate of umpty billions a month, and it extracts what that we don’t have access to down here? Arguably you could also build a launch facility there, but damned near everything you need to build a vehicle and fuel that vehicle don’t exist on the moon. It’s a big ball of green cheese.

Space elevators I get, it’s an engineering challenge that is at least mildly feasible that results in something that makes a big difference in efficiency, but even with that I don’t see what you’re doing with it that makes any sense. What are we lacking right now or in the next century by not having space factories and whatnot?

4608

You have Helium 3, which is very useful to have.

4609

True, towards the fusion goal. Where I’m stuck is the simple accounting sheet of what it would take to extract it and bring it back vs. the benefit. Have we demonstrated with our meager Helium-3 stores that we can make productive fusion happen with it at all, much less at scale that is energy-profitable? Also, could there be a more Earth-adjacent way to harvest it rather than maintaining a moonbase?

4610

And there is water, which can be used for…well, if off world trading is to be believed, you can do anything with.

4611

We gots the water already, to be sure. Just have to quit borking it up.

4612

The moon actually has quite a lot of resources, I believe that by weight the moon’s surface actually has more metallic minerals than the earth does.

The big limiting factor, for producing things like steel, is the limited amount of carbon. However, they have recently discovered emissions of volatile carbon from the surface of the moon, which brings up questions of the moon’s formation, and may indicate harvestable carbon sources beneath the surface.

They’ve successfully conducted nuclear reactions with He3, but not on a level that is commercially viable yet.

4613

Wouldn’t it be much easier to mine the deep ocean rather than the moon for all the things (Helium 3 not being one) that might exist in concentrations on the moon, though?

4614

The main reasons for mining stuff on the moon, would be:

  1. They don’t exist in abundance on earth (like He3)
  2. You are building stuff with them in space, and want to avoid having to launch them from earth’s gravity