Why would the investors bail from a thriving company? That doesn’t make any sense. SpaceX has billions in annual revenue and is profitable last I checked.
I really don’t want to derail this thread into another debate on Elon Musk since he’s such a polarizing figure, so I’ll just leave it with this statement: SpaceX has good tech, good prospects, and a track record of delivering that is waay better than any other company in the US doing space stuff.
I think the better question is, regardless of the company, is it in the national interest for our space operations future to be in the hands of a for-profit corporation whose loyalties are to its shareholders, rather than in the hands of the people, indirectly, via the government? One can definitely make a case for government mishandling of space stuff, but you also have to look at the job the government (with industry partners, of course) did prior to thee Shuttle era. Admittedly, times were different and there’s that rather unpleasant Nazi connection, but in general, I think we need to have a robust national space program under the auspices of the government, and not rely totally on businesses that may or may not have the national interests at heart.
Of course, these days, “national interests” can be hard to track down. But I don’t buy the “if it’s good for General Motors, it’s good for the USA” shibboleth. If it’s good for a corporation, it’s good for the corporation. Whether it is good for the nation is usually totally coincidental. Decades of aerospace and defense contracting pretty much prove this.
Musk is listed at chief designer for Spacex. I think he has more to do with the day to day operation of SpaceX than Tesla. That said Gwynne Shotwell has probably just as much to do with SpaceX success as Elon, and is very strong #2 in the company. If Elon died it would be a horrible day for both SpaceX and Tesla, but I think SpaceX lead in both technology and manufacturer is such that it would do fine without Gwynne, not sure you could say the same for Tesla.
My favorite Astronaut and nonagenarian.
From what I can tell at a glance, government programs in my lifetime have mostly resulted in contractors providing shit results that take longer than expected and fleece taxpayers in the bargain.
If that weren’t the norm, I’d probably agree with you.
Well, when you gut the government’s (that is, our, the people’s, because only the government has as its primary mission serving the population, rather than quarterly earnings statements) ability to do things, by refusing to fund enough capability to perform functions most governments would consider fundamental government responsibilities, and make unlimited amounts of money available to private industry with little to no effective oversight on many of the most vital and expensive programs, yeah, you will get shit work. That’s what happens when business controls the government. It is not a measure of government work per se.
The whole “the government can’t do it, let private industry handle it” thing is part of the whole modern capitalist con game of self-fulfilling prophecies. Attack the government, slash budgets, insure inability to produce results, shift the (now grossly padded) money to private firms, often get the same results, but at a much higher cost that is now going into the pockets of stockholders. Everyone wins but the country.
Yes, there is a very important place for private industry in partnership with the public sector. But partnership is not what we have now. We have the tail wagging the dog.
Honest question: what interests would those be? Posturing aside, there’s no fear of conflicts and there’s no lack of ability to put things in space.
Unless you mean too many “too big to fail” companies grifting around, removing all economic stability, but that’s a different thing.
A space program I think is more than just technical ability. What are the goals? I could see the government working on ways to use space to monitor or maybe even mitigate climate change; using space-based research capabilities to explore useful things like pharmaceuticals where the first priority isn’t getting a patent and price gouging; exploring space-based power generation and transmission (ditto on the lower priority of cornering the market); pure research in general, including otherwise unprofitable activities possibly including human missions; communications enhancements that would not, again, be locked behind someone’s paywall; etc.
Sure, some off this stuff could, and would have to be, shared with industry. No problem there. But I grew up I guess in the era of the classic NASA human spaceflight programs. I watched the first moon landing in 1969, on a small black and white TV. I admit I’ve never quite gotten over our complete abandonment of a serious commitment to space exploration on a national level.
But that can all be done with satelites, no? Which I think are fairly simple things, although an expertise in shielding and whatnot maybe important enough to have some sort of body.
I do think it’s kind of natural monopoly territory, with all that entails, I’m just not seeing an argument for people who don’t think that’s an actual big issue in general.
Well, that’s probably the key. I strongly feel government, as the only institution devoted solely (in theory) to serving the population as a whole and not itself, should take responsibility for and commit resources to things that benefit society as a whole. No one else is going to, and relying on corporate charity is a losing proposition. I do not buy into the Smithian rising tide lifts all boats malarky about the Holy Free Market.
Matt_W
4123
Certainly the shuttle program was more expensive, less reusable, and more deadly than expected. On the other hand, we wouldn’t have Hubble or the ISS without it.
The failure rate for the SSME’s is very low. Only two in-flight incidents (premature engine shut-down) out of 135 missions, neither of which affected mission completion. The main engines were not responsible for nor contributed in any way to the two shuttle disasters.
This is hard to parse. SpaceX is a private company and its books aren’t public. It claims profitability, but that’s hard to take at face value, particularly since they’ve only had about half of their predicted launch volume every year. Also they’ve received many billions of development dollars from NASA, which they’ll count as income. It’s hard to believe that they can be long-term profitable based on launch contracts alone (though perhaps with StarLink.)
We’ve put several robots on Mars with years-long missions there. We’ve flown years-long missions to Saturn and Jupiter. Landed a spacecraft on Titan. Flown past Pluto. Done countless missions measuring and mapping the earth, moon, sun, and other planets. Launched a space telescope that has probed the beginning of the universe, probed deep space, and revealed planets around other suns. Built a space station the size of a football field. I’m not sure how all of that equates to an abandonment of space exploration.
My understanding is that the private rocket industry wouldn’t be here today without the massive investment NASA has made throughout the last half century. It’s not just the money NASA pays the private industry to launch their stuff into space and even the SLS funding, their extremely heavy investment in rockets, space exploration, etc… all paved the way for all the critical infrastructure and engineering knowledge today’s rocket companies are based on. They are literally standing on the shoulders of the giant that only exists because of NASA’s investment of the scale that no private for profit company would have ever been able to justify, and those investments are paying off in many, many other industries not even related to space.
This is why the theory of NASA trying to get people to the moon again is important to me and a lot of the logistical ideas they are proposing, because it’s funding investment and engineering into things that right now are not really able to be justified by anyone but Elon Musk (and I don’t know that he can justify it from a business point of view rather than his desire to see people on mars in his lifetime).
What’s not clear to me is how much of the money NASA spent from the 50-s to 90s went to private contractors rather than in house engineering efforts. Were private companies always heavily involved and they’ve just gotten more efficient at fleecing the government, or is this actually due to the lack of a space race essentially defunding NASA efforts.
Depends what they’re competing against, surely. At the moment they’re the only manned launch capability the US has outside of begging Russia. And they’re the cheapest medium lift option for satellites by some distance. So, sure, if ULA or whoever is getting massive subsidies and/or launch quotas, then it will be hard for them to be profitable, but at the moment they’ve got more prospects of being profitable than anyone else.
Yes, they were, at least after the rockets stopped being glorified ICBMs (and maybe even then).
You seem to be assuming that I wasn’t calling for a heavy lift launch program at all, or for scrapping NASA entirely or something. I was not. I very much support the mission of NASA, I just think the overpriced underperforming shuttle program was extremely disappointing. I wanted NASA to do something better than the shuttle program, and I want them to get rid of SLS now and focus on more re-usable and practical launch vehicles. We certainly could have come up with something to launch ISS segments or Hubble. Heck, the Falcon 9 heavy can launch more weight to low Earth orbit than the shuttle if I remember correctly.
Oof, hard time to argue on behalf of the RS-25 engine after it’s spectacular performance in the SLS test the other day! You are correct though that the RS-25, looked at in isolation away from the other failures of the shuttle program, does have a good service record. The issue that I have with it is that it’s a relic of a dead-end technology initiative designed before I was born. And I’m no spring chicken.
I’m not sure I’m getting your point here? I said something nice about SpaceX, YakAttack responded with “until Musk goes away” and you followed up with “And they may not be profitable if NASA stops funding them” so I’m honestly not sure what we are talking about. From my perspective the goalposts, or least the subject, keep moving around. SpaceX is doing great things with launch vehicles that are vastly more economical than something like the SLS. They are receiving NASA funding and I don’t imagine that will stop anytime soon.
The shuttle was what it was because of political reasons, and it still is the focus for the same reasons. Despite them never making entire sense, and much less now.
My bad, human exploration, and stuff on the ambition level of thee moon program. I’m not saying that would be rational or the best use of our resources, but it’s what we thought we were going to be doing, when I was young at least.
As for the stuff you list, yes, it’s all very useful. It’s also the sort of thing I would hope we’d do in the background of bigger, long term projects.
Houngan
4130
Way behind on this thread so this may be a repost, but interesting nonetheless:
TL:DR, it’s in the title.
fire
4131
Although JPL is shut down to public and private tours, the education office put together this great virtual tour. Browse our wares here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/virtual-tour/
fire
4132
Yesterday’s pre-landing news conference for the Perseverance rover (landing on Feb 18 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70rKVFNtV7c
