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Leave Outer Space to the Millionaires
tcd004 writes "Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal has an interesting article in Foreign Policy arguing that the future of manned space travel should be left to wealthy adventurers. He points to the fact that modern state-funded space disasters become national traumas, and argues that that gung-ho millionaires are more free to take risks because they 'don't represent a nation; [they] represent humanity.'"
The time frame is 100 years.
Probably, but it's not either-or.
The problem with NASA (with all government space in all countries really) is that it's budget can't grow much. It can't grow because it is a government operation, and hence essentially can't make a profit, and therefore only grows as fast as government grows.
Which is a big problem, because one of the reasons that space is really expensive is because hardly anyone goes there per year- the economies of scale are really bad when you only go a few times a year. But commercial companies, under the right conditions, grow exponentially, far faster than governments can. Look at Cisco, a lot of their growth isn't directly related to Moore's law.
And that's where we are right now- it actually costs about $6000/kg to put something in orbit (the Shuttle is up at more like ~$13000/kg)- a man weighs maybe 80kg- so ~$500,000 is a reasonable price to aim for. (There's also some evidence that the price of commercial launch has dropped by about 50% in the last 5 years or so.)
If there was a market for tourism; then the launch rate would go up- it's a rule of thumb that the price drops by 15% for every 10x more you do something. So if there was a launch market of 1000 tourists per year, then the price could be as low as $300,000 from economies of scale alone. And that's before you get into fully reusable vehicles and other 'high technology' which can cut the costs even more.
But I don't really think that governments are in the business to do that kind of thing; they're interested in defense, spy sats, navigation sats, antisat tech, ICBMs etc. not a bunch of tourists- so it seems that the wing of the government called NASA is the wrong organisation to put even averagely wealthy people into space.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I guess you haven't watched NASA for the past 30 years.
NASA has progressed much further then any wealthy millionaire. NASA has been to space a zillion times in the last 30 years. When was the last time a wealthy millionaires made it into orbit without the help of a big government?
Yes, wealthy millionaires are progressing, but right now they are far, far behind any of the major space agencies. The Xprize only requires their contestants to reach low orbit below the height needed for satallites, so don't expect most of these guys will be launching satalites in 2004.
There are other more successful examples (like Sealaunch, who's launched a couple of satellites).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
No. The X prize requires that they reach a specific minimum altitude (Somewhere around 100km IIRC). It says nothing about orbiting the earth.
environmental degradation and other "negative externalities" that allow people to offload costs onto third parties without paying themselves
aggressive marketing of addictive and unhealthy substances, especially to children
marketing of tinned milk as infant formula in the third world (think nestle boycott) and other attempts to profit off the information gap between cultures
But really the issue is how to define "counter-productive for humanity" --- what about products or actions that benefit some people while harming others? Who gets to decide? Under the market, it's one dollar, one vote --- the smallest desire of a rich person will count for more than the life threatening need of a poor person.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Still think it's a cool idea to build one from scratch each time?
Uh, no. It wasn't. NASA was born of NACA (the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics), and has been a civilian agency from the get-go. NASA's funding does not come through the DoD or the USAF, but directly from Congress.
Yes, a number of NASA Astronauts are either ex-military, or active duty military seconded to NASA, but this is a result of the requirements NASA places on shuttle pilots (mission and payload specialists OTOH tend to be civilian). Yes, NASA flew a bunch of DoD payloads on the shuttle, but this was a result of NASA essentially demanding that they be the only launcher for US payloads (this was the only way they could even come close to generating a flight rate that would justify the shuttle).
NASA is a civilian agency. NASA employees are civilian government employees.