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.'"

Comments

Uh-huh.

[Tidal Flame]

That's a bit counterproductive - if the only people who're going to be travelling into space are wealthy millionaires, we'd be much slower in space-travel development than we are at current. Not that it's all that important, but.

Re:Uh-huh.

[Aadain2001]

I guess you haven't watched NASA for the past 30 years. We still use the same Shuttles. We have seen MANY great new spacecraft designs, but they were never explored because of all the buracracy invloved. There was an article in the latest Wired that talked about this. These millionars are building reusable space craft that are cheap and effective and actually made with modern ideas. They will most likely be the ones to bring us, the average citizen, into space. Let them do the research, because in the end they will want to turn around and sell it on the open market, creating practicle space travel.

Re:Uh-huh.

[phutureboy]

Do you realize how horribly complicated the space shuttle is? It is not economically feasible to redesign a shuttle every 10 years, let alone 20-30

Do you realize how horribly complicated computers are? Less than 30 years ago it was almost incomprehensible that the things would someday become a household item. The same could have been said of automobiles at one point. Never underestimate the power of commoditization.

And these millionaires who are building reusable spacecraft are also not under the umbrella of the US government, which requires some form of safety/redundancy/reliability

And private industry *doesn't* require safety/redundancy/reliability?

Re:Uh-huh.

[Aadain2001]

I do realize how complicated the shuttle is. I also know that they are required to take the entire thing apart after it returns from space, requalify each piece, and rebuild the entire thing from the ground up. This makes it MORE expensive than just building a new one from scratch! The shuttle is about as reusable as a car that has to be rebuilt every night.
NASA did do good work, 30 years ago, but they haven't done much of anything since. When NASA was founded in the 1960's (could be wrong, could have been in the 50's, so don't hold me to this), they went from capsule style launching to putting a man on the moon to shuttle launching in about 20 years. But since that time, they haven't done anything new. Sure, there have been plans to goto Mars, or build a habitat on the moon. But none of these projects were explored. So, instead of spending their budget on pushing further into space, maybe even grabing an asteroid for mining, they decided to stay at home, doing nothing more than launching expensive shuttles to perform some experiments. My tax dollars are higher because NASA has refused to scrap the shuttle. If they had actually spent the time to test/build some of these new designs, we would have much cheaper space flight.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Millionaires represent humanity?

What?

[mikeophile]

gung-ho millionaires are more free to take risks because they 'don't represent a nation; [they] represent humanity.'

Pretty sad world when nations aren't considered to represent humanity.

Re:Space should be left to corperations

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

Yes, I agree that it is a great motivator for innovation, but sometimes it seems it doens't always lead innovation in the right direction. It's great from the consumer standpoint, because that's who they're trying to please.. but when you start to look at humanity as a whole, it seems the profit motivation leads to things which are counter-productive.... Just my 2 cents, anyways.

On NASA, and where we're going next

[Anonymous Coward]

I do at the least believe contests like the X-Prize are the real future of aeronautics. They allot a prize, and say 'Make something that does 'X'', and many groups from incredibly different backgrounds and ideals come up with technology that could and will do the job.

I saw today some of NASA's plans for life beyond the Shuttle. In particular, their 'Space Plane', which looks, feels, and does the exact same thing the Shuttle does. Their 'next craft' may well have a mission 'well beyond Earth's orbit'.

Whoopie doo! What will that be, 2030? It makes me sick that NASA is willing to mortgage the future of space for 30 years because they're not daring enough to do something big right now. I'll be 65 in 2030. People don't live that long.

People die in space.

Craft are lost in space.

Space is a dangerous place.

If the most NASA believes space is good for is interesting ways to battle cancer using technology from the ISS, we do not have a real leader behind us in the space race.

Did I say 'space race'? There still is one, you know. Sooner or later, the Chinese will shoot a capsule to the moon, because they have a real interest in going there - and then America will sit back and suddenly realize that they have NOTHING that can do what the Chinese had just done. We'd have to create the Apollo program from scratch. SCRATCH.

The article makes a good point, that individuals can take more risk than a government institution. Government institutions value job security and predictability fostered by high budgets...not pure results. This is why the conclusions of the shuttle inquiry thus far have said 'That was bad. Well, back to the shuttles!' without real consideration of alternatives.

I wave my flag to the X-Prize and prizes like it that will come after. A random person will, someday soon, reinvent the Mercury program with a small group of people that NO government actually sanctions, and it is only then that it will be realized where the real advancements are being made.