Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Private Business Will Not Open the Space Frontier

MarkWhittington writes "Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist and media personality, offered something of a reality check on the potential of commercial enterprises to open the space frontier without the aid of government. Specifically referencing SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk's boast that he would establish a Mars colony, Tyson said on a recent video podcast, 'It's not possible. Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise.'"

Comments

I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

But I hope he's wrong. Chances of anyone in government coming together for long enough to get something like this done again are slim, especially without a military reason.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Penguinisto]

He's probably both.

I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites.

I can prove him semi-right with a slightly higher word count: It will likely take some heavy-duty research to help get the costs down to under $100/kg or so, but once it hits that threshold, then you'll likely find a shitload of companies falling all over themselves to strip-mine space for everything from aluminum to methane (assuming a vessel could be made to send the stuff down w/o it burning/boiling off during re-entry.) It'll also open up colonization, albeit on a small scale.

The reasons why? Sure there's unlimited distances, but there's also unlimited potential for wealth, and a lot of folks are going to give it a shot. Most will fail miserably. Many will see death, dismemberment, and spectacular horror. A few however will succeed - some will do so enough to make them wealthier than anyone could imagine.

Not much different from the state of things in 1493 Europe, if you think about it.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect he is right about *Mars*, I'm not sure there's much to gain from landing people on a hunk of rock and dust at the bottom of a big gravity well. However going out and 'mining' the asteroid belt with robot ships, or even moving asteroids into earth orbit to mine closer to home, could potentially be lucrative for rare earth materials, etc.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Chrisq]

But I hope he's wrong. Chances of anyone in government coming together for long enough to get something like this done again are slim, especially without a military reason.

.... unless you mean the Chinese government perhaps.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[VortexCortex]

I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites.

I watched a speech to the space society where he stated this message a bit more clearly, I think. Tyson means the Frontier will be "opened", as in "trail blazed" by the governments. Once you can get a person to Mars, then private industry has much more data to make the calculated risks. Massive uncalculated risk? That's not a valid business strategy, really. However, a government can allocate more funds as needed, and push forth a frontier for the good of mankind. Money isn't much of issue for governments (look at the size of the US's war budget, for example).

Inspiring the people by pushing the frontier even further has shown beneficial in both economic and social terms in the past. This new generation has no Neil or Buzz. The ISS is hugely valuable, but we're still whipping around in the same near Earth orbit. That's not nearly as captivating, or inspiring to the average Jane or Joe.

Take commercial space satellites. You didn't disprove shit, man. Guess who "opened" that frontier first? Governments. Neil is saying the Governments will blaze the trails and make way for the private space industry for the benefit of all. We all benefit from satellites now, but that private industry remained grounded until governments took the first steps.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and who did practically all of the "new continents exploration"? Exactly, the Spanish, English, Portugese, etc. royal governments. None of that would've been possible if the government hadn't funded practically all of the major initial investments, just as with space exploration: SpaceX would have to spend orders of magnitude more in research (=prohibitive) if they hadn't access to all the NASA data.

Sure the private sector is very good at commercialising a field and reaping the benefits, but not so much at building it, just look at history...

captcha: fogging

Re:I suspect he's right.

[nospam007]

"I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites."

That's not exactly space. Also, those were launched by Russian, American or European state sponsored rockets.

Since it seems to be even impossible to grow corn without government aid I fear he's right.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Rakishi]

Governments have already done the trail blazing for where it matters. There is nothing of worth on Mars, it's inside a gravity well with barely an atmosphere and no radiation protection. The money isn't in shipping a handful of people to a red rock for millions and burying them under twisty feet of rock.

The money is in all the easier to access and easier to reach natural resources in asteroids and outside the giant gravity wells. There may also be some money in cheaper local tourism. As the cost per person goes up, the total amount of money you can make goes down as your potential market shrinks much faster than the price grows.

These are all things which aren't even being commercially exploited. Blazing a trail into the jungle doesn't benefit anyone that much if you're starting from a dinky little 2 man outpost that the commercial routes won't reach for twenty years. Looks at colonization. The governments brazed a trail to the coasts but it was the commercial fur traders who really explored the inside of the US.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Alef]

I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites.

Oh really? What do you figure he said that this proves wrong? You know, because he specifically argues that private companies does things like transporting stuff into space better than government can. You'd known that if you bothered to watch TFV -- I know, this is Slashdot, what am I expecting?

What he is talking about is missions to push the frontiers, like mapping planets and such, where it's hard to find a clear ROI for a private investor.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites.

What have commercial satellites in common with a Mars base? Commercial satellites are being launched by private companies because the government paved the way for them in the 1960s and 1970s. There are no live humans on board. Nobody to cope with the radiation and the microgravity. There's vast commercial interest in having a satellite fleet, even short-term - especially short term. Where's the commercial interest in sending a man to Mars? You're saying "commercial", and yet commercial companies can't see beyond the tips of their noses. Anything requiring more than ten years in the future is "not a viable business plan" for the shrewd MBA. You're talking about space mining, but who's going to do all the primary research? Because it surely weren't the commercial satellite companies who did the primary research on geosynchronous satellites! We can't even begin to design the technological processes to mine and process asteroid material unless we know what exactly is out there, and the first asteroid probes have been sent very recently. Guess what: they were sent by NASA, not by commercial companies! Yes, I believe that there will be a day when commercial space mining will be commonplace affair, but I don't think that pure commercial endeavours will be the ones to pave the way to that.

Not much different from the state of things in 1493 Europe, if you think about it.

So you're saying that if the Apollo 13 had died in the accident, Mrs. Shepard and Mrs. Roosa would have simply told their husbands "of course you have to go, we expected a lot of people to die in space anyway"? Human life has an entirely different value in 1493. Nobody cared about the survival of expendable, uneducated sailors back then. How many have died for every single successful discovery voyage? Because you can bet that every double-PhD scientist or engineer dying beyond Earth's orbit will be treated like a national catastrophe. That won't last forever, of course, but the beginnings won't be easy.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[negablade]

Not convinced your example proves Neil wrong. Commercial satellites are common only because the US and Russian governments did all the primary research and development first. Satellites aren't as fragile as humans and considerably easier to launch into space and keep there. Near Earth orbit is easier and cheaper than Mars.

Neil is commenting mainly on "Elon Musk's boast that he would establish a Mars colony". Manned travel to Mars isn't routinely done and there isn't anything for \industry to build on. The cost to develop and test the technology to make manned trips to Mars feasible and to sustain a base on Mars would be prohibitive for a single commercial industry. Look at the development of the electric car for instance. Significant cost and research required as well as infrastructure changes and no single commercial entity was responsible for the full development of the technology required to make hybrids and full electric vehicles commercially viable.

As for the cost, getting a manned Mars trip down to $100/kg is a significant undertaking. I'm sure that if the costs could be bought down to that level that commercial interest would peak. But that is a far cry from doing it now before the technology has been developed, as Elon Musk seems to boast.

-Wayne

PS Secretly I'm hoping Elan can do it, but the chances are slim to none.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[peragrin]

The thing is those fur traders who really explored the US needed a gun, a stock of ammo, and some blankets to do that exploration.

In Alaska Today you can literally live without earning more than a couple of grand a year.

Now let's see you live in space without

water, oxygen, radiation shielding, propulsion, and some form of fake gravity. You have to carry everything with you literally everything. Asteriods to mine are very hard to get to and from basically because they are not near a gravity well and we use gravity wells for 90% of our intra solar travel propulsion.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Money isn't much of issue for governments (look at the size of the US's war budget, for example).

That's the great fallacy. There is a myth that government sits on top of some massive mine of untapped wealth, but it doesn't. Government is supported, financially, by the very private enterprises that Tyson seems to think are not cut out. Wealth is not fixed, nor does it come out of thin air.

Some may think that because government taxes all industry it has a massive chunk of the entire economy and is thus better equipped, financially, to allocate the resources. I'm not sure about that. For one, those resources are still spread out over many different activites (such as the war budget to use your own example). Secondly, because the resources are expropriated from tax payers for "public" purposes they are subject to various political pressures and issues.

I suspect the other fallacy here is that people imagine a lone entrepreneur taking money out of his bank account to fund an investment / business venture. There is no rule in business enforcing such lone risk taking. Entrepreneurs are good at raising capital from a wide amount of investors. If the plan is solid and the potential profit is lucrative enough, an entrepreneur can raise substantial capital by appealing to a large number of investors. There is simply no reason to think government actually has more financial resources at it's disposal than private enterprise. In fact, mathematically it is impossible unless it expropriates > 50% of all wealth produced in the form of taxes and inflation. I've heard estimates that it is actually around 50% when you factor in income tax, sales tax, inflation and other fees but it's an estimate, and if it were exactly 50% then on the aggregate private enterprise and government are on equal footing and it becomes a matter of who is better qualified to take those risks and why. I just don't see the case that government is better because "space is dangerous." What use is military, police, courts and career politicans when dealing with space debris and harsh environmental conditions ? Financial resources aside, how is what government does better equipped to go into space than what private enterprise does ?

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive uncalculated risk? That's not a valid business strategy, really.

Kickstarter.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Drethon]

But will governments continue to blaze the trail by themselves or fund private industry to do it? Christopher Columbus' expidition wasn't a state project, he had to shop around to multiple governments before he found one that would fund HIS project.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[multi io]

I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites.

I watched a speech to the space society where he stated this message a bit more clearly, I think. Tyson means the Frontier will be "opened", as in "trail blazed" by the governments. Once you can get a person to Mars, then private industry has much more data to make the calculated risks.

There's not much "trailblazing" remaining to be done, as long as we aren't talking about entirely new propulsion technologies that are basically science fiction, especially for high-thrust (i.e. manned spaceflight) requirements. I do think that SpaceX can make manned spaceflight (with chemical rockets) cheaper, if you just look at their integrated approach -- where government-built vehicles have all kinds of "pork barrel" issues, e.g. each stage and each subsystem is produced by a different company, where SpaceX just uses the same engine for the 1st and 2nd stage (just several of them bundled in the first stage), and is free to do what's economically feasible, not what pleases a bunch of senators from different states.

Still, I think space tourism will be the only viable perspective for commercial manned spaceflight for an unforeseeable amount of time. Mining asteroids as a private business, and making a profit out of it, is not doable with chemical propulsion. The launch cost per kilogram isn't the only factor there, what counts would be $/kg for the returned material. And that's just not working out. Any run of the mill asteroid that you'd want to mine weighs more than the entire payload mass launched into space by mankind in its history. And "mining equipment" isn't light-weight either, apart from the fact that you'd first have to make it work electrically in zero-G conditions. And the asteroid has a delta-V of several km/s relative to earth. I think there is no way that the combined cost of retrieving any "rare earth" material from an asteroid is gonna be cheaper than digging it out of the ground somewhere, and perfecting recycling technologies.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[delt0r]

To fly to NZ from here is about 1600EUR for coach, about 3000 for 2nd class and upwards of 6000 for first class. I have seen 1st class tickets for over 10k. I weight 90kg, so at $100 per kg it compares well to what some people are prepared to pay to fly.

I think the $100 per kg could well be the threshold level.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive uncalculated risk? That's not a valid business strategy, really.

Says who? Not the entrepreneur who's doing it, but the theoretical scientist advocating more NASA funding.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um no. Boeing sells the launch vehicles so not "state sponsored"

Re:I suspect he's right.

[h4rr4r]

Boeing would not exist if not for the state.
If not for the desire of some to privatize everything Boeing would not exist in the rocket arena. Without the state doing the basic research and being a guaranteed buyer Boeing would not make rockets at all.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites."

I don't think commercial satellites count as "opening up the space frontier" any more. Even the bit of space where commercial satellites satellites are was not opened up by private business.
So with that you did not actually prove him wrong.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Teancum]

The problem with an entrepreneur making a profit in space is getting cooperation from government to get that to happen. Note that I'm not saying that the government must necessarily subsidize the venture, but it is possible to set up a "business climate" that encourages or discourages entrepreneurial activity in space.

Two big examples for how the U.S. government basically killed entrepreneurial spaceflight activity:

Space Services, Inc. designed and built the Conestoga rocket. They got to the working hardware stage of development which actual flights of the hardware (most rocket launching companies don't even get that far). While there were admittedly problems with quality control and other problems, the primary issue that this company faced was competition from the Space Shuttle program, where NASA claimed commercial customers could buy launching services for about $1000 per pound to low-Earth orbit. This basically threw out the business case for Space Services to continue developing this rocket, thus they bailed out. The funny thing is that NASA never delivered on that promise of commercial launches and the Space Shuttle never could have been able to fly payloads at that price even if commercial payloads were actually flowing freely like was originally promised.

The OTRAG rocket wasn't even manufactured by an American company, but instead was mostly composed of European investors and engineers. Again they got to the working hardware stage of development and even started to build some launch sites for their rockets.... except those launch sites were located in "sensitive countries" like Libya and Zaire (now called Congo again). Intense diplomatic pressure (perhaps justified) was employed by the U.S. government to kill the development of this rocket, not to mention that Arianespace had formed as a competitor (government funded as well... something OTRAG didn't have) so all further permits were cancelled.

The interesting thing is that more recently there was sort of the opposite sort of anti-entrepreneurial activity that took place, especially following the success of the Ansari X-Prize when Burt Rutan's Spaceship One finally made a successful series of sub-orbital flights. Noting that Scaled Composites was hardly the only company, the Office of Commercial Spaceflight was established to at the very least permit entrepreneurs to try and see if they can make a commercial effort in space. It also doesn't hurt that existing government launcher efforts like the Constellation program and the SLS have proven to be so horribly uneconomical in their operations and development that the case for commercial launcher operations is basically a slam dunk business case at the moment.

What I'm trying to say is that the government can either encourage private entrepreneurial efforts in this regard, or they can completely screw them up so they would never be successful no matter how hard these entrepreneurs try. Also, spaceflight really is a very capital intensive business. Not nearly so much as petroleum exploration and refining (which definitely has much more capital tied up in those business), but unfortunately space transportation services is also a razor thin profit margin as well. In the words of Elon Musk, commercial spaceflight launchers is an excellent way to turn billionaires into millionaires.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[asylumx]

Of course, Columbus used that funding so that he can now wander the heavens as the morning star, still believing he reached India.

http://www.xkcd.com/1255/

Re:I suspect he's right.

[shokk]

He’s right for the same reason that private business has never opened Antarctica. It’s not as safe and cheap as taking a bus across town.
That is not to say we should not explore, but exploration has always been backed by military and governments because of funding. It’s one thing to kickstart and get a balloon up into near-space, but completely another to get out of our neighborhood of the solar system.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Teancum]

Commercial satellites are being launched by private companies because the government paved the way for them in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nope, you are wrong here.

Commercial satellites were first developed not by the good graces of the U.S. government, or even the Soviet Union for that matter. Instead the first practical communications satellite (and commercial satellite I would note too) was launched by AT&T as a part of the Telstar program Keep in mind that AT&T paid for the satellite development, paid for the rocket to launch it into space, and even paid for the launch pad services at a premium rate. Unfortunately the rocket and the launch pad were government owned and required special legislation to be passed by the U.S. Congress just for AT&T to be granted permission for the privilege of being able to go into space.

The other stupid thing about this whole venture by AT&T is that once they proved that commercial satellites could be successful, and furthermore that a real business opportunity existed so entrepreneurs could actually make money by sending satellites into space, special legislation was enacted that actually prohibited anybody else other than a competitor to AT&T could launch satellites into space. It was a forced government monopoly that essentially treated satellites as a regulated utility company.

Far from the government being a trailblazer of going forth and proving that satellites could work and earn money, the government actually screwed things up and prevented commercial spaceflight from happening for more than 40 years after commercial spaceflight efforts had been proven successful. I think that has damaged the U.S. economy and only in the past decade has commercial spaceflight efforts even been permitted to happen in meaningful ways that in earlier decades simply were illegal.

This lack of freedom to even try has been by far and away the worst part about government space policy in the 20th Century. I'm not even convinced that the government was the only option for developing rockets either, but the one thing that made building rockets so important to the government in the 1950's and 1960's (not so much in the 1970's) was that it provided a good platform to place nuclear bombs for ICBMs and shorter ranged missiles. The whole business of sending stuff into space was mainly a side-show of technology that could be reused for other things at the same time.

I'll also note that one of the reasons why the USSR achieved so many "firsts" early on with rockets is that the nuclear bombs they had to fly were so much larger than the bombs built by America that they simply needed the larger rockets. The same ICBM used to deliver the huge nuke to America could also be used to launch a capsule big enough to carry a cosmonaut into space.

Note also that by about 1970, the needs of missiles and the needs of vehicles going into space diverged enough that they became different vehicles. The design requirements for an ICBM is not the same as what you want to use for sending "fragile cargo" up into space including communications satellites or crewed vehicles. This is also why funding for spaceflight in both the USA and the USSR was cut substantially, even though the public relations benefits from continuing the spaceflight programs still had some benefit. This is also why Neil deGrasse Tyson's notion of government funded space is never going to happen either, as there is no purpose other than minor public relations benefits to the governments involved to see that it occurs.

The first NASA astronauts going to Mars will be greeted by a crew from CNN covering the landing live on the ground under the lander... and a party will be held honoring their arrival when the rest of the people in that part of Mars gather together for the celebration. NASA astronauts or for that matter government employees will not be the first to go there.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[dywolf]

in our country, you're right. possibly even the EU.
China however is looking very promising.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[thomasw_lrd]

Those damn martian terrorists are building chemical weapons, quick alert the US govt. So we can launch troops. And liberate the green martians. So we can all live in peace. We must bring peace to the Martians and democracy.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Oligonicella]

Uh, no. Trade companies did a whole lot more than the governments. The governments mostly gave their blessing. Just look at history.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[3.5 stripes]

So, commercial satellites predated sputnik?

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Nemyst]

You do realize that the mere idea of a "governmental commercial satellite" is pretty much an oxymoron? The government trailblazed satellites, there's no questioning that. From then on, commercial entities could begin to leverage all the data that governments amassed from doing this to create commercial satellites. THAT is the point, not your entire rant on government.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Agent0013]

I watched a speech to the space society where he stated this message a bit more clearly, I think. Tyson means the Frontier will be "opened", as in "trail blazed" by the governments. Once you can get a person to Mars, then private industry has much more data to make the calculated risks. Massive uncalculated risk?

It wasn't a government that pushed to find the new world. Columbus had to search for funding for his expedition. Sounds like a commercial endeavor being done by an entrepreneur to me.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Alioth]

Commercial satellites are not space exploration any more than a commercial flight from London to Paris is exploration.

Re: I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

you know "dangerous", "expensive", "risky" (which is basically saying "dangerous" twice) and "impossible" were among the many arguments against exploring what lies East of India, on this very planet, not that long ago...

-and if I'm not mistaken, a rather infamous Trading Company did rather well out of the bargain

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Teancum]

Sputnik was a stripped down nuclear warhead missing the fissionable material itself and instead it had a very simple radio transmitter.

Also note that Telstar was launched just five years after Sputnik. Do you really think there was much of a technology transfer from the USSR to an American telecom company in the 1950's and 1960's?

And yes, I believe that without the massive race to build nuclear bombs and the Cold War that it is likely commercial spaceflight would have happened anyway. It may have been slower to get going and certainly done on a much smaller scale, but it likely would have happened. The rocket equation wasn't exactly a new concept in 1960, especially since the people you really need to give thanks to are the Germans of World War II that helped to build the V2.

With this statement you are presupposing that Telstar would never have been able to go into space had Sputnik never launched. I am suggesting that the two were not directly related incidents and indeed were contemporary of each other.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Teancum]

The idea of a satellite was hardly a new idea in the 1950's. You can't even call that trail blazing other than showing it could be done at all.

I also disagree with your notion that the "data" that 'governments amassed" was necessary for commercial launch operators from being developed. Much of that data was started by efforts of several amateur rocketry clubs that had been created at the beginning of the 20th century based upon the work of Hermann Oberth and Robert Goddard, both of whom in turn leaned upon the efforts of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and his rocket equation.

I think you are placing far too much emphasis upon the role that governments played here in getting this working. No doubt government efforts accelerated development of spaceflight, but was it necessary for governments to get the ball rolling to make rockets work in the first place? I suppose we won't know because governments were involved heavily once actual hardware capable of going into space was developed, but I am suggesting otherwise.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[judoguy]

and burying them under twisty feet of rock.

I forget, how many twisties to a Library of Congress?

Re:I suspect he's right.

[dj245]

But I hope he's wrong. Chances of anyone in government coming together for long enough to get something like this done again are slim, especially without a military reason.

I think he is wrong. The statement "Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise" seems a little harsh considering the history of risky endeavors. In the 1700s, building and operating a ship was risky, expensive, and had unknown risks. There were plenty of non-government owned ships though.

Government has its place in this kind of industry. For hundreds of years, governments have built lighthouses, made maps, created navigational calculation devices and systems, made rules for designing and operating ships, etc. These are things which the private industry can not do, or struggles to do by themselves. Space rockets should be no different. Government can supply some helpful tools (maybe access to relay stations, communications networks, locating systems, basic research etc), but there is no reason why private enterprises can't build and operate rockets and spacecraft.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Orne]

Exactly. Private enterprise won't get us a city on Mars, it will get us thousands of tiny habitats on asteroids in the belt, to hold the mechanics/repair staff for robotic mining operations. It won't be glorious, but it will make money.

This is the same reason we don't have all of the crazy stuff that classic sci-fi says we should have by now, like habitats at the bottom of the ocean or a city at the north pole. Instead we do have floating oil rigs, mining operations, mountaintop windfarms, desert solar arrays... because that's what is actually profitable.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Sputnik was a stripped down nuclear warhead missing the fissionable material itself

Hah. This is for the first time that I hear that Soviet nuclear warheads of the 1950s were spherical and two feet in size. I think someone was playing a joke on you.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[wiit_rabit]

Change the paradigm.

You don't need water, oxygen, etc... if you don't send humans. Private enterprise will do the cost analysis, and I bet they will send very sophisticated robots first. Go to the Asteroid belt to mine for things, go into low/medium orbit to develop new materials and manufacturing processes, etc... All with a focus on what is the best return on investment, not what political whims are fashionable.

I agree with others that Kennedy's speech about going to the moon was brilliant, but we were developing heavy lift capability anyway for the military, and maybe starting a 'space program' deflected some of the criticism that would have come about of we had developed the heavy lift capability, etc... with only military interests in mind.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites.

I believe his to be a gross and oversimplification of his position.

Business comes in AFTER Government does the heavy lifting. Commercial satellites were not viable before the Apollo/Mercury projects.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now let's see you live in space without water, oxygen, radiation shielding, propulsion, and some form of fake gravity.

Strange...it's as though you think only the government is capable of providing the necessary items required for space travel. Which is especially odd when you realize that governments don't manufacture items at all, they contract commercial manufacturers to construct it for them. Governments don't produce things. They simply organize and oversee things.

The idea that ONLY the government or ONLY a commercial entity will be able to kick things off is ridiculous. It will be a combination of both. Period. Anything else is propaganda designed to increase ad-sense for more internet monies...

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Princeofcups]

But I hope he's wrong. Chances of anyone in government coming together for long enough to get something like this done again are slim, especially without a military reason.

Then we have to change that government and military. The only way to save this planet in the long run is to get it out of the hands of the "free market" and into the hands of people with intelligence and integrity. The problem is those people rarely want that kind of power, but eventually they will have no choice but to step up.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[SEE]

Massive uncalculated risk? That's not a valid business strategy,

Actually, it's the standard business strategy of startup finance.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[schnell]

It wasn't a government that pushed to find the new world. Columbus had to search for funding for his expedition. Sounds like a commercial endeavor being done by an entrepreneur to me.

You do know where Columbus got his funding, right?

Re:I suspect he's right.

[ArsonSmith]

This is just not true. look at expeditions to the north poll. Through history Government sponsored expeditions were cost more and failed more often than the more numerous private and commercial expeditions.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[notanalien_justgreen]

Governments have been funding private industry for decades to do this stuff. NASA routinely contracts out to Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman or Ball Aerospace to build vehicles or instruments. People act like all of NASA's budget is spent at NASA centers, when it's actually the exact opposite. SpaceX isn't really anything new, they're just doing it better and cheaper then places like Lockheed Martin.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[notanalien_justgreen]

Yeah I agree, people seem to be really deluding themselves about the cost of mining in space. Until we exhaust all of a particular element on Earth (or something not readily available like He-3) , it's really really hard to imagine mining in space being cheaper than here on Earth. There might be niches for those elements, but everything else I'll bet stays local.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Belial6]

One must keep in mind that Mars is the most practical place to declare a new kingdom and rule as king and master of all the kingdoms inhabitants. It also has no pesky laws concerning medical experimentation.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[geekoid]

"I can prove him wrong with two words: commercial satellites."
you actually just proved him right. The government blazed the trail. Private companies then got involved once the majority of risk was identifiable and they could put numbers on it.

and it needs to be cheaper then 100 dollars a kilo, a lot cheaper

Re:I suspect he's right.

[geekoid]

Sending robots will mean continued diminishing interest.

We just send people... AND robots.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[geekoid]

You miss the point. The trade companies would have done squat without the government infrastructure that was in place to support it. Protection, courts, contract enforcement common acceptance of notes.

Even the black market relied on it.

There would have been no Dutch East India trading company.

Re: I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with all of this is the haves vs have nots. Those with means and those without. Right now some have bmws some drive Chevys, but everyone can - increasingly hard given obama's economy though, can buy a car and travel about. It unites us. It makes us one. We share a common experience. When some can go to mars and some can't it changes the ball game. You create a class society. Much more so than now and those with the means better watch out because there are way more of us than them. Right now we allow them to get away with it, but once that starts to change? Watch out.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Agent0013]

Yes, I realize that the funding came from the queen, thus waas government sponsored. My point was the initiative was from him and not the government. He had to shop around to find the funding. If they had investment groups and things like that he would have tried that way also. I don't think it is that different from SpaceX and his project and investment in that.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[ChrisMaple]

The alternatives being presented are government funding Mars colonization or industry funding Mars colonization for profit. This does not exhaust the possibilities.

An extremely rich individual or group of individuals could fund it. A charity or religion could fund it.

The profit motive is not the only reason nongovernmental entities do things.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

So.... a price threshold for the dawn of the post-scarcity era of humanity?

O, Cruel Fate!

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

You totally skip over Courier 1B which paved the way for Telstar in every way.

It's ok, I know you want to present Libertarian Free Market economics as then end all be all solution and it pains you that it never works. Just like communism you are never going to get your libertarian Utopia, because every-time it's been tried, it fails because man is a piece of shit and business only looks at the short term oh and people want free shit. Accept it, grow up and move on. But don't lie to yourself about the history. Governments have done evil shit, but they also sometimes do good shit. It's not the fault of socialism, or failed libertarianism but a failure of people to keep government honest. It doesn't matter if it's a Libertarian republic or Constitutional Monarchy.

Once you accept that, you will be able to handle the real world and the way it works a lot better.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[fatphil]

If medical experimentation freedom, just bring back Nazi Germany. I'm sure there are dozens of countries will to let the US set up equivalent labs, to perform extraordinary rendering of flesh. Absolutely no need to send people into space.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Your.Master]

You can't even call that trail blazing other than showing it could be done at all.

So...you can't call it trailblazing except for the trail that was blazed?

Also, the GP didn't necessarily state that the data was necessary. But you're a fool if you think it wasn't used. Commercial satellites therefore aren't good proof of private trailblazing in space absent government support.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[pupsocket]

Adding:

The Wright brothers received tens of thousands for research annually from the United States military for their flying-machine research.

Werner von Braun was a rocketry promoter who got the German government and then the conquering American government to pay for his projects, compromising his ambitions in order to shoot the moon.

Not to mention how the railroads were built with immense grants of land.

Re:I suspect he's right.

[adhishm]

Exactly - governments in general (meaning politicians with narrow 5-year visions) don't have an incentive to go to space except for military reasons. The market, on the other hand, always has a few individuals passionate enough to try something that everyone says is crazy. As long there is the possibility of profit, someone or the other will try it. And once it all works, some government will try to step in and nationalize it. :P

Re:I suspect he's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is... He's right. Noone in his right mind will fund a project with so many unknown risks....

The thing is, we have a few excessively rich people who just might fund such a project anyway. As the price for getting into space drops, the price for getting into space further drops as well. Thus someone with an innovative idea might just feel compelled to just try it.

It seems NASA is planning on getting another rover on mars in the 2020 timeframe, right? So isn't someone planning on a one-way-ticket-to-mars idea? Same timeframe? The first human might land on mars before Nasa has that extra rover there....

There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

Now watch Elon Musk do it anyway.

Re:There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

Now watch Elon Musk do it anyway.

Not a chance in hell. C'mon SpaceX can barely put a satellite in LEO let alone a man or a space station.
And you want me to believe that this guys is going to develop an infrastructure to send someone to Mars and back ? Dream on.

Re:There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what's going to happen. People like Musk and Branson don't do this kind of thing just because it'll turn a profit, they do it because it's awesome and they have money to burn on awesome things. But they are also the type of people who think things through - while they have money to burn, they're not going to burn it killing people because they didn't do the science first.

Re: There have always been doubters

[miguel_a_castro]

Isn't the ISS in LEO? They already delivered supplies there and they were the first private business to do so, if they can get supplies up what's so difficult about getting astronauts up?

Re: There have always been doubters

[meglon]

...and yet they didn't plan it, engineer it, build it, or pay for it.... you're giving them a lot of credit for being nothing more than a taxi service.

Re: There have always been doubters

[bruce_the_loon]

They did plan it, engineer it, build it and pay for it. Falcon and Dragon was their accomplishment.

Unless you're talking about the space station, which is then scraping the slimy mud under the bottom of the barrel. That's like saying the first transatlantic flight was not a massive credit to the builders and aviators because the towns were already there and built by other people.

Re:There have always been doubters

[Gavagai80]

LEO to Mars isn't such a gap -- remember that the first Mars probe (Mars 1, 1962) was launched only 5 years after the first satellite (Sputnik, 1957). Now the manned part, yes, is far more complex.

Re: There have always been doubters

[crakbone]

They did plan to get to the station, They did engineer brand new state of the art rocket engines that run on different fuel, they did build it in a state of the art brand new factility, and they did pay for it with less money than the cost of one nuclear submarine. Now you could argue that the money was from government contracts for transport to ISS, But I would argue right back, that NO ONE does transport for as cheap as they do. One launch is cheaper than a ride on a russian rocket and SpaceX had multiple cargo. And that Tesla fully paid back it's government loan ahead of schedule. So can you really honestly say that NASA could have, rebuilt its rocket program from the bottom up, designed and built a manufacturing center for it, as well as a launch center with testing for the rockets for less than the cost of three shuttle launches?

Re: There have always been doubters

[meglon]

Isn't the ISS in LEO?

...and what you're saying is that first transatlantic flight is the end all be all, and received no benefit from the fact someone else not only figured out how to get to the water, build an aircraft, and learned how to fly.

In this case, private business did what it does best: exploiting the knowledge gained from government investing in research.

Re: There have always been doubters

[meglon]

What i'm saying is, you and your pal are entirely discounting EVERYTHING that NASA has done. Without everything THE GOVERNMENT has done since WWII in research and development towards aeronautics and space exploration, Elon Musk certainly would not have funded all of that on his own to get to where he is now. Lets not forget the bigger picture: had NASA not existed, with all that GOVERNMENT research and taxpayer money, Elon Musk might never have been who he is at all, given what the NASA programs contributed to solid state electronics, miniaturization, computers, communications, material science, and all sorts of other stuff.

This is a very common problem in the US... people are too egotistical to think that the reason they are where they are is that they've stood on the shoulders of this country to get there (to co-opt a compelling meme). We are who we are, our nation is what our nation is, BECAUSE previous generations have invested in the future to make this country better for the next generations (up until now.. now we have a bunch of asshats doing nothing but bleeding the country's future dry because they don't want to live up to the responsibility of investing in someone elses future).

Re: There have always been doubters

[westlake]

That's like saying the first transatlantic flight was not a massive credit to the builders and aviators because the towns were already there and built by other people.

British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They flew a modified World War I Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.

Two weeks before Alcock and Brown's flight, the first trans-Atlantic flight had been made by the NC-4, a United States Navy flying boat, commanded by Lt. Commander Albert Cushing Read, who flew from Naval Air Station Rockaway, New York to Plymouth with a crew of five, over 23 days, with six stops along the way. This flight was not eligible for the Daily Mail prize since it took more than 72 consecutive hours and also because more than one aircraft was used in the attempt.

A month after Alcock and Brown's achievement, British airship R34 made the first double crossing of the Atlantic, carrying 31 people (one a stowaway) and a cat; twenty-nine of this crew, plus two flight engineers and a different American observer, then flew back to Europe.

The common thread here:

This is all military tech which evolved under the pressure and with the support of unlimited government spending in World War I.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Rockoon]

Without everything THE GOVERNMENT has done since WWII in research and development towards aeronautics and space exploration

You mean the former government mandated monopoly of space exploration? It was ILLEGAL to build and launch a private space craft in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's (until 1984, to be precise... just a little bit ironic) unless you used a government launch vehicle (the shuttle in the case of the U.S)

You did know that, right?

So your argument translates to: "The government did all the research and development of initial space technologies during the period where it monopolized space technologies through the use of force" -- well no fucking shit sherlock. Now, I'm going to believe that you were sadly misinformed about what held back commercial space launches, rather than being an outright dishonest government/nasa shill.

To be very very specific: The Commercial Space Launch Act was passed in 1984 - prior to that point, it was completely illegal for any American company to use anything but a U.S. government launch vehicle to put anything into space. By 1997 (13 years), commercial launches outnumbered all government launches worldwide.

This is a very common problem in the US

You know whats a common problem in the U.S.? People being so sadly misinformed about things while defending the government based on arguments that fall to pieces when the light if knowledge is shines upon them.

Re: There have always been doubters

[crakbone]

No, I think you have got it wrong. This country is here because of the the people who pushed the envelope and created new ideas. To give the credit of aircraft solely to the government when people like the Wright brothers that put their lively hood and personal safety on the line for a dream is messed up. The light we use every day was made by people investing in them selves for profit ( Edison, Tesla, and tons of other inventors). The electric power you find in your house was designed and built by personal investment (Tesla and Edison). With private funds. Cars were first invested and built by private funds ( Ford, Karl Benz). The telephone was a by private investment (Bell). Some of the first universities in the US were by private funds (Washington). The same with hospitals (Pennsylvania Hospital). All of these were done by private entrepreneurs that wanted to make a dream or idea. NASA would not have been able to build a single rocket without the technology developed by private industry in this country. So you may want to ignore all the people who invested their life savings and personal safety and health to push a dream and give all the credit to a Government entity that has managed to run the costs of any simple thing to extravagance. But I won't. Yes SpaceX had prior art to work with from NASA. However even NASA now has to mine old museums to create new rockets because they didn't keep any proper documentation of their moon rockets. And in their attempt to reduce costs they created a monster that ate 450 million per launch and is the leading killer of astronauts.

Re:There have always been doubters

[Rockoon]

LEO to Mars isn't such a gap

Indeed. To make this clear to everybody as to why, most of the delta-v we use to put things into orbit are not used to go upwards, but instead to go sideways fast enough to orbit the planet (the ISS goes sideways at a speed of 27,600 km/h.)

Escape velocity from the earths surface is 40,320 km/h, less than twice the delta-v needed to orbit at the ISS's altitude.

We only need 4 times the required earth escape delta-v to escape the solar system itself.

Re:There have always been doubters

[Goose In Orbit]

This is the same guy that just said "I have this great idea for a new means of transport" ... "oh, I'm not going to pay to develop it myself - someone else can do that"?

Re: There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

OK you have a point, but all of the pioneer inventors would (and some did) just flop back into anonymity if governments didn't, at some point, recognize significance of their inventions and stood behind them with orders and research grants. It is obvious that governments do have occasional indispensable role in making things happen. However, to make some technological achievement permanent, it has to get dispersed and form its own ecosystem, i.e. "industry". However, as long as government remains the only or main customer of an industry, the industry is not on solid footing and remains a money and resources sinkhole and a source of political corruption.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Goose In Orbit]

"You know whats a common problem in the U.S.? ..."

As is your "Government is bad... m'kay" rhetoric

Re: There have always been doubters

[h4rr4r]

Go look at what Falcon 9 uses for a rocket engine and tell me all about how governments were not involved.

They just totally invented the field of rocket engine design did they?

Re: There have always been doubters

[Rockoon]

If you feel that the government making it illegal to explore space without using government vehicles is a bad thing, then its you that are in the "government is bad... m'kay" mindset.

You are projecting your own feelings onto me, something quite common among blindly-pro-government sheep. The government did a bad thing, and you agree. End of discussion.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Oligonicella]

"get to the water, build an aircraft, and learned how to fly."

All done by private enterprise.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Oligonicella]

They invented it no more than the government did. Rocketry was not a product of governmental research or funding for said research. Some advances were made from such, but some advances were made without it as well.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Oligonicella]

He didn't say that - quite trying to dehumanize him Alinsky.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Oligonicella]

"...but all of the pioneer inventors would (and some did) just flop back into anonymity if governments didn't, at some point, recognize significance of their inventions and stood behind them with orders and research grants."

An opinion that does not jibe with history.

Re: There have always been doubters

[3.5 stripes]

So, you'd want people launching large easily mistaken for ICBM objects from places around the US? During the cold war?

Free enterprise ahoy!

Re: There have always been doubters

[h4rr4r]

So the V2 program in your estimation did not give birth to all of modern rocketry?

The basic research like most basic research was done by governments and hobbyists when the field was very young.

Re: There have always been doubters

[jedidiah]

There is no incentive in government to do things effectively or efficiently.

A government solution will always be more costly because any external pressures to work in an economically sustainable fashion have been removed. Large corporations that are "too big to fail" suffer from similar problems.

Fortunately, we still have plenty of startups and small companies to bridge the gap.

Government should not be the only available option.

Government should not be the first option to be considered.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a common misconception that NASA didn't document (or lost the documents for) the Saturn V and other Apollo-era projects. There is a very large amount of documentation (the entire SP-8000 series of technical manuals, commonly available online, but recently removed from NTRS), and I believe the actual factory specifications are still around. They even interviewed lots of employees and contractors from that period before they all retired.

Despite this, it would still be difficult to restart the lines because of the little details. It's not like an electronics assembly line where you just throw the parts into the machine and let it go. Small impurities and process variation in your materials can make large differences. It's my understanding that this is why they keep the assembly lines for expensive things like M1 tanks going, even if we don't need more: restarting production is difficult.

Re:There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

He has never claimed that he wanted to build the hyperloop himself. Why do you think that reflects poorly on him?

Re: There have always been doubters

[cusco]

It was ILLEGAL to build and launch a private space craft in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's in the United States

FTFY. Any private company could have built its space craft in France or Japan and launched it from Ecuador or Tahiti. Not surprisingly none did. Not because it was illegal to build them in the United States, but because the research and development necessary for a private company to succeed hadn't been completed yet by the US and Soviet governments and handed to them on a silver platter. Robert Goddard would have loved to work with a private company to develop and build rockets, and so would Werner Von Braun and Sergei Korilev. They couldn't though, and had to rely on governments throughout their careers because the time necessary for the ROI is too long for any industrialist to be able to keep shareholders happy.

SpaceX has developed its own rocket engines, but they're evolutionary not revolutionary.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Rockoon]

It was ILLEGAL to build and launch a private space craft in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's in the United States

Wrong. It was illegal for ANY American company to build and launch a private space craft anywhere in the world. The location of the launch or the production of the vehicle didn't matter.

Any private company could have built its space craft in France or Japan and launched it from Ecuador or Tahiti.

You mean like the West German company OTRAG that planned to launch from Zaire in the late 70's, but then faced political opposition from France and the Soviet Union resulting in the West German government shutting all in-country development down? OTRAG had to move its development to Libya of all places!

You really do not seem to know much of anything about the history of private space flight, or the extent to which many governments of the world (not just the United States, dummy) worked to prevent it. You cite France as a place that a private space industry might have developed, but history shows us that France especially was extremely hostile to private space development even in countries other than its own.

Re: There have always been doubters

[cusco]

It was illegal for ANY American company to sell computers to the USSR too, so IBM built a factory in Tacna, Peru under a shell company and sold them as many computers as they could come up with the cash for.

I pulled France, Japan, Ecuador and Tahiti out of thin air. Any country with a moderately well educated populace could have fostered a private space industry, the same as they fostered private electronics and automobile industries. Anywhere near the equator could serve as a launching point. OTRAG failed because of extraordinarily questionable management decisions, such as choosing one of the nastiest dictatorships on the planet for a launch site and selling easily-convertible technology to the highest bidder. I remember being enthusiastic about OTRAG when it first appeared, but it very quickly became apparent that it wasn't an organization that was less interested in pioneering private space flight than it was in enriching its management team.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Rockoon]

OTRAG failed because of extraordinarily questionable management decisions, such as choosing one of the nastiest dictatorships on the planet for a launch site and selling easily-convertible technology to the highest bidder.

Your true colors shine through right here.

Its was cool for OTRAG to be a private space company as long as they didnt make business decisions like selling the technology they developed to the highest paying bidder. You do know how R&D works, right? When you do some R&D you often fund future R&D by selling rights to what you've accomplished so far.

Translation: OTRAG wasn't actually allowed to actually be a private company.

Re: There have always been doubters

[cusco]

You're not going to get much sympathy from me, I consider mercenaries to be the only life forms on this planet more contemptible than weapons dealers. OTRAG management was knowingly selling technology that was easily convertible to ballistic missiles to countries that they knew were going to use it for exactly that. I personally don't think that Blackwater or DynCorp should be "allowed to actually be a private company" either.

Re: There have always been doubters

[Anonymous Coward]

we did what we did with confiscated germans

on a related note

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no way that you can sail across the ocean, there is no way you can fly, there is no way you can go to space, there is no way you can land on the moon.

Its always great to put people down but what have you done lately mr tyson.

Re:on a related note

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no way that you can sail across the ocean, there is no way you can fly, there is no way you can go to space, there is no way you can land on the moon.

Its always great to put people down but what have you done lately mr tyson.

And guess what, all those enterprises were founded/financed by governments. Columbus would have never sailed without the Spanish King and Queen giving him the funds. Landing on the moon wouldn't have been possibile without the focus of the entire US space related firms under NASA and government spending over the course of a decade. As for flying you realise yes that flying was always been a losing economic proposition and that if an industry exists today it is because of heavy government intervention during the first 50 or so years (and they had to kill the train to achieve that) of the 20th century ?

Go spout your free market drivel someplace else Mr Anonymous Coward.

Re:on a related note

[Penguinisto]

Its always great to put people down but what have you done lately mr tyson.

...he whacked Pluto with smug satisfaction.

(yeah, still kinda mad about that one...)

Re:on a related note

[tmosley]

This is quite literally the most hypocritical post I have ever read.

You should probably log in if you are going to criticize someone for posting anonymously. Might also want to think for five seconds before you post your own drivel.

Columbus' voyages were the equivalent of SpaceX. He got FUNDING from the crown. The ships were built and equipped privately, and were crewed by private citizens, not members of the Spanish military. Landing on the Moon I will give you, but I guess you forgot that NASA had a government granted monopoly on space flight until Reagan.

And as for flight, you are insane. Where do you come up with this shit? The government created...what, exactly? They had to...kill the train? You mean by nationalizing trains and running them into the ground like all government sponsored enterprises, while air travel remained free, with plenty of competition, until the government started interfering heavily in the industry, leading it to become the government-sponsered molestation industry it is today?

I would suggest that if anyone needs to take their drivel elsewhere, it is you.

Re:on a related note

[AK Marc]

And guess what, all those enterprises were founded/financed by governments. Columbus would have never sailed without the Spanish King and Queen giving him the funds. Landing on the moon wouldn't have been possibile without the focus of the entire US space related firms under NASA and government spending over the course of a decade. As for flying you realise yes that flying was always been a losing economic proposition and that if an industry exists today it is because of heavy government intervention during the first 50 or so years (and they had to kill the train to achieve that) of the 20th century ?

How many active government satellites are up in space? There are few GEO slots available, 180 slots, and every one is claimed, the vast majority populated with active satellites. Iridium, and some others in LEO/MEO, against spy satellites and GPS, sounds like there are more private satellites up than public.

New stuff is usually government because profit-motivated people are risk averse. You are incorrectly assuming risk aversion in the current private space pioneers.

Re:on a related note

[crakbone]

Lief Erickson in 1001 explored, without government assistance, the new world. It continued to be explored and farmed for four hundred years before Columbus. Flying was the big thing and tons of people were dabbling and hobbying in it. The Wright brothers used their own capital from a bike business to finance the development of the control systems you see in all modern aircraft. The first non stop flight from New York to Paris was done without Government financing and was profitable. It created the Lindbergh Boom and single handedly pushed aviation mainstream and created a commercial push of aviation. To the point that air travel increased 3000% in three years. It's interest lasted till the Great Depression.

Re:on a related note

[Anonymous Coward]

And guess what, all those enterprises were founded/financed by governments. Columbus would have never sailed without the Spanish King and Queen giving him the funds. Landing on the moon wouldn't have been possibile without the focus of the entire US space related firms under NASA and government spending over the course of a decade. As for flying you realise yes that flying was always been a losing economic proposition and that if an industry exists today it is because of heavy government intervention during the first 50 or so years (and they had to kill the train to achieve that) of the 20th century ?

Stop showing your Ass - Columbus was not the first to "find" the new world. The Wright brothers did not have a government grant to build their airplane.And the only reason we went to the moon was to give the finger to the Russians (we haven't been back, have we?)
  God are you dumb and brainwashed.

Re:on a related note

[Anonymous Coward]

Lief Erickson in 1001 explored, without government assistance, the new world.

Actually his expedition is fine example of what happens when you receive no backing.

It continued to be explored and farmed for four hundred years before Columbus.

[citation needed].

Re:on a related note

[Goose In Orbit]

Its always great to put people down but what have you done lately mr tyson.

More than you, I'll wager...

Re:on a related note

[crakbone]

Farmed was incorrect. Explored and timbered would be more correct. There is evidence of trading with the natives too. As well the line four hundred years before Columbus is written poorly. I should have been. "It continued to be explored and Timbered for four hundred years, before Columbus was even born." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Americas#cite_note-14

Re:on a related note

[Teancum]

The U.S. federal government had an aviation program under Samuel Langley. It cost $70k (in 1898 dollars) to fund his effort to launch an airplane into the Potomac River that ultimately ended up killing two pilots who tried and ended up as mostly a failure. A couple of bicycle mechanics from Ohio, using their own funds, ended up developing a much more successful airplane.

Re:on a related note

[Oligonicella]

What ludicrous gall to demand a citation from someone after typing a moronic statement such as your opinion and offering no cite yourself.

Re:on a related note

[Teancum]

New stuff is usually government because profit-motivated people are risk averse. You are incorrectly assuming risk aversion in the current private space pioneers.

Profit motivated people are willing to take risks. The problem is that those risks need to be weighed against potential profit, and if the profit is high enough you will find people willing to finance you on something that is very risky.

That is the one way a government can really screw up things like risk taking, as having the government step in and take any profit or transfer that profit to a competitor upon your success is likely to simply get those investors to walk away and not bother. Even the threat of government involvement is usually sufficient, or an uncertainty in terms of knowing what the government will do if you are successful. That by far and away has been a huge problem with regards to private commercial spaceflight efforts in particular, as those private efforts have usually been thwarted by sometimes well meaning government interference or at least indifference.

Re:on a related note

[3.5 stripes]

The wright brothers were the first to fly under power, not the first to fly. They also went a few hundred feet, didn't get very high, it was useless at transporting people besides the pilot, and were not going to be making much profit off the thing they invented (except maybe through publicity). The modern aviation industry would not be here if it were not for the huge investments governments made in aviation in WW1.

Re:on a related note

[stevew]

Yep - if you can't figure out that Pluto is a PLANET - then why should we listen to any of his other opinions?

Re:on a related note

[cusco]

NASA had a government granted monopoly on space flight IN THE UNITED STATES

Oh, that's right, this is the only country in the world. I forgot.

Re:on a related note

[Anonymous Coward]

"They also went a few hundred feet, didn't get very high"

Initially perhaps, within a few years though after that first flight from my understanding of history they were flying miles and taking a few passengers (Wright Flyer III flew about 20 miles in 1905). Their attempts to sell aircraft to the US government met with very little interest, it wasn't until 1908 after taking their aircraft on a demonstration tour of both the US and Europe that the government finally showed interest. Government funding DID NOT build the Wright prototypes, AFTER they were flying 20 miles plus they had some interest from both the French and US governments.

Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Seumas]

It doesn't really matter, because private sector is our only option. Adjusted for inflation, we spent more in each year of our last dozen years of military actions than on NASA in 55 years. Doubling NASA's budget seems trivial. Hell, tripling or quadrupling it (especially in consideration for the kinds of returns we get, technologically and economically across all of society) seems insignificant.

But it isn't going to happen.

If we wait for a government and a citizenry that is more compelled by blowing up brown people overseas and pushing authoritarian and corporate agendas, it is never going to happen.

If we wait for a government and a citizenry that doesn't want to spend the money to cure cancer, cure aids, feed starving people -- all things that are entirely reasonable with fractions of the funding we spend on some of the most controversial and possibly unnecessary expenses in this country -- then what fucking hope have we of ever finding the progressive spirit for human advancement within our collective selves for funding space efforts?

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[meglon]

The current lifetime projected budget cost for just the F-35 program is equivalent to about 75 years of NASA funding. The other part of that, of course, is that they recalculate the lifetime cost of the F-35 about every 12-18 months... and it keeps skyrocketing every time they do.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[AHuxley]

Yes the US private sector is going to have to re invent what Germans taught the USA years ago but long term it will be great.
More real local jobs again, real science, real data and real costs.
Groups, institutions and companies world wide will have more options and see missions they could never afford been launched.
As the tech gets cheaper more companies will be able to enter the market too.
No more slowing a science or an imaging project due to politics, an epic boondoggle or hidden costs :)

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Errol backfiring]

More real local jobs again, real science, real data and real costs.

Why is that? people from India are at least as smart an those from the USA, but a lot cheaper. And Russians can read their own theory (theory of space travel was largely developed by Russians, the practical problems were largely solved by the Germans) for a fraction of the price it takes for an American to do it. If programming is outsourced, why not rocket science? It's not exactly speculative finance, you know.

No more slowing a science or an imaging project due to politics, an epic boondoggle or hidden costs :)

Like in digital publishing you mean? That is even more boring than rocket science, but to say that "private sector"=="no politics" is simply not true.

And off course there is another thing. If you can launch anything into space, it will be abused before you know it. A satellite launching missile can easily be abused as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Or you could orbit GPS jammers, targeted lasers, guided solar mirrors, chaffs of debris to disable other satellites, or any other stuff you know from James Bond villains. Do you really think politicians will stay out of that?

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indians are only cheaper because there is a greater supply. Wait until the demand rises, and the price will also rise. Your comparison assumes equality, but there are other costs associated with language and cultural barriers. Fuckin' economics, how does it work?

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

"brown people overseas"... LOL. Nice try.
Your entire country will soon be 'brown', then who will you blame?

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not specifically the F35, but how much science was done during the space race that directly or indirectly contributed to modern aircraft and military designs?

Probably a lot out of Skunkworks etc.. and that was built on stuff done earlier trying to get stuff up there and break the sound barrier.

Research, that seems impractical is very useful in the long run generally. Especially when it increases the overall pool of knowledge and talent one can draw from. I have seen the excuse "Orion spacecraft are too expensive and dangerous" used so many times it makes me sick. Nah, we could build 3 right now for almost nothing compared to what we spend on the war on terror. Though I would also agree theres even better uses for that money. Both in regards to space exploration and humanitarian endeavors.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Errol backfiring]

Wait until the demand rises, and the price will also rise.

Until the availability dries out, price will be cheap enough. Did the price of an Indian programmer rise enough to stop outsourcing? When demand rises, availability will rise as well.

Apart from that, I can clearly remember my aeronautical teacher to explain that in the USA, the aeronautical engineers were called "homeless", because, due to the liberal laws, any talented designer would just get kicked out of the company as soon as a project was finished. Because of this, demand was hardly enough to support the local talent.

(lovemaking) economics, how does it work?

Economics ("household science") would seriously consider the effects of business decisions on employment, education and other needs of society. Finance only counts the virtual beans. Please don't mix those two things up. Especially nowadays, the two have nothing in common anymore.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[boarder8925]

They should just go ahead and upgrade to the F150. I hear you can get one of those things for around $20,000.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other part of that, of course, is that they recalculate the lifetime cost of the F-35 about every 12-18 months... and it keeps skyrocketing every time they do.
 
Kinda like the JWST?
 
On a more serious note, I've lost even more respect for NDT with this rambling of his about free markets and such. I will agree that not-for-profit style research won't greatly be helped by private enterprise but there will be gains from commercialization. Costs will ultimately come down with more hands in the game. This is the natural progress of R&D and if he doesn't know that he needs to go back a do some practical engineering 101 research.
 
This is the type of thing that makes me question if he really should be taking over Sagan’s place with the remake of Cosmos. It does need updated, yes. But what Sagan did was tried to inclusive of everyone without being controversial on any level and let the common man’s mind wonder the possibilities instead of throwing up limits. Let those with skin in the game determine if for-profit space exploration goes anywhere, let public science advocates inspire everyone else to dream and want to do better for future generations.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

If we wait for a government that is more compelled by blowing up brown people overseas and pushing authoritarian and corporate agendas, it is never going to happen.

Don't pretend we have control.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're right, but so is Neil. Eventually companies will stop being interested in such expensive enterprises with such limited returns, but I'm more than happy to let them explore until that happens. The only option we have is to hope beyond hope that the work being done by SpaceX and companies like it will inspire people to put more public money into the same types of ventures.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[sproketboy]

If that's the only option then it will simply never happen. Which will probably be the case.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[ahabswhale]

lol...you haven't been to a car dealership in a long time, have you? My neighbor has an F-150 that costs WELL over my new BMW. The F-150 is extremely profitable for Ford. Literally half the cost of the vehicle is profit and they still sell like hotcakes.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[GodfatherofSoul]

You can get an old one for pretty cheap. Honestly, unless you love truck aesthetics I don't see the reason for a brand spanking new pickup. I was looking at a 2004+ F150 work truck and you can get a nice one for $10K.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, unless you love truck aesthetics I don't see the reason for a brand spanking new pickup.

Reliability. Who knows how the pervious owner treated it.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[jwhitener]

I agree that our government looks grim now, but it will swing back to common sense eventually.

The rate at which demographics are changing in the USA pretty much guarantees that the new influx of 'tea party' / 'evangelical' / 'neocon' type conservatives controlling the house won't last forever.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[mdielmann]

They should just go ahead and upgrade to the F150. I hear you can get one of those things for around $20,000.

Doubtless flies better, too.

Re:Doesn't matter. Only option.

[boarder8925]

They should just go ahead and upgrade to the F150. I hear you can get one of those things for around $20,000.

Doubtless flies better, too.

Just super-glue some wings on that sucker and you're in business.

Why back?

[SuperKendall]

And you want me to believe that this guys is going to develop an infrastructure to send someone to Mars and back?

When you only have to stat with "there" the problem is much easier to solve. And we know there are hundreds of thousands glad for the opportunity.

And it's not even that hard to be honest. I fully expect him to accomplish that task, and many beyond that.

Re:Why back?

[lgw]

Elon won't live forever, and I think he'll be consumed by Tesla for a while now. Really, until he finds a CEO and moves to the board, I don't think Spacex will be getting much of whatever he contributes (beyond money). Tesla has an enormous amount of "normal business expansion" ahead of it, and will need a lower end product line, and both of those will need a lot of guidance.

But that being said, I do think getting cargo to Mars is well within existing science, and just needs his style of "OK, now do it easier and cheaper" engineering to deliver technology that makes it practical for a sane price.

Having humans survive the trip without too much radiation damage and zero-g damage does require new science. SpaceX can't do that. Something fundamental needs to change in either propulsion or human medicine to get people unharmed to Mars, and we won't get there with incrementally better engineering and logistics.

I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[miguel_a_castro]

Well, Musk had to get government aid for Tesla so I assume he'll need it for SpaceX too and won't be able to do it without at least financial aid but with it, I'm sure SpaceX can pull it off. Plus they'll be able to cut costs if they succeed with those Grasshopper experiments.

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[msauve]

Tesla received a loan from the government, not aid. And they've since paid it back, with interest, 9 years early.

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[Goose In Orbit]

Which means they couldn't do it off their own bat, without risking public money?

I'll grant you the fact that he's made a go of it - but if it had failed... Joe Taxpayer foots the bill while Tesla disappears into the accountancy-based ether...

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[oobayly]

9 years early.

Exactly, they've ripped off the government by paying back the loan early so it gets less interest. The bastards.

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[camperdave]

Which means they couldn't do it off their own bat, without risking public money?

No, All it means is that they took advantage of an available resource. It does not mean that they couldn't have done it without it. Yes Joe Taxpayer would have footed the bill, but Joe Taxpayer's representatives said it was worth the risk.

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[Goose In Orbit]

That is true, I'll grant you - but if the Government could be persuaded to fund it - why not the banks? (I'm guessing that the banks would have wanted too much in return)

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[Quila]

And paid it off with their own money, not government TARP funds like GM did.

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[Teancum]

That is true, I'll grant you - but if the Government could be persuaded to fund it - why not the banks? (I'm guessing that the banks would have wanted too much in return)

If it is raining money, you haul out the buckets and fill them up first before borrowing money from your Aunt Erma.

The problem here is that competitors to SpaceX had their lobbyists in motion well before SpaceX got into the game and had these government loan programs in place to help out their buddies. That SpaceX happened to be in the right place at the right time to qualify for the same programs (they were competitors to SpaceX after all), SpaceX took the money and ran with it.

The banks charged a higher rate of interest and in some cases wouldn't loan the money no matter the interest rate because they (legitimately I might add) considered such business ventures to be extremely risky and not likely to succeed.

I'll also note that Elon Musk did get quite a bit of private capital that he raised from some of his friends and people that he knew from his earlier entrepreneurial activities including his experiences with PayPal. Indeed many of his PayPal co-founders and other related people are investors in both Tesla and SpaceX.

And who said that SpaceX doesn't have a line of credit with ordinary banks too? I'm pretty certain that they have those loans as well.

Re:I need to write a subject for this prattle?

[organgtool]

The story that I read was that they had several angel investors fronting most of their money before production of the Model S, but the banks backing those loans for the angel investors reneged after the crash in 2008. Tesla's options were to either fold or apply for government loans. The government was hesitant at first, especially after all of the bad press about Solyndra, but after they bailed out sinking ships like GM who bled billions for six straight quarters, the money to Tesla was peanuts in comparison. In any event, Tesla's plan from the very start was focused solely on private investors until the crash caused them to change course.

Really?

[msmonroe]

Yeah just lost some respect for some one that I would normally say is brilliant. Space is risky and people are going to die, that's an unfortunate fact of life. I don't think government changes that for a lot of reasons. Usually exploration of a frontier is done historically by those seeking profit even if a government originally financed the exploration.

Re:Really?

[Spy Handler]

He's a govt/NASA guy. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, there are many very smart people there, but you gotta figure whatever he says represents the gov't/Big Aerospace point of view.

Re:Really?

[ikedasquid]

I think we need to read between the lines. I bet Tyson realizes Musk is the kind of guy who can't lose a bet and is daring him. Obviously this is speculation and I could be wrong, but I think Tyson is playing chicken with Musk - except Tyson wants to lose. Tyson is a brilliant guy. He's also all about getting people interested in the cosmos, and getting funding for the required research etc. Musk is also a brilliant guy, and we all know he's a daredevil. Look at his businesses (which are quite successful), high performance electric cars and rocketry. He was also a founder of Paypal back when doing that kind of thing wasn't a "sure bet". Musk is also all about the technology, and he's an innovator.

Re:Really?

[msmonroe]

Thanks for this :)

Re:Really?

[msmonroe]

Thanks for the comment :)

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you can. All that is needed is to socialize the costs and privatize the profits (US Big Biz 101).

Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[wonkey_monkey]

It's not possible. Space is dangerous.

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat. So was heavier-than-air flight. So was getting into space in the first place. So was going to the toilet in the middle of the night 100 years ago.

It's expensive.

So was... well, you see where I'm going with this.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[phantomfive]

Yeah, he said " Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks."

And he thinks that will stop private enterprise? If the potential for profit is there, then those have never posed an obstacle. The hard part is preventing business from sacrificing life and limb in pursuit of profit.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[betterprimate]

It's not possible. Space is dangerous.

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat. So was heavier-than-air flight. So was getting into space in the first place. So was going to the toilet in the middle of the night 100 years ago.

It's expensive.

So was... well, you see where I'm going with this.

I see where you're going... you're regressing. None of your lousy irrational examples are even comparable to space exploration and colonization. Not to mention of even creating and sustaining a market out of it, which is his point. Besides, we've been crossing the Atlantic for thousands of years.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[DerekLyons]

It's not possible. Space is dangerous.

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat. So was heavier-than-air flight.

But there were riches to be had if you risked that crossing in a boat - there isn't in space. Etc... etc... And, as he notes and you conveniently ignore, the Atlantic wasn't opened by private enterprise. The same goes for heaver-than-air flight. From the NACA to the enormous jumpstart that came from truckloads goverment cash spending on research, training pilots (who later became available for civil employment), aircraft production, etc... etc... (especially in the two world wars)
 
Cheap soundbites only make you look wise to the uneducated and kool-aid swillers.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but crossing the ocean was a lot less risky and expensive than building space ships etc... Right now we're basically building rafts for space when we should be building ships.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that getting into space requires several tonnes of fuel per kilogram of payload. It takes quite a large amount of energy to escape Earth's gravity, and there's simply no way to make space travel cheap if it takes that much fuel.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And he thinks that will stop private enterprise? If the potential for profit is there, then those have never posed an obstacle. The hard part is preventing business from sacrificing public life and limb in pursuit of private profit

FTFY

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And he thinks that will stop private enterprise? If the potential for profit is there, then those have never posed an obstacle. The hard part is preventing business from sacrificing life and limb in pursuit of profit.

What potential for profit? Ain't no terbinium on Mars.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

But there were riches to be had if you risked that crossing in a boat - there isn't in space.

Wut? No riches in space? If there are no riches in space then there are no riches down here either.

YAAFM

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[asmkm22]

Commercial businesses need more than just "potential" profit, especially if they are going to be spending the insane amounts of money that space exploration will demand. There is currently no company that can realistically make something like a moon colony happen, much less a mars colony, because there needs to be some kind of return of investment.

We can't even get a company to successfully trail blaze and revolutionize a source of clean energy to replace fossil fuels, so I don't know how in the world anyone thinks we'll do something even more difficult, expensive, and risky like manned space exploration any time soon.

It's not a lost cause, however. It's just not something that's going to happen until a mars rover unearths a huge diamond deposit, or discovers some martian species capable of picking fruit for cheaper than the Mexicans. THEN, you can bet your ass some company will step up and suddenly have a plan.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize that crossing the Atlantic involved traversing millions of miles through a freezing vacuum, while being bombarded with high intensity radiation.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[tmosley]

"Besides, we've been crossing the Atlantic for thousands of years."

Yes, you clearly know your stuff. Everyone should pay attention to your ideas, which aren't crazy or stupid in the least.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[tmosley]

The Polynesians didn't see much wrong with that.

Also, you are forgetting scurvy. Space travel is a LOT less dangerous than sea travel was during the age of sail.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Jade_Wayfarer]

The same goes for heaver-than-air flight.

Oh yes, the famous Smithsonian Institute spent hundreds of thousand of taxpayers dollars over the several years to create the marvel of heavier-than-air unmanned flying machine. It's not that some small bicycle company then took that ideas and made a first controllable manned airplane. Ridiculous notion, truly.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat.

That's why it was exclusive to government-funded expeditions for decades.

So was heavier-than-air flight.

That's why is was largely exclusive to enthusiasts until the governments had a sudden need for hundreds of aircraft and trained pilots (in WW1). Civil airliners were spun off later (and until way after WW2 either spin-offs of bomber aircraft or related developments).

So was... well, you see where I'm going with this.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he said " Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks."

Sail too far and you'll fall off the edge of the earth, y'know, where those maps say "there be dragons"... don't want to go there, too many unquantified risks.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[dkf]

Commercial businesses need more than just "potential" profit, especially if they are going to be spending the insane amounts of money that space exploration will demand.

And yet lots of businesses do things for potential profit, and have done for centuries. It's about balancing risk and costs against what you can gain for it. (Now, if they can avoid sending people that'll keep costs down a lot in the early parts, at least until it is demonstrated that the profit can actually be realised.)

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Farmer Tim]

So was... well, you see where I'm going with this.

I'm pretty sure going to the toilet in the middle of the night costs as much as it ever did (unless you count accidentally dropping your phone in).

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Heavier-than-air flight got started pretty much because of private enterprise. Government was quick to exploit the new possibilities it afforded (especially around the wars) but the truckloads of government cash did not come in before privately funded R&D paved the way. And even Columbus' idea of a westward route to Asia carried a profit motive. Half of the cost of his voyages was put up by private investors. There is no reason to believe either of those things would not have happened if government hadn't stepped in. The fact that they did step in doesn't change this, even if it did provide a boost.

There are vast riches to be had from space. The problem is that it'll take many years and huge outlays of cash before we can get at them, and even then it will be a seriously risky undertaking; not something investors will jump on eagerly. Tyson argues that you can't find private funding for something that won't pay out for decades, with a good chance it will not pay out at all, and he has a good point there. I wouldn't invest in a privately funded Mars colony (I might sponsor one but that's not the same thing). However, it may well turn out that there are profits to be found on the stepping stones towards the end-goal: a Mars colony. Significantly lowering launch costs (which Musk explicitly mentioned as one of the goals of SpaceX) may bring them enough revenue and investors to finance the next step.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[poena.dare]

"So was crossing the atlantic in a boat."

'Tis true, Until we find natives on another planet foolishly hoarding natural resources, that are ripe for exploitation and conquest, then commercial space programs are doomed.

Until then our only hope (stop, please stop, thinking about making a joke there) is some crazy idiot backed by a second-rate global player who thinks he can find a quicker route from San Jose to San Francisco via Mars.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat. So was heavier-than-air flight. So was getting into space in the first place. So was going to the toilet in the middle of the night 100 years ago.

The first and third of those were government funded in the beginning, which was his argument.

Actually not the first time he made that argument... he's been saying it for years.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[gutnor]

Not to rain on your parade, but yes those 3 elements are show stopper for private enterprise, especially the unquantified bit. Getting the government covering your asses for some/all of those aspect is what it takes to kick start a market. Once the unquantifiable has been quantified, that's when the fun begin.

For example, did you see a boom in private space exploration in the 70's ?

Seems to me here that the only disagreement is to know if we have passed the threshold that make commercial colonisation of space viable or not. Tyson thinks more leg work needs to be done by the government (you know killing people, crashing a few billion on a rock). Musk is of the opposite opinion. Both have very good basis to talk as they are.

We will see, there have been many many claim of commercial operation in the space. It is only very recently that a tiny bit of it has actually materialised. I'm still waiting for my Moon resort and my orbit hotel that were promised in the 90's.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't even get a company to successfully trail blaze and revolutionize a source of clean energy to replace fossil fuels, so I don't know how in the world anyone thinks we'll do something even more difficult, expensive, and risky like manned space exploration any time soon.

The reason why getting rid of fossil fuels is hard is that there is a huge industry that doesn't want us to. There are no entrenched interests that oppose space colonization.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more gold dilluted in the seas that it's been mined in all history. It doesn't mean you can make a profit from it. Surely there is a lot of wealth in space. It's simply not profitable with our current technology. Antimatter engines, you say? Well, now we start to talk about making bussiness in space mining.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but in both heavier-than-air and sailing-westward-to-India the technology was available and cheap (engines and ships). In this case, it must be invented first. Yes, we know how to build rockets, but many of the problems about building a permanent base in another planet (and getting there first) are not resolved yet. Building the first (american) rocket took quite a lot of trial-and-error; how many fails do you think a private company is going to accept before giving up?

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat.

Are you referring to the famous expedition financed by the Spanish government?

All of your examples save the crapper were partially or wholly funded by government money. I assume that's not the point you were trying to make.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. We humans have evolved in Earth, and so Earth is a very kind environment for us to live in. If a storm didn't sunk the vessel the only life-threatening risk was running out of food or water and you were sure you could find more if you reached your destination - or any unintended land.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[crakbone]

But there is asteroid mining, There is a ton of rare earth metals up there.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"the Atlantic wasn't opened by private enterprise"

YES, It WAS.

It was Cristopher Colombus private project(he dedicated more than 10 years of his life to prepare it when nobody believed him, on his own money and the help of some monks, we would call them Angel Investors now) and finally financing came something like:

2/3 Spanish royalty.
1/3 PRIVATE INVESTMENT by individuals, some of them even join Colombus in his journey.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

:Heavier-than-air flight got started pretty much because of private enterprise. Government was quick to exploit the new possibilities it afforded (especially around the wars) but the truckloads of government cash did not come in before privately funded R&D paved the way.

By that logic, so did spaceflight. Robert H. Goddard's research was largely funded by private investors. Yet most people would rightly say space travel could not have happened without government; and for a good reason: It's very, very hard.

The energy requirements, the logistics, and the low tolerance for error all make it very difficult with our level of tech.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[westlake]

But there were riches to be had if you risked that crossing in a boat - there isn't in space. Etc... etc...

There were already riches to had in the farther reaches of the North Atlantic:

Cods. Seals. Whales and so on.

Columbus made the argument that the western sea route to Asia was commercially viable for the ships of his day. He was wrong ---- but in a way that could easily be tested.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[tmosley]

I guess you forgot about scurvy, even though I just mentioned it.

Humans did NOT evolve for long ocean journeys with no fresh food.

There is a reason that press gangs existed--no-one in their right minds wanted to be a sailor. It was a death sentence. Any of those sailors would have leapt for the opportunity to trade places with one of those astronauts.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[myowntrueself]

But there is asteroid mining, There is a ton of rare earth metals up there.

They'll have to be renamed; rare space metals.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[dave420]

So 33.3% of something is 100% of something? Who knew...

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat.

There was a huge continent full of wealth and resources to be exploited at the other side of the Atlantic. If there wasn't, if America was let's say a bare desert wasteland, no one would remember Columbus today and his voyage would be meaningless and forgotten. So can you tell me what resources (i.e. profit) are there on Mars? Exploration voyages only make commerical sense is there is a potential for real profit, that means a flow of resources and wealth from the newly discovered areas. "Someone paying for the voyage" does not equal profit, that's just redistribution of existing wealth.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[fekmist]

Rare earth metals is the correct term, seeing as they are rare on earth. In space though, you may as well call them common space metals.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If asteroid mining becomes a reality then the price of rare earths/gold will eventually collapse as the supply increases (companies will only do the mining if they can be sure of getting enough ores to make large profits, but large amounts of said ores being brought back to Earth will kill the market). I suppose the space mining corporations could operate a legal monopoly like DeBeers but that would soon backfire as other companies/countries decide to create their own mining ventures.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a ton of rare earth metals down here. The problem is not in finding them. The problem is economically extracting them without hopelessly polluting your environment.

Perhaps the benefit of mining an asteroid will be not that resources are more easily found but that you can make a huge mess up there and it won't hurt anyone.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

They should've been renamed when people discovered that they're not actually rare.

"Uncommon near-universal metals" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[ElectricTurtle]

To say that the Atlantic wasn't opened by private enterprise is obtusely semantic. While the companies that established, operated and expanded settlements, trade, etc. in New World colonies were endorsed/authorized by the various European monarchies, these operations yielded both public and private profits, and initially more direction and oversight was provided at the company level than the government level. It's sometimes hard to distinguish where public interests end and private interests begin in an imperial aristocracy, but it's disingenuous to pretend that it was wholly one or the other.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't even get a company to successfully trail blaze and revolutionize a source of clean energy to replace fossil fuels, so I don't know how in the world anyone thinks we'll do something even more difficult, expensive, and risky like manned space exploration any time soon.

Why does it have to be "soon"? Rome was not built in a day. The world was not first circumnavigated in a week. Al Gore did not build the internet in a month. Space flight was not achieved in a year.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't even get a company to successfully trail blaze and revolutionize a source of clean energy to replace fossil fuels
 
Maybe because we can't get the consumer to pay? Businesses aren't self funded... they need a customer base that is interested. A lot of people have to be willing to ante up to make green businesses profitable and I've personally watched for the last 25 years how most have gone nowhere because of cheaper alternatives. Don't blame the businesses. Plenty of people have the vision. Will you put your money where your mouth is for once and for all or will you continue to blame business for the failures of the consumer?
 
  so I don't know how in the world anyone thinks we'll do something even more difficult, expensive, and risky like manned space exploration any time soon.
 
While we may not be putting man on the moon we certainly have been doing continuous manned space exploration for over 50 years. It's safer and cheaper now. Sorry that we're not living your Space 1999 fantasies but it doesn't mean that no one is doing anything. Again, put your money where your mouth is. There are private ventures out there looking for funding. Skip your next DLC or Latte or whatever and ante up.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the mess that private enterprise is in at the moment, a rocket scheduled for blast-off to Mars could be aborted due to a lawsuit from a software patent ...

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Oligonicella]

Bad, bad analogy. DeBeers deals in an artificial product - "Ohhh, pretty." This is why the fake market they've created exists. Rare earth metals are utilized by industry, like industrial diamonds. Industrial diamonds are cheap. They'll harvest the rare metals and we'll use them.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Oligonicella]

You sir, are incorrect.

During a science class I attended around ten years ago conversation was on conservation. I mentioned methane and metal harvesting around Saturn and in the asteroid belt and a very serious young woman said "But you'll pollute the environment." I responded "What environment?" No answer of course, but she still saw mining in space as essentially "dirty" and not to be done.

Do not discount the damage enviro-weenies can do.

Me? I agree with you. I'd like to see as much material acquisition as possible come from space.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rare Earth" metals are anything but rare, in fact they are pretty common all over the place, the problem is that they are ridiculously dificult to extract.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Agent0013]

Plus, the people who stand to profit aren't the ones putting their lives on the line!

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Agent0013]

And communications companies won't pay to put up satellites? What world do you live in?

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[sproketboy]

Did you even watch the vid? How is this stupid tripe modded up?

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Oligonicella]

One - count 'em, *one* - nickel asteroid would yield all the nickel we'll need for decades, if not centuries.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Oligonicella]

You're aware that the entire reason the Wright Brothers are famous is for inventing their guidance technology, right?

The first American rockets were entirely privately funded. You've conveniently leapt ahead to the space race.

Once the government became interested - as has been pointed out here before - the government ***made it illegal to use private rockets to reach space*** Got that? They were prevented - by government.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The first American rockets were entirely privately funded. You've conveniently leapt ahead to the space race.

Because they were working of the government funded rocket research of Nazi Germany.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Dave. It was a private enterprise that received government funding. It wasn't the NASA of the day.

But anyway, to compare the kings and merchants of old against the massive democracies and corporations of today is simply stupid. A merchant who put all his gold into an Atlantic expedition was risking his entirely livelihood. An investor who invests a portion of his wealth in Space Company 0 will only lose that portion if it fails. We simply have a glut of wealthy people who are many many many times wealthier than those merchants of Columbus' day. Heck, they are wealthier than those old governments.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[SecurityGuy]

Shame they didn't quantify them. You know, like "There be 3 dragons." Totally safe, then.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite their name, rare earth elements (with the exception of the radioactive promethium) are relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million (similar to copper). However, because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated as rare earth minerals in economically exploitable ore deposits.[3] It was the very scarcity of these minerals (previously called "earths") that led to the term "rare earth". The first such mineral discovered was gadolinite, a compound of cerium, yttrium, iron, silicon and other elements. This mineral was extracted from a mine in the village of Ytterby in Sweden; several of the rare earth elements bear names derived from this location.

Rare earth minerals are neither rare, nor only from Earth. The "earth" mentioned (notice "earth" is not capitalized) means "dirt", not "planet Earth".

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

" It's about balancing risk and costs against what you can gain for it."

And that exactly what he is saying, that there are too many calculable risks right now to do the actual balancing, when there is no idea of what the return could possibly be, what is the business model, until they have something to go to space for, they wont go, and tourism isn't going to cut it. It's going to take public (governmental) money, time and expertise to find that something before the private commercial enterprise really start investing in it. This doesn't seem controversial, or even that insightful, it seems like common sense to me. Yes lots of businesses do things for "potential" profit, but what is the potential profit, long term right now with going to space, there isn't any. There is theoretical profit, but theoretic profit isn't the same thing as potential profit.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[bill_mcgonigle]

There is currently no company that can realistically make something like a moon colony happen, much less a mars colony, because there needs to be some kind of return of investment. ... It's just not something that's going to happen until a mars rover unearths a huge diamond deposit, or discovers some martian species capable of picking fruit for cheaper than the Mexicans. :) Your post is self-solving. The Moon is full of helium-3, which is essential to profitable fusion generators on Earth, which would pick up so many carbon credits (in the jurisdictions that are so predicated) that they will take over just as soon as the R&D is ready and the governments get out of the way (the R&D is likely the easier part).

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[bill_mcgonigle]

"Besides, we've been crossing the Atlantic for thousands of years."

Yes, you clearly know your stuff. Everyone should pay attention to your ideas, which aren't crazy or stupid in the least.

Tread carefully - there's pretty good evidence for commerce between Africa and South America in that time frame, and the Chinese mega-ships were almost that long ago.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So was going to the toilet in the middle of the night 100 years ago.

Going to the toilet in the city in the middle of teh night 100 years ago was no more dangerous than now -- city toilets were in houses' basements (I owned a house built in 1918). Not many dangerous animals in the city, either. In the country, 50 years ago was exactly like 100 years ago -- when I was a kid, both of my sets of grandparents had outhouses (they did both eventually get indoor plumbing). And what was dangerous was wasps. I never could figure out what it was about outhouses that wasps liked.

The most dangerous things at one set's house was the well and the hog pen.

I had to go to the emergency room because of a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night last year. I stubbed my foot in the dark and broke my toe.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuel costs aren't the problem, the space shuttle only used about $200,000 worth of LOX/LH2 and somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million of SRB fuel. Currently it costs $150,000 + to fuel a 747. No doubt that its more expensive, but its not that much more (~6 times) expensive. The real issues are the spacecraft itself . If you could bring construction & maintenance costs down to more in the realm of air-travel, even if it cost you more fuel, your probably only talking about $8,000 per passenger in fuel costs. Bringing down those costs though means doing away with this idiotic expendable spacecraft ideology (that NASA is oddly returning to) and using some form of reusable system with minimal (or at least simplified) maintenance. Its not going to be easy, but at least two private space companies (Space X & Virgin Galactic) are already making a go of it.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[happyhamster]

That's an empty soundbite. Just because something was done before in no way implies that a quite different thing can be done in the future. Society has advanced dramatically since crossing the Atlantic, and nobody will tolerate hundreds of lost ships and thousands of missing crew members. As far as expenses, surely, the private enterprise will spare no expense after governments around the worlds sink trillions in funding for fundamental science in technology for 50-100 years. Then the proud private entrepreneurs will bravely step forward, take all the risks (of which most have been already taken at society's expense), skim off all profits, and lecture the rest of us how "private enterprise" solves all problems.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[asmkm22]

Is there even a working fusion reactor in place yet? If not, the idea is moot.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[khallow]

The reason why getting rid of fossil fuels is hard is that there is a huge industry that doesn't want us to.

This "huge industry" is actually most of human civilization. Economics of fossil fuels especially when coupled with existing infrastructure still makes them a pretty competitive alternative especially oil products and natural gas at the moment.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[asmkm22]

Risks and costs are fine, but we're talking about a whole other level of money here. Mistakes in this kind of industry are catastrophic, and not something any single corporation can handle without going under. Do you think the Apollo program would have gone past stage 1 after the fire if it wasn't essentially government funded and backed? What kind of board of directors would you need to be able to look at that and not cancel it on the spot? And that's back before OSHA and general work safety issues were around.

Imagine that happening today, and think about how crippling it would be for a company.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[khallow]

The first American rockets weren't based on Nazi funded research. And it's worth noting that a number of rocket technologies such as hybrid rocket motors and balloon-launched rockets haven't seen a lot of NASA money nor picked up help from Nazi scientists.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about balancing risk and costs against what you can gain for it.

This is exactly what Tyson is saying. "There are unquantified risks." You cannot balance an unquantified risk against your costs. Therefore, no business case until risks are determined, and that will likely only happen by government funded activities.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[DerekLyons]

Is such utter ignorance and lack of reading comprehension a natural talent, or did you study?

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[DerekLyons]

To say that the Atlantic wasn't opened by private enterprise is obtusely semantic.

No, it's plain black-and-white fact. The 'companies' you refer to range from outright government enterprises only thinly disguised to what amounted to government contractors. They were almost universally backed with special privileges afforded by law, etc... etc..

It's supremely ignorant to pretend these were equivalent to the companies of today. The one playing semantic games is you, by pretending that the word represents the same thing then and now.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[DerekLyons]

There is no reason to believe either of those things would not have happened if government hadn't stepped in.

Other than the fact that no evidence to support the notion, no. There's completely no reason to not have faith in an imaginary friend in the sky and that private enterprise would have done these things. But using that blind faith in place of facts - that's an entirely different matter.
 

There are vast riches to be had from space. The problem is that it'll take many years and huge outlays of cash before we can get at them, and even then it will be a seriously risky undertaking; not something investors will jump on eagerly.

Once again, your faith is touching - but it's seriously out of touch with reality. Private investors aren't jumping on space mining because of those things - but because there is not one natural or processed material which you wouldn't go broke hauling back from space. Not. One. Not without lowering launch costs considerably past "significantly" and down into the "hallucinogenic dreaming" range of costs. (Oh, and lets not mention the slight problem of none of the equipment existing even as power point slides.)

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[DerekLyons]

There were already riches to had in the farther reaches of the North Atlantic:

There were some people making a living fishing the North Atlantic, but riches? Not by any reasonable standard. (Hint: There's a reason why only relatively few made the crossing to do so - where there are riches, there is a rush.)

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[betterprimate]

"Besides, we've been crossing the Atlantic for thousands of years."

Yes, you clearly know your stuff. Everyone should pay attention to your ideas, which aren't crazy or stupid in the least.

What is stupid is comparing apples to oranges, and what's crazy is consistently using that argument to defend your ideology and ignorance.

You may want to research transatlantic travel. It's interesting stuff. I suspect you will continue to maintain and limit your world view to the past 500 years because it makes living in Texas more tolerable.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Please, chill - experiencing rage and frustration over a long period of time raises your blood pressure and may lead to stroke. My point merely was that from the Wright brothers, to Howard Hughes to Elon Musk there were always entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, experimentators and so on, who contributed to aviation and space industry enough to change it completely. Yes, there were great risks, there were spectacular failures, but without private capital and personal initiative aviation and space industry (or any other industry, all of IT for example) wouldn't achieve so much today. Trying to reduce their value and to simplify everything down to "profit" and "riches" is drinking kool-aid to, just flavor is different.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Commercial businesses need more than just "potential" profit

Uh...wut? Since when has the risk of not making a profit ever stopped anybody from trying anyways?

Sorry but that one statement - which isn't even remotely true - just set the rest of your post up for fail.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[betterprimate]

So was crossing the atlantic in a boat.

There was a huge continent full of wealth and resources to be exploited at the other side of the Atlantic. If there wasn't, if America was let's say a bare desert wasteland, no one would remember Columbus today and his voyage would be meaningless and forgotten. So can you tell me what resources (i.e. profit) are there on Mars? Exploration voyages only make commerical sense is there is a potential for real profit, that means a flow of resources and wealth from the newly discovered areas. "Someone paying for the voyage" does not equal profit, that's just redistribution of existing wealth.

When the cost benefit of space travel and colonization is comparable to transatlantic travel and trade, then it's reasonable to consider a free-market sustainable enterprise. Until then...

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This "huge industry" is actually most of human civilization.

Indeed, most of human civilization is part of the problem rather than the solution. It's not surprising that most solutions to fix the environment problem (and many other problems we have today) would involve huge changes to human civilization affecting large portions of the world population

But that's no reason to not try. One would think that the US, having experienced several revolutions in its short lifetime (from its own independence, to the industrial revolution, to the digital revolution) would be more open to the idea of another revolution.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Is there even a working fusion reactor in place yet? If not, the idea is moot.

Working, yes. Commerical? No, there's not really enough fuel. Practical? Not really - it's not commercially viable due to the lack of fuel.

But, perhaps what you're illuminating here is that it might be the same venture that needs to do both parts of the work. They'd probably have to find a jurisdiction without oil company influence to be based out of and then find a launch facility that would be friendly. I'm not sure which one that might be.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as he notes and you conveniently ignore, the Atlantic wasn't opened by private enterprise.

Yes, it was. You seem to be confused about how monarchies worked back in the day.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[khallow]

It's not surprising that most solutions to fix the environment problem (and many other problems we have today) would involve huge changes to human civilization affecting large portions of the world population

But that's no reason to not try.

I don't know what you're think here, but I disagree. Obviously, those "solutions" have reasons to try them, but they also have reasons not to try them. And huge changes to a lot of human civilization are an obvious reason not to try the "solution". It's not the factor here, but there's nothing to be gained from refusing to recognize a downside.

One would think that the US, having experienced several revolutions in its short lifetime (from its own independence, to the industrial revolution, to the digital revolution) would be more open to the idea of another revolution.

And why should that be the case when a key component of this "revolution" is the harming of "large portions of the world population"?

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[betterprimate]

"Besides, we've been crossing the Atlantic for thousands of years."

Yes, you clearly know your stuff. Everyone should pay attention to your ideas, which aren't crazy or stupid in the least.

Tread carefully - there's pretty good evidence for commerce between Africa and South America in that time frame, and the Chinese mega-ships were almost that long ago.

... and then there is evidence of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Turks... the list goes on. It's not preposterous to speculate we've been traveling the Atlantic for *tens of thousands of years*. It's really striking to see such push-back on a thread that is seemingly embracing, how naively in this context, the pursuits of human empowerment and endeavor (if there's a will, there's a way) while denouncing our very ancestors' capabilities for the same thing (i.e. crazy to think we traveled the Atlantic thousand of years ago). How those two mentalities can co-exist is beyond me.

Oceans and Seas facilitated trade and capital, not inhibited it. But yeah, thanks for piping in. I always appreciate your posts.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[betterprimate]

Ridiculous, truly. We would have been delivering telegrams on bicycles with wings. The market evolved from government funding and warfare. Depressing truth, truly.

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[tmosley]

lol, why would they sail across the oceans when they could just use the power of the pyramids to teleport back and forth?

Re:Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be right - now, but...

[robsku]

I'm pretty sure going to the toilet in the middle of the night costs as much as it ever did (unless you count accidentally dropping your phone in).

If you got there alive and unharmed, sure, but it wasn't until indoor toilets becoming the norm for middle- and low-class people too, which wasn't that long ago (in wealthy countries - for the whole globe we still have long to go to get there), when it got safe too.

Oil Discovered On Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal Funding For Mars Mission Approved

Re:Oil Discovered On Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal Funding For Mars Mission Approved

Stop waging wars and giving tens of billions of dollars to corrupt spy agencies.
Presto, you've got more money than you shake a stick at, give some of it to NASA.

Re:Oil Discovered On Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Declare war on Mars............because those native Martians hate teh freedoms.

Re:Oil Discovered On Mars

[Samantha Wright]

Already used up that excuse on asteroids, alas. Maybe if China says they're gonna do it?

Re:Oil Discovered On Mars

[tmosley]

The US doesn't declare wars, and hasn't since Korea.

Well, except on concepts. But it loses all of those.

SpaceX is impressive, but...

[jfruh]

...to say that it's an example of free enterprise in space is laughable. The company's most high-profile missions -- the Dragon capsules to and from the ISS -- are fully paid for by NASA. SpaceX is essentially a government contractor. It's "profitable" because the government is paying it do things (and because it can do those things more efficiently than the government could itself, for a variety of structural reasons). So, yeah, I have no doubt that Elon Musk could set up a Mars colony if the U.S. government paid him to do it. I'm just not sure that really constitutes "private business" doing the job.

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[c0lo]

...to say that it's an example of free enterprise in space is laughable. The company's most high-profile missions -- the Dragon capsules to and from the ISS -- are fully paid for by NASA. SpaceX is essentially a government contractor. It's "profitable" because the government is paying it do things (and because it can do those things more efficiently than the government could itself, for a variety of structural reasons). So, yeah, I have no doubt that Elon Musk could set up a Mars colony if the U.S. government paid him to do it. I'm just not sure that really constitutes "private business" doing the job.

Hang on.... before NASA paying SpaceX to do things... wasn't it a period of time when SpaceX took the risk of developing its capabilities without being funded by the govt?

Re: SpaceX is impressive, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at their launch manifest and you will see that ISS launches are a small minority. SpaceX has LOTS of commercial launches lined up.

Besides: NASA is just another customer, their money is as good as anyone else's.

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX's launch manifest is right here: http://www.spacex.com/missions

Of the remaining four launches this year, only one is for NASA. Indeed, only one is for a US-based customer.
Of the twelve launches next year, three are for NASA and one is for the US Air Force. One is a launch demo so that obviously doesn't count, but that's still seven out of eleven launches going somewhere other than the US Government.

I don't really see SpaceX as being just a government contractor. It has plenty of customers, some of which are governments, and it actively seeks more by bringing launch costs down lower than any government agency has done in the past.

The real questions are:

1) Is there any profit to be made in colonizing space with human presence? If yes, then as someone else said, the hard part will be stopping them from doing so.
2) If there isn't, since Elon Musk is a bit of a space colonization nut, can he make enough profit off of his other business to finance a colony out of sspare change?

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[shia84]

If by "developing its capabilities" you mean "analysing, understanding and applying NASA knowledge from the last 5 decades" to which they have full access then yes, they did that at some point and are still doing it. However, I'd be very surprised if their own research added even close to 1% to the heap. Just look at the outright silly disparity in amount, scale and scope of experiments, the size of the funding and R&D staff, etc. between the two.

They are basically a private extension of NASA with a significantly less risk averse decision making process, but also much less accountability. Not that I have anything against that, I think SpaceX is awesome, but I also do think that Tyson is mostly right.

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[RKThoadan]

#2 is why I think Tyson is both right and wrong. I don't think it's even close to being commercially profitable, and probably won't be for at least a century, but on occasion we do things for other reasons. Going to the moon wasn't profitable, but a huge group of people (The US) decided to do it anyway. This is just a different group of people deciding to do something similar that will also not be profitable. One group being "public" and the other "private" isn't actually that big a difference.

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on occasion we do things for other reasons.

But multilmillionaires tend to not. They tend to do things to make more money. The one I work for just fired 20 or so people because two years ago he made $10 million, and last year he didn't make nearly that much. This year, he got the taxpayer to fund the expansion of one of his businesses (the one I work for) to the tune of half a million dollars - I know that this business is to be used as a tax write-off. Pay the staff shit, fleece the taxpayer, get taxes back, claim you worked harder than the people you don't pay for their overtime.

But that's multimillionaires for you: if there ain't a fortune in it for them, there's no point in doing it.

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like my last job. Sounds absolutely identical to my last job. Well, with a difference in head count. My last job only had 25 employees to begin with, so the multimillionaire (with the ocean-going boat, the land barge of an RV, the classic car collection that filled a warehouse, and real estate all over California) didn't let 20 go. But because the government money wasn't flowing in, he ditched employees, even knowing the government money would start flowing again real soon.

Fucking job creators my ass... (Pun intended.)

Re:SpaceX is impressive, but...

[BorisSkratchunkov]

Okay. Maybe it's not always *directly* funded by the US government, but I wonder where most of its other clients get *their* funding. I know MDA for sure has won some major contracts from NASA in the past, and they definitely get quite a few contracts for the CSA. How many of these SpaceX missions would continue to exist feasibly without funding from NASA, the CSA, and the ESA? Maybe SpaceX is not a contractor for a single government, but I can easily see it working for multiple governments (in the same manner as Lockheed Martin).

CARL SAGAN ROLLING IN GRAVE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

A billllion times already with this Tyson guy making a mockery of space !! The final frontier !! Notice how man has gone NOWHERE since Sagan was killed off !!

Re:CARL SAGAN ROLLING IN GRAVE !!

[FPhlyer]

Not a billion times. Rather "billions and billions" of times.

Re:CARL SAGAN ROLLING IN GRAVE !!

[myowntrueself]

"There are more stars in our galaxy than there are atoms in the universe."
-- Niel DeGrasse Tyson

Re:CARL SAGAN ROLLING IN GRAVE !!

[Fenster Karton]

Didn't you mean there are more stars in the universe than there are atoms in our galaxy?

Re:CARL SAGAN ROLLING IN GRAVE !!

[myowntrueself]

Didn't you mean there are more stars in the universe than there are atoms in our galaxy?

No, I'm pretty sure black science guy said that.

Years late to the party

[DerekLyons]

I've known this for... well, the better part of two decades now. It's blindingly obvious to anyone who has actually studied the history of exploration. And he doesn't go far enough at that - most of the voyages and expeditions were indeed backed by governments, but for commercial, political, and military advantages. The big problem, is that there really isn't much of that in space that we aren't exploiting already.

Re:Years late to the party

[FPhlyer]

Right. The unspoken implication of Sputnik was that if the Russians could put something in orbit then they could just as easily drop a nuclear payload on any spot on the planet. The early space race was sold as being about scientific exploration it was just as much about demonstrating to allies and enemies the heavy lifting capability of ICBMs.

The race for the moon became an extension of cold war propaganda. Once the goals were reached... well, space exploration became a hobby. If we look at how much was accomplished from Sputnik to Apollo 11... we've mostly been spinning our wheels... at least when it comes to manned spaceflight.

The ironing is delicious

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love the sweet sweet irony of the fact that some of the biggest proponents of a space exploration being a purely private affair live(and in some cases govern) a country that was colonized largely by people representing companies that had state backing

counterargument:

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson's_Bay_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_company

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani

(ok, the last one not so much)

Re:counterargument:

[Anonymous Coward]

But all of those companies enjoyed massive support from their governments (e.g. military support and escort, diplomatic help, tax breaks, etc.) .

Re:counterargument:

[oDDmON oUT]

Of your three examples, it seems to me the only real contender for a purely corporate endeavor is the Massachusetts Bay Company.

The Hudson's Bay Company, and the East India Company in particular, appear to be more quasi-governmental concerns, birthed by royal fiat, benefiting those in government who invested, allowing ample plausible deniability for inhumane actions against indigenous people and whose assets were eventually folded back into government.

Re:counterargument:

[Alef]

And obviously you didn't watch TFV. Quote from it: "The first Europeans to the New World were not the Dutch East India Trading Company. It was governments funding government missions. Columbus drew the maps, established where the trade winds were. Where are the hostiles? Where are the friendlies? Is there food there? Can you breathe the air? They come back with this information. Then you can establish a capital market evaluation. 'Cause now you know there are riches here but not there; you can go here by this route but not that one. Then you can turn it into a profitable enterprise."

He thinks private companies should do more of the work in space, he just thinks there are too many unknowns for it to make business sense for anyone to push the frontiers.

Re:counterargument:

[Luthair]

The problem with all the links - those companies were all established well after the initial government financed exploration. Business is happy to boldly go where governments have gone before and absorbed all the risk.

Re:counterargument:

[Nimey]

It's a lot more fun/far easier for too many people to work themselves up into a frothy outrage than it is to read/listen and understand what the other guy's really trying to say.

This is a common failure mode of the lazy, stupid, and self-absorbed.

Re:counterargument:

[Anonymous Coward]

And obviously you didn't watch TFV. Quote from it: "The first Europeans to the New World were not the Dutch East India Trading Company. It was governments funding government missions.

In actuality, the firstEuropeans to the New World were exiles and traders, but then again he's not a historian, is he.

Kinda changes the argument a little bit and raises the spectre of yet another country that will beat us at cricket (but not this year)

Re:counterargument:

[T.E.D.]

Not one of those companies happened until after a government-sponsored expidition to those areas showed what was there, and that it was feasible to go there and back in a ship.

The Dutch East India company was particularly interesting, in that pretty much all it did was send out warships and soldiers to take over Portugese possessions. An interesting instance of a private company going to war with a soverign nation for sure, but the creative work was done by the Portugese government (at massive expense).

Also, most of those entities actually obtained a royal monopoly. That makes them independent competitive companies in the modern sense about as much as your local utility company.

Re:counterargument:

[SEE]

Sure, the fifteenth century lacked sophisticated capital markets, requiring Columbus to pitch his project to people with crowns until he found one willing to give him the money. And that's relevant to today, with angel investors and venture capital how, exactly?

Yes, you're not going to get large bureaucratized businesses that resemble government in their structure and operations to open frontiers. That tells you exactly zero about what risks private capital is willing to take.

I suspect he's wrong.

[gargleblast]

And I suspect he should look up the definition of the word Entrepreneur sometime.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because you, a random slashdot poster, are obviously more intelligent and insightful than one of the brightest minds of our time.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[SealBeater]

I'm sure the odds of that happening are not impossible.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[tmosley]

Actually, that is very likely. Simply being intelligent doesn't make you immune to bias, especially in areas outside of your expertise (here an astrophysicist is playing at being an economist). Liberals tend to look down on industry while believing strongly in government.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[FPhlyer]

Exactly. Neil deGrasse Tyson is certainly an intelligent and articulate voice for science but we all have bias and he's not immune.
In this case, Tyson has been on the front lines of advocating increasing NASA's budget. When private industry begins talking about doing the things that have traditionally been done within NASA for cheaper, this becomes an argument against increasing government funding for space exploration.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to agree with you. He is making statements about big business, industry and government that has to many variables to forecast the future. So many times things have been accomplished by private interests, with or without government investment or involvement that have taken the world in a direction that was not planned for. Space travel is no more dangerous today then many other endeavors in the past. If you
consider that technology advances along with each attempt making it more possible and feasible if the first attempt(s) fail making it likely to happen by more people, groups, business, governments, etc......
I am sure that it will be a mixture of many parties to move forward into space. So far government exclusiveness has moved us along at a safe and restrictive pace, they are not normally risk takers in many ways. This where the rich with interest in space will be involved. They will move things along and government will follow getting involved in their own way while hopefully staying out of the way. Its not all about profit only. Is Bill Gates only trying to solve some of the worlds health issue just for profit? There are many million, billionaires that are providing their resources to solve big problem without doing it just for profit without government(s).
Only considering how expensive something is, is short sighted and not productive. Taking chances is one of the ways great things are done and discovered. I respect Mr. Tyson's view, but i don't agree. I know, i should have just said that in the first place.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And I suspect he should look up the definition of the word Entrepreneur sometime.

A USS Enterprise crew member?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

especially in areas outside of your expertise

An astrophysicist telling a car engineer that space is dangerous and that the space people don't know all the risks? Surely he's way outside his comfort zone here!

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

here an astrophysicist is playing at being an economist

I think an astrophysicist is playing someone who knows a bit more about the risks of space exploration than the average Slashdot poster, who I might add is also not immune to bias.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Alef]

Very likely? I'll give you that it is possible that a "random slashdot poster" is more intelligent and insightful than "one of the brightest minds of our time", but you can't honestly think it is usually the case?

It seems most posters in this story haven't really bothered to watch TFV (go figure). Unlike the impression you can get from TFS, Tyson says he thinks there is too little private enterprise in the space industry, and that it's taken too long for them to get there.

The point he is making is that when it comes to pushing the frontiers, mapping planets and such, the business case is tricky. So he thinks there will continue to be a need for governments to fund this, if it is to continue, much like basic research.

I'd say that the presumption that private enterprises will always do everything better is the biased opinion, if anything.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Theoretical scientist telling his own point of view on business and engineering problems to successful businessman and engineer? Surely Musk must repent and change his wrongful ways this instant.

I'm not saying he is wrong, or that his words mean nothing. I'm just saying that in this dialogue I'd listen to Musk and his arguments with much greater interest.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Rockoon]

I think that it should be noted, because the poster that you replied to was talking about liberals, that Neil deGrasse Tyson calls the liberals out on their complete hostility towards NASA funding (and science in general.)

He observed and noted that NASA funding goes up during Republican administrations and goes down during Democrat administrations: here is a video of him talking about NIH, NSF, and NASA budgets and Bush vs Clinton funding levels.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Pino Grigio]

I listened to one of Tyson's radio segments a few months ago. I can't remember which station it was. There seemed to be two minutes of chat with an expert, followed by 5 minutes of adverts for the entire length of the show. Worse, Tyson has a side-kick who's only purpose is to be a smart arse and constantly wise-crack while the expert is talking. This guy was probably the most punchable radio presenter I think I've ever heard. Perhaps punchable is the wrong word to use. I actually turned to look at the cricket bat I had resting up against the wall. The show was horrific. Tyson should be ashamed to call himself a science communicator.

I speak as someone who regularly listens to Melvin Bragg's In Our Time of course, so I'm used to something a little more cerebral.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[jkflying]

Musk is also a physicist. He actually dropped out of a PhD in physics to start PayPal.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[TheCarp]

One need not be brilliant to be right. The man is an astronomer not an economist, and generally seems to be assuming that there are only 2 possibilities.... 1. Government 2. For profit enterprise

I would submit that its entirely possible for groups of private individuals to come together and work on things for purposes other than either violently imposing their will on others, or building their own personal wealth. He may be right about private for profit business ventures but.... government is too focused on beating the heads of people here.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's an astrophysicist telling us that voluntary association (i.e. free choice) can't possibly achieve what coercive authority (i.e. government) has.

And I say that's bullshit. The only thing coercive authority has over voluntary association is the ability to force people to pay for things they wouldn't otherwise choose to. (Otherwise they'd already be funding it, wouldn't they?) Well, that's about to change, because people are beginning to get very interested in the possibilities of space industry.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

First to their relative merits on this subject.

Tyson has spent his career, and most of his life studying space, and thinking about the challenges it poses. You can play Musks's engineering credentials up all you wan't and it means nothing if he doesn't understand the obstacles that he is supposed to engineer solutions to. Between his academic knowledge, and his work with the federal government working towards space travel, very few people alive, in fact very few people in history have understood the challenges of space travel like Tyson.

Musk may have a great understanding of the dangers of space travel, and he may have experience solving them as well, but we should not discount Tysons views as bias just because he is not an Engineer, or an economist. Honestly I think our best bet of a Mars colony would be if the 2 could work together.

Secondly

The fact is space is dangerous in ways we don't even understand yet. Every person who enters space is basically taking part in a human drug trial, where no one has any idea what drugs they are going to be given(Radiation, effects of 0g, loss of the circadian rhythm, etc), or what the effects are likely to be. We don't even really understand all of the effects of a month on the ISS yet, much less what a year on Mars would be like. In our litigious society it just isn't practice to send civilians into deep space yet. I see the role of government as testing it out, astronauts are all basically test pilots. Once we have understood more of the ricks, and how to avoid them a company can make a profit by spending people into space, with less fear that their next of kin will sue them into bankruptcy.

Do I hope that I am wrong about that, that we as a society can remember the spirit of exploration, decide that its worth the risk, and accept the consequences when they occur instead of pretending that we thought it was perfectly safe? Of course, but I doubt that I am.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[drakaan]

Assuming that the guy who started paypal, tesla, and spacex doesn't understand that space is dangerous is just stupid.

Honestly, it's a severely myopic view to say that Tyson (who is brilliant) has some insight to correctly predict that history won't repeat itself. I think the folks at Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnel Douglass, et al have had just a slight impact on advancing things like aerospace beyond what NASA could have done on their own.

How else do we learn more about the dangers of space without being able to go there cheaply enough to gather useful data? Mr. Tyson is probably incorrect. If he would at least qualify his criticism of private space industry with "probably won't", then maybe I'd be able to take it seriously, but he didn't, so I can't.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[jdigriz]

Funding for space goes up in Republican administrations because space exploration has traditionally been an outgrowth of the armaments industry. Put a capsule on a Titan II and it's a rocket. Put a warhead or several on it and it's an ICBM. Building and testing peaceful rockets helps national defense.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[delt0r]

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

"New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!"

-- A C Clark.

I will go a step further. Space *won't* be done by nasa, at lest for the masses. But will be done by private industry when technology makes it cheap and safe enough to so. Of course by private i mean at the airline industry version of private and non government. Which can be disputed as being not really being a "private industry".

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

Yeah FSM forbid a hard science man try his hand at a soft science like economics. I trust him before folks that can't even make meaningful predictions, but claim they are practicing a science.

Yeah, trot out that tired old liberal boogey man, great idea. Realists, like Mr Tyson here realize not everything can be done by industry. As he observes it wants known risks to calculate against, industry needs a profit motive. Without known numbers it can't make one.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

Which will only happen after NASA makes it routine.

Private industry is great at lots of things, bringing stuff to the masses is where it really shines. Opening new frontiers and basic research is not.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

The folks at Lockheed, Boeing, etc would be working for NASA if not for this incessant need to "privatize" everything. They likely would be doing more too, since most of the doers are not in it for the profit motive the way the set that goes to meetings for pay is.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

You should lookup the word Investor sometime: Dangerous, Expensive, Unquantified Risks, are all things investors AVOID.

Try again Potsy.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[gtall]

To be a physicist, one has to actually do physics. Does anyone know what physics Musk has done after dropping out? Recently?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

LMOL o.k. Potsy....an astrophysicist is providing his expert opinion as to why the free market won't work in space but of course you have insights as to why he is wrong...do tell....

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

Not tea party republicans....

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

Douche bag commenting on what an astrophysicist says...priceless.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dcw3]

Haven't watched the video, but who was in charge of congress during these times...you know, the ones who actually control the budget?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

Last time I checked you need to have a degree in Physics to be called a physicist...

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

Because it costs too much. Once you've grasped that, you will understand.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[oh_my_080980980]

No, he's saying that a corporation operates on profit. Government does not. Space exploration costs alot of money. Corporations would need to see return on their investment now or shareholders will revolt. In today's economic climate, private space exploration WILL NOT HAPPEN. If you actually followed business news you'd understand that.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dcw3]

Private industry is great at lots of things, bringing stuff to the masses is where it really shines. Opening new frontiers and basic research is not.

I've heard this argument before, but wonder what it's based upon? As a counter to it, what about all of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors
Were they done with government support? Yeah, I understand that the govt. has done some really big stuff, but so has private industry. One example that immediately comes to mind is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dcw3]

Maybe Tyson didn't intend his broadcast for the more cerebral audience. Just maybe, he's trying to sway more public support for science, and to do so, you need to aim at the masses.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[chuckinator]

Last I checked, people hung up on degrees and academic pedigree don't get out of the lab much and fight for research grants. Musk has built up multiple companies and started to make the world tilt on its axis to his whim. I don't think it really matters what degree he has at this point, nor do I think it matters what you think of him, either.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Alioth]

Elon Musk *does* have a degree in physics.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Baloroth]

Which Musk does, he has a bachelor's in physics (most physicists have a PhD, yes, but it's not really required). Besides, you don't really need a degree: all a degree is is a piece if paper. You can know and do physics without having a piece of paper that says you can.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Oligonicella]

"Which will only happen after NASA makes it routine."

You mean like a rocket with lateral control and landing?

"Opening new frontiers and basic research is not."

History does not jibe with your assertion.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Muros]

Last I checked, you started your doctorate after getting a degree.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Alioth]

No, *for profit* space exploration won't happen (at least any time soon). You can still have private not-for-profit things. Private does not necessarily imply profit motive. If Musk can get enough of his ultra-rich buddies excited enough to fund (for example) a Mars exploration mission, then it could be done privately. Of course this is a big "if" and the probability of it happening is somewhere close to zero.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[drakaan]

They didn't work for NASA in the 60's and 70's...why would that be different today?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[TWiTfan]

In my dictionary, it says that an Entrepreneur is someone who's smart enough to realize that space is a worthless, inhospitable money sink.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Sique]

You miss the point of the parent poster. Inventing a light bulb is not exactly breaking new frontiers, especially when the first patents on lightbulbs are more than 25 years old at the time of invention. But going to Mars does not even require a big scientific breakthrough. We know how rockets work, we know how to get a load to Mars. It's done before. It will need lots of little improvements and innovation to get a person there, for sure. But what it really requires is lots and lots of funding. And you won't see a return of investment in the next decades, at least not pecuniarily. So no company will do it on its own. No conglomerate of companies will form on its own to get there. You need a state or even a group of states come together and make putting a person on Mars a state goal, and then fund it.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[drakaan]

I was hoping that my comment about commercial entities trying to make things *not* cost too much would have been noticed, but I guess not. Also, you seem to be replying to someone else's comment (or you're being deliberately incoherent...not sure which).

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Oligonicella]

They were all around *before* NASA. Your screed fails on that fact alone. Learn some real history - the kind with dates.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Rockoon]

Funding for space goes up in Republican administrations because space exploration has traditionally been an outgrowth of the armaments industry.

..and what about funding of the NIH and NSF?

To add to this, funding for the Federal Department of Educations doubled under Bush Jr (its one of the first things his administration pushed for.)

You need to look at what these politicians do, not what they say.

Democrats constantly talk about how Republicans hate science, want to destroy education, hate medical research, and so on.. but the budget numbers across the board tell a different story. The Republicans are by no-means saints, but the Democrats constantly lie about the issues we are discussing today. It is the Democrats that actually don't put the money where their mouth is.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Oligonicella]

"Government does not."

Please tell me you were joking. Governmental profit comes in the form of ever expanding bureaucracies needing larger and larger funding.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The people who run the business of government are every bit as motivated by profit as the people who run private industry.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dywolf]

how many entrepenaurs do you know who can bankroll a space program?
now how many do you know who are willing to instead of growing/hoarding their wealth some other way?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[jellomizer]

Yes because he is an astrophysicist, it makes him qualified to be an expert on all fields, like economics.

This XKCD Applies

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

You mean like those SSTO X vehicles NASA tested 20+ years ago?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Lord Lemur]

The content of TFA and the views expresed by Dr. Tyson are completely moot. This is just a jumping off point for Libertarians to get fired up about a free market. If they get to call some one dumb it's all the better.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

For the same reasons.
NASA and the previous space/missile programs of the USA created the entire field.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dywolf]

you're compeltely sidestepping the entire argument: that private enterprise does not break new ground in exploration and never has. they only repeat what the sponsored explorers already did. yes they do it cheaper, but they didnt do it first, and they followed in someone elses footsteps. its always easy to improve ona nd cheapen things when youre simply copying someone else. the first to do something is almost ALWAYS more expensive.

no private enterprise will go to Mars, first. why? because there is no profit there. There is no business venture to be made there without decades of investment with zero return. no private enterprise is going ot invest the trillions of dollars needed to do that. None. They will wait til someone else (a governement sponsored exploration) does it first. then once htey know what can be reaped, then they will go. and they will make improvements along the way.

And people will say "see? the government should never have done it, they spent too much money. Privatize this, privatize that".
And thus cycle continues.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

NASA was not our first such agency or program.
Go learn some history yourself. Who was buying all these missiles and funding their creation?

Without a blank check from the taxpayer none of these things would exist.

Industry is really good at some stuff, for things it can't be good at we have governments. This is one of those things. Industry can't deal with unknown unknowns. Musk already knows this, he saw it with Tesla. Until universities invented those batteries and industry commercialized them he could not have made his cars. These things are not conflicting concepts unless your are some moonbat libertarian ideologue who believes industry can do no wrong and government no right.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Yes, because no regular person could possibly know more about the capabilities of business and government than one of the best astrophysicists in the world.

I have nothing but respect for the guy, but this is not his area of expertise.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's been working at this little company called SpaceX that does a little bit of physics...

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Doubtful, and I'm not an astrophysicist, but interesting point of view anyway, thanks.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[evilRhino]

Do you know what really brings stuff to the masses? Public roads and highways.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's been working at this little company called SpaceX that does a little bit of physics...

To boldly privatize what no one has privatized before?

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tea party republicans have been around, what? Less than a decade. I don't recall seeing teabags hanging from hats in the 80's. That is unless you want to move the goalposts and say they've been there all along, back to 1783!

The Space industry has been around 50 years, give or take.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[i kan reed]

Wait, we're blaming Obama for pushing unnecessary cuts? Since when? Not vetoing the dumb shit the republicans forced through congress by threatening to destroy the government's basic function, is bad, but it's hardly comparable to actually pushing for said dumb shit.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[jedidiah]

> one of the brightest minds of our time.

You must be joking? He's just some talking head.

The rest of the Astronomers Union probably view him as some hack with marginally better social skills.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

Thank you, everyone seems to be missing the forest for the trees.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[SecurityGuy]

In our litigious society it just isn't practice to send civilians into deep space yet. I see the role of government as testing it out, astronauts are all basically test pilots. Once we have understood more of the ricks, and how to avoid them a company can make a profit by spending people into space, with less fear that their next of kin will sue them into bankruptcy.

If we can have things like living wills that grant other people the legal right to let you die when they could keep you alive, we can certainly have a legal construct that explains in clear English to the participants that they're going where no man has gone before, we have no idea what's going to happen to them, and they're quite likely (or certain) to die in the process. Heck, if you want to be super-paranoid, require that the next-of-kin sign, too.

IMO, this is one of the stupidest things we've done as a society. We strangle innovation out of fear someone's going to sue.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the Republicans are more than happy to run massive deficits pumping money through every channel they can to 1) appease the populace with circuses and 2) appease their corporate masters with Trillions of dollars in public debt. Then, when they finally fall out of favor, they are happy to do everything they can to cut off the supply and start screaming "austerity" and pointing out the huge "unsustainable" deficit (never minding that they are the one's who ran it up) and demanding that we cut back, most especially in the science and health areas.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Agent0013]

Space exploration costs alot of money, when the government does it. [fixed that for you]

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[interkin3tic]

I think at least recently it's more about not wanting to fit the stereotype of "tax and spend" while avoiding cuts to defense and playing into the other stereotype of hippies who would destroy the military.

This being a small part of the Democratic Party's strategy of "Maybe if we are really nice to the bullies on the right, they'll respect us and won't say mean things about us!" Or alternatively, "Ha, can you believe those idiots thought we were different from the Republicans!"

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Wrong.
We has said, many time, that he would like to see private industry do the routing thing we do now. Launch satellites, restock the space station, etc..

Here, he is talking about going to Mars. This will cost billions of dollars, to go to what is currently a planet that can not support life on its own.
There is a lot of knowledge to gain, a lot of science to do, but it will take a long time before thee is enough infrastructure to private enterprise to do it.

Business only thrive when there is an infrastructure in place, and there s reasonable assurance of a return.
Columbus was a government funded enterprise, as was Lewis and Clark, was was expansion across the US, as was Marco Polo.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[delt0r]

Nothing NASA does is or ever will be routine. If you want a small set of "elite" astronauts to trailblaze space for ridiculous costs. NASA is the way to go. But they are never ever going to bring or make it in anyway more accessible to anyone else. For an example, see the Apollo missions or the space shuttle program. Compare that to international airline travel.

This is the irony of it all. The space buffs will never get what they want from NASA. Its the worst possible to way to "get humanity into space". Something closer to what happened in the airline industry is what you want. Its not what i would call 100% private, far from it. But its about the right mix to get the job done, and done for the masses.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dywolf]

Way to completely misapply and abuse the quote.

1) he is neither elderly nor past his prime.

2) he didnt say it's impossible, and i dont think you'll find an astrophysicist who believes more in space exploration not only being possible, but neccesary. he simply said private enterprise won't do it first.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

"...funding for the Federal Department of Educations doubled under Bush Jr ..."
no it did not. In fact his program cost the education system and the 14 billion he eventual got them, in 2005, still doesn't cover the costs odff his program. A program experts in the field said wasn't worth the money. And they where right.

"Democrats constantly talk about how Republicans hate science, want to destroy education, hate medical research, and so on.. but the budget numbers across the board tell a different story"
No, they do not. I suggest you actually read the numbers and the policies; which are the foundation of those opinions.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[nschubach]

This is why I don't see someone putting a ton of effort to get something on a large body like Mars. I could, however, see someone spending all kinds of money trying to lasso an asteroid made of rare/desirable ores.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[jythie]

When it comes down to it, research and advancement tend to work best when both paths are being worked on. Private industry really shines at some types of research, public funding really shines at others, and quite a bit really does well with mixed funding/goals.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say the business case for space exploration is no more or less tricky than the case for, say, oil or coal or gas exploration - all of which are undertaken by PRIVATE enterprise and have very little government involvement (beyond legislation) - and also happen to be among the BIGGEST industries in the world...

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

Good job missing what I was saying.
Is it hard to read a comment and miss what it says or does it come natural to you?

NASA does lots of routine for them stuff, like going to the ISS for example, well before they stopped the shuttle program.

Doing this invents and funds the creation of things needed to even make getting this to the masses possible.

International airline travel as we have it now was only possible after it was routine for nations to fly jets. Sure they were expensive, and only for fighters at first, but that opened the door for industry to commercialize the tech.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

HAHAHAHA. Everyone on that list did what they did based on government infrastructure and RnD.

NO one is saying private industry doesn't invent. What it does very poorly is create and maintain infrastructure needed by every one.
Science doe science sake isn't done in the private sector very much anymore. Meaning large companies. Having a large goal thats just for exploring has always been the work of a large body of people pooling together tremendous wealth. i.e. a government.

Bell labs started from french government funding, via an award.

"In 1880, the French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs (approximately US$10,000 at that time, about $250,000 in current dollars[1]) for the invention of the telephone, which he used to found the Volta Laboratory, along with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin Chichester Bell.[2] His research laboratory focused on the analysis, recording and transmission of sound. Bell used his considerable profits from the laboratory for further research and education to permit the "[increased] diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf".[2]:
And
" Support work for the phone companies included the writing and maintaining of the Bell System Practices (BSP), a comprehensive series of technical manuals. Bell Labs also carried out consulting work for the Bell Telephone Companies, and U.S. government work, including Project Nike and the Apollo program."

Guess who made it possible to have the infrastructure to lay telephone lines?

Look, you have missed the point. When they government does a large project, they don't literally burn money. They set goals, developer engineering and the go to the private industry to build things to meet the goal. The vast majority of these things are thing private industry would never have researched on their own. There was as time where the idea of a smoke detector in the home didn't even exist. NASA needed one, took bids, got a private company to make one. The private company went out and start the smoke detector industry, and many private companies shave improved them.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Which were based on NASA designed and experiments.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[nschubach]

There's no requirement to be a physicist other than practicing physics. To be called a Doctor, you need a doctorate, sure. But there's no such requirement for physicist like there's no degree requirement to be a manager or a programmer.

Webster defines it as: "a specialist in physics"
Oxford defines it as: "an expert in or student of physics."

So by those definitions, it could just be someone studying physics book or extremely learned in the field of physics.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

do you ever watch the business news? do you know which industries are the biggest in the world? do you know how significant EXPLORATION is to their share prices and profit margins?

yes exploration is risky, no matter the economic climate - but in business, the bigger the risk, the bigger the rewards...

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

I wouldn't. Elon Musk gets too much attention. Not only is hyperloop and old Idea(I read about something just like it in OMNI magazine in 1981, or so.) His idea to go to Mars seems to be lacking in a ot or practical details.
His car is a nice car, but it's not exactly a new invention.

Paypal? he got lucky. There where a lot of people working on something similar. So nothing about it is exactly ground breaking.

Sure, all that was hard work, and need some clever idea. None of it compares to going to a different planet.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[phrostie]

you are correct,

and just my own .02001 USD, both Tyson and Musk are Correct.
Government programs will carry the heavy lifting until the commercial side sees a way to make a profit.
but this is what Musk is trying to prove. that you can make a business model. i'm cheering him on like there is no tomorrow, but he hasn't done it yet.
we need more people like Musk. we need more people willing to invest in private space industries(not just the tourism).

what really annoys me is when you have people trying to move fwd on one side and S#!^ like this ( http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Russian_rocket_engine_export_ban_could_halt_US_space_program_999.html ) on the other.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

hasn't communism proved your idea about government and industry completely and utterly provably wrong?

do you understand why everything is Made In China now - including most likely the next lunar lander?

the Russians are about to buy the ISS...

for that matter, for all NASA's blowing its own horn, it's the Russians did much of it first, and it's the Russians they will have to bum rides off of, from now on, every time they actually want to go into space...

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dryeo]

Seems the airline industry was started by governments investing in warplanes during a couple of world wars. At that before WWI the airline industry was dead due to patents.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

A bachelor's degree hardly counts. When someone is described as a physicist, they typically mean a PhD in Physics.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dadelbunts]

Yea the same guy that posts ridiculous tweets all the time such as asking why we measure a car performance in horsepower (already wrong on so many levels) when we dont measure a rockets performance in plane power. But seems to completely forget we measure a rockets performance in Pounds of thrust, an equally arbitrary unit. If this guy stopped spending his day trying to get circlejerked from his "fans" by posting idiotic shit all the time, i could probably take his opinions to mean something worthwhile.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[delt0r]

He said its impossible for private industry to do it. He is most probably wrong.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Stop putting words into his mouth.
" If he would at least qualify his criticism of private space industry "
His criticism is regard private industry going to Mars, and he is correct. Tyson has been a a supporter of private industries in space, but the only money in it for the private industry at this time is satellite launches, restocking, and getting people into low orbit.

" have had just a slight impact on advancing things like aerospace "
because of government contracts. NASA contracts out. They set the goals for thing private industry doesn't have.

Dr. Tyson. Musk is a Mr. Tyson is a Dr.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

"... commercial entities trying to make things *not* cost too much would have been noticed,.."
becasue it's wrong.
Private industries are driven to make thing as expensive as they can get away with.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

all of what you say is very true and very important

BUT

there is water on Mars and that makes it a launch platform to get to the asteroid belt (and beyond) which is rich in the kinds of materials that make the entire endeavour look attractive to the largest industries in the world - which currently, literally, spend BILLIONS in EXPLORATION to get at (relatively) tiny deposits of those same materials, right here on Earth...

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

No we haven't. We have a set of people using the sue argument to blame someone else for their fear of risk.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[delt0r]

I use it as an example because it was and still is a mix of private companies with quite a lot of government support. Even now airports are not possible without substantial government support at least locally, for example.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

well you are A or B. You say you aren't B that means.....
go on, you can puzzle through it.

"Absence of proof != proof of absence."
depends. If I say a nuclear bomb went of in LA, and there wasn't any mention of it in the news, then Absence of proof would be proof of absence.
If I said someone fired a gun, but it wasn't mention in the news, then you would be correct.

I'm really tired of people trotting out propositional logic they clearly don't actually understand.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

His ultra rich business didn't get there bu throwing most their money at something that has no return.

Maybe a robotic mission, which could be cool, not a manned mission.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Government bureaucracies grown and shrink based on a number of things.

BTW, mankind invented bureaucracies so we can do complex things well.
Which isn't to say that can't have problem, but they do server some very good purposes.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

"There seemed to be two minutes of chat with an expert, followed by 5 minutes of adverts for the entire length of the show.
that's the show format. Tyson has no control over that.

"Tyson has a side-kick who's only purpose is to be a smart arse and constantly wise-crack while the expert is talking. "
I have never seen Tyson with a sidekick. Are you sure it just wasn't another radio 'personality'?

"The show was horrific'
which has nothing to do with Tyson.

DO you have more information on the show?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[GLMDesigns]

Why do you fear private corporations and yet want to centralize everything in the government?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anne_Nonymous]

Here

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I think we could look at going to Mars much in the same light as the Europeans settling the Americas. Without private interest, it probably wouldn't have happened. And yes, it was very dangerous. It was rather common to not survive the trip over here, it was expensive, and then once you landed you had to figure out how to survive from there.

This was repeated yet again when settling the west (think back to The Oregon Trail, remember how many times you died trying to make it?)

Sorry but Tyson really lacks perspective. And to be honest, all Keynesians do. The Keynesian model fell apart back in the 80's when their model couldn't explain stagflation (the Keynesian model basically said it was impossible) and the "New Keynesian" model doesn't work much better (it flies in the face of the broken window fallacy - Paul Krugman is recommending that the government simulate an alien invasion in order to jumpstart the economy, and he's foolish enough to think it would actually work.)

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about investors? Some rich bloke with enough money and desire could make this happen.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

What are you smoking? Pass it over.

The Chinese will not be making the next lunar lander, they will be lucky to have an economy much longer the way they are building empty cities. The russians can't even afford to visit the ISS alone, how are they going to buy it?

We don't bum rides, we fund their space program. They need us more than we need them. We could always buy transport on another launcher and soon Falcon will be that launcher.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless and until we can get cheap orbital capability (space elevator, ram accelerator, launch loop, or similar), water on Mars does absolutely fuck-all for asteroid mining. There's no sense jumping down a gravity well to get water so you can electrolyse it then burn 90% of it getting back out of the well with a chemical rocket. But if you can economically lift it from Mars to an orbital fuel depot, we might actually be getting somewhere.

Now it's true that a Martian space elevator is less demanding on material strength than a Terran one, so that one you could feasibly do at Mars before materials science has figured out how to do one on Earth. The other options, though, seem equally feasible on Earth and Mars (because current materials science isn't the limiting factor), so there's absolutely no reason anyone would build one on Mars before we do the prototype right here on Earth. That hasn't happened yet, and the mechanicals simply aren't there to get the huge mass of a Martian space-elevator (either prebuilt and spooled up, or in the form of a just-add-mars-rocks) from Earth's surface to Mars orbit.

So all the water on Mars is great for people on Mars -- but for the near future, asteroid miners will be better off mining icy asteroids for their water supplies.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Guru80]

You have pretty much made his point for him. There is no private business in the world that has the funds or ability to fund the loses long enough to eventually get to the point where profit is possible, particularly when it comes to colonizing Mars. I can almost guarantee there be more deaths and lost missions than actual settlements.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dcw3]

HAHAHAHA. Everyone on that list did what they did based on government infrastructure and RnD.

Spare me the childish guffaw, and tells us when Edison's work was based on government infrastructure and RnD.

NO one is saying private industry doesn't invent

What does this look like: "Opening new frontiers and basic research is not."

Bell labs started from french government funding, via an award.

And, did he invent the phone before, or after that money? Who did make it possible to lay those phone lines? You could argue that it was the government, but they only provided permission, not funding, nor RnD. I will grant that the phone companies were monopoly utilities, and could charge a virtual tax for their research, so in that way this may not be a good example.

Yes, I totally understand business profit motive, I've managed multi-million dollar budgets at work. And yes, I understand that many of the advances made were the result of military, and aerospace needs. Private industry will do research on their own (we do), but with the intent of finding some gold at the end of that rainbow. The question is will there be enough ROI for Musk and whoever joins him to proceed.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Mr. Slippery]

When private industry begins talking about doing the things that have traditionally been done within NASA for cheaper, this becomes an argument against increasing government funding for space exploration.

Not at all. Private industry has always contracted for NASA. Having private companies do things like supply runs to the ISS isn't a significant change; if they can do the scutwork cheaper it leaves more funds for NASA to do the science.

Private companies are not going to launch pure science missions. There's no profit in it. Science missions are going to remain NASA's bailiwick.The handful of commercially viable space missions (which will never involve sending humans beyond Earth orbit -- deep space is for robots) can be taken over by private industry.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a fun dictionary to read. What else is in there?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Mr. Slippery]

Something closer to what happened in the airline industry is what you want.

The airline industry takes people and cargo from one habitable place to another.

Something close to that for space would take people from one habitable place (Earth) to...where, exactly?

There is nowhere to go. "Going into space" is as pointless as "going into the air". Modulo a handful of thrill-seekers or performance artists, you go into the air in order to get somewhere. There is no destination for which you can go into space, that's worth getting there other than for extremely rich thrill-seekers or performance artists, or participants in international bigger-dick contents. Science missions can be done so much more cheaply with robots that we will never launch a human beyond Earth orbit on a science mission.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

Inventing a light bulb is not exactly breaking new frontiers

Investing the first commercially viable light bulb is.

But going to Mars does not even require a big scientific breakthrough. We know how rockets work, we know how to get a load to Mars. It's done before. It will need lots of little improvements and innovation to get a person there, for sure. But what it really requires is lots and lots of funding.

It needs infrastructure. NASA doesn't provide and even at times has inhibited the creation of infrastructure.

And you won't see a return of investment in the next decades

Then you're doing it wrong.

Sure, I agree that a government can take an unworthy or even actively harmful goal and chuck vast sums of money at it. But what is the point of doing so aside from a display of status?

There's no reason that putting a person on Mars has to be in the realm of government-only spending. I'd rather private industry first greatly lowered the cost of this activity, then see what happens.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

As the other replier noted, Musk is "chief designer" at SpaceX. SpaceX has developed three different engines and two different launch vehicles. He's also running Tesla Motors and proposed a novel, high speed transportation system called "Hyperloop".

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[delt0r]

See my other posts on similar topics. TL;DR or otherwise couldn't be bothered reading my history. I agree with you.

However I think in time tech will make it cheap enough and there is enough people that are thrill seekers or whatever, that there is a viable industry there.

I am starting regular skydiving next year with the goal of wingsuit flying about 2-3 years later.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[fritsd]

Opening new frontiers and basic research is not.

Maybe your sentence should be split in two; we know that basic research is a government task because it's almost certainly not profitable. On the other hand "opening new frontiers" could be profitable (Hilton hotel on Mars for the super-rich) but it carries so much risk that the taxpayers might revolt, e.g. European Green Parties's complaint against the ITER reactor is not that it is an abomination and the Ents should release the Rhône and flood and extinguish it, but rather that "nuclear fusion is still too far away a goal to spend taxpayer money on at the moment" (note the large difference in position towards nuclear fusion and nuclear fission reactors, here!).

Did that make sense? I'm tired..

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

Last time I checked you need to have a degree in Physics to be called a physicist...

Well, you heard wrong. Just look up the definition. Anyone who studies or is well versed in physics is a physicist.

One wonders how the ancients ever managed to do any physics without any Physics degrees lying around.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

If that money gets Musk on Mars in his lifetime, then it has return.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Andrio]

The problem is rockets. They suck and will never get us anywhere useful in space.

We need to invent something better. There is something out there that is undiscovered and impossible right now that will change all this. Some new source of energy, or method of storing energy.

Go back in time far enough and tell an expert that one day we'll have pocket computers, and they would probably laugh at you. "Computers can't be that small, because vacuum tubes can't be that small. There is no computer without vacuum tubes."

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[0123456]

The most expensive way to put people on Mars is to have states fund it, because then it becomes a pork-barrel project that will take decades and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

The cheap way to put people on Mars is for a few billionaire tourists to pay for it out of their own pocket. That way you get something adequately safe, at a reasonable price, with no frills.

Of course it doesn't help that there's no good reason to go to Mars other than tourism. Pretty much any resources you want are available on the Moon or asteroids, and on Mars you're just dropping yourself into a signiificant gravity well for no good reason.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Oh, it must be really hard living in a state of permanent frustration. BTW, your example is incorrect. If you'd say that there was a nuclear explosion in LA, I just have to find any mention of LA in today's news, even weather forecast, to acquire "proof of absence" of said explosion. It's pretty logical to assume that, say, traffic report from LA would be replaced by the news of "Terrorists attacked USA again!!!". If, on the other hand, I'd notice that there were absolutely no news from LA for some time (minutes to half-an-hour), then that would be "absence of proof" and I'd give your version some credit until I'd find some real proof of said explosion or (hopefully) of absence of any catastrophic events. So...

That's not even mentioning that you haven't got my crude and untasteful joke in the upper comment correctly. Better luck next time!

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Degree in physics" usually means a Ph.D. People with just a B.S. in physics are referred to as "failures".

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[0123456]

Seems the airline industry was started by governments investing in warplanes during a couple of world wars.

If I remember correctly, the sale of cheap military transports after WWII killed off several aircraft manufacturers who'd otherwise have been producing civilian transports.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[wiredlogic]

This is also why they ballooned the defense budget in the name of "fighting terrorism" and are now unwilling to make the necessary cuts to return to pre-war funding levels because it will mean a loss of jobs in the MIC.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[ultranova]

The problem is rockets. They suck and will never get us anywhere useful in space.

The problem is not rockets, the problem is chemical fuel. It simply doesn't have energy density high enough to be economical. You need a lot of low-density fuel to lift your final payload the final ascend, which means you need even more fuel to rise that fuel, and then more fuel to rise the fuel that rises the fuel that rises the payload, and then there's the issue of tanks to hold all this fuel...

We need to invent something better. There is something out there that is undiscovered and impossible right now that will change all this. Some new source of energy, or method of storing energy.

Except that it won't help. It's either as low-density as chemistry, in which case it has all the same problems, or it's high-density, in which case it has all the problems of nuclear power. "Powerful" and "dangerous" are synonyms. The only way to get around that would be have the energy be aware of what it's doing and avoid harmful effects; in other words, be alive, smart and benevolent.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Sique]

Inventing a light bulb is not exactly breaking new frontiers

Investing the first commercially viable light bulb is.

No. It's not. It's no new frontier. It's a gradual improvement, and one person (or better: one laboratory with around 150 engineers) made exactly that improvement that allowed widespread commercial exploitation. In Edison's case, it was finding one special type of bamboo, whose charred fibers withstand 100 hrs of use. It was not the first solution for a lightbulb, it was not the best solution, it was just a commercially viable solution. It lead at first to a patent war about 90 patents directly connected to the lightbulb and another 125 patents around it. As I said: Edison's lightbulb was nothing radically new, it was state of the Art at the time of its invention. And the coal got replaced pretty soon (20 years later) with tantal wires and later with tungsten wires.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[h4rr4r]

Why do you make insane assumptions based on little information?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[notanalien_justgreen]

A huge chunk of NASA's funding goes directly to private industry like SpaceX and Lockheed Martin. Ask these companies what they think of NASA funding - I guarantee you they're in favor or it. SpaceX's primary funding is to deliver the ISS. Without NASA these companies would be hurting. I don't know why people think NASA spends all its money on itself, it's just not true.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Solandri]

While that's a plausible hypothesis, that's not at all what happened recently. Bush's science research budget increases focused on medicine, and NIH specifically. NASA's research budget actually shrank under Bush (though their overall budget went up slightly once you factor in the D in R&D).

The whole idea that budget trends can be tied to a Presidential administration is flawed anyway. Much of the science budget cuts under Clinton were done at the behest of a Republican Congress who insisted on balancing the budget (yup, the budget surplus under Cliton's administration was the Republicans' doing, not Clinton's, though Clinton to his credit went along with their budget cuts). Likewise, the Democrats in Congress went along with Bush's science budget increases. The President simply says what he wants; it's up to Congress to make it happen (or not happen). If in addition to the Presidential administration, you include which party controls the House and Senate, most of these party-correlated "patterns" in the budget simply vanish.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like a rocket with lateral control and landing?

LEM me think about that.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[chihowa]

I genuinely don't know which of you is right and I'm mildly curious (but not enough to research is myself).

That said, in internet debates you don't refute unsubstantiated assertions with more unsubstantiated assertions. Take the time to at least find one reference and back up your claim before you hit post. If you don't do that, your post carries no more weight than the post you're "refuting".

Repeatedly seeing this here makes me die a little inside. From the outside your argument looks like: "Uh-huh", "Nuh-uh" over and over again. We should be better than that here.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[tibman]

AFAIK, SpaceX is privately owned.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Pino Grigio]

I think it was Star Talk, but I'm not certain. Tyson tweeted a link ages ago. Don't get me wrong, I like Tyson. I buy and listen to his audio books. But that show was absolutely terrible.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[drakaan]

...okay, but that's discounting competition and price pressure. The incentive is to be cheaper than the alternatives, so people will buy your space services, right?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[drakaan]

...but there was only progress because there was a huge push to out-compete the Soviets. It's not as if NASA grew engineers in a lab, they hired them from the public sector. They did create the field (easy to do in a vacuum), but not most of the technology. I'm all for upping NASA's budget (I'd pay an extra grand a year in taxes without complaint), but that's not going to happen. Saying that private industry *can't* do spaceflight is as silly as predicting that they couldn't have done commercial air services. We just need to be supportive of whoever is succeeding as much as we're collectively able to be.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[TWiTfan]

It defines Slashdot as a "worthless, inhospitable time sink."

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Rockoon]

Nobody but you mentioned Obama.

You are projecting your own opinions onto others now.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[drakaan]

Allow me to modify the bit you quoted, then. I usually try to be more careful, and I apologize:

...If he would at least qualify his criticism of private space industry's probability of establishing a Mars colony...

Why do we decry the ability of the private sector to do stuff in space? I'm not saying "they absolutely will establish a Mars base!", I'm taking issue with anyone saying outright that it can't be done. It's a silly statement, regardless of whether it's made by a well-respected Doctor of Philosophy in Astrophysics, or someone who is somewhat less qualified.

Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, and he's curt and painfully correct on many far more controversial topics. I just think that on this statement, there is room for disagreement.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) design a rocket ship
2) design hyper loop
3) physics review of electric car

item 1 is especially relevant.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[BorisSkratchunkov]

Bell Labs being part of a government-supported natural monopoly that has languished miserably in the post-Ma Bell world. Not the example I would choose if you were trying to make the case for private enterprise. The Bell system seemed non-governmental in only a nominal sense.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

The Department's budget increased by $14B between 2002 and 2004, from $46B to $60B.[16]

was quicker to find then writing a post.

For the second point, start here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals

get back to me in 6 months after you have done a comparative between budget, presidential parties and control in congress.
Since the parties stance on things have reversed, you should note those.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Rockoon]

The Department of Educations budgets are public record and the data includes both the actual appropriations as well as the amounts requested in the president budget (the president submits a budget request every year.)

We can end this on Bush's final year, his 2008 State of the Union address, where he asked congress to double science spending. Thats after he already increased science spending over his terms.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Rockoon]

Ah yes, the "even though we are the ones that did it, its the other guys fault" defense that is quite common with Democrats (see the Affordable Care Act.)

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Who do you think created the infrastructure that allowed ho to apply the principles of mass production.?
Who do you think paid for telegraph lines and that infrastructure?
Edison owes his start to the quadraplex telegraph. the technology he used, and improved upon was developed by Julius Wilhelm Gintl. Who was paid fro the government of Australia to do research.

Once again, government funding supplied the ground work and infrastructure. Private industry ran with it once it found a way to make money.

"What does this look like: "Opening new frontiers and basic research is not.""
it looks like opening new frontiers an basic research.

" Who did make it possible to lay those phone lines?"
The government.

"Yes, I totally understand business profit motive, I've managed multi-million dollar budgets at work"
Those thing don't necessarily go together. Based on you post I don't think you truly understand business profit motive. No doubt you think you do. If you can't think of any examples from classes that don't end in 101, then you do not.

" Private industry will do research on their own (we do)"
yes. But nothing you do is a completely new frontier with no infrastructure and little history.

"The question is will there be enough ROI for Musk and whoever joins him to proceed."
and we know the answer., and it's no.
There is plenty of ROI to build the things NASA will need to get their.

"Spare me the childish guffaw,"
HAHAHAHAHA...no.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Rockoon]

No, they do not. I suggest you actually read the numbers and the policies

I did read the numbers, and so did Neil deGrasse Tyson. The numbers are public record.

The numbers tell both of us that you are full of shit. You do seem to know the common Democrat propaganda, even though you don't know whats actually being done in and by the government.

The numbers don't lie. People do. Stop repeating people. Look at the numbers.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

The also say 'literally' means to opposite things, literally.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[vux984]

asking why we measure a car performance in horsepower (already wrong on so many levels)

Wrong in that its exactly one of the most prominent performance metrics anyone looks at, while also being completely absurd.

. But seems to completely forget we measure a rockets performance in Pounds of thrust,

That's a far less arbitrary unit than horsepower. Admittedly its still a stupid unit... im not a rocket scientist though, but I'd have hoped rocketetry was largely done with SI units... thrust in Newtons, Specific Impulse in seconds, mass flow rate in kg/s, etc... and the conversion pounds thrust was just what gets shoveled out in press releases to have big numbers. That's what I'd have hoped... I'm prepared to be disappointed.

If this guy stopped spending his day trying to get circlejerked from his "fans" by posting idiotic shit all the time, i could probably take his opinions to mean something worthwhile.

Engaging with idiots is the nature of celebrity; and if your worst complaint is some cornball jokes that's not much of a complaint. Neil's done more good for science and space awareness than any actual physicist or rocket engineer I can think of.

In many respects getting regular people to think about and care about space is just as important for space exploration as actually doing the hard science. We need both.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

I can't decide which is worse:
either you are too stupid to understand an analogy for what it is.
Or so frustrated with being simple you had to twist the example outside its contextual bounds. Here let me use soething clearer:

"I flip a coin 5 times and get "heads" every time (no "tails"). Is it a "heads only" coin? (...having a "head" printed on both sides.) Well, say I flip it 500 times and get "heads" every time. Now I'm pretty convinced that it is "heads only.""
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AbsenceOfEvidenceIsNotEvidenceOfAbsence

http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2012/11/18/absence-of-evidence-is-evidence-of-absence-in-many-cases/

"That's not even mentioning that you haven't got my crude and untasteful[sic*] joke in the upper comment correctly. Better luck next time!"
actually I did. May it doesn't mean what you think it means?

*I assume you mean 'distasteful'

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Not to the investors.*

Did I really need to point that out?

*unless the investers are a major car company! ZING

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I say a nuclear bomb went of in LA, and there wasn't any mention of it in the news, then Absence of proof would be proof of absence.

No, it wouldn't. That's not how logic works.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

I'm sure it was. I just suspect it was the shows host and producer and not Tyson that made it horrbiel.

OTOH I haven't heard it, so I may be wrong.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

Yes, and it's awesome. Not exactly cutting edge frontier.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the funding bush Jr put into education was for the no child left behind bullshit, which saw schools spending ridiculous ammounts for these bullshit tests.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

It's no new frontier. [...] it was just a commercially viable solution

0 Ok, why do you think this isn't a valid frontier? It fits the definition as commercially viable light bulbs hadn't been developed before. This was indeed new ground that was being explored.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[geekoid]

yeah. I can start a space company. big deal.
How many would spend 50 billion to go to mars for no immediate return?

Granted, it could happen. If some one had the money an was forward thinking enough to wait 20+ year before the technology they developed got spun into something for the consumer. OTOH, they would want to do it all in house and not share, so that timeline might be more like 40 years.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

**Unless Elon Musk is the investor.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[HornWumpus]

Liquid fueled ICBMs have been obsolete for 50 years. What you say was true in 1950, not so much in 1980.

The money however does go to the same group of companies.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Belial6]

I'm going to have to agree with this. Too many times, I have seen businesses say that they can't do something they don't want to do because of "the risk of getting sued", yet you will find them taking the exact same risks in other areas.

The same can be said for individuals.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[tibman]

Will it be cutting edge when the first rocket stage returns to the earth by landing vertically instead of an uncontrolled fall into the ocean? Or do you mean frontier as in doing something in space that no one has done before? Because i think that's the point of the argument that Neil is making. That SpaceX will never land a human on Mars. That only a Government can do that. But the creator/owner of SpaceX has said that landing humans on Mars is something they ARE pursuing. The company has so far has been delivering tangible and functional products in that direction. Not many Governments can say the same. Am i arguing in the right direction?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dadelbunts]

No its wrong as in a cars performance is measured in alot more than horsepower. Not even an engines performance is measured only in horsepower. The problem i have is that he is intelligent enough as is, there is no need to make quirky wrong statements about subjects he doesnt know, to try to seem smarter. I always liked Sagan and Feynman the most.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[dcw3]

Your response once again is childish, and with that I'm done with you. Grow up, and come back when you learn to act and think like an adult.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[vux984]

No its wrong as in a cars performance is measured in alot more than horsepower.

Most people can name maybe 3 stats about their car... some sort of fuel economy figure, displacement (if its part of the model number or just badged on to the side of the car) and horsepower.

The problem i have is that he is intelligent enough as is, there is no need to make quirky wrong statements about subjects he doesnt know

Do you really think he doesn't know enough about cars to make an intelligent statement about this? Or is it more likely he just tweeted some vaguely-science related joke he heard some comic do at evening at the improv?

(Admittedly, the sole purpose of which is the sort of phenomena you cynically labelled the "circle-jerk with his fans")

I always liked Sagan and Feynman the most.

Feyman... I mean, *I* know the name Richard Feynman and what he did and what not... but I honestly can't think of him in terms of regular public awareness / celebrity at all... it really doesn't help that he's been dead for 25 years now.

Sagan has much better name recognition, although he's fading now too. Being dead does that.

At least Neil's got breathing going for him. :)

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[tmosley]

Wow, so one thing is funded by government, and the government gets credit for EVERY SINGLE THING that ever came into being afterwards?

The mental contortions of the statist never cease to amaze me.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[fatphil]

Or a railroad. And an efficient postal system.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Sique]

Because the solution was clear even before the actual invention. Electric light was feasible. Electric light had a business case. It was the difficult little details that one had to get right. It was exactly what the original poster said: It wasn't breaking into new land, it was paving the road for the tourists, that was Edison's main achievement. I guess, one of the judges in the patent courts said it best:

It was a remarkable discovery that an attenuated thread of carbon would possess all the long-sought qualities of a practical burner when maintained in a perfect vacuum. The extreme fragility of such a structure was calculated to discourage experimentation with it, and it does not detract in the least from the originality of the conception that previous patents hat suggested that thin plates or pencils or small bridges could be used. The futility of hoping to maintain a burner in vacuum with any permanency had discouraged prior inventors, and Mr. Edison is entitled to the credit of obviating the mechanical difficulties which disheartened them,

Judge Wallace

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason private industry is doing space more successfully than government is that private industry doesn't have nearly as much affirmative action mandates as government. NASA's leader thinks his first priority is outreach towards Muslims.

Which is why it's ironic to hear this from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who's famous for being an astrophysicist just like Clever Hans was famous for his arithmetic.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

Because the solution was clear even before the actual invention.

Except that it wasn't. It took considerable effort even after that point. Recall those many patents from processes that didn't work out!

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk is a con-man, he doesn't have a U Penn Physics degree as he claims. See lawsuit by Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors. Musk was 1st principal funder of Tesla Motors (40 million), who is now (falsely) claiming he is a Tesla founder..!!? Musk also falsely claims he is Paypal co-founder, when in fact his company merged with another company that ended up being Paypal. He was kicked off the Board of Paypal, after p*ssing off principals. There is this Edge.org thing, where "bigshots" convene at SpaceX, where he claims to be a "Physicist"..total BS. Also, there is this POTUS (Physics of the Universe Summit), a fluff thing by Caltech Physics drawing "bigshots" in Astronomy/Physics, hosted by SpaceX/Musk.

The SpaceX Dragon launches have been plagued by rocket engine problems. (video of launch was taken down of engine nacelle blowing apart..coverup by SpaceX) As long as he continues to insert himself as an "engineer/physicist" WITHOUT proper training, SpaceX is in trouble. Look at the "flawed Safety Culture" at NASA, as per Shuttle disasters -- Challneger & Columbia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster

"In the appendix, he argued that the estimates of reliability offered by NASA management were wildly unrealistic, differing as much as a thousandfold from the estimates of working engineers. "For a successful technology," he concluded, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

SpaceX is a "Recipe for Disaster", where Engineering/Physics principles were NOT adhered to. A "private" version of NASA (bloated US Govt program)

Tesla MOtors is doing the SAME THING, overloading Technology in the Model S (currently in mass production, VERY BUGGY release..problems everywhere) without addressing Durability/Reliability testing. I.e., "Culture of SAfety" is flawed..

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dangerous, Expensive, Unquantified Risks, are all things investors AVOID.

Unless there is a large profit to be made. The California and Alaska gold rush experiences saw lots of folks gamble all against the possibility of getting rich.

Dangerous, Expensive and Unquantified Risk also applies to deep water drilling. Yet it's corporations that do this, not governments.

  Or sometimes, it is undertaken by corporations paid by governments. Guess who takes the liability risk when the government pays?

What governments can do is try Dangerous, Expensive things with Unquantified risk without worrying about profit, or even success.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[buybuydandavis]

Intelligence does not equal expertise in all fields, even for Tyson. When people want something, they are motivated to special pleading, and money should be forcibly extracted from other people to pay for it.

Nothing to see here, folks. "Force my neighbors to fund what I want." Yawn.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[Fenster Karton]

the technology needs some maturation and the best way to do that would be to move into space. Eros has been sampled and it is said to contain more gold than mankind has discovered so far on Earth. Perhaps termiting Eros and turning it into housing would be good because the materials excavated could pay for it. A city in space would be a good start.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Sique]

As I said: It was the difficult little details that one had to get right.

The solution was to have a uniform piece of coal burning in a vacuum while electric current flows through it. The hellishly difficult details were: 1. how to create a piece of coal with constant diameter to avoid hot spots, 2. how to fix it onto a conducting wire. 3. how to create and keep the vacuum. 4. how to get the coal to burn at 1900 celsius without having the connecting wire melt away.

It's a little bit similar to the invention of the steam engine. The solution was clear long before James Watt. Heating water until it boils yields enough energy to move a piston in a cylinder. This was patented long before James Watt even was born. And the Newcomen engine was already an improvement on this, so one could call it the first commercially viable version, though it still was enormous in size, occupying a whole house for a single machine, and using gigantic amounts of coal.

James Watt invented three very important details. First, heating the water and cooling it afterwards outside the actual cylinder, thus improving vastly on the economy of the machine, cutting the needed fuel to a fourth of what it was before, and allowing the machine to get reduced in size. Second, the regulator, allowing changing loads on the running machine without having to constantly re-calibring it, thus allowing its use in new environments like powering looms. Third: combining the piston with a gear to change the linear movement of the piston in a rotating movement to power all kinds of mechanical engines, thus creating an universal machine for generic power. Those invention allowed Boulton&Watt to reign supreme in the world of steam engines for the decades to come. It still doesn't make James Watt the inventor of the steam engine or a breaker into uncharted territory.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Virtucon]

Don't get me wrong, Neil Tyson is right up there with Michio Kaku in terms of TV quotes for the History Channel but I doubt he seriously understands that if there's something to be exploited, capitalists or governments looking for an advantage will push us further out into space. Right now the reason they're not mining the shit out of mars and every metallic asteroid out there is that it's not cost effective or there's no shortage of some critical element that's necessary to promote other technologies. It will happen, just not right now because you won't see businesses making investments that don't have an eventual return, shareholders won't tolerate it. That means in the near future, unless they're a contracting firm for a government or there's some radical discovery nearby that can make commercial sense, meaning that it must be profitable, then you won't see companies venturing out into space but it will happen probably not in the next 25 to 50 years, but it will eventually happen.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[khallow]

As I said: It was the difficult little details that one had to get right.

One can say this about any frontier, be it making a commercially viable light bulb or landing a person on Mars. The "solution" is clear long before - though no one has done them before. But there's these details to work out.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[gzuckier]

We can't even make supersonic air travel profitable.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[cthulhu11]

Articulate? I've mostly seen him being a pompous ass. Call me a baaad liberal if you like, but if he were Caucasian nobody would have ever heard of him.

Re: I suspect he's wrong.

[delt0r]

Its not fair comparison, because you can fly long distance fairly quick for cheap. Supersonic transport competes with subsonic ones and there are a bunch of physics reason why you always use more fuel for supersonic. But what does a orbital craft compete with?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Last time I checked you need to have a degree in Physics to be called a physicist"

Probably necessary, but by no means sufficient. The majority of people with degrees in physics can't do physics. That said, a PhD generally means you have at least used some physics - something most people with Masters and below haven't done.

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[GLMDesigns]

Replied to the comment "The folks at Lockheed, Boeing, etc would be working for NASA if not for this incessant need to "privatize" everything. " The alternative is centralized government is it not? And if not - what?

Re:I suspect he's wrong.

[mdielmann]

Then try the word visionary. I wonder if any people like that ever had money...

Liability

[blavallee]

Commercial space exploration will end once the first lawsuit is filed.
Only governments can enforce the applicability of a liability waiver.

The real reason

[sir-gold]

Tyson hit the REAL reason why serious private space flight will never happen, even if he didn't realize it:

"...There are unquantified risks..."

If the risks can't be quantified down to a concrete set of numbers, no insurance company will offer coverage. Without insurance coverage, no corporation has the balls to actually take the risk.

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is disappointing because nobody talking here has the resources to make a meaningful impact one way or the other. It has more to do with popular culture and Neil DeGrasse Tyson's career as a science celebrity than anything else. For what it's worth I make my anonymous vote to have this removed for lack of relevance to the tagline "News... Stuff That Matters". It fails to meet any of those criteria.

Re:The real reason

[jbeaupre]

Tyson is the REAL reason why serious private space flight will never happen, even if he didn't realize it:

FTFY

By insisting it's too risky and too expensive and can't be quantified, he's just perpetuating false reasons not to go into space ... by anyone.

The alternative is to assume that they are not true under some conditions, learn those conditions, create those conditions, then make money.

If getting government contracts (existing demand) is a step along the way to create those conditions, so be it. If creating demand is a step, so be it. But making an a priori assumption that "it's impossible" is poor science and poor business.

Re:The real reason

[delt0r]

Insurance Companies already provide insurance for satellites, from launch problems to in orbit mechanics. The have made a business out of quantifying what others won't. Life (or your death) has a well established "cost" or price. Ask any airline insurance company.

Re:The real reason

[John.Banister]

There are unquantified risks to people on the ground if it isn't super-convenient to shoot the private concerns having rocks at the top of the well. You could sell the asteroid, but if you sell protection from it, you can keep the asteroid and sell protection from it again.

Re:The real reason

[bill_mcgonigle]

By insisting it's too risky and too expensive and can't be quantified, he's just perpetuating false reasons not to go into space ... by anyone.

He's good with astronomy and communications. We can give him a pass for not being very sharp on economics.

Re:The real reason

[GodfatherofSoul]

Well, I agree with your point, but I don't get why you say "even if he didn't realize it". He said it!

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

He spake the truth and low the investors did quake in fear!

Bad Neil!

Re:The real reason

[TuringCheck]

There are international laws about rocket launches and insurance. In particular there are no liability limits. And the state that does the launch assumes full responsability.
Insurance companies are partially covered by state insurance but if serious shit happens (foreign city obliterated by out of control rocket) they will go bankrupt and the launching organization will go bankrupt and most likely in jail and the launching state could still go bankrupt or in a war.
Facing these risks imagine how many insurance companies can do that and how high are the fees, especially for new unproven launchers.

Re:The real reason

[TuringCheck]

By international space law states are responsible in full for any liability caused by a launch. Insurance companies are only 2nd tier and obviously a government will refuse to allow any launch that's considered too risky.

Re:The real reason

[sir-gold]

What I meant was, he might not realize just how critical that one bit of information is, more so than his other points

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

...companies are not in the business of having balls and taking risks - they are there to keep quarterly reports glossy by keeping income up (however unsustainable). They answer to stockholders, not wide-eyed visionaries like us!

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

...companies are not about having "the balls to actually take the risk" - they are there to make their quarterly reports pretty and stockholders (via Wall Street) happy.

Zeoform - revolutionary new material

[Anonymous Coward]

Just waiting for Slashdot to catch up with Gizmag (which seems to be where they get half of their news articles from), and post up about Zeoform.

http://www.zeoform.com/

Historically speaking

[oDDmON oUT]

Many major exploratory endeavors were subsidized:

Columbus, subsidized by Queen Isabella.

Louis and Clark, commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and subsidized by the US government

The transcontinental railroad, subsidized by the US government via the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864.

The interstate highway system, which enabled US citizens to truly explore their own country was brought about through the US taxpayer at the behest of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

NASA was subsidized.

The initial ventures into "cyberspace" came about through the direction of DARPA, an arm of government.

In fact, looking back, private industry hasn't really gotten involved until a clear profit potential was identified. So yeah, I'm going to have to side with Neil on this one.

Re:Historically speaking

[Xiaran]

You forgot commercial air travel. When you look at the big picture commercial air travel has made a cumulative loss and only exists because of government subsidy.

Re:Historically speaking

[oDDmON oUT]

I was concentrating more on exploratory endeavors, but you make a very valid point. Thanks for mentioning it.

Without a worthy enemy to focus government efforts

[korbulon]

Private enterprise is the only way. Which is not to say that it will succeed, since this would essentially redefine the meaning of long-term business goals. However, under the current business zeitgeist in which the health of companies is gauged on a quarterly basis, in which "shareholder value" and "fiduciary responsibility" are code words for huge profits NOW or clearly something is fundamentally wrong with the business model - and it's time to send in the management consultants and equity fund boys for a healthy restructuring - I don't see it happening.

Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... but at the current pricing, it is still HIGHLY improbable.

Although entrepreneurship can go very VERY FAR, it still needs to follow what the balance sheet tells it to do.

After all, businesses survive/thrive purely because of profit, and no business can engage in loss-making endeavor for too long.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but at the current pricing, it is still HIGHLY improbable.

Although entrepreneurship can go very VERY FAR, it still needs to follow what the balance sheet tells it to do.

After all, businesses survive/thrive purely because of profit, and no business can engage in loss-making endeavor for too long.

Not quite sure whether to laugh or cry at the amount of irony coming from this when referring to a country that is trillions in debt. Seems "for too long" has been redefined.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[xigxag]

Not quite sure whether to laugh or cry at the amount of irony coming from this when referring to a country that is trillions in debt. Seems "for too long" has been redefined.

I'm more flabbergasted by the irony of your posting that comment in a topic that is expressly about why your equating "country" with "business" is wrong. Dr. Tyson's entire point is that a country is NOT necessarily a for-profit business and doesn't need to balance its ledger ever. A nation's ability to incur debt is tempered only by the will of the people or the leadership to continue, and the ability that it has to secure loans from creditors. Even there, loans from creditors are only required because there are external debts -- payments to domestic bondholders and to other nations. A hypothetical SFnal future world-spanning empire would not have external debt payments and could engage in any venture that its leadership had the ability to bring to fruition.

Having said that, I still suspect that Dr. Tyson is incorrect. First of all, we have reached the point where private individuals are as wealthy as some governments, and I don't see that trend abating. Mars One estimates they can put four people there for US$6 billion. That's an amount that could come out of a hyperwealthy individual's back pocket totally without regard to profit. They would be able to enlarge the frontier, so to speak, and determine whether it is even viable for humans to establish a permanent colony there. They would be able to report back to the accountants and from there, if profit was viable, industry would gladly take over, which Dr. Tyson acknowledges and encourages.

Secondly, Dr. Tyson is referring to the undetermined costs of establishing a frontier as being something that governments have traditionally undertaken. But those costs are only going to get cheaper over time. Robots continue to develop greater autonomy and data-gathering ability, so at some point in the not-too distant future, it will be possible for a robotic probe to do all of the necessary frontiering. And at some point after that, it will be possible for the robots to do all of the colonizing and profit-extraction as well.

Also, the uncharted waters parallel that Dr. Tyson used doesn't really work. In the case of the New World, the Spanish Government literally had no idea whatsoever of the dangers Columbus faced. Were there monsters or other impassible dangers? Nobody actually knew. The only way to gather the data was to do the mission. That's totally unlike, say, a mission to Mars, where we already know a considerable amount about the planet. Many of the risks are already known and will be better known long before colonization begins in earnest.

Not to mention, a great deal of Christopher Columbus's funding was indeed private. He just ran out of potential investors and had to turn to the crown for the rest of the funding, but that was not necessarily a foregone chain of events. Plus, Isabella wasn't looking to advance the cause of science and exploration - the Spanish government was in it for the money as well.

Finally, back to your comment, "the amount of irony coming from this when referring to a country that is trillions in debt." Presumably you mean the USA here, but Dr.Tyson didn't refer to any specific country. He just said a government would do so. Could just as easily be China, which is not trillions in debt. In timeless words of our Usenet forefathers, "Nice strawman."

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[jythie]

States and Corporations are rather different beasts, each with their strengths and weaknesses.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[ultranova]

Not quite sure whether to laugh or cry at the amount of irony coming from this when referring to a country that is trillions in debt. Seems "for too long" has been redefined.

Yes. It's been redefined from the traditional "when the creditors think you're at a risk of defaulting and thus either charge outrageous interest or outright refuse to lend any more" to "when some random jackass thinks so".

The real irony is that it's the same people who preach the wisdom of the Invisible Hand of the Free Market who then cry foul when the Hand decides lending the US government trillions is a good investment. The Hand apparently thinks the country is financially stable enough it's willing to pay for the privilege of having it hold its money. But obviously the Anonymous Coward of Slashdot is a greater expert in economics.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[notanalien_justgreen]

MarsOne is scam perpetuated by people who have no idea what they're doing. They can't put anyone on Mars (intact anyway) for anywhere close to $6 billion. The entire company is a joke designed to sell tshirts and take donations to fund their team (which is full of artists and "communication specialists"). Just look at your own link and compare it to say: http://www.spacex.com/ Their website is far more Web 2.0 (donate here!, Facebook like here! Buy a tshirt here!), then it is technology related.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[sumdumass]

MarsOne isn't trying to put people on mars for $6 billion. They are trying to determine what is needed and develop the tech to be transported and survive on mars for $6 billion.

I listened to a radio interview a while ago with them. They were clear that the $6 billion wouldn't be putting people on the planet. They were also clear that they were going to be asking for more money in the future too.

Perhaps you know something I don't or their statements are ambiguous enough that you took them differently then I did.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[HornWumpus]

Except the US federal reserve has been the biggest buyer of US treasuries for the last 5 years.

There is no market in US government debt. The government is selling it to itself. Answering the question: What happens when a Treasury bond auction doesn't sell out. Answer: It doesn't, The federal reserve has infinite cash.

This is the step before the 'treasury bubble' pops. Good luck to us all. We all own treasuries in the form of our expectations of social security payments.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[ultranova]

Except the US federal reserve has been the biggest buyer of US treasuries for the last 5 years.

So... is there a huge national debt or not? Because you can't have it both ways.

There is no market in US government debt. The government is selling it to itself.

So there is not, in fact, a huge national debt, just some "creative" accounting?

Answering the question: What happens when a Treasury bond auction doesn't sell out. Answer: It doesn't, The federal reserve has infinite cash.

So the US can't, in fact, go bankrupt, having literally unlimited credit? But of course all that money entering the economy is causing a huge inflation... nope, it's hovering steady at around 2%.

It would be simpler to just rise taxes 2%, but I guess this weird virtual debt scheme works too, having basically the same effect.

This is the step before the 'treasury bubble' pops.

How, exactly speaking, will it pop? Will it run out of its "infinite cash"? Will the inflation rate suddenly skyrocket (and why would it)?

I'm sorry, but what you're saying just isn't adding up. Please elaborate.

Re:Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[Geezle2]

[sigh]

Sovereign state =/= capitalist enterprise.

The State need never make a profit... ever.

Re: Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure 6 billion would be sufficient to put a person on mars. Just without any guarantees of surviving the landing, being able to survive once on the surface and no chance of getting home.

Re: Not, it is NOT impossible ...

[dgallard]

How lonely it would be on Mars. What a horrible idea.

As for the super-rich going on space roller coaster rides, sure why not. The transfer of wealth upward (which Fundamentalist Libertarians think is natural since "government is bad" and the "free" market is good) is going to make it possible for the upper one tenth or one hundredth per cent to pay for and go on such rides. Maybe they'll notice that the odds of surviving a launch and successful return into space are in only one in a few hundred and decide to spend their money on moats or whatever new form of security systems will be needed in the future to keep the rabble out.

Private space tech can work if we get behind it

[physicsphairy]

Space is dangerous.

Which doesn't matter as long as people are willing and the government doesn't step in to protect us from ourselves. I think the fact that it's dangerous has been much more of an impediment to NASA than it would be for private companies. When national pride rides on the mission success you have to attenuate risk to a degree that impedes the rate of progress. In any case, the progress of techology is constantly making all aspects of space travel safer, cheaper, and more feasible, which is why we are finally starting to see private space tech taking off. It could be that designing a robust space vehicle soon becomes as trivial as designing a luxury car.

It's expensive.

And potentially very profitable. Huge chunks of valuable metals floating around waiting to be mined. Potential for improved synthesis of high-value products in zero-G, or exploitable power which can be beamed back down to earth. Opportunity and adventure for which rich persons who would otherwise be building $1 billion yachts can pony up the ticket price. Entertainment value for the billions of earthlings watching the space colony reality TV shows. And then all the capitalizable charity and investment from people who just want it to happen.

There are unquantified risks.

Present in every undertaking, and the confrontation of which is what is known in economics as "entrepreurship."

I do completely agree that more government funding would be nice. But I think it's a mistake to downplay the promise of private space technology in order to make that case. Especially because doing so is going to chase away investment money, which, unlike the congressional budget, Neil Degrassie can definitely influence. In some ways, I don't think it's good to discuss feasibility at all. Space tech has been all about taking what is not feasible and making it feasible. It was never a given the Apollo missions would make it to the moon. And it's not a given that you and I are going to see someone land on Mars. But I'm willing to support Elon Musk, or NASA, or anyone else who is going to try, and I'm not going suggest they can't do it, because I have to hope they can.

Re:Private space tech can work if we get behind it

[Rollgunner]

And potentially very profitable. Huge chunks of valuable metals floating around waiting to be mined. .

I seem to recall reading that If there were a mass of gold ingots in low Earth orbit, it would not be economically feasible to send the Space Shuttle up to bring them back to Earth. You'd spend more on training, parts, maintenance and fuel than a cargo hold full of pure bullion could offset. If you had a factory in orbit to use the gold to some purpose, that might be different, but that's putting the cart before the horse.

Re:Private space tech can work if we get behind it

[RKThoadan]

While it's not entirely clear, the discussion in the link appears to be entirely about a Mars Colony, which I do tend to think is going to be non-profitable for a long time. He may be more open to asteroid mining.

Re:Private space tech can work if we get behind it

[Anonymous Coward]

"economically feasible to send the Space Shuttle up"

Of course not, because the Space Shuttle Program was never the "space bus" that it was supposed to be. It became a symbol of national pride and after that happened it also became a good place for various pork projects to hang their budget. If you look at the "Space Shuttle Budget" little of it went to the actual space shuttles, most was maintaining a massive expanse of research, administration, security, grounds maintenance, wetlands restoration, etc. For example the cost to put the shuttle into orbit in fuel was only about 1.75 Million (both liquid & solid), tack on refurb, ET and other consumables and you've probably got a cost of about $200-300 Million per launch. A small portion of the $1.5 Billion breakdown of the shuttles budget divided by actual launches.

Re:Ignore it

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

Tyson is clearly intelligent and knowledgable, but he's actually quite a bit of an egotistical twat as well. And at the risk of stating the obvious: the only reason he's famous is because he's black. Phil Plait is a much better scientist and skeptic, but not nearly as well known, again for the obvious reason.

Such a shame that we've traded in the brilliant Sagan for the lemon Tyson. Hopefully the next generation will get someone better.

As it's been said some time ago

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Relevant quotes from Arthur C. Clarke:

"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along."

"The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible."

And my personal favorite:

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

With all the respect to Neil, my bets are on Musk and his likes in this one.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, I don't think he thinks that a manned expedition to Mars, or even a Mars colony, it's impossible. But there's no way, with our current technology and knowledge, of making it profitable (economically) and since private entepreneurship is all about profit there's no way the project goes on. Another thing would be if tomorrow Elon Musk announced they have just patented an antigravitational device.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

my bets are on Musk

It's a losing bet.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Platitudes do not disprove concrete thinking. Simply because you can look at ideas that were proven true and then retroactively see that they were once deemed impossible does not mean that every idea that is viewed as impossible will be proven true. You have fallen into a very simple logical fallacy.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Relevant quotes from Arthur C. Clarke:

"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along."

"The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible."

And my personal favorite:

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

With all the respect to Neil, my bets are on Musk and his likes in this one.

Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, which predicted, among other things, extensive solar system colonization over a decade ago.

When it comes down to it, sci-fi writers of Clarke's generation were WILDLY optimistic about our ability to do space travel, while the old scientists throwing out caveats look to have been a bit more in touch with reality.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Nemyst]

It's always amusing to see people rebutting figures with what are pretty much just soundbites. You're essentially being a politician. Just like a politician, you don't take time to see what the actual argument is (it's been quoted many times in this comments section) or actually weight the argument. You just take your preconceived notion and accompanying snark lines and throw them at his face and feel smug about it.

Great job really.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Ahem... weighing the argument and still not agreeing with it for your own reasons is what's called smug these days? Being called a politician (that's low, BTW) just for taking the other side in the discussion? Well, that's strange, unless... are you a government contractor yourself, by any chance?

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, quoting sci-fi authors in a technology argument, the last resort of the desperate. Perhaps you should quote Gene Roddenberry to prove FTL travel is possible for an encore?

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Please show me the reasons that the OP disagrees. You won't see any valid reasons only platitudes.

Re:As it's been said some time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because Arthur C Clarke said it doesn't make it true.

Sounds like mining

[Anonymous Coward]

Dangerous.... tick.
Expensive ... tick.
Unquantfied risks... tick!

At least your robotic workforce won;t have unions.

NDGT Fanbois?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, way too many of the comments here are taking what he says on face value because, in the words of his radio show host, he's the Shaft of Astrophysics.

There will be commercial space exploration and exploitation if there's sufficient economic incentive. Here's a few industries that could benefit

1) Power generation (Hydrogen-3, always-on solar collection)
2) Astroid mining
3) Highly sensitive production facilities e.g. for semiconductors operating way more efficiently in the low/no friction environment of a vacuum (right now semiconductor manufacturers have such sensitivity they need giant slabs weighing many many tons just to provide enough stability to operate at the nm scales they currently do)
4) Seriously offsite backups
5) Farming when we find a more fertile, hospitable planet
6) War. Capture a meteor, toss it at a city. All the damage, none of the radiation
7) Biomedical production
8) Tourism - we go because we can, its pretty, and so we can instagram it to our jealous friends

The problem isn't really commercializing space itself, but bringing down transport costs. The problem is the expense of getting up there. If we can reduce that expense to a reasonable level, all kinds of new business models will appear. That trend is already happening.
http://www.futron.com/upload/wysiwyg/Resources/Whitepapers/Space_Transportation_Costs_Trends_0902.pdf
The cost to send up a kilo of material now is a lot cheaper than the first missions during the space race.

Its just a question of when transport becomes cheap enough to utilize the resources of a body in space

The answer:

[FPhlyer]

Forget Govt. subsidizing of space exploration or private industry.
We. Need. KERBALS!
In less than 10 years my Kerbals have colonized two worlds and visited countless moons. How? Because Kerbals take the risks!

Remember Clarke's laws

[cyberthanasis12]

Remember Clarke's Laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws):
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

OK, DeGrasse is not elderly (just 55 years old), but still...

He's right

[Alioth]

He's right, you won't have businesses trying to establish a colony on Mars.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean there is a probability of zero that Elon Musk can't talk a bunch of his very rich buddies to helping bankroll a mission to Mars, in other words, private but not commercial. (The probability is probably close to zero, but it is non-zero). In reality you'd probably find that NASA also provides something (and probably quite a lot of something) towards a Mars mission that had its origins outside of government.

You can have private travel to somewhere without it being commercial.

Re:He's right

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can have private travel to somewhere without it being commercial."

There's plenty private funding of non-commercial endeavors - but since no profit is made there, i doubt it qualifies as "business". Also the amount of money going around there is quite small compared to the commercial sector.

Re:He's right

[asylumx]

You can have private travel to somewhere without it being commercial.

So you're saying we should be talking about the Mayflower and not about the East India Trading Company or Christopher Columbus?

I understand his point---But:

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken as a statement by a well-known scientist, he is correct on the individual points he makes--But:

    Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a Scientist. Theoretically his points stand on their own, But, leave it to Engineers to create the technologies that get us there.

Nothing works better to motivate humans than to tell them, " You Can't Do That". Next thing you know, they do just that.

Re:Ignore it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're cycling celebrity scientists on a generational basis? That's what's wrong with this country right there.

American's shy away from the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Chinese will let Americans ride on their shuttles to Chinese bases on the moon and Mars.
Maybe not.

Some links of the counter argument

[Nielsio]

The Economics of Space Exploration | by Gregory Rehmke

TEDxSanJoseCA - Jeff Greason - Rocket Scientist: Making Space Pay and Having Fun Doing It

A response to Neil deGrasse Tyson regarding NASA | by Robert P. Murphy

Profitable or worthless

[billstclair]

If it isn't profitable enough for private enterprise to do it, it's not worth doing. End of story.

Of course, that's true of everything.

Re:Profitable or worthless

[RKThoadan]

So I should play soccer with my daughter occasionally because there's no profit in it??? I do things for profit (my paycheck) so I can do the things that are truly worth doing.

Re:Profitable or worthless

[JesseMcDonald]

I do things for profit (my paycheck) so I can do the things that are truly worth doing.

Profit includes more than just money; it's the difference in value between the return and opportunity cost. For you, playing soccer with your daughter is profitable; you value the experience more than the time and energy it costs.

If you wanted to, you could attach a (hypothetical) dollar value to each aspect—time, energy, and experience—and calculate whether the action is really profitable. The experience part is hardest to price, but even there you can set a threshold: how much money would it take to convince you to forgo the experience? Enough to guarantee that your daughter will never need to worry about the cost of treatment for any non-terminal medical condition?

This sort of analysis is more useful when there are multiple people involved with distinct preferences. When it's just you, you can just decide which is more important directly. When multiple people are involved, prices are usually the only objective metric available to indicate what people value, within the limits of what they've earned through surplus production and saving.

The main motive for a private enterprise is profit

[Anonymous Coward]

The main motive for a private enterprise and for people in general, is profit. How will colonists profit from going to Mars? How will SpaceX profit from establishing a Mars colony?

If we discover something of commercial value on Mars, say, a room temperature superconductor, going to Mars for reasons other than Science is pointless. I would rather invest my money into mining asteroids. Heck, even a lunar colony has better business case. You can mine stuff on the Moon and build satellites on the Moon, and then move then into Earth orbit. It is trivial to launch stuff from the Moon, since the deltaV requirement is low. Problem is, that getting to the Moon in the first place is expensive. Not to mention making a colony there. But, we could send there robotic mining and manufacturing equipment, tele-operated from Earth and that is going make a lot of sense.

Smart

[JohnJoiner]

So smart about some things, and yet so clueless about other things...

Immagine a low cost space airline

[wakely]

Scared ? Immagine with a CEO like Mr. O'leary in charge . Yes, the Ryaniar's CEO. Are you already gasping for air ? That what would be to allow private corporations to take care of the space frontier.

Netherlands says he is wrong

[captainpanic]

The Dutch East Indies Company had established trading colonies in the Indies before the Netherlands had even gained its independence from Spain. The first permanent trading post was established in 1603, by the company, not by the government. Going to the other side of the globe was dangerous. It was expensive. And there were unquantified risks.

If there is profit, a company can pull it off. I can certainly see SpaceX mine some asteroid for some valuable minerals, if they are worth the fuel to go there and back. But the real question is what Mars has to offer for any company. It's just another gravity well, and it will be a pain to export anything from Mars to where any market is... so it'd better better be some kind of information that they export.

Re:Netherlands says he is wrong

[madhatter256]

This is what I was going to say lol. History has proven him wrong. Of course, it is only a matter of time until a company will have technologically progressed enough to actually go an mine an asteroid since that is currently the only economically viable endeavour for space travelling. We need precious metals.

Re:Netherlands says he is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dutch East Indies Company had established trading colonies in the Indies before the Netherlands had even gained its independence from Spain. The first permanent trading post was established in 1603, by the company, not by the government, after a hundred and eleven years of government sponsored exploration.

There, fixed that for you. No one is saying Space Inc won't build a Mars base a hundred years after NASA/China does. We're saying they won't build it first, even though the governments have spent 70 years funding and building space rockets.

Re:The real reason: X-Rays

[AmbiLobe]

When explorers report on the X-Rays on Mars, one quantifiable risk will drive people away from investing. I have seen no report on the X-Rays that bounce up from the soil after a cosmic ray hits red dirt. It is estimated in my book: Mars Tour for New Owners. No instruments are being sent to Mars to measure that withering hazard.

You can't be serious about Plait..

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not a popularizer of science and he's not a person people want to hear speak like Tyson.

Furthermore, and this is the most important thing: his entire shtick is as a 'skeptic" and telling people why pretty much everything they want to do is impossible or wrong. So while Tyson is a skeptic on the matter of space travel being led by private business, a matter he happens to be right on, Plait's entire livelihood is based around criticizing everything. Moreover, there's a reason guys like him aren't as popular, no one wants to hear such incessantly false comments.

Because the future isn't built on accepting what we think is possible, it's built on doing what was previously thought impossible.

Why wouldn't

[SuperDre]

Maybe it's expensive, but it can also gain a lot of wealth in the long run, as goverments have no say over anything anymore. So if you are the first man on mars you can actually claim whole mars as yours in theory especially if it's all done through private funding..

Market Can't Do What's Not Profitable

[reallocate]

If it isn't profitable, the market can't do it. Not won't, can't.

Fifty-six years after Sputnik, there's profit to be found in building, launching and operating satellites. As a result, the market has built and sustains businesses that do that. Aside from the Russians pay-to-be-a-space-tourist gimmickry (which exists thanks to state-funded infrastructure) no one has built a business putting people into space.

If the market is going to send people out to explore the Solar System, someone will need to tell it how to turn a profit doing that.

has he met Eldon

[Anonymous Coward]

so, has he met young Eldon Tyrell, aka Elon Musk yet?

omg stop the presses!

[Anonymous Coward]

some nerd has an opinion! more news at noon, dinner, and 11pm.

An immoral, even psychopathic goal

[Sqreater]

Attempts to "colonize" space are immoral and even psychopathic because they attempt to bring into existence (be born) human beings separated from the Earth regardless of the misery and suffering that would cause. We are not merely living on the Earth; we ARE the Earth. Four billion years of evolution have accomodated us to no other place in the universe. We are NOT Mars; we are NOT the Moon. We are the Earth and the Earth only. To use terms of colonization and movement created on the Earth for movement and resource utilization on the Earth that do not apply to space is to be intellectually dishonest because it refuses to acknowledge the glaring differences between the Earth and space and the planets. A colony is the expansion into unused resources of land, water, air, plant, mineral, and animal life. None of these things exist on Mars or the Moon. Thus, no colony is possible there. There isn't even a magnetosphere to protect people from the harmful effects of the Sun 's energetic particles that bathe them. Delusional attempts to "colonize" space are doomed to failure and because they deliberately attempt to harm masses of human "colonists" comprise a crime against humanity and a civil tort toward those deprived of their genetic legacy: the ability to live easily on the Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson an others should stop supporting space for humans from childish enthusiasm and personal need. It is extremely immoral.

Re:An immoral, even psychopathic goal

[Punko]

"Immoral" ?

Ignoring the concept that good and evil, and right and wrong are not germane to the discussion, but why have you decided that it is "immoral" ?

If I may simplify something for you, the heavy elements that form our bodies and the Earth did not come from within this solar system. We are no more tied to the Earth than anywhere else. The elements that were created in a supernova explosion and deposited within our solar system came from 'outside' our system. We are stardust, as much as we are Earth's children.

Re:An immoral, even psychopathic goal

[Sqreater]

The deliberate and intentional causing of suffering to other human beings is immoral. And we are talking about life, not elements.

Re:An immoral, even psychopathic goal

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you'll use the same reasoning to support life extension, right?

Re:An immoral, even psychopathic goal

[Sqreater]

Try to focus.

Re:An immoral, even psychopathic goal

[Punko]

I agree to your definition of immorality, but again, I don't see how it applies to human living on another planet. Are you are indicating that because humans will not be living in (earthly) optimal conditions, that having them there is immoral ?

You have indicated that we are part of Earth and not Mars, so living on Mars is immoral.

Do you believe that having astronauts living on the space station is immoral?
Do you believe that humans living in the Arctic is immoral?

Would denying the opportunity for people to live on other planets be considered immoral ?

Americas

[bob_jordan]

Obviously.

These are exactly the same reasons that stopped Europe colonising the Americas.

Bob.

Unsettling

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it a little unsettling when a scientist (any scientist) speaks in such absolutes.

"Man will never fly!"
"Man will never privatize space exploration!"
"There's no such thing as unicorns!"

SpaceX will and won't

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX will put more Telco Stats in Low earth orbit, they wont be sending probes to mars/Saturn/Titian/Jupiter ect

Things will be put into space by private enterprise , but science will not be one of them.

Paraphrase

[msobkow]

It's not possible. Sailing into the unknown is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise. People like Columbus just can't do it.

Now, granted, Columbus himself was supported by Queen Isabella, but there were many explorers over the centuries who were not supported by anything but private enterprise despite the "risks" of their forays. But I've no doubt they had their detractors, too, telling them they were crazy and that it "couldn't be done."

Yes you can, but only with decades of finances

[Anonymous Coward]

And good luck getting venture capital for, oh, 40 or 50 years worth of investment before it starts returning a profit (and even then it might not). Bankers tend to want to get some return on investment within their lifetimes.

Re:Yes you can, but only with decades of finances

[oh_my_080980980]

THANK YOU! Look at JCPenny. Brought in a new CEO to implement a change and projected to lose money and continued to lose money and after a year of losing money, he was fired. That's one freaking year! You think investors are going to last that long?

Oregon Trail

[LoyalOpposition]

'It's not possible. Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise.'"

I feel the same way about settling the western United States. Oregon is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise.

~Loyal

"You have died of dysentery."

Re:Oregon Trail

[Anonymous Coward]

The Oregon trail... the very one that was opened by a party send by the government?

A lot of people here seems not to have read the OP (shouldn't be surprised, on /.). Tyson never said "there won't be commercial exploitation of space ever" or "companies don't do new things", but "the very first to make it there will be supported by a government". Which is entirely different. Historically, things as hugely costly as space travel or crossing the pacific ocean for the first time are backed by government, because entrepreneurial spirit can't do everything. You need an entrepreneur, and you need the kind of money the government have and can spend (well, they don't have it, but it doesn't stop them from spending it anyway).

Base argument is that government-backed entities don't have to care about profitability or public image. Corporations do. They can't take the same risks or experiments.

Dubious

[Anonymous Coward]

Ill be one of the rare people to say it.. He has gone over the edge. Between letting fame goes to his head, and his recent, obvious, use of molly while partying in Iceland.. I think he has lost his grounding.

Two words

[wjcofkc]

Qeng Ho

Re:Without a worthy enemy to focus government effo

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you talking of the efforts of government? Or a society? Entirely different concepts. Private enterprise is encouraged by society, government stifles but regulates private enterprise to create a good that society will enjoy. If their were no monarchy in England, would there have been the East India, or the Hudson Bay? If there were no society would the Polynesians have left their homeland for some distant site? Would we have schools if there business controlled life? How about streets,or highways for the public? Texas anyone?

So this explains why ...

[Skapare]

... we have not been visited by space aliens.

I suspect he's right

[P-niiice]

We can't even get good competitive internet service in the US. Or affordable healthcare despite a thriving market. If there's not an immediate profit, it's not going to happen.

Well

[argStyopa]

I respect NDT, but AFAIK the man has never accepted a paycheck in his life that wasn't from academia or a government entity. That doesn't condemn his intelligence, it just means that I doubt he understands entrepreneurial, risk-taking spirit to any substantial degree.

I'm not some space-libertarian that believes we're going to launch space miners from every garage. Of course not.

But one would have to look at the sweeping course of history and acknowledge that the power of the individual is almost ceaselessly increasing.

Yes, I'm aware that the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, etc were 'government-sponsored'. Clearly there's a role for 'big pockets' of government. But note that many of such explorations were indeed (MERELY) 'sponsored' by government. Many of the American colonies were PRIVATE chartered companies only partly subsidized by government.

The governments HAVE already done most of the heavy-lifting here in their space programs, remote-sensing systems, and proof-of-concept work.

I too believe we're on the cusp of this turning from government only, to a government-backed but private-investor-driven model.

And as one post suggested: "there's no profit in space"... a single reasonably-sized asteroid of the right type would include more iron than has been mined in all of human history. Oh, and the first one to get up there and exploit it will be the one the GOVERNMENTS come to when they inevitably want/need to build significant structures outside our gravity well. How much will THAT monopoly be worth? (Not to mention being famous forever through human history, which is arguably a bigger prize than simple dollars to these guys.)

Re:Well

[TheSync]

I respect NDT, but AFAIK the man has never accepted a paycheck in his life that wasn't from academia or a government entity.

Not true, soon you will be able to watch NDT on COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY on FOX!

No kidding

[sunking2]

If you don't own a printing press you can't afford it. The only ones who can take on the risk are large governments. Think Apple and their $50B in cash in impressive? The Fed is buying almost that in toxic assets every month. The costs are so high that you need to have Trillions working behind the scenes to even consider the risk.

I work for the government

[Anonymous Coward]

Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks.

I work for the government, and the only one of these the government is good with is "expensive". The government is mostly really bad at managing risk and government organizations tend to get more and more risk adverse over time. Defense aerospace today could never do the cutting edge stuff they did back in the 50's and 60's. Back in those days things went wrong, test pilots got killed and we picked up the pieces and tried again. Now stuff like that results in a full-stop and multi year investigation with a simultaneous witch-hunt.

Who is the expert?

[Maudib]

Who is the expert on this question?

Given that we are discussing the viability of commercialization given costs and risks, Ill take the entrepreneur's opinion over the astrophysicist's.

I have two words for him

[Anonymous Coward]

he should ask ANYONE in the mining industry about the economic realities of EXPLORATORY DRILLING

Dangerous and expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds an awful lot like early mining to me and that was a career many who had no business doing, got into anyways. Dangerous and expensive just means the reward needs to be greater than the cost. I would say that is the case here.

Private patronage might.

[DdJ]

The reasons cited are reasons why a competitive free market wouldn't directly lead to space.

They're not, it seems to me, reasons why funds earned in the market and used by private individuals wouldn't lead to space.

For an example, look at the Carnegie Museum and Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. Andrew Carnegie got rich as hell, and then spent the money on stuff like that. Can other folks see stuff like that leading outward to space?

Who cares about Tyson

[Anonymous Coward]

He lost his credibility as a rational person when he associated himself with PETA.

WTF?

[sribe]

Seriously, in the 15th-18th centuries, trans-oceanic travel was extremely expensive and dangerous. Care to explain to me how private enterprise was unable to establish enterprises around it???

It really is the perfect analogy: early exploration was funded by the richest governments of the day; as time passed, private enterprise pooled funds from large groups of investors; eventually costs were lowered, risks managed, and profits proven to an extent that smaller enterprises could play. But at no time was there a lack of willing travelers; there were always plenty of people not deterred by the unquantified dangers.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to explain how floating dead trees on the ocean of the planet we evolved on compares at all to an empty vacuum?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. In 1500 the 3000+ miles across open ocean from Europe to the Americas was an almost unthinkable distance. Almost all ocean voyages were measured in days or weeks, usually within a fairly short distance of shore (often within sight of shore). Kinda like space, where most manned trips are days or weeks long in low earth orbit. The open ocean was dangerous, and you wouldn't live too long without the support of your ship, kinda like space. Sure hard vacuum is different than the ocean, but so what? Can we build spaceships as well as the Spanish could build wooden ships?

Uh oh, time to 3D print a gallows

[Anonymous Coward]

Our dear Professor Tyson will now have all the Space Nutters screaming for his head. The Space Nutters will be reminding us that computers got better therefore anything is possible.

Re:Uh oh, time to 3D print a gallows

[Anonymous Coward]

Space Nutters? Is that supposed to be Philly On The Moon®?

Tesla == Welfare Queen

[emorning9707]

If they get a loan from a private lender then it's not aid.
If they get a loan from the government then it's aid.
Just ask any Republican representative.

Telsa paid 2.6% on a 465 million dollar loan while students pay 6.8%.
That's the worst kind of corporate welfare.

actually you're wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

private enterprise ALREADY spends the kind of money you're taking about on exploration - deep sea oil exploration, coal, gas, coal seam gas exploration, exploration looking for deposits of nickel, gold, lithium, zinc, copper, you name it...

in fact, beyond maybe the Chinese, governments are spending ALMOST NOTHING on exploration

-and here's the kicker: as the deposits of these materials become harder and harder to find, thus making the cost of exploring THIS planet more and more expensive, the business case for expanding your exploration to include Mars and the Asteroid Belt starts to look better and better...

Huh..

[koan]

So I have come to an understanding that "free market capitalization" is the leech on those that do the real work.

In others words after we land on Mars then the "free market capitalization" and exploitation will begin, but it always has to feed off of someone else's work... like Hollywood or the music industry and so it's never there first and it's never the creator.

Neil deGrasse Tyson...

[bloggerhater]

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a brilliant astrophysicist. NOT a businessman.
It isn't as if NASA has an exemplary safety record, so stop trying to play that card.
I'm sad for Neil since he is so hurt by NASA's reduced roles. The reality of the thing is that without the massive hydra that is Uncle Sam staring over their shoulders, productivity just went up 10x.

We shouldn't be concerned about getting there. That's inevitable. We should be concerned what's going to happen when we get there. Is the government going to step back in...or is Heinlein going to blow Nostradamus' socks off yet again?

Corporations won't thrive in space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude has clearly never played EvE Online.

Smart Guy

[Rostin]

Tyson is a smart guy, but probably out of his depth in this case. I doubt he's ever taken more than a couple of economics or business courses, let alone run a successful business on the scale of Paypal, SpaceX, or Tesla. Sadly, he's suffering from the same delusion that lots of people like him eventually contract. Being expected to comment as a kind of "public intellectual" on all things space and science related has given him the misapprehension that he can comment intelligently on anything, including things he doesn't know much about.

There is a taint that just won't go away

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG: Unstirred feces detected! Well...[cue clacking of high power solenoid and the spin up of heavy duty motorized equipment]

This guy worships the government like it is the deity of his religion.

Government is our G-d
Government is our King
Government is our lord and saviour
Worship it to entreat its favour
Government is the source of everything
Government's our G-d! And! King!

Pre 14th Amendment: Whites were free and Blacks were slaves
Post 14th Amendment: Everyone is a slave of Uncle Sam

I really think he's wrong.

[roc97007]

Far be it from me to argue with a famous astrophysicist and media personality, but I really think Tyson is wrong on this one.

Think of all the high risk (for the time) tasks that were done by private industry. Heavier than air flight, oil rigging and skyscrapers come to mind. There's probably a lot of other examples.

Yes, space is dangerous, but so are a lot of other things.

And most importantly, I think we're finding that space travel is expensive primarily because of the way governments do it. Having worked for a government contractor, I've seen first hand that our government has lost the ability to do anything at all at reasonable cost. To keep costs at reasonable (effective but not exorbitant) levels requires, I believe, the mind set that "I'm spending my own money on this", not "I'm spending someone else's money".

Just one more person...

[theshowmecanuck]

Just someone else who wants to tell us what can't be done. Just because he can build something doesn't mean he knows how best to use it. This is usually the case.

Perhaps. But...

[saturnianjourneyman]

As long as government has no power to keep the frontier CLOSED, free enterprise will have as much of a chance as anyone else to OPEN it.

Re:THIRD Option

[Anonymous Coward]

The villain sector.

They seem to have plenty of funding and technical labor without concern for profit or risk.

not a singular event

[Anonymous Coward]

Opening the space frontier is not an all or none prospect. I have no doubt by the time I'm married (I'm thinking in 50 more years or so), I will be able to honeymoon in a satellite hotel floating around earth. Also, let's not forget how technology jumps exponential with unforseen discoveries and paradigm shifts. And finally, let's remember, wealth disparity is only increasing. "Prohibitively expensive" today, will be reasonably affordable tomorrow for the elite with nothing better to do, as the working class continues to build wealth and the upper class continues to swindle them out of it.

Re:Smarter than MOST people Guy

[bussdriver]

The leaked USA black budget chews up 1 Bill Gates per year. SpaceX is an insect... no... a microbe.

Ignorance aside, he is smarter than most the planet and is likely going to better with less information than most people with more information. He can speak intelligently on anything; that is not impossible, he just has to think before speaking for his whole life and remain intelligent. Ignorance is another topic; the two are not the same (and what qualifies as "educated" is a rather large debate in itself.)

Space is not cheap or simple. It took a long long time of free government work to let an insect like SpaceX buzz around the space station a few times... their wealthy customers? government.

Mars is a total waste and I have no problem arguing with people like Tyson - even though it is his area expertise; I don't have to be as educated as him in the area to mop the floor with his pro Mars arguments. Same goes for him addressing the evangelical type FAITH in the "free market" to answer all our prayers.

Typical parasite

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he has never started or run a viable business and sucked government and academic tit his entire career, Tyson cannot imagine that anyone could conceive of making money in his area of expertise. Well, the truth is that someone, probably not as smart as Tyson but more willing to take risks, will. When that leap is made, there will be no shortage of investors and pioneers.

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of commercial enterprises cruised uncharted waters after Columbus discovered the new world. Even today, plenty of ships sink, but plenty of folks take to the seas.

Frontiersmen and Frontierswomen braved wolves, panthers, spiders, quicksand, snakes, bears, disease, famine, indians, etc to establish commercial enterprises throughout america. Hopefully there are no grizzly bears in space.

Nearly all mining operations are commercial. There are tons of risk there... like tons of earth on top of you waiting for the right moment to cave in. Scores of miners die all time, but there are still plenty of mining companies.

Airplanes crash, people still fly.

Spaceships will inevitably crash into things, or be struck by swarms of micro meteors, or mathematically error their way into the sun, but plenty of people will still go into space.

The pioneering spirit always outweighs risk. Many will go broke, but many lucky folks will figure out how to settle into profitable enterprises.

Anybody remember "Manifest Destiny?"

[rocket rancher]

Tyson, entertaining and astute as he is, seems to be missing the historical point. Musk is following in the footsteps of Astor, Harriman, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the rest of the robber barons of the late 19th century, by building out a self-financing sustainable infrastructure for his industrial ambitions. And make no mistake, he may be a neo-industrialist, but he is still an industrialist, with all the negative baggage that goes along with it. And like his 19th century predecessors, Musk will eventually need resources that he doesn't already command. The robber barons of the 19th century created manifest destiny out of whole cloth to enlist the help of the US government in removing obstacles -- natives, geography, competing commercial interests, pretty much anything that stood in the way -- of pillaging the continent for its natural resources. Unlike his predecessors, though, Musk seems to be angling only for financial support from the US government in the form of guaranteed lift contracts once he's got a heavy lift capacity established. What Tyson seems to be saying is that Musk can't do it alone; nobody can do it without some kind of major (read: US) governmental support. The only governmental support Musk and his fellow neo-industrialists are likely going to need is somebody to scrape the claim jumpers off their asteroids and orbital habitats. That is going to require an armed force, and I'm certain there exist any number of polities on this planet willing to loan him theirs in return for a slice of Musk's pie in the sky.

He is wrong He has no vision or sense of history

[n2hightech]

It was potential for profit that drove the exploration of the new world. The risk of death and failure were just as large for those explorers. There technology was barely able to handle the trip and the process of extracting the required resources to maintain life and obtain a profit. Space is vastly more difficult however our technology is becoming capable of conquering it. Many people risked all their wealth and life on opening up the new world. After the initial voyages it took about 100 years. That time frame looks very likely to repeat itself for the conquest of space. Initial voyages into space started in the 1940s. Man took some trips in the 60s and then set up a permanent outpost in near space. Government did the heavy lifting. Now its time for the commercial interests to take over. Elon Musk has already bet his company Space X once on a do or die launch. The company was nearly out of money and would have folded if the launch was not successful. Space X has passed their crisis and is moving ahead. There are others that are following. If they succeed or fail as individuals no one can know. As a group they will keep trying making that big bet to get the big payoff. That's what entrepreneurs and explorers do,

Tyson is a brilliant theoretical physicist and..

[Loki_1929]

Tyson is a brilliant theoretical physicist and he should probably continue studying theoretical physics rather than pontificating on whether a billionaire who owns and designs products for multiple successful companies understands the risks and rewards of space exploration. When Neil deGrasse Tyson launches his own successful businesses and starts designing rocket ships that successfully deliver supplies to the international space station, he'll be slightly more qualified to hold an opinion on the subject.

Elon Musk is an educated, trained physicist. He's started multiple successful businesses. He's designed and built electric cars that actually work for real people and that are built like tanks. He's designed and built rockets and capsules that carry out successful missions in space at a fraction of the cost of NASA and everyone else. He's doing what virtually nobody else is doing: taking risks. He's the next Steve Jobs and he doesn't want to make your music player pretty; he wants to go to Mars.

If I were a betting man, I most certainly wouldn't be betting against Elon Musk. That's a stupid bet.

Credibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tyson is an astrophysicist, not a businessman or economist. Why should we take his opinion seriously?

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone with some common sense speaks. One step further would be to acknowledge this fact that earth's resources could be better spent taking care of earth, with or without government support than taking off on some wild ass cowboy mission to who knows where for who knows what. That is a good start.

Risky alright, but for different reasons

[clustro]

Tyson is wrong in his belief that free market capitalism abhors risky investments. On the contrary, the free market scenario minimizes risk for any investment, simply by ensuring government will not interfere and change the rulebook during halftime. Sure, there are substantial risks in space travel. But as has been discussed at length in these comments already, risk is only one-third of the equation:

Payoff = (1 - Risk) x Reward + Risk x Loss

There is no way to dismiss an investment purely on risk. If the Reward and the Loss are in alignment, any risk can possibly be worth it. Heck, what if the lottery was free to play - what idiot wouldn't play each week?

To be blunt, there are terrestrial ventures that seem riskier than space mining. Heck, look at Afghanistan. That country isn't poor - its filthy rich. There are over $1 trillion in minerals beneath the feet of those backwards Pashtuns. Their mineral wealth could pave their streets with gold, send every child to school, modernize (or render extant) their food, health, and transportation sectors.

But it borders on impossible. First, the Taliban have fought the mightiest army in the world to a standstill. Any mining venture would be subjected to relentless and bloody attacks, as well as sabotage. To them, Afghanistan's greatest resource isn't minerals, oil, or anything else earthly - it is Islam. Large-scale mining would need roads to be built pretty much everywhere, since much of the country has none. Despite the enormous benefits mining could bring to their country, Afghanistan has a corrupt government, riven by tribal and family squabbles. Much like Africa and Iran, it is not difficult to foresee corruption leading to a small number of connected tribesmen becoming multi-billionaires, while the rest of the country wears sandals.

Space mining at least doesn't require miners to duke it out with decapitation-happy, Third-world savages.

Another argument against Tyson's claim is that, quite simply, we do not practice free market capitalism in America (nearly any Western country) anymore. We practice crony capitalism, where huge swaths of production are controlled of a few powerful men, with loyal (or, if nothing else, frightened) men filling legislatures and working on their behalf. Instead of focusing on improving the productivity of their industries, their main pursuit becomes rent-seeking. Regulations are applied stringently to those outside of the inner circle, to raise the barrier-to-entry. Inside players are allowed to skate.

Here is a general, dismal scenario:

1. Some company shoulders enormous financial risk at developing space technologies.
2. After much hardship, this company actually pulls it off, e.g. a working mining pipeline from the Moon or Mars.
3. Stakeholders in the current economic landscape view this activity as a threat, and dispatch their political Sardaukar.
3. Laws are passed plunder the company, and/or take over administration of their operations.

One can easily envision some slimy future President lecturing the American public on how regulation of space mining is necessary to prevent the sale of yellowcake to terrorists.

I'll consider him one of the brightest minds

[NotSoHeavyD3]

of our times when he's on the short list for a Nobel prize in physics.

I suspect he's wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect Mr. Tyson is wrong but not for any of the reasons listed here. He's wrong because he hasn't been paying attention to what Mr. Musk has said. Mr. Musk isn't going to Mars to make money, he's going to make humans an interplanetary species. Sure, Mr. Musk wants SpaceX to make money, but that was never the goal. He founded SpaceX BECAUSE NASA wasn't building a Martian colony fast enough.

fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Tyson is a fool who does not know history very well.

Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything that NDT says about space exploration was also true of ocean exploration some centuries ago--with much of that driven by nothing more noble than the idea of lowering the price of a spice that made unrefrigerated meat more palatable. You might not consider all the wars, colonialism and slavery that world exploration brought about to be good things, but you can't say "everyone thought it was too hard so nothing happened."

Sure, space is difficult, dangerous and expensive to exploit, but if there's any way to pull a profit out of it, there's a good chance that someone somewhere is going to step up and do it.

as long as a significant portion

[Anonymous Coward]

of capitalism comes from the government teat, only the format will change. and the folks benefiting the most will be the ones calling for government to leave business alone.

An up and coming country will open up space.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will place my money newer independent countries on the rise like Singapore, India, and China. They have they have the ability and the reason to develop majorly disruptive technologies like asteroid mining. Whatever country grabs that brass ring first will dominate the world economically and militarily for the foreseeable future.

Profit companies are risk adverse

[bbsalem]

And it is much worse in the investment climate that has prevailed since about 1990. Thanks to the very technology that makes this web site posaible, investors can micromanage their investments and they want as much profit in as little time as possible. This means that public firms are much more risk adverse than they have ever been. I didn't say that investors couldn't be taken for a ride, indeed they seem more vulnerable now than ever before. What I am saying is that they want a sure bet and they don't want as much to wait around for an idea to bear fruit.

The government has traditionally filled in where public for-profit companies fear to tread, long-term or high risk development, and space exploration is still very much that. Only in areas where the risks have been determined, are well known, do private enterprise enter. Someone mentioned communications satellites. The risk of getting something into earth orbit is pretty well known as is the risk of electronics working in space for X years. Beyond that the risks and payouts are very uncertain.

It is clear that once the risks in a new industry are established, that for profit companies jump in. Even though early auto companies experimented with electric cars and abandoned the idea with the advent of cheap gas a century ago, they are back in the game with the end of cheap oil, and it didn't take them long to retool and make advances, maybe a decade or so, but it was largely proven technology.

An even better example is the Internet. I had an Arpanet account when it was maybe 30 nodes, and witnessed the rise of UNIX and DNS, so that by the time it was privatized by companies like Cisco and Sun and IBM and DEC in the early 1980's as the Internet, it had been running for about a decade and proven technically.

Ho Hum!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ho hum! All the examples that he uses are private enterprise from the old world. They were sponsored by governments, not accomplished by them.

He's absolutely right...

[DrStoooopid]

...because an oppressive government that tries to regulate everything, will regulate it so that a private entity can't fly a space craft because "clearly they lack the expertise"....well no shit, pal....nobody has the expertise. After all, you can't maintain your power-base, if the people who don't like the way you run the government can just decide, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore"...(it'd made the first "Great White Flight" pale in comparison)

Public or Private?

[tmjva]

Maybe he is implying of course it can't be "private" business, it has to be one of those money grubbing, "publicly" traded businesses? (A.k.a. corporations).

Historical

[Anonymous Coward]

How was America opened up? What about the East Indies?
Governments opened up the routes, then various COMMERCIAL companies from multiple countries competed to open up the various "colonies".
Both in the form of moving migrants to the new colonies as well as shipping products back to the markets, Spanish Silver from Sth America, Dutch East India company various products, who shipped migrants to the US?
The point is, that if someone can see a way to make money, they will invest in the hardware & knowledge to open up the frontier.
Quote
If someone say we can do something, they maybe right, if someone says we CAN'T they are almost certainly wrong.

deja vu

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of private individuals and partnerships went broke trying to explore North America, which pretty much stymied further development before the invention of limited liability corporations allowed the entrepreneurs to shift the risk onto investors, who mostly lost their investments.
Heck, private companies today can't even afford to invest in relatively cheap basic research, like basic biochemistry.

Musk replies..

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED..

Joke

[algoa456]

Insight from an affirmative action nobody

Re:The main motive for a private enterprise is pro

[robsku]

The main motive for a private enterprise and for people in general, is profit.

For private enterprise, sure, but people have much greater hobbies - generally profit is seen as means to an end (or to ends if you will), at least by healthy individuals.

But people in general have very little motive to colonize mars (as being part of it), and to be able to achieve it they would need to either be able to pay someone enough to make it profitable or do all the work needed to get and set up conditions they can live in there themselves. I don't see that as likely - However there might be growing amount of people willing to leave from this planet to existing colony in future... if there would be one, that is. And I see such colony being rather unlikely to be done as a long term for-profit business plan - in comparison a (multi)government supported colonization sounds far greater, but one likely to happen much further in future, if ever (rooting for the former).

FIXED MY TYPO ON ABOVE REPLY

[robsku]

Aw man, I wrote "people have much greater hobbies", but what I meant to write was "greater motives".