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

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: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: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 wrong.

[jkflying]

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