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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.'"
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
"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".
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?