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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.'"
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.
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?
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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.
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.
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.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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?
...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.
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.
Already used up that excuse on asteroids, alas. Maybe if China says they're gonna do it?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And I suspect he should look up the definition of the word Entrepreneur sometime.
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.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Commercial space exploration will end once the first lawsuit is filed.
Only governments can enforce the applicability of a liability waiver.
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.
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...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
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.
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.
This space intentionally left blank
... 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.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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.
"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.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Not a billion times. Rather "billions and billions" of times.
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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!
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
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, 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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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?
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Isn't the ISS in LEO?
In this case, private business did what it does best: exploiting the knowledge gained from government investing in research.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
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
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.
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).
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
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.
So smart about some things, and yet so clueless about other things...
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
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.
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.
"There are more stars in our galaxy than there are atoms in the universe."
-- Niel DeGrasse Tyson
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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..
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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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"?
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.
E Proelio Veritas.
Its always great to put people down but what have you done lately mr tyson.
More than you, I'll wager...
Obviously.
These are exactly the same reasons that stopped Europe colonising the Americas.
Bob.
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."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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?
'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."
I aim to misbehave.
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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?
Qeng Ho
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
... we have not been visited by space aliens.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"get to the water, build an aircraft, and learned how to fly."
All done by private enterprise.
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.
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.)
-Styopa
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.
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.
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
He didn't say that - quite trying to dehumanize him Alinsky.
"...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.
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.
What ludicrous gall to demand a citation from someone after typing a moronic statement such as your opinion and offering no cite yourself.
So, you'd want people launching large easily mistaken for ICBM objects from places around the US? During the cold war?
Free enterprise ahoy!
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
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.
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.
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.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Yep - if you can't figure out that Pluto is a PLANET - then why should we listen to any of his other opinions?
Have you compiled your kernel today??
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?
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.
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".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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.
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.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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.
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,
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
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.
of our times when he's on the short list for a Nobel prize in physics.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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.
...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)
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
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).
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
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.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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).
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Aw man, I wrote "people have much greater hobbies", but what I meant to write was "greater motives".
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.