The Billionaires' Space Club

theodp writes Silicon sultans are the new robber barons, writes The Economist, adding that "they have been diversifying into businesses that have little to do with computers, while egotistically proclaiming that they alone can solve mankind's problems, from aging to space travel." Over at Slate, NYU journalism prof Charles Seife is less-than impressed with The Billionaires' Space Club. "It's an old trick," begins Seife. "Multimillionaires regularly try to spin acts of crass ego gratification as selfless philanthropy, no matter how obviously self-serving. They jump out of balloons at the edge of the atmosphere, take submarines to the bottom of the ocean, or shoot endangered animals on safari, all in the name of science and exploration. The more recent trend is billionaires making fleets of rocket ships for private space exploration. What makes this one different is that the public actually seems to buy the farce." Seife goes on to argue that "neither [Elon] Musk's nor [Richard] Branson's goals really seem to break new ground, despite all the talk of exploration."

Comments

RAH had this in the 50's

[Bodhammer]

They all want to be D. D. Harriman - "The Man Who Sold the Moon".

The one who figures out asteroid mining is going to be the real winner!

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

"The one who figures out asteroid mining is going to be the real winner!"

How do you figure? We've spent the last half century turning into a knowledge society and you're pining for a 19th centuty fantasy?

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[mi]

The one who figures out asteroid mining is going to be the real winner!

And I for one will applaud him the way Heinlein would've done — not call him a "robber"...

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, you don't build computers out of thin air. Gotta get our raw materials from somewhere. And don't say recycling :P

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[confused one]

parent is missing the point + what follows is a bit of a circular argument. Asteroid mining isn't going to do anything, directly, for people on Earth. If, however, you're going to build infrastructure to support space exploration and colonization, in the long run you need to learn to use "local" resources. You're not going to do it successfully entirely using resources lifted from the surface of the Earth.

Re: RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

We can grind up all the billionaires.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[rtb61]

Yeah, right up until the corporate bonus boosting short cut sends an asteroid crashing into the earth instead of putting it in orbit. The brutal reality is by far the majority of get super rich schemes burn up, the rapid rise burning up on re-entry as it crashes back to earth. I trust corporations a whole lot less in fact an order of magnitude less than the government. In fact the main reason not to trust government currently relates directly to the corporate ownership of government.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

No credit for government incompetence? That's disregarding a lot of governemnt employees.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[TheEyes]

Space exploration and colonization are hopeless fantasies. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend insane fortunes to explore and colonize the most inhospitable places there are, for no apparent benefit.

Hopeless or not, we have to do it. Right now all of humanity is in a single interconnected biosphere, that is one rich crazy dickhead away from becoming uninhabitable. How many people are out there right now claiming that we can do anything we want to the Earth and humanity can never become extinct, because God? We need to get sustainable populations off of this planet and somewhere they can survive for when the inevitable happens and one of those mouth-breathing morons hits the wrong button somewhere and releases super-Ebola into the atmosphere or something.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why humans have consistently sat on their butts over the past few thousand years and never sought far horizons

Sure, it is difficult, but we need our 'Crazy Eddies', or we would simply go the way of the dodo

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm, I think that the recipe calls for holding the Earth hostage at risk of bombardment

It certainly brings a whole new meaning to taking the 'high ground'

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not. If large deposits of minerals are found on asteroids & we can mine them then by the time the minerals get back to Earth supply increases and prices drop. Imagine what'd happen to the value of gold, say, if there was 50 million tonnes of the stuff on Ceres and we could easily mine it. Perhaps governments would issue monopoly permits to mining companies, but other countries would simply ignore them and send their miners up to grab some of the action.

Asteroid mining would be great if we had the economic system to support it, but I don't think the nerds on here are fans of utopian socialism (unless it's on Star Trek).

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is slightly comedic that the tech industry is mentioned as an example of the epic power of the free market, but... they don't mention the subsidies much, or the military-industrial complex investment or the millions of people living in shit conditions in Communist China who make the crap for the westerners. The free-market guys also have memory lapses when it comes to waste or pollution or even applying the actual rules of capitalism to their chosen companies (when will Amazon declare a genuine profit and pay its shareholders some dividends?).

I'm all for running a good business and making cash, but this creepy corporate mind-control which afflicts so many in the geek community is just disturbing.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

We can't we just go extinct ? What's so special about our particular DNA configuration that we would have to preserve it at huge costs ?

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[SuricouRaven]

So what we need are people with gigantic piles of money who are not in their right mind.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

That's a rare combination, for obvious reasons. And I'm sure Musk is not going to fund a manned Mars mission on his own. At some point in time, he'll need additional fools... I mean investors.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

Moderated "-1 Disagree", I see.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Lotana]

What's so special about our particular DNA configuration that we would have to preserve it at huge costs ?

We are the only living organism in the known Universe that possess such a high level of intelligence. Until we discover another species that can plan thier survival on interstellar basis, we are special and worth preserving.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

I don't see what the big deal is. 5 million years ago we were still swinging from trees. Nobody has any idea what humanity, or whatever is left, will look like in another 5 million years. Our resources are better spent worrying about the next century here in Earth.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Eunuchswear]

Government is a system for getting useful work out of possibly incompetent workers. (Stross has some talk of this in the Laundry series).

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just go and die? Is there anything special about you?

Stop wasting precious resources and time.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Cyberax]

Platinum and other noble metals are expensive because they are genuinely hard to extract - the yearly production is measured in _tons_. If we had access to cheaper supply of these metals from asteroids then we'd be able to significantly increase their use. And that means cheaper fuel cells, more durable alloys, better catalysts in chemical plants and so on.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

There are seven billion people on the earth. I think we can work on more than one endeavour at once.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Kjella]

The one who figures out asteroid mining is going to be the real winner!

The one who could produce an economically and technically viable asteroid mining ship would almost certainly already be a trillionaire from applying his inventions here on earth.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Applehu Akbar]

More importantly, you don't build large-scale infrastructure like China's new Silk Road bullet freight operation out of thin air. Large-scale infrastructure of this kind will require large amounts of pure metals. Having large new sources of supply in turn encourages bigger projects. How much copper is it going to take for the Silk Road to go maglev?

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Applehu Akbar]

Nobody in his right mind would build a worldwide communication network that would shoot information anywhere in the world with negligible friction, either. But there were entrepreneurs who just went out and did it, so it will be these very people who are most likely to open up extraterrestrial destinations for us.

I can personally remember a time when getting a long-distance phone call meant that somebody had died.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Applehu Akbar]

I have just the organization for you, and all fellow misanthropes: http://vhemt.org/

Please visit this site and abide by its recommendations. For the good of humanity and for all the promise of our future, encourage all your fellow Greens to do the same.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[anmre]

Actually, you are not sure about anything and are just grasping at straws at this point. We get it -- you're a nihilist (so cool!). The rest of us just have a more optimistic outlook regarding the frontiers of space and technology.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Applehu Akbar]

Before China put its peasants to work making tech toys, those same people were starving to death in the millions. You young whippersnappers don't remember the "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

Even in Fe-rich asteroids, the concentration of platinum is rather low (less than 0.01%). I wonder what's more problematic, launching a refinery to an asteroid, or bringing back tons of raw ore ?

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Lotana]

Look at the title of the story you are replying in: It is billionaires that are funding it. Nothing about public funds being discussed here.

You just seem to trying to find any excuse in order to troll the space enthusiasts of this site.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

You're so cute.. calling somebody a nihilist because he doesn't want to go to Mars. As if that's the only thing there is to do.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

Actually, building a communication network seems like something everybody in their right mind would want. I'm not sure why you'd consider that a good analogy for trying to build a settlement on a cold dusty rock in a near vacuum.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

You misunderstand. I have no reason to want to speed up human extinction. But I also have no reason to want to spend fortunes on a crazy plan that might extend it. If you care for humanity, the best thing to do is spend the resources on keeping the Earth in shape.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[itzly]

A few billion won't be enough to build a colony on Mars, so yes, public funds will be needed.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[DanielRavenNest]

> We've spent the last half century turning into a knowledge society

And all of those billions of computers run on energy, as does the rest of civilization. Modern civilization is based on replacing human and animal labor with mechanical and electrical power. The amount of solar energy passing closer than the Moon is equal to the whole world's fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. We just have to learn how to exploit it. Leveraging resources already on location is part of that equation.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[DanielRavenNest]

> . Asteroid mining isn't going to do anything, directly, for people on Earth.

This is incorrect. Space is already a $300 billion/year industry, of which NASA only represents 6%. Most of it is in the thousand or so satellites in Earth orbit, doing communications, navigation, weather, mapping, etc. Today, when a satellite breaks a part or runs out of fuel, there is no way to fix or refuel it. So you have to launch a whole new satellite at great expense. An "orbital service station" with the capacity to do those things is worth billions a year. Since Near Earth Asteroids can supply 30-50 times more fuel, plus the potential for other supplies, it makes that service station cheaper to operate. That's enough of a "first market" to bootstrap the development. Once you are up and operating, other activities become economic besides satellite servicing.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[DanielRavenNest]

It will if you do it right. Self-expaning factories and mining everywhere would bring the cost down to that range.

* Self-expanding production is where you deliver a "starter kit" of machines. Those machines make parts for more machines out of local materials. An example is using CNC machine tools to make metal parts out of Metallic type asteroid rock. The expanding collection of machines then can make more and more items.

* Sourcing your raw materials locally, in every orbit, turns the exponential rocket equation into a linear problem.

The combination of the two has the potential to reduce the cost of supporting a human on Mars by a factor of 2500 over today's cost. You won't get that reduction all at once, but it brings the cost of a colony (mostly self-supporting, lots of people) within reach.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[DanielRavenNest]

What was the value of the Nevada desert before we built Las Vegas? What's it worth now? Musk is the equivalent of the Connestoga wagon builders for the first settlers. Real estate developers will do the bulk of the work, like they do on Earth. Remember that Mars has the same land area as the Earth (minus oceans), and none of it is claimed yet.

Re: RAH had this in the 50's

[ceoyoyo]

It depends on what he does with it. The robber barons of the Industrial Age did lots of important, innovative things. They're remembered as robbers because of the way they exploited people and society in order to do them.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[lgw]

Since Near Earth Asteroids can supply 30-50 times more fuel, plus the potential for other supplies, it makes that service station cheaper to operate

People underestimate the effect of this. A near-Earth fuel station would be a change in kind for space travel. For example, the logistics for a manned Mars journey suddenly become affordable (by national standards), travel to the Moon becomes something a billionaire adventurer could do. Sending hundreds of probes to the planets and finally seeing more than a mailslot view of our own solar system becomes practical.

The cost of lifting fuel to GEO is nuts - most of the expense of anything you want to do beyond Earth orbit is the cost of getting the fuel up to Earth orbit. Sure, manned exploration still would need medical breakthroughs, but unmanned, well, everything changes.

And as for the medical side, if you can't see the benefit "here on Earth" for figuring out how to "radiation-harden" humans, you're not paying attention.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not going to get far trying to use reality and logic with Space Nutters. You can practically feel the rabid spittle radiating from their posts.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[flyingsquid]

Hopeless or not, we have to do it. Right now all of humanity is in a single interconnected biosphere, that is one rich crazy dickhead away from becoming uninhabitable. How many people are out there right now claiming that we can do anything we want to the Earth and humanity can never become extinct, because God? We need to get sustainable populations off of this planet and somewhere they can survive for when the inevitable happens and one of those mouth-breathing morons hits the wrong button somewhere and releases super-Ebola into the atmosphere or something.

The "we've got to get off of this rock!!!" argument is nonsensical when you consider that the Earth is currently the most habitable place within several light-years and it's been that way for at least the past 3.5 *billion* years. Just over the past 550 million years we've seen severe ice ages, runaway greenhouse warming, an asteroid impact, several massive volcanic eruptions... these events were severe enough to devastate the biosphere and wipe out most of the species on the planet, but in each case some of them survived (otherwise we wouldn't be here). It's been able to sustain complex life for at least half a billion years. Even after the Chicxulub asteroid impact, it's still got a breathable atmosphere, radiation shielding, normal gravity, liquid water, etc., none of which are the case on Mars (all you'd need to survive would be stocks of food, warm clothes, and fuel to last out the impact winter). And even before 550 million years ago, when there's too little oxygen for complex life, it's still a better option than Mars (you'd need supplemental oxygen like on Everest but otherwise it'd be habitable). You would have to do a lot to the Earth to make it less habitable than space or Mars; even with a full-out nuclear war, you've got the Strangelove option.

Looking backwards, Earth has been habitable for a very long time, it's likely to remain so for tens of millions of years more- far longer than our species can be expected to last. Looking forwards, there's no realistic scenario in which space colonies make sense:

Let's assume that we do develop the technology to live on hostile environments such as Mars, asteroids, etc. Wouldn't this exact same technology also allow us to cope with whatever hostile environmental conditions might develop on Earth?

Let's assume that we develop the ability to terraform Mars to make it habitable. Wouldn't this exact same technology allow us to terraform Earth to correct whatever hostile conditions might emerge here?

Let's assume that nuclear war or other environmental issues threaten us as a species. Wouldn't it be a lot easier and more realistic to prevent these things from happening in the first place than build some fleet of Space Arks to escape them once they've already happened?

Let's assume again we're so suicidal that we're in danger of wiping ourselves out due to nuclear war or environmental damage. Doesn't this undermine the whole All Your Eggs in One Basket argument? I mean, the idea is that some freak event might wipe out one of your baskets, but not ALL of them. But that assumes these are independent events. If people on Earth are stupid and suicidal enough to wipe themselves out, that's not a problem with the Earth, it's a problem with the *species*. EVERY human population will have those same suicidal tendencies. It's false redundancy because all your backup systems share the exact same fatal flaw.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but Space Nutter Faulty Analogy 101: comparing progress in information processing to the material world. It's an utterly stupid comparison to make, but Space Nutters trot that dusty old corpse of an "argument" out any chance they get.

And then there's all that vague emotional language like "extraterrestrial destinations". So much childish nonsense from otherwise normal adults.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[flyingsquid]

There are seven billion people on the earth. I think we can work on more than one endeavour at once.

The cost of the International Space Station was $150 billion, and a crewed Mars mission- sending a crew to Mars, landing them, bringing them back- is an order of magnitude more complicated. I'm guessing it would cost on the order of 500 billion or a trillion dollars. The issue is, that money has to come from somewhere. That's a trillion dollars that's can't be spent on other things. Economic development, medical treatments, flood and famine relief, scientific and medical research, etc. So we have a choice. We can spend hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars on the possibility that the human race will face some crisis in the far future. Or we can spend that money on solving the very real problems that people are facing today, right now, as we discuss this. Unemployment, poverty, starvation, disease, lack of education, lack of opportunities for women. I'm not saying that we cannot do anything else until we solve all those problems. But for all the talk about The Good of the Species and Preserving the Species, space nutters seem remarkably unconcerned by the idea that there are people right here on Earth who could use some help, and last time I checked the species was composed of these people. And if you space nutters are really so goddamn concerned about saving the species, maybe you'd be more interested in helping them out. If half the planet wasn't uneducated and living in poverty, maybe we'd have a lot more economic and intellectual resources at building that Space Ark or Warp Gate or Hyperdrive or whatever it will take to get into space. I'm skeptical about the possibility of setting up space colonies, but if it does happen, I think Bill Gates' work on malaria in Africa will probably end up doing a lot more to help get us there than Elon Musk's rockets.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[flyingsquid]

Look at the title of the story you are replying in: It is billionaires that are funding it. Nothing about public funds being discussed here.

Yes, Elon Musk's rockets will be funded by all those privately funded space stations, privately funded spy satellites, and privately funded missions to Mars.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Beck_Neard]

Is it a good idea to voluntarily phase out human beings? No.

But I think itzly's position is that humanity is not the end-goal of evolution; we are just one step in the evolutionary process, and for the time being we should be more focused on ensuring a better standard of living and environment for ourselves and our immediate descendants. Thinking about what's going to happen a million years down the road is incredibly premature at this point. If humans are no longer around in a million years (and they probably won't be), that has no effect on the here and now.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Beck_Neard]

Yup, it seems hilarious to me that people say we need to go to Mars to ensure the survival of the human race, except Earth has ensured the survival of humans for 100,000 years and all it would take for a Mars colony to completely die would be a simple power outage incident. Even if 10,000 people were living on Mars, it would still be a tenuous place to live until it was completely terraformed.

But I disagree with your premise that _anything_ threatens our existence here at all. No asteroid impact or nuclear war would wipe out the human race. Destroy civilization? Maybe. But not the human race. Even if 1000 people survived it would be enough to propagate the species.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[mi]

I trust corporations a whole lot less in fact an order of magnitude less than the government.

Do you really? I wonder, why that is — do you have some reference to a study comparing disasters at corporate-owned vs. government-owned establishments?

If, as seems very likely, your statement comes purely from unsubstantiated belief, please, explain, what your life experience is — so we may decide, whether or not give credence to your gut's feeling.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[flyingsquid]

More importantly, you don't build large-scale infrastructure like China's new Silk Road bullet freight operation out of thin air. Large-scale infrastructure of this kind will require large amounts of pure metals. Having large new sources of supply in turn encourages bigger projects. How much copper is it going to take for the Silk Road to go maglev?

These kinds of shortages have a way of sorting themselves out. If the price of a commodity goes up, then people start exploring new sources of the commodity, new modes of production, alternatives to the commodity, and ways to be more efficient with the commodity. This is exactly what happened with oil prices back when people started panicking about "peak oil". New resources and modes of production (deep water oil, tar sands, shale oil) were developed and alternative sources of energy (solar, wind, natural gas, etc.) were pursued, and more efficient cars were developed. The result is that oil prices have fallen dramatically in recent years from around $100 a barrel to around $60 a barrel and the U.S. is set to become a net oil exporter. The same dynamic is likely to play out with copper- as soon as we start seeing shortages of copper, increased prices will increasingly drive people to find more of it, replace it with other materials, and be more efficient in its use.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[TheEyes]

Every dollar spent on space exploration has come back to us tenfold. No other investment in history can make such a boast. Most of your "better ideas" have in fact proven to be losers over time, especially direct economic aid to poorer nations. You talk about setting aside emotional commitments and embracing rationality. Practice what you preach, shut up and multiply.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Maritz]

Space exploration and colonization are hopeless fantasies. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend insane fortunes to explore and colonize the most inhospitable places there are, for no apparent benefit.

There never being any benefit, and you being unable to foresee any benefit, are not the same thing. Hard as that might be for you to believe.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Maritz]

You first. Kill yourself and then I'll know you're credible.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Maritz]

There is no end-goal of evolution. Therefore not being it is completely irrelevant. There's a whole lot of things that we're not. Who is saying 'let's spend all our money on a Mars colony'? Nobody is; that's what makes it a straw man bullshit argument.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not going to get far trying to use reality and logic with Space Nutters. You can practically feel the rabid spittle radiating from their posts.

Lol it's the 'space nutter' dickhead. He wins all arguments by calling people space nutters. How clever.

Re: RAH had this in the 50's

[Meditato]

This sort of blind faith in exponential economics will be the death of us.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[cjameshuff]

It's not about minerals to be sent back to Earth, it's about volatiles for use in orbit. Platinum group metals might someday become a minor side business, but the real potential is in supplying propellant in orbit that doesn't cost as much as its mass in precious metals. This would allow a major expansion of orbital operations, with further reduction of costs and risk due to the additional flexibility in handling failures via robotic assembly and servicing, as well as largely solving the orbital debris problem.

Re: RAH had this in the 50's

[DEN_GUY]

Yeah, I mean if it wasn"t for the sky high cost of gas, we've wouldn't have moved on to alternatives at scale, right?
Oh yeah, that's right. Exactly what he said happened. Where's the blind faith?

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Beck_Neard]

All our money? If the goal of a Mars colony is just 'saving the species', then even a single dollar of public funds is too much. Really. You would object to other wastes of public funds, no matter how small. Why make an exception just because the word 'Mars' is involved?

If the goal is, on the other hand, something more important, like an experiment to learn how to build better human societies and how to deal with the inevitable rise of AIs, then that's a different question. But there's no reason to think that Mars is the best place to carry out such experiments. It's probably the worst place, actually (well, at least in the inner solar system).

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[painandgreed]

Space exploration and colonization are hopeless fantasies. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend insane fortunes to explore and colonize the most inhospitable places there are, for no apparent benefit.

It's inhospitable, but it has near limitless energy which is going to be the one resource we'll continue to need and want more of. Although we can send infrastructure up into space to collect it for us, eventually, that infrastructure will require people in space to maintain it. That infrastructure and the people in space to collect that energy will be the exploration which will eventually be self serving.

Re:RAH had this in the 50's

[Cantankerous Cur]

Every dollar spent on space exploration has come back to us tenfold.

Whoa, wait, what? Short of attributing this to inventions necessary for space travel, I don't see how this could possibly be true. Proof please.

Do I buy it?

[Runaway1956]

I'm well aware of fake "philanthropy". Some of the more respectable philanthropy even fails. Supposing that some billionaire actually funds the lab that finds the cure for cancer - he has bought and paid for his brand of immortality. The world doesn't need or want any more pyramids, so cancer will do the trick.

All the same - if enough people are competing to accomplish something is space, SOMEONE is going to succeed.

Yeah, I buy it. Hell, I'd work for little more than a pretty meager wage if I could be reasonably sure of ACCOMPLISHING something meaningful in space.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the same - if enough people are competing to accomplish something is space, SOMEONE is going to succeed.

And how many is enough? 10? 100? 1000?

Re:Do I buy it?

[Livius]

This is exactly why The Economist is over-stating the argument. Anonymous charity is a goal of many religions, but self-promoting charity is better than no charity at all. If the philanthropy achieves its charitable goal, then it doesn't matter if it's self-serving, and one could argue that the wealthy patron has honestly earned the fame and recognition that they receive. If it does not achieve its goal, or does so inefficiently, then the public is not likely to be fooled.

Re:Do I buy it?

[beelsebob]

What's especially weird about this article is that neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit...

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of to your point. What the hell do I care how the 1% of the 1% spend their money? Good on them... I am glad they are spending it rather than hording it into hedgefunds... They are building value.

Re:Do I buy it?

[the gnat]

neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit

Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to retire on Mars, and making orbital launches affordable is a first step towards that. It sounds a little nutty, but I wish him the best of luck anyway. If he succeeds, we should all benefit in the long term; if he only makes a fool of himself, at least he's not doing it with my money.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Kjella]

Or the alternative, nobody's going to succeed. That happens often enough as rich people want to live forever, well so far that's not for sale. if I got the choice between dying myself or two of my organ transplants saving lives, I'd choose living. Doesn't matter if a thousand or a million or a billion lives would live without me, you've no moral right to ask me to sacrifice my life.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do I care how the 1% of the 1% spend their money?

Would you rather have Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor?

Re:Do I buy it?

[FatLittleMonkey]

What's especially weird about this article is that neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit...

Nor have they "egotistically proclaim[ed] that they alone can solve mankind's problems, from aging to space travel." Nor "all the talk of exploration." Nor "shoot endangered animals on safari".

Seriously, the guy is nothing but a walking strawman.

There's plenty of things you can criticise the "PayPal mafia" and NewSpace over, especially Thiel and Branson respectively, but nothing that the Professor is going on about even comes close to a valid criticism. (Or even something that has anything to do with reality.) It's bizarre that someone would say it, but crazy that a major newspaper would actually publish it.

"The more recent trend is billionaires making fleets of rocket ships"

A) "recently", for something that's over a decade old, suggests that he's only just heard about it and because he only just heard about it, thinks it's new.

B) "fleets of rocket ships" is how a child would see it. Suggesting the guy is not only ignorant, but is surrounded by ignorant people.

"neither [Elon] Musk's nor [Richard] Branson's goals really seem to break new ground"

VG won't be doing anything special, (although even a private sub-orbital system is new; nothing like SS2 exists. X-15 with passengers and open space.)

But Musk already has the cheapest launcher on the market (perhaps ignoring a few micro-launchers), is about to develop fly-back first stage (something the industry has been wishing for since the early sixties), and is developing a private manned capsule, and is developing a heavy lift launcher that costs less than any other medium-lift launcher on the market even if they doesn't achieve reusability, and he's working with NASA to develop a Saturn V F1-class engine for a Saturn V class launcher, and he wants to go to Mars.

Not breaking new ground? What the fuck does this idiot want from them, a warp drive?

Re:Do I buy it?

[confused one]

Musk has been clearly stating that one of his long term goals is exploration and colonization of Mars. As an example: Elon Musk: The Case for Mars. That mission statement is written right into SpaceX documentation: About SpaceX

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk has stated explicitly that his goal is to colonize Mars.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do I care how the 1% of the 1% spend their money?

In a certain sense, I grew up poor in a rich (extended) family. Most of the other families in my neighborhood had motor boats and went water skiing in the summer. My family had a $150 canoe from K-mart. But I never went to bed hungry out of economic necessity. And when I got accepted to MIT, my family paid the full tuition.

But then I ended up living overseas and seeing first-hand levels of poverty and human suffering that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Before that, I didn't really understand poverty. Sure, growing up I heard about famines in Africa and urban decay in the inner cities. But it never really hit home that there were vast numbers of good innocent people who, through no fault of their own, were trapped in vicious soul destroying poverty. I wasn't a bad person but at a subconscious cultural level without really thinking about it I accepted that the world mostly a good and just place and that most people who were suffering in desperate poverty somehow deserved it: if they really didn't want to be poor then they could just "make some good choices" and stop being poor.

So why does it matter what rich people spend their money on? In the long term, an economy can increase it's productive capacity through scientific discovery and technological advances. In the very long term, we'll have technology that would allow most people in the world to live lives of comfort and leisure while robots do almost all of the work. But, in the short term, the economy has a limited productive capacity - that can either be used to produce frivolous luxury goods for rich people or to lift poor people out of poverty. And rich people control most of the economy. In a certain sense, I believe in the power of the human spirit. I believe that humanity can achieve incredible things - but only if it wants to. If the (rich) people who control the world's resources and economy mostly want frivolous luxury goods for themselves then that's what humanity will achieve. On other the other hand, if it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all the world's rich people truly care about lifting poor people out of poverty then poverty could be eradicated from the world in a single generation.

Mostly rich people really don't understand poverty because it's so far outside their own life experience but many of them have also not thought carefully about whether the purpose of life is to do as much as they can for themselves or do do as much as they can for others (and many naively pretend that the two are exactly equivalent).

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I pick Doctor Doom?

He knows how to get shit the fuck done. Universal Healthcare. Excellent Education. And absolutely no conscription. Sure, we don't have entirely free speech, but why would I do anything but PRAISE DOOM anyway?

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk has already succeeded in reducing global launch prices by almost half in the payload range that Falcon can launch. That's just by increased manufacturing efficiency, not by his highly optimistic plan to reuse stages. If he does nothing else he has already done humanity an enormous service.

Re:Do I buy it?

[ClickOnThis]

This did not deserve a flamebait mod. Somebody mod it back up again.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'dont care AC' here. You are 100% correct. I think maybe I overstated my potion a bit.

Even a poor neighborhood in the US does not understand the abject poverty some people in 3rd world countries lives in.

However, my point is I can neither control nor influence what these people do (just as you could not control what your extended family did with their money). In any manor whatsoever. I would rather they spend it on their pet space project than pumping it into some hedgefund that just shuffles money around. At least the money is doing *some* good rather than just making interest/valuation float.

The best way I can put it is this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Unfortunatly it is wrapped up in anti immigration rhetoric. We could literally steal the money from all the 1%rs and hand it out freely to the world. It still would not be enough. The mean daily wage of every person on the planet is $2.50. Think about that. There is 0 we can do to help them. The only way to help them is to find ways they can help themselves. Anything else will not work as it is not sustainable in any way (as giveaway money runs out).

In our own country we have sold everyone on the idea they have to go to college to be something. We we should be selling people on the idea they need to build things. They need to create jobs, they need to be the ones doing the hiring. They need to work to build a better life. No one will give you the really nice things. They will give you basic needs and thats it. Instead we sell people that they could be chosen and lifted up out of poverty at the whim of the 1%. We sell large sections of our population on the idea if they play football or basketball good enough they could win the lottery and make millions. We sell everyone on the quick fix. I do not look to the 1%rs to help me out. They never will in fact they are looking to separate me from what little I do have. They are too busy playing astronaut or robber baron. I worry about what I am going to do. We have huge swaths of people who have thrown up their hands and go 'I do not care' we need to get them to care again. We need them to build a better world instead of a lazy one where everyone lays around hopping to win the lottery between bits of reality TV.

And whoever tagged this one as flamebait is a jerk.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider yourself lucky the 1% aren't spending their money developing a better gas chamber. I couldn't say I'd blame them if they were.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, in the short term, the economy has a limited productive capacity - that can either be used to produce frivolous luxury goods for rich people or to lift poor people out of poverty.

Put me down as a vote for "use it to produce frivolous luxury goods for rich people".

Seriously, if it upsets you that much, post your address and I'll be glad to mail you a hankie. A nice pink one to go with your politics.

Re:Do I buy it?

[gman003]

What the fuck does this idiot want from them, a warp drive?

Yes, a warp drive would be nice, if it's not too much of a bother.

Re:Do I buy it?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I second that request, even if it is a bit of a bother.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Runaway1956]

I would if I could - we ALWAYS seem to have mod points here, but not me, not today. I agree with AC. Like him, I grew up relatively poor, in a rather wealthy town. It wasn't until I walked the streets of Djibouti that I saw genuine soul grinding, body destroying poverty. No, rich people don't understand poverty - and in fact, there are only a small percentage of Americans who probably have seen it face to face.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Runaway1956]

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Runaway1956]

I could hate you for bringing me back to reality. But, you're right. The ultimate goal, is to get mankind out there among the stars. And - that may never happen. Every attempt may fail. We MAY not even establish any self sustaining colonies here in the solar system. But, I sure as hell don't want to accept that idea as likely. I suppose you've seen this little video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That's the short take from a longer video, which is somewhat less "exciting" I guess the term might be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Do I buy it?

[Hognoxious]

Teach a million men to fish, and soon the oceans are empty.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes, despite their claims of greatness, the 1% are fundamentally incapable of catching enough fish to feed everyone on the planet, so to speak. The key is to create an economy where everyone can "catch fish" for themselves - where everyone has the training and the tools to support themselves and their family comfortably with an honest days work. This isn't an easy problem but it's not hopeless either. And if the people who control the world's economy understand that poverty is a terrible problem in the world and that they will get more respect from reducing poverty than from jumping out of balloons then they are likely to change their behavior.

Re:Do I buy it?

[BitZtream]

VG won't be doing anything special, (although even a private sub-orbital system is new; nothing like SS2 exists. X-15 with passengers and open space.)

But Musk already has the cheapest launcher on the market (perhaps ignoring a few micro-launchers), is about to develop fly-back first stage (something the industry has been wishing for since the early sixties), and is developing a private manned capsule, and is developing a heavy lift launcher that costs less than any other medium-lift launcher on the market even if they doesn't achieve reusability, and he's working with NASA to develop a Saturn V F1-class engine for a Saturn V class launcher, and he wants to go to Mars.

Not breaking new ground? What the fuck does this idiot want from them, a warp drive?

While I agree with most of you post, these parts are just wrong.

There is nothing new about anything they've done so far. They are simply taking advantage of more modern technology to do things that have already been done more efficiently, to the point that some of them are viable without being funded by the government. NASA has done all of these things in one form or another, it just cost far too much to be commercially viable. Hell, other civilians have been carried to the ISS by Russia so VG is WAY behind the curve. NASA had self landing rockets in the 60s - They were ridiculously expensive and unreliable, but occasionally they worked, they just didn't have the advantage of the fact that $100 worth of electronics can act as a fully functional guided autopilot (See: MegaPilot at HobbyKing, a rip off of the original 3DR auto pilot).

Re:Do I buy it?

[Applehu Akbar]

Teach a billion men to fish, and they will be forced to come up with a better system than strip-mining the ocean.

Re:Do I buy it?

[cheesybagel]

Rocketry research was mostly done as a hobby by private citizens in the 1930s before WWII came out and their research got picked up by the military in their countries. I am talking about people like Goddard, Obbert, even von Braun.

Re:Do I buy it?

[pooh666]

But what if no charity at all evetually spawns wider thought on our responsiblity to each other, not as charity, but as being decent human beings.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. This is why we should expand elsewhere: in order to do our mining, extraction, and refining elsewhere. Not on Earth. Putting large asteroids in Earth's (or the Moon's orbit) will not be well received.

More resources, less pollution here. The universe is big. Why do we have to do everything right here?

Re:Do I buy it?

[DanielRavenNest]

> Yeah, I buy it. Hell, I'd work for little more than a pretty meager wage if I could be reasonably sure of ACCOMPLISHING something meaningful in space.

You can, and don't even have to quit your day job. Read up on "self expanding automation" ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/S... ), where a starter kit of machines is used to build parts for more machines, until you have the production capacity you need. In space, instead of sending a whole factory to process asteroids or support a Mars base, you send just the starter kit, and build the rest from local materials. On Earth the same idea of bootstrapping from a starter kit lets you grow your rocket factory or launch site, or any other industrial production you want.

An industrial starter kit will be beyond the average person's finances, but then so is a data center. The way to bring it down to the individual level is (a) to make it distributed - the machines are split up among different people or groups, but they collaborate to make things, or (b) to run a centralized production location on a time share or lease basis. You need a part, you submit the design files and a small payment to have it made. Much of the work becomes designing new or upgraded things to make to expand the system. You can do that at home, because you already have a computer to run the design software.

Once people get the hang of making starter kits and growing them, they can work towards more and more difficult locations. First typical metro areas, then deserts, ice caps, oceans, and finally space. Your first kit, when it is fully grown up, can produce another starter kit for the next location, and so on. You automatically build your supply chain as you go.

Re:Do I buy it?

[DanielRavenNest]

> VG won't be doing anything special,

Actually "Son of SpaceShip Two", otherwise known as Stratolaunch ( http://www.stratolaunch.com/) , is the special thing. It's the same basic idea, carrier airplane and rocket stages, but much bigger and able to put significant payloads in orbit. Yet another billionaire, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, started this up. The same people (Scaled Composites) are building this as SpaceShip Two. But this time they are using parts from *two* 747's to build the world's largest airplane, to maximize launch capacity.

At first, the rocket stages are disposable, and only the airplane comes back, but in the long run I expect them to reuse the rocket stages too, it would save a lot per flight.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's doing it with the money of millions of PayPal customers' money whose accounts mysteriously became frozen (becuse of "irregular activity") after they had a few tens of bucks in them. Yes, the Great PayPal scam. Nearly got caught out by it myself. Luckily I'm a few months behind the fashion, so I didn't use my PayPal account before the scam hit, and I never used it after. Musk got 1 shiny Brirish Pound out of me. I got ripped off by ebay too, Never used it again. Now these bastards are building big space rockets...

Re:Do I buy it?

[flyingsquid]

On other the other hand, if it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all the world's rich people truly care about lifting poor people out of poverty then poverty could be eradicated from the world in a single generation.

I think that this is probably a bit overly optimistic. The difference between the U.S. and some failed state isn't merely a difference in the level of wealth. It's a whole series of things- an effective security apparatus, infrastructure, a court system, trustworthy, responsive, and effective government administration, education and literacy, a free press, a fair market system with companies and finance, a national identity, tolerance of different people and ideas, and a culture that buys into and believes in these things as realistic and important goals. The wealth and prosperity of the United States are built on a culture, ideals, markets and governments that go back hundreds of years, to the Colonies, to England, to Renaissance Italy, to Rome, to Jesus, to the Greeks.

Wealth isn't just the condition of not being poor, it's about creating a productive and fair society. Like they say, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him the rest of his life. The issue is that being a good fisherman is *hard*. It takes a work ethic and discipline, piloting, engineering, and navigational skills, management skills, and learning how to actually catch fish. It takes years.

Poverty has a lot of causes. If you cut your potential labor force in half by keeping women unemployed, if government officials steal from the people with bribes, if there's a lack of education so you can't hire skilled workers, if business can't operate because of a corrupt judiciary, if you can't move goods to market because there are no roads, if you're sick with malaria and can't work, if the army is weak and violence flourishes, if you can't get a small business loan... these are problems that make going to the moon look pretty straightforward. I'm not saying we shouldn't try. As Kennedy said about the moon, we're not going there because it's easy, but because it's hard. But we need to be realistic about how hard it's going to be.

Re:Do I buy it?

[flyingsquid]

I remember seeing starving Ethiopian kids on TV when I was a kid, and it left me deeply shaken up. But over the years, I realized that you saw all kinds of things on TV- GI Joe and Transformers and the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon and exploding coyotes, and the little Ethiopian kid with the distended belly sort of entered that realm. One more image on TV and you can just change the channel.

And then travelling in Africa I saw a starving kid, face to face. Me looking at him, and him looking back. And I realized, that's not fake. That's not TV. I can't just change the channel and make him go away. And he can't just change the channel and make all this stuff go away. This is his reality, and it fucking sucks, and this is the reality of millions and millions of people.

One of the tropes in science fiction is the Bubble City. The residents of the Bubble City live in their cozy, clean, climate controlled little domed city and have wealth and peace and long happy lives. And meanwhile, outside live the savages, with their poor, dirty, and violent little lives, and the people in the Bubble City don't think much about them or worry about them. What I saw for the first time is that this isn't science fiction. This describes the world we live in. The developed world is a bubble, but until you step foot outside, you don't even know it.

Re:Do I buy it?

[cjameshuff]

What SpaceX is doing isn't just a self landing rocket, it's operational medium (and soon heavy lift lift) orbital launch vehicles with first stages that can restart their engines multiple times and return through a powered reentry for a precision landing and reuse. That *is* new, in fact the supersonic retroburn is something that nobody was even certain was possible. They're also doing propellant crossfeed on the Falcon Heavy...they may not have invented the concept, but they are the only ones to implement it. Also new: record setting thrust to weight and specific impulse from a simple gas generator engine design, and successful clustering of 9 engines for the first stage and a single near-identical engine for the second. And then there's the fact that they've disrupted the entire industry with their cost reductions. It takes a particularly blatant form of denial to claim SpaceX is doing nothing new.

Re:Do I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I pick Doctor Doom?

He knows how to get shit the fuck done. Universal Healthcare. Excellent Education. And absolutely no conscription. Sure, we don't have entirely free speech, but why would I do anything but PRAISE DOOM anyway?

How is the internet bandwidth in Latveria?

Re:Do I buy it?

[Optali]

And we can all recall Howard Hughes, a billionaire as eccentric and any and who actually produced quite a bunch of breaking tech.

These guys do have a lot of money, and they can just go and invest a part of it in something they fancy, even if it doesn't make sense. If it does, they will have hit the jackpot as Hughes did, of not, well, they had their fun.

I don't understand all this bitching: They have the funds and they do what they want with it, right? It's always better than investing in churches and / or think tanks trying to tell us that tobacco is good for health or that Jesus worked as a cowboy in a dinosaur farm.

 

What the hell is this guy smoking

[Spy Handler]

not gonna bother clicking any of the links. This guy is either incredibly ignorant and been living under a rock for the past few years, or his 401k is heavily vested in defense contractors. SpaceX is shaking the space launch industry to the very foundations and turning everything upside down. SpaceX is already cheaper than them (by a lot), but if the R program succeeds (we'll know in a few days), basically Elon will wipe out ULA and Ariannespace and there will be nothing left of them except for a few crumbs thrown at them by their buddies in government.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

not gonna bother clicking any of the links. This guy is either incredibly ignorant and been living under a rock for the past few years, or his 401k is heavily vested in defense contractors. SpaceX is shaking the space launch industry to the very foundations and turning everything upside down. SpaceX is already cheaper than them (by a lot), but if the R program succeeds (we'll know in a few days), basically Elon will wipe out ULA and Ariannespace and there will be nothing left of them except for a few crumbs thrown at them by their buddies in government.

a-fking-men and good riddance to the incest-corps of ULA and the air force launch command's previous relationships

the article author is on crack

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Travis Mansbridge]

Not to mention the work SpaceX has already done developing re-usable rockets, a technology that's going to save every-tax-paying-body money in the long run.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Teancum]

Ariannespace already treats SpaceX as a credible threat and is making significant changes to their next generation Ariane launch vehicle specifically to go in a direct competition with the Falcon 9. I don't know if they are going to succeed in being able to drop launch costs below $1k/kg like Elon Musk seems to be striving for, but they sure want to stay in the game and try to at least maintain market share against SpaceX and the stream of steady launch contracts that are now going to America that used to not happen.

SpaceX is definitely winning more launch contracts than they are currently launching, so I expect that even an increased launch rate is going to be sustainable for that company into the near future. This is even without the reusable launchers that SpaceX is trying to develop as I consider that to be merely icing on the cake and a long term extra profit thing even if the upcoming launch pancakes the 1st stage after stage separation.

ULA is merely trying to compete against SpaceX in the halls of Congress instead with lobbyists. I wonder how that will work out in the long run?

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[denzacar]

I like the bit where running a space transport company with long term cargo, people and fuel transporting plans and goals, including but not limited to resupplying the ISS is equated with "shoot[ing] endangered animals on [a] safari".

Why not just call Musk an apartheid-lovin fascist nazi-commie from South-WeHateBlackPeople-Africa?

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Trane Francks]

In addition to your excellent points, SpaceX made history by being the first private spacecraft to berth with the ISS. NASA and SpaceX have a very complementary collaboration schedule in place. The cost-competitiveness of SpaceX's programs will make for a long-term paradigm shift in space exploration and commercial ventures for the private sector.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[AK Marc]

I clicked a link. the billionaire who "shot endangered animals on safari" didn't shot any animals, and was armed only with a camera, and never gave the reason that it was in the name of "science" or anything else. So the summary is a lying troll. I agree that there's something else going on. Otherwise why lie so blatantly?

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Immerman]

Are you sure there's any cake under that icing? As I recall the single-use launch vehicle accounts for 90-95% of the cost of a typical launch, SpaceX included. Make it reusable and you cut launch costs to around 1/10th to 1/20th of the current level. Even a single reuse would cut costs almost in half, a handful of reuses would bring the price down enough that it might start making sense to look at the cost-effectiveness of other aspects of the launch as well. Of course that's based on reusing both stages, and the second stage will probably prove considerably more challenging to recover, but it's still a potential game-changing advance in the technology, not just some profit-padding "icing"

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Guspaz]

Nope, once you run an Internet company, you're never allowed to be successful at anything else. It doesn't matter if you run a highly successful and profitable space transport company, that's just vanity and hubris. It doesn't even matter if you weren't a billionaire when you founded said space transport company, and that it was your post-dot-com companies such as said space transport company that made you a billionaire... you're now in the "billionaire robber baron space club".

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Ariannespace already treats SpaceX as a credible threat and is making significant changes to their next generation Ariane launch vehicle specifically to go in a direct competition with the Falcon 9.

The sad thing is that in 2020+, they'll have a launch vehicle somewhat competitive with the 2014's Falcon 9 v1.1. Unfortunately, without a time machine, such marginal progress would seem less than useful.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Bo'Bob'O]

Even space launch economics aside, the dragon spacecraft can return cargo to earth from LEO.

This is a technology that only only a number of countries you can count on your fingers can do. Fewer still with anything actively doing it. Even if SpaceX stops developing tech tomorrow, it's still had an immediate impact the US and the world's ability to do research in space now and for years to come.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[confused one]

you're absolutely right. Musk, et. al. have repeatedly said re-use is a necessary component for reaching the price point they're targeting. The big rockets they're planning for later (Mars Colony Transporter (MCT) aka Big Falcon Rocket (BFR)) would be untenable as a throw away. Imagine a rocket big enough to lift the entire ISS to orbit in 3-4 launches. Now, imagine doing that for fuel cost alone. That's where SpaceX is headed.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Even if you go out on a very pessimistic limb and assume that the best SpaceX will be able to achieve in next few years will be a Falcon Heavy version with the reuse of just side boosters (central core expended, no downrange landing) and without crossfeed, and that reusing those side boosters would only cut the costs by a factor of two to three (some serious inspection required, plus logistics), it turns out that you should still get a ~40 t to LEO/~15 t to GTO class launcher for something like 100M-$110M, or slightly less. In fact, they don't even have to ask for less money - if they asked for $150M, or even $200M, people would still gladly pay for it since nobody else plans to offer anything even remotely similar in that time frame, and if SpaceX will still have limited launch throughput at that moment (as they do now), they'll just be limiting their own profits (which they badly need for further R&D).

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

the barge is definitely usable for far downrange recovery of the heavy central stage. so its better than we assume.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

the numbers Arianspace put out were a third more than F9 for each launch so its not going to be competitive with present SpaceX launches in that many years...its a last gasp to hold onto ESA contracts

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I think it actually mostly depends on the level of cost savings you achieve with the stage reuse. The side boosters shouldn't be a problem in any case, they're being recovered from fairly small speed and downrange distance (you only need a small amount of reserved fuel for recovery), so the payload decrease will be fairly small, and certainly smaller, percentage-wise, from what a reusable Falcon 9 will achieve. But recovering the core stage of a Falcon Heavy (from a higher velocity, even if downrange) should mean a comparatively higher decrease in useful payload (more fuel reserve necessary AND on a higher stage), and therefore presumably will only be economical if the reuse is sufficiently cheap, which we don't know yet.

In other words, if reusing the side boosters slashes 2X dollars from the launch cost and slightly decreases the payload, and reusing also the core only slashes extra X dollars from the launch cost but decreases the payload much more significantly, chances are that only the former might make economical sense, in terms of cost per unit of payload mass. I'm not sure where the threshold is.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Beck_Neard]

Yup I agree. It's true that a lot of billionaire philanthropists are full of it, but not all of them are.

Musk has made a well-defined and significant contribution: Development of a cheap reusable rocket. This isn't some wishy-washy concept like "paradigm shift in how we interact with our technology" or "revolutionary new power source that could change the world if only people listened!" This is something that can be measured in pounds-force, tons to LEO, and gallons of LOX.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[ArsonSmith]

Why would I want to launch something in space just to bring it back. If it's not required to insure the survival of the crew I could make it significantly lighter and cheaper, and instead of all that extra weight that will just be coming back for another trip I could be sending up that much more payload. This re-usable rocket bullshit is what stalled the space programs over the past 40+ years.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You may not have noticed, but there hasn't been a single reusable non-STS launch vehicle yet - in fact, not even STS was properly reusable (SRBs corroded, ET burned up), so I'm not even sure it counts. And those "significantly lighter and cheaper" vehicles you called for and eventually ended up with are called Delta IV...hey, wait a minute! Those aren't actually cheap at all! Bummer.

And why would you want to launch something in space just to bring it back? Because it's much cheaper than to build it again, of course, even if you get slightly less payload with it.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

And maybe in a decade or two, the private companies will be able to send a small group of people to the moon, proving once and for all that private industry is more innovative than government.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

If a given payload is launched for less the solution is economic. Period. If you save a dollar reusing the core you reuse it.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's more about replacing Soyuz, both with Ariane 6-2 and a uprated Vega. Over the last two years Russia has become less than a reliable supplier of space hardware.

Europe needs guaranteed access to space at any cost. If this system halves the infrastructure costs and eliminates a bad supplier so much the better.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Teancum]

More important, what Elon Musk has provided for spaceflight is a huge reduction in cost that can be measured as dollars per kilogram to orbit. The Space Shuttle typically got somewhere in the range of about $20k-$40k/kg to LEO (depending on how you calculated the cost of launching a shuttle.... getting the order of magnitude on that number is dubious at best and no two independent sources give the same number). Typical in the launch industry is about $10k/kg as a general rule of thumb (if you can get cheaper... it is likely a good price for a launch). SpaceX on the other hand has a posted price for a Falcon 9 (no frills or extras where the customer has to do everything else once they get into orbit) of about $60 million per launch. @10,000 kilograms for the payload capacity of that rocket (officially rated for about 15 MT, but I'm being generous here and deliberately low-balling the price) that gives you a price of $6k/kg.

In other words, the bottom line really does matter, and SpaceX is extremely competitive and cost effective for getting into space.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Teancum]

SpaceX is making a profit off of their expendable rocket program.... and beating the Chinese Space Agency on a cost per kilogram into orbit even doing just that. Mind you, the main way that SpaceX is going to try to get launch prices cheaper is simply to reuse the first stage by flying it back to the launch pad... something that won't ever make the trip into space anyway. Most of the fuel that the stage will be firing is the reserve fuel that normally isn't used in a nominal flight but will be used in an attempt to recover the stage after it has accomplished the primary task of sending the rest of the rocket to a point it can get into orbit and space.

Another difference between what SpaceX is doing and previous attempts is that they are doing it incrementally instead of all at once (a huge problem for Rotary Rocket as well as the DC-X and arguably even the Space Shuttle) and it isn't being done with tax dollars but rather with private R&D spending. They don't depend upon a vague and indifferent Congress to decide if funding for the R&D program will continue or not. No NASA money is being spent on the reusable engine program but instead is simply minor testing after the revenue portion of the flight has already happened.

We will see next month (or this month... depending on when you read this) how successful SpaceX will actually be with the concept, since they are attempting to capture and successfully land the first stage as a part of the next launch. If it was power point presentations still, your argument that this is bullshit would be justified. Bent hardware currently sitting on a launch pad (SLC-40) in Florida awaiting FAA-AST approval for launch doesn't sound like bullshit to me. I think SpaceX is in slightly better shape than you think.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Teancum]

I'm suggesting that some of the methods that SpaceX has employed to reduce costs of their rocket in terms of applying mass production techniques and treating the manufacturing of rockets more like how automobiles are manufactured on an assembly line has made a huge impact in terms of the cost of a launch. They are currently manufacturing more than a couple Merlin 1-D engines each week and plan to ramp up that production rate to even higher levels. They have also streamlined a number of things in the vehicle design to drop prices considerably including using consumer grade electronics instead of mil-spec equipment (using redundancy instead to achieve higher reliability) and several other innovations to really drop costs that haven't been used earlier.

That is the cake I'm talking about which other companies haven't been able to achieve... for various reasons. The Merlin 1-D engines aren't the highest performing engines and definitely have some strong limitations, but they are very cheap to manufacture. The same goes for the body of the rocket and other parts too. The vertical integration of SpaceX has also helped in terms of keeping the supply chain tight and keeping costs under control.

I also question how much actual savings will happen with reuse as there are definitely fixed costs that really limit how much it can reduce costs. 1st stage reuse at best only saves about half of the cost.... when done over the course of nearly 20-30 launches for amortization and assuming even low fixed costs. That still is useful and can make SpaceX very competitive, but it isn't nearly the earth shattering cost reduction that some are suggesting. SpaceX isn't even talking much any more about 2nd stage reuse, and all of the contracts using the Dragon spacecraft currently require a new capsule on every launch.

In other words, SpaceX really can't be depending on reuse for profit and instead must depend on other ways to cut costs in order to survive as a company while charging so little to the end customers. Admittedly, SpaceX officials have quoted a price point of $7 million per launch of the Falcon 9 to deliver 10 metric tons to LEO as something they are aiming at (mentioned at a satellite conference in Indonesia last year with commentary by other launch providers simply saying SpaceX is quoting nonsense). That is about 1/10th of the price currently, but I would assume that includes more than just reuse savings.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Teancum]

This is a technology that only only a number of countries you can count on your fingers can do.

I think you can put that on a single digit. The Soyuz spacecraft can basically return the three member crew and essentially a postage stamp. Well, it is about a hundred pounds of extra baggage, but essentially nothing on a practical level. The Dragon spacecraft really is the only vehicle currently in active use that has this capability at all.

Yes, Russia obviously has the capability and even flew the Buran spacecraft that had some capability of returning stuff from orbit. The Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft has the same return capabilities of the Soyuz (basically nothing) although I have no doubt that if China needed the capability they could make it. There is also the X-37 spacecraft that the USAF has been playing with that may or may not have actually brought stuff back from orbit. It also should go without saying that the Boeing CST-100 as well as the Orion capsule should also be capable of returning more substantial amounts of cargo from space (Boeing is even trying to muscle their way into the next round of the commercial cargo resupply flights). ESA has never had a return cargo capability of any kind, nor has Japan even though I don't doubt either "country" (is the EU a country?) could put up such a spacecraft if they cared. Both Japan and ESA have sent cargo flights to the ISS though.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Beck_Neard]

If the reusable rocket thing pans out, it's likely that that number will drop even further in the future.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Beck_Neard]

I'm pretty sure if you gave SpaceX $150 billion they could also send a bunch of astronauts to the moon. Hell, even the ULA could do that, and they are wasteful behemoths.

SpaceX carried out its entire Falcon 9 development and launch program (including ISS resupply mission) with less money than a single shuttle launch.

Don't get me wrong, Apollo was great, and the Apollo program was done _extremely_ well given the time constraints ("...by the end of this decade") and technological abilities of the time. It was nothing short of a technological miracle carried out by the very best minds the world had to offer. But it cost 1/8 trillion dollars (in today's money). Never forget that when making a comparison.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Beck_Neard]

Do you understand why rockets use staging? Do you realize that the first stage (by far the heaviest and most expensive part of the rocket) does not go to space?

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[confused one]

Because the booster might cost something like $20 million and the fuel cost is like $200,000 per launch. The fuel cost is 1% of the cost. If you can recover the booster and re-use it 10 times or more (without all the refurbishment required for each turn of the Space Shuttle), you've reduced launch cost considerably. If you can do this, it might make sense to just build a bigger re-usable booster, if you need to launch more mass.

SpaceX is doing this the right way: They want to test re-use; so, they increased the fuel capacity and upgraded the engines. There was no lose of up-mass, in fact it increased. Having done this, they still have the margin to bring the booster back. NASA never tried this for three reasons: (1) Every launch is basically a one-off, unique mission. Standardization was driven by Air Force and commercial interests. (2) Their budget is so tight that, if they could save a couple million on a given mission by using a throw away booster, they would. They put onerous flight rules in place, which guaranteed the cost of recertification of the vehicle for re-use made it uneconomical. (SpaceX is contractually obligated to use a new booster and new cargo/crew module for each ISS mission, even though they are theoretically re-usable -- they plan to re-use some of the components for commercial flights) (3)They convinced themselves it couldn't be done. They assumed the booster couldn't be controlled on re-entry -- it would tumble. They convinced themselves that firing an engine into a supersonic flow (engine pointed in the direction of travel, to slow the vehicle) would not be stable and would not allow for precision control of the vehicle.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[confused one]

Generally I'm agreeing with you.

I think the reason you're not hearing them talk about recovering 2nd stages is their program of incremental improvements. Once they have a system for recovering the 1st stage working, and have successfully launched a couple of F9Heavy boosters, I think you'll see the 2nd stage recovery talks come back.

NASA didn't trust the "re-usability" of the Dragon enough to allow this (at the time) untested vehicle to be re-attached to the ISS. Assuming they get the contract for crew launch, that might change.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Applehu Akbar]

We're talking about journalists here, not historians.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, Russia obviously has the capability and even flew the Buran spacecraft that had some capability of returning stuff from orbit."
--------------------
AFAIK, Buran was copy of Shuttle. And a bad copy - that's why it failed.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[wiredlogic]

Don't forget that he was a "robber baron" reduced to borrowing money from friends because SpaceX was about to go under after the initial launch failures.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[roman_mir]

Oh, but that is not a new idea coming from moron socialists. There are those, who literally want to LIMIT BY LAW how much money can a person make (or how much property they can own). So I heard nonsense like: hundred million or half a billion or a billion or ten billion should be enough for anybody. I say nothing is ever enough and it's none of anybody's business in the first place how many companies a person ends up creating and how big his own fortune becomes through all of his holdings, assets, enterprises. If we had a law that limited person's possessions to let's say 1 Billion, a person who owned that much wouldn't want to work to achieve more, because 100% of everything over that amount would be stolen from him (never mind that income / wealth / capital gains / dividend / death taxes are already immoral and shouldn't exist, they are destroying incentives and misallocating capital investments as is).

This diatribe of an 'article' is some kind of a hit piece, it's designed to corrupt the minds of the weak minded TV watching, newspaper reading, voting drones further, it's naked class warfare and I think there will be more of it coming soon.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[cheesybagel]

Actually the EELVs were a lot cheaper than the Shuttle and the Titan IV they replaced. The problems started when the ULA monopoly was formed.

You also forgot about Energia Buran.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[K. S. Kyosuke]

True. I did in fact picture a three core reuse FH even under unfavorable reuse conditions if the payload mass falls into the right bracket. But it may not be the best option for some missions, such as orbital refueling, where $/kg is the major metric. Having said that, I still keep my hope for the three core reuse flight profile being more economical than two core reuse even in this area, but it's still far from certain that it will be the case. Anyway, either one will be a massive improvement on the state of the art.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[cheesybagel]

They managed to orbit and land Buran. From a technical perspective it did not fail. But it was too expensive to keep using.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm pretty sure that the Centaur was at least about as expensive in the 1990s as it is today. For example, the Cassini launch cost breakdown by GAO lists its price tag in as $70.9M (presumably in the 1995 value of USD). That seems to make its cost roughly similar to the cost of its own dry weight in gold. That sounds like a very strange definition of "cheaper" to me for a rocket stage. Perhaps Delta's upper stage is cheaper, but seeing as Deltas are actually more expensive in practice than Atlases...

And Energia wasn't reusable. They had some "plans" for making at least the kerolox boosters reusable, but in retrospect, it seems more like wishful thinking.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

Ayn Rand, is that you?

The article was pretty good, you're just paranoid that the hagiographic media splurge required to keep your rich pals in the devotion they think they deserve (like previous emperors and the like) is coming to an end. We've let the rich do what they want and so far all we've got out of it is slightly fancier versions of technology that existed decades ago. People are pissed that once again an elite have abused their power.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[Maritz]

There are those, who literally want to LIMIT BY LAW how much money can a person make (or how much property they can own).

Really? Who?

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[cjameshuff]

They've specifically said that second stage reuse probably won't happen on the Falcon 9, but that the next vehicle (the gigantic methane-powered monster using the Raptor engine) will be fully reusable. Still, bringing the substantially larger tanks and structure of the first stage and 9 of 10 engines (27 of 28 engines for Falcon Heavy) back for reuse is likely to do more than halve costs as Teancum is assuming, even without considering that it'll allow simultaneous easing of pressure on the manufacturing end while increasing the launch rate.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[roman_mir]

Why are you surprised? I hear this often, here is a funny one.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[cheesybagel]

In the Energia test flights the engines were in a pod with parachutes for post-launch inspection. Since the engines are a significant part of the cost of the launcher you could say they had the technology to recover at least part of the rocket.

Re:What the hell is this guy smoking

[cheesybagel]

As for the Centaur the manufacturing process is quite old fashioned and involves a lot of manual labor. Of course the costs have gone up. For it to be cheaper the engine needed to be redesigned to use modern automated manufacturing methods. They have been working on a replacement for quite some time. If the RL-60 had not been canceled there would be one flying now.

Someone's mad

[Anonymous Coward]

You can practically feel the envy radiating off him. "You can't be rich and a good person too, that's not fair!"

"all in the name of science and exploration"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I just haven't seen it, but do they actually claim this? Sources? I've always thought of these things as rich peoples hobbies, on their own money, for their own fun. I assume the talk about things isn't even the primary goal, but just a necessity as unusual things tend to draw attention anyway. Consequently, relations to fan-boys and media have to be managed. But that's just a side-effect?

Re:"all in the name of science and exploration"?

[wiredlogic]

Alan Eustace did no publicity before his jump. He never claimed it was for charity or even a PR stunt like RedBull's over-hyped jump. The author is a moron churning out clickbait.

Troll. Go away.

[NReitzel]

Nuff' said.

Expensive New Markets

[Anonymous Coward]

It sometimes takes Billionaires to create a new market in some area where costs are astronomically high. eg Electric Cars, the established players have the car maket locked up in a cosy arrangement so no new advances are desired, monopoly type arrangements. Now Elon Musk the Billionaire has come along and is trying to oust the cosy arrangements to benefit mankind and get the West Off the Petro Dollar. He has to be a billionaire to be able to afford all the paid politicians and lawyers fees just to break up this huge anti-American cartel, and thats just to get his cars legally on sale.

Richard Branson, takes his Billions and tries to make a new market in space travel which will fileter down to other companies when the huge price tags and infrastructure is built so others may join him, which will be a net win for humanity.

You know sometimes a Bilionaires ego can really help further humanity, not everything is just going to benefit one person. Quite often a billionaire unkonowingly will benefit mankind. Its basic economics.

I have a huge problem...

[Man On Pink Corner]

... with the author's conflation of "shooting endangered animals on safari" with the pursuits of a James Cameron, Elon Musk, or Richard Garriott.

So, I guess I took the clickbait, huh.

Re: I have a huge problem...

[savuporo]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

any further questions?

Re: I have a huge problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, could you paraphrase whatever pertinent info there is behind that link? I don't want to click the clickbait.

Re: I have a huge problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Steven Spielberg is shown posing next to what appears to be a Triceratops that he bagged.

What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[mi]

Silicon sultans are the new robber barons

What's with the "robber" nonsense? Whom did the "silicon sultans" rob and of what? Are the toiling masses of the downtrodden not better off with Internet-connections to a dazzling variety of sites and cellular phones in their pockets?

Perhaps, comparing value-creating capitalists to the highway plunderers of the dark-ages — as has been the Illiberal Socialists' wont for nearly 150 years — is not entirely warranted?

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

They robbed the workforce of long term employment stability in exchange for trinkets.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg cheated many people to make their fortunes. Intel recently too, although I'm not aware of such practices in the infancy of the company. If you think Silicon Valley is free from parasites you couldn't be farther from the truth.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Teancum]

They robbed the workforce of long term employment stability in exchange for trinkets.

When in history did anybody ever have long-term employment? It was the so-called Robber-Barons that provided such long term stable employment contracts to their workers in exchange for loyalty. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, they were instead plundered by knights as they pillaged farmland and took random women as mistresses and whores (often involuntarily... and legally). Or you can go back to your hunter-gatherer tribe.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[catchblue22]

What are "robber barons" anyways? John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil is an excellent example of one. He gained an early lead in the oil industry. Then he used some rather extreme tactics to preserve his lead, none of which benefited consumers. For one, he bought up rail lines surrounding his competitors, and used this ownership to deny his competitors the ability to transport their oil. Those competitors responded by packing their oil in barrels which could then be loaded onto multiple means of conveyance (i.e. trucks). This is why oil is still measured in "barrels". Rockefeller responded by attempting to control the market on the compound that was used to seal the barrels from leaking. The government eventually responded by breaking up Standard Oil into many different companies.

The above doesn't sound like Space X under Elon Musk. Space X is the plucky newcomer disrupting the existing American launch contractor United Launch Alliance (ULA) and its cosy relationship with the US military. If anything, ULA, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing fall under the moniker of "Robber Baron". This writer sounds like a troll acting in the best interests of the decaying American launch industry.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I think it was called the post WWII era, up to about the late 1970s. My father was able to run a single-income family with a house, a car, and two kids with one job from one employer that paid for vacation, training, insurance, and a pension plan that is presently paying my father more than I am able to earn at a job.

Can you explain why we no longer have that? Besides that employers have reduced their side of the equation to as little as possible?

1) Jobs are now contract-based, with one year terms being a luxury.
2) Employers no longer invest in their employees, they expect you to go to university on your own dime so that you're pre-broke.
3) Pension plans no longer exist in the private sector.
4) Health plan? Yeah, look at #1, you need to work 3-6 months before you qualify for health insurance... Oops, contract's up.

So yeah, how can we live in a world with such high "productivity" and yet have less than people had 40 years ago?

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[meta-monkey]

"I can't believe these NEW fatcats think they're as good as our OLD fatcats!"

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So yeah, how can we live in a world with such high "productivity" and yet have less than people had 40 years ago?

Capitalism. ;-p

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Teancum]

You are talking about a very short period of prosperity that was artificially created by having the government dump a whole pile of money largely created by debt extending barely over a twenty year period of time. It was also something largely not true anyway even at the time where it wasn't as widespread of a practice as you are claiming either... certainly not for smaller businesses including mom & pop retail outlets.

It is a dream world that never existed that you are pining for and expecting conditions to duplicate once again. Once again I'll point out that it is these same "Robber-Barons" that created the conditions that made such long-term contracts even happen in the first place. It is indeed called capitalism!

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[phantomfive]

3) Pension plans no longer exist in the private sector.

I'd like to suggest that this is a good thing, why? Because now you can control your own pension plan. There was no guarantee that your pension plan would exist when you wanted to retire, because there was no guarantee that the company would exist. Also, you aren't locked into a single company. You can move around and not lose your retirement.

A person should have control of their own retirement account, not leave it in control of a corporation.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Teancum]

Then he used some rather extreme tactics to preserve his lead, none of which benefited consumers.

Other than the fact that between when Rockefeller started providing products for his customers and when he finally called himself a billionaire, he was selling the same product for less than 10% of what he was originally charging. I suppose that didn't help the consumer in any manner?

I'm not saying he was a saint and that there was no room for criticism, but you are also flat out wrong that his actions didn't help the buyers of the products he was selling. That he clearly stopped other potential competitors from entering the marketplace is true, but he also was hardly the only person to shut out subsequent potential competitors from entering into an industry either. Sadly, most business regulations and laws are designed explicitly to encourage that kind of behavior too.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[0123456]

You are talking about a very short period of prosperity that was artificially created by having the government dump a whole pile of money largely created by debt extending barely over a twenty year period of time.

You forgot the part about bombing the crap out of the rest of the world, and handing half of it over to Commies who kept their workers out of the global economic system.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[0123456]

Yes, but... Global Warming! Oil is EVIL! Cheap Oil Will Kill Us All!

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[catchblue22]

I'm not saying he was a saint and that there was no room for criticism, but you are also flat out wrong that his actions didn't help the buyers of the products he was selling. That he clearly stopped other potential competitors from entering the marketplace is true, but he also was hardly the only person to shut out subsequent potential competitors from entering into an industry either. Sadly, most business regulations and laws are designed explicitly to encourage that kind of behavior too.

Just because others do it doesn't make it right. Just because organizations like Rockefeller's have purchased and corrupted our political system doesn't make it right. Just because similar organizations have purchased most of the media and broadcast the subtle propaganda that you have so faithfully reproduced doesn't make it right. Rockefeller illegally used his dominant market position to supress actual competition. That you so casually defend such reprehensible behavior speaks more to the effectiveness of the propaganda environment we live in than to the actual strength of any argument you are presenting. Your comment is basically an admission of your own slavery.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[dryeo]

The thing is you have to make enough to save for that retirement fund.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[dryeo]

Perhaps the prices would have dropped down to 5% or less of what he was originally charging if there had been real competition.
The price dropped due to improvements in technology, not due to generosity on the part of Rockefeller.
Anyways when you get right down to it, capitalism is about capturing government to ensure your profits.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[radarskiy]

It was the so-called Robber-Barons that provided layoffs. Business cycle theories don't tell you much about what happened before as they do after.

Knights in general did not engage in pillaging of serfs because the serfs didn't have much to pillage.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[phantomfive]

If you don't make enough, then you weren't going to get a pension anyhow.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything we do is "artificially created", I don't know what that means either way. Wasn't it better to have higher taxes and prosperity for more people?

I like how no one addressed this:

How can we live in a world with such high "productivity" and yet have less than people had 40 years ago?

but instead went straight for the corporate cock gobbling and defending the ones robbing us.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[cascadingstylesheet]

The above doesn't sound like Space X under Elon Musk. Space X is the plucky newcomer disrupting the existing American launch contractor United Launch Alliance (ULA) and its cosy relationship with the US military. If anything, ULA, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing fall under the moniker of "Robber Baron".

Exactly.

And honestly, we could use a few more "robber barons". Why should only the government be able to tax and hobble their competitors?

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[BitZtream]

Whats with it is your lack of understand of the term. It has nothing to do with actually robbing people directly, though you could easily argue that the term applies to both PayPal and depending on how far you wanted to stretch it, the Virgin group.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Applehu Akbar]

"Robber baron" was nineteenth-century leftspeak for the entrepreneurs who gave us railroads, steel,telephones, automobiles and electricity. So far as I'm concerned, their self-indulgenct use of riches is more than fair exchange for the value they brought to every one of us with their creations.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhh, now your Space Nuttery comes into sharp focus. You're a crackpot.

The "entrepreneurs" gave us nothing, it was the scientists and engineers.

Re: What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[ceoyoyo]

It does kind of sound like Microsoft though. The guy who wrote the article seems to be (poorly) paraphrasing observations from around the time Gates retired that there's a history of industry moguls achieving wild success using sometimes questionable methods and then attempting penance later in life by using their personal fortunes philanthropically in other areas.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they've robbed us of our privacy. They've robbed us of lots of taxpayers money. They're in bed with the national security state. They're using the power of networks to create mass unemployment then hoping that little externality is paid for by someone else. Plus we've seen our entire culture change into a Facebook-gawking clickbait addicted mess.

Fair enough they haven't outright murdered any people, but that'll happen soon - Google haven't bought a military robotics company for nothing.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened is the rich have always wanted to go back to ye olden days with 7 day work weeks and people worked to death but a little problem happened with geopolitics. The rise of the Soviet Union & the events of WW2 meant the West had to treat their workers better for fear of a Communist uprising or takeover. Hence from the 40s onward workers got a better deal.

The Soviet Union collapsed circa 1989/90 and then what happened... 'globalism', 'free trade', 'people are lazy!', 'we can't afford all this public sector stuff'. The textbooks will tell you that this push towards market-as-God was due to technological advancement, but the required technologies had all been around for decades (phones, faxes, radio, international shipping, even computers).

Soon as the threat vanished the rich had no reason to be nice anymore. Sure its a slow decline as there's a great deal of inertia from existing social systems and a little thing called democracy standing in the way. But the rich have once again blown it - they could have stayed super-wealthy and worked with the system & ensured employees were treated well. Instead we're seeing rights eroded and wages collapsing - the whole thing is held aloft by cheap money & psychological manipulation.

But if they get their way then many of the nerds here gleefully informing you of how the Chinese love their servitude will in a decade or so be working in similar conditions. Let's see how happy they are when their PHB circa 2020 gives them a good kicking because they can't stay conscious after yet another 16 hour day or when they have to send their daughters out to walk the streets in the hope of earning some extra food money.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[mi]

Knights in general did not engage in pillaging of serfs because the serfs didn't have much to pillage.

Thank you for confirming, that today's downtrodden do have plenty to pillage from them.

I think, we have Capitalism to thank for this...

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[Teancum]

The prices did drop to less than 5% of what he was originally charging. Actually more like less than 1% of the original prices.

Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense?

[dryeo]

Ah, I misunderstood as you mentioned 10% in the GP post. My point still stands, perhaps the prices would have dropped even further if there was not the overhead of destroying all competition.
Besides, even if you are correct and he was functioning as a benevolent dictator, what about his successor?
This is always the problem. A benevolent dictator is perhaps the best form of government or other power but they never last and usually you get a crappy tyrant as the successor.

Will you buy it? (Re:Do I buy it?)

[mi]

The world doesn't need or want any more pyramids, so cancer will do the trick.

It sound like you are disapproving... Will you refuse any treatment developed with a "silicon sultan's" money — because the benefactor's purpose was not sufficiently pure in your opinion?

Will you demand, the laboratories be staffed by people of all races and genders, and that any developed drugs be manufactured by unionized workers and/or be "Fair Trade" certified — before you agree to accept the cure?

Will you reject it, because "not everyone" can afford it — or will you, perhaps, wish, such "unfair" drug was never developed in the first place?

Re:Will you buy it? (Re:Do I buy it?)

[Anonymous Coward]

It sound like you are disapproving...

It sounds like you didn't read what he wrote.

"Do I buy it?"
"Yeah, I buy it. Hell, I'd work for little more than a pretty meager wage if I could be reasonably sure of ACCOMPLISHING something meaningful in space."

Dude would work for a subsistence salary if he thought he could help. How does that even remotely "sound disapproving"?

Re:Will you buy it? (Re:Do I buy it?)

[mi]

Dude would work for a subsistence salary if he thought he could help.How does that even remotely "sound disapproving"?

Dude would work for a subsistence salary on a space-related project. His disapproval was aimed at the rich's attempts to fund cancer-research (instead of pyramids).

Branson philanthropy? When?

[damn_registrars]

You can criticize Richard Branson on plenty of things, but I don't recall him ever selling any of his ventures as being philanthropic. From my vantage point he has been pretty clear on the fact that he does what he does because he has the money to do it, and if it somehow helps others along the way that's just gravy.

Now, there are plenty of others who try to spin their adventures as being for "humanity", but I don't recall an adventure of his where he went for that label.

Space is very unforgiving

[Anonymous Coward]

"Multimillionaires regularly try to spin acts of crass ego gratification as selfless philanthropy, no matter how obviously self-serving."

Space is very unforgiving. It's why the NASA groups spend so much testing. It's why a ~$350 million test stand was built in Mississippi to test the J-2X rocket engine, which may not be put into service. As the phrase goes "To make a small fortune in Aerospace, start with a large fortune.".

Even billionares, that invest in space can lose their hide. It almost happened to Andrew Beal. Branson got other people to spend their money on Virgin Galactic. Elon Musk was smart, and he focused on Aerospace Engineering talent, and prototyping. As Jeff Bezos, he might settle for making rocket engines, instead of entire rockets. That might not be by choice.

Re:Space is very unforgiving

[FatLittleMonkey]

Space is very unforgiving. It's why a ~$350 million test stand was built in Mississippi

No, it's really not.

Re:Space is very unforgiving

[Dereck1701]

"It's why a ~$350 million test stand was built"

I think you forgot your sarcasm tag, the test stand in Mississippi is widely believed to be an egregious example of runaway federal government pork spending. Built for a rocket engine being designed for a launch system that no longer exists. The rocket motor itself was idled long before the test stand was completed but politically connected individuals continued to get money funneled to it even after it exceeded its original estimates by a factor of three.
http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Uninformed Drek disguised as Journalism

[Teancum]

Neither article is well researched and the "Billionaire Space Club" in Slateis particularly awful in terms of even pulling out legitimate statistics other than from the author's hind end. In the rare instance (like his quote of $35 million for space tourists on the Soyuz spacecraft) that he seems to get something close to reality, it is so dated and obsolete that he might has well be making up that figure too. I have no idea where the "$20,000 per pound to take cargo into orbit" figure came from as that is perhaps a generic industry rule of thumb price yardstick, but still not anything close to reality.

It is possible to make the general argument being made here that perhaps Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are milking taxpayers for billions of dollars in a manner that is unjustified. You can quote the multi-billion dollar awards given explicitly to SpaceX and millions of dollars of help given to Bezos with his Blue Origin company too as unneeded extravagance. On the other hand, quote the exact awards (like the SpaceX COTS and CCtCAP contracts) or go into how Blue Origin has acquired the DC-X research at basically pennies on the dollar including hardware and test facilities. Blue Origin is still receiving assistance from NASA in the form of consultants and technical data for their ongoing R&D efforts.

Hell, he didn't even get that Orbital Science has been purchased by ATK... a major defense contractor... and instead treats them as the tiny underdog being bulldozed by SpaceX.

The author made none of those assertions, thus shows simultaneously arrogance and ignorance. A rather dangerous combination if anybody took him seriously.

Re:Uninformed Drek disguised as Journalism

[Guspaz]

To be fair, SpaceX's valuation is probably similar to or higher than ATK at this point. They disputed the $10 billion figure, but the estimate of their valuation in 2012 was $4-5 billion, and they've added a rather large amount of future business to the books since then, including a lot of regular launches, plus stuff like the multi-billion dollar NASA contracts... ATK, for their part, has a market cap of $3.7 billion.

Re:Uninformed Drek disguised as Journalism

[Teancum]

The value of SpaceX as a corporation would largely be due to the nearly cult-like personality of Elon Musk and a whole bunch of people trying to get a piece of the action that he is doing with the company, not so much what is on the books for launch contracts.... which would barely be about $2 billion (being generous including NASA and DOD/intelligence contracts that are a matter of public record). They only had six launches this year (still pretty good), and being very generous with $100 million per launch that means they only had a revenue stream of just a little over a half billion this year and a huge amount of spending that they've done too. That isn't profit, just revenue in an industry with a fairly tight profit margin and SpaceX being the discount competitor still trying to get customers by offering steeply lower prices.

Mind you, the future of the company does indeed look bright and accounting practices do include future launches in terms of company profits, but a couple of bad launches like what happened to Orbital or Sea Launch could spell disaster to the company and really cause the value of the company to drop considerably and even cause customers to flee. I wish SpaceX all the best and I hope they can continue their success with future flights, but nothing is guaranteed in this industry. It is after all called rocket science.

Re:Uninformed Drek disguised as Journalism

[Guspaz]

I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying with the exception of their book of business. I'm not sure how you came up with a figure of $2 billion including NASA contracts, when their CCtCap contract alone is for $2.6 billion. And using your average of $100 million per launch, well, they've got a good deal more than 20 flights on their manifest...

One of their biggest weaknesses seems to be their launch frequency. People keep telling me I'm crazy when I predict they're not going to hit anywhere close to their estimates, but it happens every year. It's certainly improving, because six launches is better than the three launches the year before, or the two before that, but SpaceX's original prediction for 2014 was 14 launches. They don't publish target launch years on their manifest anymore.

As the saying goes...

[marciot]

They hate us 'cuz they ain't us.

Too much whine for breakfast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody pissed in Seife's corn flakes this morning, and he's taking it out on anyone more accomplished than himself. Which is pretty much everybody.

Re:Too much whine for breakfast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, bible thumping conservative. We dont like ur type here @ slashdot. dig it?

Re:Too much whine for breakfast?

[Applehu Akbar]

On Slashdot, we of the dark side don't thump Bibles. We thump "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

Hey Seife: A question... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF have YOU done better than those you criticize, hmmm?

* Sorry folks - I have NO remorse asking this... why?? Hell, see the question, as it speaks for itself!

(On a guess? He *WISHES* he was Mr. Musk!)

APK

P.S.=> See, imo @ least? It's REALLY EASY to be a "critic", but QUITE ANOTHER to be the chef doing the actual cooking... apk

Re:Hey Seife: A question... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"WTF have YOU done better than those you criticize, hmmm?"

That is a ridiculous "argument".

Imagine you eat at a restaurant and you don't like the food, you'd be happy if the chef said "What have YOU cooked that's better?"

Commercialize Space or write Snarky Blog

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is more likely to contribute to the survival of human kind?

Traditional funding vs. individual billionairs

[Required Snark]

What are the alternatives? Who will fund things like deep sea diving or space launch systems? (Big game hunting is just a stupid troll.)

There are only two groups outside of individual rich people who can fund these endeavors: governments and normal investment. Governments are already in the game. India just launched their first heavy lift vehicle, for example.

Regular investment will never take that kind of risk. Perhaps in the past you could have raised money on Wall Street or the equivalent, but these days big financial institutions expect government subsidized guaranteed profit. It's so much easier to buy legislation, manipulate the system and control regulators then invest in long term innovation. Acquisitions and mergers along with zero interest prime rate funding lines their pockets without any bothersome "investing". Why bother with risky space investment, for example?

So it's fine if big egos go after these kinds of things. There are a lot worse ways that the ultra rich spend their wealth. Would you rather see Musk with Tesla and SpaceX, or Ellison with his billion dollar yacht?

By the way, you are subsidizing Ellison's yacht and purchase of the island of Lanai in Hawaii. He took out a loan against his stock in Oracle, so the interest he pays defers his income taxes. To quote another rich asshat, "taxes are for little people."

Re:Troll. Go away.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the "shoot endangered animals on safari" link and they didn't actually shoot or even intend to shoot any endangered animals, rather the guy got beat up by an elephant.

escape plan

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just working on a escape plan, mining asteroids, there won't ever be a day in the next 1000 years where it makes a profit, but it doesn't need to if it's part of their escape plan for this planet full of crazies.

2 makes a club? Maybe you know more?

[__aanbvm4272]

Space Club? of 2? C'mon, NASA said they wanted the private sector to step up and awarded millions as an incentive. So where's the gripe man? I think it's better than buying other companies out until there is only one internet company. Like cable is doing etc.

If it doesn't succeed...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If [self-serviing private philanthropy] does not achieve its goal, or does so inefficiently, then the public is not likely to be fooled.

If self-serving private philanthropy does not achieve it' goal, nobody is harmed except the self-serving private philanthropist.

If PUBLIC philanthropy does not achieve its goal, the general population has been looted and received no benefit in return.

Re:If it doesn't succeed...

[ClickOnThis]

If PUBLIC philanthropy does not achieve its goal, the general population has been looted and received no benefit in return.

That's a pretty broad brush. What exactly is your definition of "public" philanthropy? And how do you define its success or failure?

Re:If it doesn't succeed...

[radarskiy]

If public philanthropy is denied on the premise that private philanthropy is superior, then the public has been defrauded.

Re:If it doesn't succeed...

[cascadingstylesheet]

If PUBLIC philanthropy does not achieve its goal, the general population has been looted and received no benefit in return.

And we all know that couldn't happen, as our land of full employment and racial harmony will attest.

Re:If it doesn't succeed...

[khallow]

I don't know about the original poster, but here's my take:

What exactly is your definition of "public" philanthropy?

That it is publicly funded and purports to solve the sort of problems that are associated with philanthropy (improve the human condition, promote the arts, etc).

And how do you define its success or failure?

By looking at how well it satisfies its purported goals, given the money spent.

Answer the question I asked... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty simple: Now, there *IS* the possibility all Mr. Seif's going for is views (as "journalists" are wont to do), & I personally feel it IS only that.

* Especially since VERY FEW out there alive right now have achieved as much as Mr. Musk has (from Paypal onwards, & before that being BOTH an engineer & having a business degree out of wharton).

APK

P.S.=> Going to be one hell of a "tall order" to show he has *ANY RIGHT WHATSOEVER AS A PEER* compared to Mr. Musk - care to "fill that order", Mr. wannabe cook? No?? Apparently not, what-with the "evasive maneuvers" you just used (sure, *may not* be Seif, but the point's there) - So, "didn't think so" (after all - YOU appear to be evading a simple question I put forth)... apk

Re:Answer the question I asked... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Your writing style is bewildering. I can't get through it. Do you have extreme ADHD or something?

100km High Club

[wisnoskij]

They just want to found the 100km high club.

Are NASA/Russian astronauts allowed to have sex in space?

Mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't capitalism. It's crony capitalism or bankism. The laws are written such that the ruling elite--those in control of the banks directly and indirectly--define the direction that the world goes in.

Re:Mod parent down

[dryeo]

It isn't capitalism. It's crony capitalism or bankism. The laws are written such that the ruling elite--those in control of the banks directly and indirectly--define the direction that the world goes in.

Seems that it is the inevitable result of capitalism. The most efficient wins and writing the rules always means that you define efficient.

Re:Mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument always gets trotted out, but its really a variant of 'The Soviet Union wasn't communism'.

Yes in theory a capitalist system should all be lovely with everyone making a buck, in reality those with excess power abuse it. Just like they do in Communism or theocratic states.

Hence the need for strong democracy, good education, a press not controlled by billionaire sociopaths and various other things that we lack, i.e. fair laws.

SpaceX

[EnsilZah]

I've been following SpaceX recently so I thought I'd point out a few things about them in regards of breaking new ground.

The company went from being founded to launching its first commercial payload to orbit in about seven years. (Which seems pretty quick in aerospace timescales)

They're consistently delivering supplies to the ISS for about half the price of their competitor using the Dragon capsule which is also able to return cargo back to Earth.
The Dragon capsule was designed with carrying passengers in mind, and version 2 of the capsule which will be undergoing launch abort tests soon is scheduled to start taking astronauts up to the ISS in about two years or so.
It will also be capable of landing propulsively.

They've undercut the prices of all existing competitors significantly, making them scramble to design new rockets to match SpaceX's price, but they'll only be ready around 2020.
Meanwhile SpaceX has been testing reusing the rocket's first stage.
The upcoming mission to the ISS will have its first stage attempt to land on a barge at sea, with the ultimate goal being landing back at the launch site.
Elon claims a theoretical potential hundred-fold price reduction for launches, but even a ten-fold reduction would have a significant effect on the industry.

In the longer term, SpaceX has plans for much larger engines and spaceships, with the ultimate goal of landing on Mars and eventually enabling people to move to Mars for around $500K.

You're obviously illiterate... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you read the 1st sentence here or not http://news.slashdot.org/comme... ?

Answer the question (for the 3rd time now)...

APK

P.S.=> You NEVER will... apk

More trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have shown, prof Charles Seife rant is full of inaccuracies.

... jump out of balloons at the edge of the atmosphere ...

Alan Eustace likes falling off things. Falling from 135,000 feet required a lot of science and space-suit construction is a popular topic. He never promised to benefit anybody else.

... take submarines to the bottom of the ocean ...

Mr Cameron had the wealth to build a Bathysphere for personal use. When he finished with it, he donated it to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

... shoot endangered animals on safari ...

Tom Siebel wasn't even carrying a gun.

Oh god, not THAT slate article

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

There is some retarded troll on there named MikeyD who argues with every post...he keeps claiming that "space" is a completely empty void that has nothing but a few empty rocks, repeating that locking yourself in an SUV for six months is simulating a Mars trip and other such trollish nonsense. Even so, the author here is just super-whiney; I guess he's mad that Musk and Branson didn't give him their money and are building out a space infrastructure again. The author also seems quite confused as to the differences between SpaceX and VG claiming their basically the same type of company. I guess he'd rather these guys just be like John McAfee and use their money to create a harem and make customized bath salts.

Re:Oh god, not THAT slate article

[SuricouRaven]

It's a big empty void aside from a very very interesting rocks. We live on one of the larger rocks. Some of the other large rocks are potentially habitable, though a lot more difficult than our current one. The smaller rocks are of scientific interest.

There may even be other easily-habitable rocks, they are just a lot further away and currently inaccessible.

Re:Oh god, not THAT slate article

[Applehu Akbar]

I too have noticed the similarity of MikeyD's posts with a certain set of posts in here. Now we have at least a screen name to put to the troll.

Re:Oh god, not THAT slate article

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess he'd rather these guys just be like John McAfee and use their money to create a harem and make customized bath salts.

I've got to admit that if I had ill-gotten dotbomb gains, I'd be sorely at a loss to choose whether to fund a space venture or start a bath salt-lovin' harem.

And sometimes..they succeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's an old trick," begins Seife. "Multimillionaires regularly try to spin acts of crass ego gratification as selfless philanthropy, no matter how obviously self-serving."

This is true, but sometimes they are right and succeed where others have failed. They can afford to take chances as no normal corporation can. What's the worst that can happen? They loose billions and have to live out their lives on just a couple hundred million?

Would it be better if they put all their cash in a pool and swam around like Scrooge McDuck?

uh

[cascadingstylesheet]

Seife goes on to argue

There's more than one reason that I initially misread that as "selfie" ...

Defining exploration

[geekmux]

Seife goes on to argue that "neither [Elon] Musk's nor [Richard] Branson's goals really seem to break new ground, despite all the talk of exploration."

Capitalism would certainly outpace taxation, the old method of funding space exploration that didn't exactly leave a bright future.

If these programs are successful, they will likely explore far more than any previous program based on that fact alone.

This is space exploration. Trying to bring the "Been There, Done That" argument to that conversation will not deter or dilute anyone's excitement for future exploration. And given the cutbacks in the US space program, I'd say the fact we're even still talking about this is breaking new ground.

Total BS

[WindBourne]

When Gates and others push to have ALL of their money given to philanthropy, I just shake my head and say what fools. It will be spread around and do little good.
OTOH, ppl like Paul Allen is the one that pushed the cable companies to carry the internet. Likewise, he funded Scaled Composites jump into the X-Prize and winning it. This was the real start of private space going forward.
Now, we have Ellon Musk building up companies such as PayPal, Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Between these 4 companies, he employs more than 100K ppl. BUT, more importantly, all 4 have changed society for the better.
Paypal helped bring retailing to the net. Prior to paypal, few wanted to put their CCs on the net (in fact, only idiots did).
Solar City was key to bringing down the costs of solar installs. The reason is because they focused on getting the INSTALLATION to be cheap and fairly quick, while buying from various makers and forcing their prices way down. Now, they are building MULTIPLE factories that will do 1GW/year of solar modules.
Tesla has forced ALL of the other car companies to produce hybrids and electric cars. In fact, Tesla has made such an impact on the car makers that all of the majors are banding together to push fuel cells. In the mean time, Tesla has installed over 300 super chargers around the world, and will almost certainly have 600-1000 units by end of next year. In the mean time, they are busy producing a line of factories in which the first one will more than double the production of li-ion batteries.
Now, he has SpaceX which has created the world's cheapest launch system. But, he is not content to stop there. He is working on recovering the first stage of F9 and 3 stages of FH. If this is successful, then sometime next year, he will cut the prices up to 50% off. And again, he is not interested in stopping there. He is instead focused on creating a rocket that will launch 200+tonnes to LEO, so as to send ppl to the moon and mars. All of this is forcing other companies and govs. to change.

The author has a point that many of the billioniares are doing NOTHING productive with their money. The right solution is to drop taxes on new companies that are solving issues. This would encourage others to jump into these kinds of ventures. And it far far better to have 8 failures combined with 2 successes in new arenas, then to simple have the money sitting around doing nothing.

Re:Branson philanthropy? When?

[k6mfw]

I believe he has funded various efforts to bring clean drinking water in deficit areas in Africa. Many civil wars, famine, etc. usually began when someone ruined the water supply. On the other hand, Branson has armies of accountants and lawyers moving monies from one country to another to avoid paying more taxes.

Is somebody jealous? I think so!

[Anonymous Coward]

.

Journalism Prof at NYU That Can't Do Research

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the idle pointing fingers at the idle.

-How did the baby boomer population economy affect adoption of computers and cellphones? (Apple+disposable income)
-Piped running water was developed for wealthy Romans.
-What is the origin of your car?
-How did we get cheaper launch capability?
-How much money does it take to become a poor quality NYU professor?
-Why is academic education not free? (economic social filter)

What this usually boils down to

[wallsg]

Didn't read the article, but what this usually boils down to is that the author is pissed that the money is being spent on something that he doesn't find important, and that if only HE had that kind of money he'd know how to spend it better than the morons who somehow were "lucky" enough to get it when he wasn't.

Tales of Tomorrow!

[tmjva]

Test Flight (Tales of tomorrow).
Season 1, episode 10.
Original air date: 26 October 1951.
An ambitious, headstrong businessman uses his huge personal fortune to construct a spaceship that will take him to Mars.
Cast: Lee J. Cobb (Wayne Crowder), Vinton Hayworth (Davis), Cameron Prud`Homme (Marty Peters) and Harry Townes (Wilkins).
From IMDB.
Very good story well developed. Great interpretation of Lee J. Cobb.

Re:Branson philanthropy? When?

[damn_registrars]

I believe he has funded various efforts to bring clean drinking water in deficit areas in Africa.

I am not familiar with that. However, I'm not sure that really fits the "philanthropic" category that this article is concerned with. The article seems to be concerned with cases where rich people are obviously doing things for themselves (such as going to outer space, or to the bottom of the ocean) and then pretending that these things have great philanthropic value to humanity. If Branson funded clean water initiatives in Africa, what was it that he got from it (beyond credit for funding it)?

Educational Community Nose Sniffing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hipster douche. Negative waves. It's easy to sound cool; hating. Now it's my turn to do the same. "Those who can; do. Those that can't do; teach."