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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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).

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

[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

[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".

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!"

Troll. Go away.

[NReitzel]

Nuff' said.

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.

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: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

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.

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

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

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