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The Two Modern Space Races (arstechnica.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Observers of the current state of the space program like to maintain that a space race, such as occurred in the 1960s, will never happen again. They cannot be farther from the truth, since not just one, but two space races are going on. The Google Lunar X Prize is managing a race for the first private group to land a rover on the lunar surface and perform a number of tasks for glory and prize money. Eric Berger at Ars Technica pointed out that another prize space race, with the goal of performing the first private crewed space mission in low Earth orbit, is ongoing thanks to NASA's commercial crew program.
Apollo wasn't that valuable? I beg to differ...
There was a lot of common good generated by the effort to put men on the moon. You may not realize it, but they made vast advances in electronics, communications technology, materials and system design practices that have overflowed into the private sector from the Apollo effort. We learned a lot of stuff and built a lot of stuff from the technology advancements from Apollo, it's predecessors and the concurrent military build up that would have taken a lot longer to become viable enough to make a difference in the world.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Quote:
Observers of the current state of the space program like to maintain that a space race, such as occurred in the 1960s, will never happen again.
Emphasis mine. The little race between Musk and Boeing is nice to watch, however in the 1960s we were watching a race between two superpowers with basically no holds barred.
There would have to be a lot more prize money involved before this would be comparable to the 1960s space race, maybe a trillion or so would do it.
If you want a real space race, wait until we figure out robotic asteroid mining and space-based manufacturing.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Are you kidding? He slayed Pytho, Earth-Dragon of Delphi; he could heal, he brought light and music, and warded away evil. He rescued Aeneas and helped Paris slay Achilles; saved his mother Leto from rape at the hands of Tityos; slayed the cyclopses; and countless other feats.
If it takes socialism to resurrect him, then long live the proletariat and down with the borgiouse swine! I'm kind of curious, what exactly is the summoning ritual like? A laurel branch, a lyre, a copy of Worker's World and a reciting of L'Internationale?
The yellowcake is a lie.
Throw such a large percent of the US economy at one task, of course you're going to get side benefits. The issue is that Apollo could have been either A) vastly cheaper, or B) have accomplished vastly more, if not for the need to keep the a couple of giant remoras alive for the journey.
The yellowcake is a lie.
There is a third race starting. It's moving very slowly but there has been investment in it. The race to mine asteroids. It will be a long while before we see any results and I expect a couple of failures. Perhaps spectacular ones. It'll be fun to watch anyway.
How can companies that must make profits "take risks", while the government can not?
I'll just point out that the profit motive does encourage a degree of risk taking due to two factors, the risk premium which comes about as a result of varying risk tolerance among private parties some which are very conservative and some which routinely take lots of chances. As a result, there are less parties willing to engage in risky activities and hence, a premium builds up where the risky activity, even when accounting for the risk has a somewhat greater return on investment than a less risky activity. This premium actually runs counter to the community's tolerance for risk since a very conservative community would eschew risk more than a risk seeking community. Thus, there is an incentive to take risks which increases in private communities that are risk adverse.
Second, risk taking tends to be a competitive advantage in the long run (assuming you avoid gambler's ruin) and relatively conservative organizations in a competitive market have to worry about losing market share and such.
Meanwhile government bureaucracies don't have these mechanisms. For example, in a lot of the US agencies, an employee who keeps their head down and doesn't rock the boat probably will have a job for many decades even if they aren't particularly competent at it even if their department is a negative sum money sink. This tends to create a huge risk adverse culture which seeks to avoid things that get one fired, but not have much else for ambitions.
I consider this a huge disaster.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
India, China, and possibly Japan have a definite competition going on.
I'll contribute toward the goal of sealing up the Kardashians in tubes and firing them off to Mars.
The yellowcake is a lie.
Observers of the current state of the space program like to maintain that a space race, such as occurred in the 1960s, will never happen again. They cannot be farther from the truth...
If you believe this is anywhere close to the '60s space race, you weren't alive back then. The only ways this even resembles that is that there are two sides and the word space.
Just another day in Paradise