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Two-Year Delay for SpaceX's Private Spaceport (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: About a year and a half ago, with then Texas Governor Rick Perry and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in attendance, ground was broken on the first private spaceport designed to launch rockets vertically near Brownsville, Texas. At the time, SpaceX announced that it expected to launch a rocket a month, either a Falcon 9 or a Falcon Heavy in the skies over South Texas starting in 2016. But then, the Texas spaceport story fell off the face of the Earth, as it were. Fortunately, the Valley Morning Star has an explanation as to why things are taking so long.
It really is private and market driven. Contracts are determined by price and efficiency. Do you think the world exists in some sort of vacuum? You an economics major or something? There's a little something you should look into called "risk" and another called "political stability". Both of these are huge, huge factors in pricing. Namely, being priced out of the market. Want to open a factory in a cheap area that's not stable? There's an excellent chance the locals will look at you like a lion looks at a sick gazelle. You can put numbers on these factors and they'll tell you to build somewhere cheaper, i.e. less risky. Texas is an excellent place to do business, they don't look at companies as the enemy - which is not the case in many states in America.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Most people wouldn't consider 1,500 miles to be "just north", which is the distance from Kourou to the mouth of the Amazon.
Uh, because American government should make decisions that benefit Americans? Just like the Venezuelan government need only made decisions that benefit their people, and the Bolivian government need not take the interests of international corporations into account before taking actions that benefit their own people. I really don't get what is so controversial about helping your own side. The entire world does it. That's pretty much the entire point of a government, if they don't represent their own people then they're not legitimate and shouldn't exist.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
My question is why they did not know surcharging was needed to begin with?
It's called "construction", did someone expect a spaceport to spring fully formed in the coastal swamps simply because SpaceX purchased the land?
SpaceX seems to be focusing on the other two portions of the venn diagram of the launch industry, "cheap" and "right". Other space launch companies have focused on the "right" and "on time" portions for decades while completely ignoring the "cheap" portion of it. Given the choice I imagine most satellite manufactures would happily (as evidenced by SpaceX's current launch backlog) wait for a launch rather than pay in excess of 4 times as much for an on time launch. They're still ironing out some kinks, and they do need competitors to keep them honest, but no one who has been paying attention can say with a straight face that they haven't been a force for advancement (both in cost & technology) in the launch industry.
There are private space companies, and there are private space companies. Take two examples:
ULA - United Launch Alliance - a merger of the rocket divisions of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that occurred to reduce competition in the US government launch market. Their launches are primarily to the US government and are based on "Cost-Plus" contracts, where ULA receives the "cost" to launch a rocket, plus a guaranteed profit margin. The "cost" is decided implicitly by ULA, through their design and staffing decisions (i.e. more complicated designs and more managers mean more money from the government). They have been receiving one billion dollars a year merely to maintain launch "readiness" without even launching any rockets. Their launch costs are the most expensive in the world.
SpaceX - a company founded by Elon Musk primarily from his own profits from selling Paypal. SpaceX developed their rockets from their own money. During the 2008 crash, SpaceX nearly went under, but was saved by a fixed cost contract to NASA to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Since then, most of their launches are for satellites for companies outside the US. They are the world's least expensive launch option, and that is without re-using their rockets. They are on track to be the world's premier launch service provider.
Which of these two companies fits the stereotype of government funded sloth?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)