Entrepreneurial Space Age Began In 2009, Says Report (arstechnica.com)

"In July 2009, SpaceX launched its first commercial payload -- a 50kg Earth observation satellite for Malaysia -- which flew into space aboard a privately developed rocket," reports Ars Technica. "According to a new space investment report that will be published Tuesday by the Space Angels, an angel fund and a venture capital fund focused on space, which marked a key inflection point between the "governmental" space age and the "entrepreneurial" space age." From the report: "With that launch, SpaceX significantly lowered the barriers to entry in the space industry," the fund's chief executive, Chad Anderson, writes in the new report. "By vertically integrating, the company was able to drastically reduce the cost to get to orbit. But what deserves at least as much credit is their decision to publish their pricing, which fundamentally changed the way we do business in space. This transparency enabled would-be space entrepreneurs to develop a business plan and raise equity financing based on those cost assumptions."

From 2009 through September 2017, the report finds that $12 billion in equity investments have been made in space, with annual amounts increasing significantly in 2015 and beyond to more than $2 billion per year. At $10 billion, launch services, landers, and satellites have accounted for the bulk of this investment since 2009. Aside from the SpaceX launch that year, other data supports the year 2009 as the beginning of an entrepreneurial space age in which the private sector began making investments to return profits from space-based activities. About 250 space ventures have received non-government equity funding, the report states, and, of those, 88 percent have been funded since 2009.

Comments

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is no less retarded than the article. I didn't think we could get lower here

A blight on Earth started around 570 AD

[Anonymous Coward]

It made an appearance in New York yesterday.

You can identify it by it's Medieval sound: "Allahu akbar!"

Those with their heads up their asses cover it up and make excuses for it.

Re:A blight on Earth started around 570 AD

[Anonymous Coward]

White man kills 58 people "there's nothing we could have done"

Brown man kills 8 people "Islam is evil!"

Re:A blight on Earth started around 570 AD

[Anonymous Coward]

White man kills 58 people "there's nothing we could have done"

Brown man kills 8 people "Islam is evil!"

Let's play Spot the "progressive"!

He's the one playing the race card because HE HAS NOTHING ELSE other than economic failure. How's that glorious Venezuelan "revolution" coming along, comrade?

Maybe we should subject what you call "brown" people who want to come to the US to the same type of vetting we already do for gun ownership?

Oh, wait, every time Trump tries that you "progressives" shit your pants in an apoplectic fit.

Re:A blight on Earth started around 570 AD

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Those with their heads up their asses cover it up and make excuses for it.

White man kills 58 people "there's nothing we could have done"

Brown man kills 8 people "Islam is evil!"

Q.E.D.

I bet you can see your molars from the backside, your head is so far up your ass.

Re:A blight on Earth started around 570 AD

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to not actually address their point.

Take that Karl Marx

[batukhan]

That's pretty cool, i never thought about that. I guess until then, all space flights were one-off deals with no room for bargaining. Goes to show the difference between state financing and capitalism.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[rtb61]

The deluded who see nothing in this world beyond greed, for them the solution for everything, in a world of 'I'm alright jack, fuck everyone else'. Want to how truly shit psychopathic capitalism is, compare spending for the war industrial complex whose only goal is murdering humanity to the space industrial complex whose goal is the rest of the galaxy. Want to see what psychopathic capitalism really is, just compare those two. Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

Amoral != evil. Capitalism has brought tremendous benefits as well as horrible atrocities.
We have yet to find a system for maximizing usefulness and minimizing suffering that is actually compatible with human psychology. The systems we've tried tend to make false assumptions that humans are all altruistic, all egoistic, all empathic or all sociopathic. Self-balancing systems seem to rely on humans pulling in all different directions with all their might, and I'm not sure there exists any better way.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they saved energy by pulling with only eighty-seven percent of their might?

Re: Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense comment is nonsense.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[AC-x]

We have yet to find a system for maximizing usefulness and minimizing suffering that is actually compatible with human psychology.

I'd say The Nordic model does a good job of it.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, but in a way that might horrify you.
The Voyages Of Discovery, the Colonization, (Often gone wrong for somebody...), of the New World, the first Railroads, Canals, and Interstate/Intrastate Highway systems... were all done with State Financing and directed towards State Goals, because the Capitalists of the time weren't confident, informed, or funded enough to carry them off on their own.
So the work of decades and spending of many billions of Dollars on Spaceflight were done largely by the States of the US and USSR, because no Corporation or synidicate of Corporations could or would carry it off on their own.
Watch the Entrepreneurs/Libertarians crow on about how successful and profitable Private Spaceflight is... or will be... while they refuse to acknowledge the many lives lost and money spent on mistakes that had to be made by those that they despise- Governments.
They are not attempting to go all Jules Verne by shooting Astronauts into Space by Cannon, because that was sorted out long as being, at the least, noisy and uncomfortable. They are not trying to fly Biplanes to the Moon.
They are just appropriating all that knowledge for themselves and claiming it as their own, because they are the fittest.
I am willing to bet not one of the current new Spaceflight Companies will exist in any form in 25 years, because the one consistent trait that all such "Entrepreneurs" share is Cannibalism.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Baron_Yam]

>Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.

You need to put down your manifesto, because you're frothing at the mouth as badly as the 'capitalism is not just the best solution, it is the only solution' crowd.

Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race, as it is the only large scale economic system we've developed so far that rewards individual effort.

Having said that, it has no inherent controls against parasitic actors abusing the system to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of the population. That is where a democratic government implementing regulations comes in, and the success of that government and its regulations will determine how well society as a whole benefits from being fundamentally capitalist.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race, as it is the only large scale economic system we've developed so far that rewards individual effort.

Man! You've fell for the propaganda hook line and sinker! (The US Chamber of Commerce started the worship of Capitalism back in the 1930s when Communism was gaining a foothold in the USA. The are also the ones who made Capitalism a Christian value.)

Capitalism didn't do anything. It's just a primitive economic system.

And that whole "rewarding individual effort" nonsense - if you were placed on the Moon, good luck surviving all by your lonesome self and your individual effort.

Musk hired some very brilliant and creative engineers to make the rockets. 250 other companies are doing similar things. Musk doesn't even have much of his own money in Space X - he got others to invest in it at well.

Musk has some wonderful publicists that make him look like some super genius that's single handedly running Space X, Tesla, Hyperloop and whatever.

The hero worship of Musk and this worship of an economic system is just pathetic ad childish.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

he got others to invest in it at well

That's why capitalism works. Some people investigated his business plan, thought that it looked sound, and were willing to risk their own money - their capital - to make it happen.

In non-capitalist systems, the people deciding which businesses will happen are risking someone else's money, so they lack that incentive to make good judgements. Historically, this has usually led to failure - at best, stasis - and never to the runaway success of capitalism.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[drinkypoo]

>Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.

Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race,

Nothing but extinction is perhaps inaccurate. It has brought us many things, and it will also bring us extinction.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I vividly remember all those Verizon, Shell, and Google logos on the side of the Saturn V as it launched.

A dummy says something stupid
almost as stupid as Chris
His name is batukhan

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[DNS-and-BIND]

And it's coming apart at the seams now that they've let immigrants in their nice country. A pity.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

So, to compare apples to apples, we should create a nation as homogeneous as Nordic countries?

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nordic model is pretty nice (I made the systems comment, and I grew up in Norway and live in Sweden), but it still relies a lot on power struggles (unions vs employers, left vs right, rich vs poor, etc) in order to maintain that balance.
This is a collossal waste of time and effort, but as I said, I'm not sure it can be solved any better way, what with humans being the way we are. Balance, it seems, can only be reached in a struggle between equally powerful opponents, not by voluntary cooperation for the greater good.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you also remember how we continued to go to the moon to develop bases, space based manufacturing, push on to Mars, etc? Of course not because they chose about the worst possible method (though perhaps the quickest) of going there and ran with it for over 50 years, vehicles built by defense contractors that rose from the ground about the size of a skyscraper and came back the size of an SUV if at all. In less than 20 years on a budget that wouldn't pay for NASA's office supplies one company (possibly two) have done what most said was impossible/wildly impractical, far cheaper vehicles that are fast on their way to full reusability. Government backed exploration can do some wonderful things, but it can also find new and interesting ways to make mountains of cash vanish.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a load of shit and you ought to know it. Even in feudalism people invested their own resources.

Historically, this has usually led to failure - at best, stasis - and never to the runaway success of capitalism.

Do you know why that is? Do you really?

Put on your scientist hat on and look at history like actual scientists and historians have done. The profession consensus is that the link between capitalism and success outside of the expansion of capitalism, i.e. technological or social progress, is a correlation, not a causation. It just so happens that resource-wealthy capitalist nations rose after the beginning of the industrial revolution. It just so happens that capitalism was conceived and coined after the enlightenment started.

Capitalism just-so-happened to become popular in the right places at the right time. If socialism or communism came to be in the same manner you would be waving the red flag and proudly declaring its virtues instead.

Capitalism is a system where people that own the capital own the output of that capital. Not really any different from a dictatorship, there's just more dictators and other dictators above them. We are a far cry from a Kantian kingdom of ends.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[AC-x]

[citation needed]

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

While I'm sure the Nordic model works quite well for them, it's unlikely to do the same here. This mainly has to do with enormous cultural differences between us and them; namely we have a mentality of abusing welfare benefits to an extreme. (Case in point, look at the percentage of the population on disability 50 years ago vs today...there's no other reason why there are twice as many now than in the past, especially given newer technology has made it even easier for disabilities to be cured or for people to be able to work around their disabilities, and that it's now illegal for employers to discriminate based on disability.)

Another example of cultural problems in the US: Many countries have very liberal gun laws, (Canada, Switzerland, and some Nordic countries) and they don't have nearly the problems we do. This mainly comes from the "gangsta" culture where too many teenagers fantasize about growing up to be a drug dealer, a pimp, a musician, or an athlete, and nothing else, but all two often the later two just turn into something close to the first two. Hell, until 2010, Swiss citizens were required by law to own a fully automatic rifle; after 2010 it just became optional, but either way they can own better firearms than Americans are allowed, meanwhile they are among the lowest in the world when it comes to violent crime.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

Put on your scientist hat on and look at history like actual scientists and historians have done. The profession consensus is that the link between capitalism and success outside of the expansion of capitalism, i.e. technological or social progress, is a correlation, not a causation.

Where the fuck are you getting this from? Some communist blog/forum? Newsflash: Capitalism has allowed technology to scale at an exponential rate due to private citizens investing massive amounts of money toward that end; this is not a coincidence. Hell, the Soviet Union, for all of the resources it had at its disposal to improve its military technology, was still using vacuum tubes in its fighter jets when the US had moved to integrated circuits long before. The same integrated circuits that were made practical for mass production in 1958 by three US companies, and that now power most of the technology we enjoy today.

Here's a bit of data that should drive the point home, especially when correlated with countries that have come from some other system to capitalism.

https://www.gapminder.org/tool...

Take a look at China for example; the government began adopting capitalist practices around 1980, and not long after that (roughly 1988,) you see their bubble quickly heading in the direction of higher average purchasing power (shown in that chart as income.) Granted, China had an enormous pile of untapped labor, that doesn't erase the fact that prior to these changes, such labor couldn't have ever been tapped because nobody could invest into the needed infrastructure (not even the government could.)

Hans Rosling (scientist, by the way) explains this data rather well:

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

And chances are, you score worse than the monkeys in this test:

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

By the way, until he died, he dedicated his career to educating academics, and to a lesser extent, people like you:

rather than generating data, Rosling has spent the past two decades communicating data gathered by others. He relays facts that he thinks many academics have been too slow to appreciate and argues that researchers are ignorant about the state of health and wealth around the world. That’s dangerous. “Campuses are full of siloed people who do advocacy about things they don’t understand,” he says.

http://www.nature.com/news/thr...

Communists/socialists here on slashdot always like to slam capitalism as if there's a much better way to go, but we've honestly been there and tried those, and they're all crap. They don't understand, at all, that the world is doing nothing but improving, as the data there very clearly shows. And contrary to popular belief, "megacorps" (as they're often described here, as if this is a cyberpunk novel) are a lot less powerful than they were in ages past. The first publicly traded corporation to exist the Dutch East India Company, at its peak had a net worth of $7 trillion in today's dollars back in 1675. Let that sink in for a minute. They also had the power to raise armies, declare war, jail and execute people who didn't pay their bills, and they had the largest monopoly the world has ever seen. As time has gone on, we've seen this power continually decrease, whereas right now the biggest companies have no martial powers at all, and the number of monopolies that exist is getting smaller and smaller, and the ones that remain have very tiny impact compared to the ones that existed in the past.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

Nothing but extinction is perhaps inaccurate. It has brought us many things, and it will also bring us extinction.

And how did you draw that conclusion? We've only seen capitalism do the exact opposite:

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

https://www.gapminder.org/tool...

Nobody says capitalism is perfect. In fact, it's analogous to democracy: Many problems, but the best system we've ever come up with. Unless you have a better idea (communism and socialism have been soundly proven to be big giant flops) then what the hell are you ranting about? Let's see if you can come up with a better idea than democracy too while you're at it.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[drinkypoo]

And how did you draw that conclusion? We've only seen capitalism do the exact opposite:

Uh, no. And also no.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

while they refuse to acknowledge the many lives lost and money spent on mistakes that had to be made by those that they despise- Governments.

For rockets? Wrong! Those lives lost were deliberate. The first rockets capable of putting objects in space had already existed by 1944, a whole 13 years before Sputnik, and they were built by Nazi Germany as a way to bomb other European cities. The US (via Wernher von Braun and others who deliberately surrendered to the US) and the USSR (via kidnapping many German scientists and capturing a V-2 rocket manufacturing plant) only refined them afterwards.

They are not attempting to go all Jules Verne by shooting Astronauts into Space by Cannon, because that was sorted out long as being, at the least, noisy and uncomfortable. They are not trying to fly Biplanes to the Moon. They are just appropriating all that knowledge for themselves and claiming it as their own, because they are the fittest.

Oh boy...you're in for a history lesson. The father of modern rocketry, Robert Goddard, was using his own private funds to develop the first liquid rockets (with many costly mistakes along the way,) and he was the one who proved that it was possible to reach outer space with rocketry. While he later received grants from a few non-profit entities (one in particular being the Smithsonian Institute) to further develop it merely for the curiosity of it, he ultimately profited off of selling his knowledge to the US Army.

No matter how you try to spin this, that is as common a case as any of man being an entrepreneur.

While I'm sure that will anger your monkey brain and you'll start saying "but but...NASA!", there's more to that as well. Much of the technology used for putting a man in space, and the moon landing, was made possible by technologies previously developed in the private sector. The most important technology by far was the integrated circuit, which was made practical by 3 US companies in 1958, and again was an entrepreneurial effort.

Capitalism is doing its thing again, only this time it is making spaceflight far more practical by bringing the costs way down...all with the intent of driving a profit. SpaceX may or may not make it that long; who knows, but it's unlikely that governments will take its place if it should fall any time soon. Governments aren't going to be the entities pushing for space tourism, or mining extraterrestrial objects for materials (like say...nickel...) especially when they have practically unlimited funds to acquire resources for their own projects that only a handful of people ever get to use due to the high cost involved, so they don't worry about discarding expensive rockets after just one use as opposed to recycling them.

And this time, you have at least three major entrepreneurs making efforts towards this end. So much for your (rather brain dead) cannibalism theory. It's actually rather funny watching heads explode in subreddits and internet forums dedicated to socialism and communism over this topic, many of them are left with no choice at all but to admit that SpaceX is already doing rather impressive things that no governments had ever even imagined doing.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[AC-x]

But what if those problems are actually caused by the economic problems associated with laissez-faire capitalism? Certainly these problems seem to have been growing since the 80s after America moved to a much more unrestrained economic model.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, did you ever prove my point! You ignored all of my other examples of "Government Entrepreneurship" to trot out the V2 Rocket... which was developed by a Government, and further developed by two more Governments. Godard's experiments were pretty much ignored by Private Industry until decades after his early work... largely funded by the Smithsonian, which is hardly private.

ICs... bozo, research first, blather away second. Initial research was conducted for the British Government, and was further developed and funded by the US Government, especially the work of Kilby at TI:
" This idea, which seemed very promising in 1957, was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby..."
"The first customer for the new invention was the US Air Force."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit
No Army and Air Force, no Funding, no IC. At least not at that time. The IC was developed initially for the Governments, something that you can't dispute, because the weight of evidence crushes your delusions.

If Commie Wikipedia isn't good enough for you, here:
http://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/aerospace-systems-are-first-the-applications-for-ics-in-computers/

Now as for Cannibalism... do spend some time looking into the history of the Telegraph, and especially the history of the Transatlantic Cables. Every single "Entrepreneur" failed, often in a period of just a year or two, only to be gobbled up by successors, who also failed, only to be gobbled up again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Telegraph_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Atlantic_Cable_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_française_du_télégraphe_de_Paris_à_New-York
Pretty much all that is left is Western Union, which shed its Communications Divisions long ago, to concentrate on Money Smuggling.

"... many of them are left with no choice at all but to admit that SpaceX is already doing rather impressive things that no governments had ever even imagined doing"
And they did it all by their itty-bitty-wittle selves, taking a Clean Room approach, and ignoring the decades of Research conducted by... Ta Dum!... Governments!

"...so they don't worry about discarding expensive rockets after just one use as opposed to recycling them."
Wrong yet _again_:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster

You and your kind are hypocritical Parasites, thieves of the work of others. Your type don't discover a damn thing... which is largely why Bell Labs is dead, and most Pure Research these days is now done at the National Labs in the US, Britain, the Russian Federation... and now China.
Now you might have a point that these Institutions are funded directly or indirectly by Taxes, which do come from the Private Sector.
That is the very fucking reason that they are allowed to exist. Occasionally there are Crackdowns on "Entrepreneurs", who have this nasty tendency of contaminating Baby Formula or creating and packaging Sub-Prime Mortgages, when there is further profit to be found in so doing.
Thus Regulation. Government Regulation.
Get used to it. Government Regulation is always Reactive, because of Crooks like you. You shit in the Commons, and somebody, usually a Government, has to clean it up. Because you are an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you also remember how we continued to go to the moon to develop bases, space based manufacturing, push on to Mars, etc"

No, because that doesn't make any sense in any political or economical system. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that sci-fi you read at 14 was not an actual blueprint for the future of the human race.

Evolution will continue to happen, a million years ago there were no humans, a million years from now there will be no humans.

" they chose about the worst possible method (though perhaps the quickest) of going there and ran with it for over 50 years,"

Yes, they should have "chosen" transporters instead, obviously.

Look, we "chose" to have the Concorde 45 years ago and no longer have it.

It's a free market, start your own supersonic transport company here on Earth before telling us about the amazing economics of an empty vacuum.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

Oh man, did you ever prove my point! You ignored all of my other examples of "Government Entrepreneurship" to trot out the V2 Rocket... which was developed by a Government, and further developed by two more Governments. Godard's experiments were pretty much ignored by Private Industry until decades after his early work... largely funded by the Smithsonian, which is hardly private.

Yes, they further developed it; I never denied this. But the invention really, truly, started with an entrepreneur.

ICs... bozo, research first, blather away second. Initial research was conducted for the British Government, and was further developed and funded by the US Government, especially the work of Kilby at TI:

Try reading my post again.

No Army and Air Force, no Funding, no IC. At least not at that time. The IC was developed initially for the Governments, something that you can't dispute, because the weight of evidence crushes your delusions.

Perhaps try reading your own link: The government did not fund it, rather they were the first customer. I think your bad reading comprehension is probably why you're uneducated, which explains why you're a commie bastard.

Now as for Cannibalism... do spend some time looking into the history of the Telegraph, and especially the history of the Transatlantic Cables. Every single "Entrepreneur" failed, often in a period of just a year or two, only to be gobbled up by successors, who also failed, only to be gobbled up again.

Hate to break it to you, but this isn't cannibalism. If the management fails at one company, and another company effectively takes over and then succeeds, that's just progress. Your socialist governments do the same thing, by the way, only they execute the former management in many cases. Cannibalism would be more akin to outright stealing somebody else's ideas, which your vaunted socialist governments did all the time.

And by the way, have you ever asked yourself why people are always wanting to leave socialist states, and why socialist states always have to build fences and shoot their own people who try to escape?

And they did it all by their itty-bitty-wittle selves, taking a Clean Room approach, and ignoring the decades of Research conducted by... Ta Dum!... Governments!

Actually, yes, they came up with the recyclable rocket engine concept themselves.

Wrong yet _again_

That isn't a valid comparison...at all. Those rockets first of all didn't even go half way to the Karman line, which is why they were able to be landed with a parachute, and why they didn't put up with anywhere near the amount of atmospheric abuse that the Falcon 9 does, because the Falcon 9 goes ALL THE WAY up to the Karman line, with a bonus in that it does it with liquid fuel as opposed to the shuttle booster's solid fuel. But in spite of that, the shuttle booster rockets weren't really all that reusable as thousands of the parts had to be refurbished, and some of the more expensive parts were outright destroyed. In fact, the whole reason the Shuttle program was abandoned to begin with was because it wasn't anywhere near as reusable as it was planned to be, and each flight costed in the 1.5 billion dollar range per launch in most cases. For comparison, NASA's SLS rockets have an estimated cost of about 500 million per launch even though none of them will be reusable.

Here's some factoids about SpaceX's current rockets:
- Their components are so reusable that they can have them ready to launch again in under 24 hours with very little in the way of refurbishment, and their current goal is to be able to reduce that to less than half of a day. In fact, the re-usability is so good that almost all of the cost to re-use the rocket is spent on fuel alone.
- The retail cost of a Falcon 9 rocket launch is roughly $62 million, and with a reused rocket that has been lower

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

While you were coming up with that, did you stop at all to think about how many very non-capitalist countries are the worst offenders here? Iran, whose economy is 60% centrally planned (which is a wet-dream-come-true in your case) holds the #1 most polluted city in the world, with many other either pure socialist or mostly socialist countries not far behind them. For comparison, the US, which is arguably the most capitalist country in the world, doesn't even have a single city that falls within the top 1,000 polluting cities in the world.

What an epic fail on your part. You aren't very good at thinking, you know. It's best to leave that to the competent people.

As war profiteering, you realize much of this has nothing to do with weapons, right? Even your own link says so. But let's stay on this subject, now that you've brought it up: Which country focused the most effort on building high powered nuclear weapons? (Hint: It wasn't a capitalist one.) And speak of weapons:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/30/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Though I could go on forever; in fact Russia alone does many of these in tandem for different military branches.

But what's the first Google result on this for America?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHi...

I pity those with weak minds like yours...they always end up being somebody's useful idiot.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

But what if those problems are actually caused by the economic problems associated with laissez-faire capitalism?

First off, we don't have laissez-faire capitalism. Second off, these problems have little to do with economics, in fact we've already tried throwing lots of money at these kinds of people, and it didn't work. We've even tried building lower income homes in affluent areas where it's considerably easier to find better paying work, and all it does is move the problem from one place to another.

Certainly these problems seem to have been growing since the 80s after America moved to a much more unrestrained economic model.

It's interesting that you say this, because things have only been improving. Pick any metric you want:

- Birth rates are lower
- Life expectancies are higher
- Wealth is higher across the board, poor and rich
- Violent crime rates are going down (Fun fact: Fewer people die of public mass shootings in the US than in many prominent welfare-friendly European countries, even though when they happen in Europe, nobody seems to debate much about increased gun control: https://www.thejacknews.com/la...)
- Suicide rates are decreasing overall (with the exception being middle aged white people, but the overall suicide rates are still going down in spite of that.)

So if we follow your assertion, then a more unrestricted economic model is improving life for Americans. The reality is much more nuanced than that, but you're the idiot who made this statement.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[AC-x]

First off, we don't have laissez-faire capitalism

But you can't deny it's a lot more laissez-faire than the Nordic model.

Second off, these problems have little to do with economics, in fact we've already tried throwing lots of money at these kinds of people, and it didn't work.

What's that? Just throwing money at a problem without actually changing the underlying socioeconomic model that caused the issue in the first place doesn't fix the problem? Who could have predicted??

It's interesting that you say this, because things have only been improving. Pick any metric you want:

I can pick 5 things straight off the bat that haven't been improving:

1. Cost of housing.

2. Healthcare costs.

3. Income inequality. The majority of wages have stagnated while only those at the top have seen their wages increase. Stagnant wages combined with increasing the living costs above is leaving far more lower and middle income families in a precarious position.

4. Incarceration rate.

5. Maternal mortality rate.

So if we follow your assertion, then a more unrestricted economic model is improving life for Americans. The reality is much more nuanced than that, but you're the idiot who made this statement.

Your assertion that things have been improving across the board is demonstrably wrong and there is clearly plenty of room for improvement.

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

But you can't deny it's a lot more laissez-faire than the Nordic model.

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

For a little background, that site favors less regulation when it comes to the economy, and if they didn't like a particular country's state of regulation, you'd see it show up. Having said that, they do a pretty thorough job in their measurements, and you can poke through their data if you'd like. As you can plainly see, it places the Nordic countries as being roughly the same as the US.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

What's that? Just throwing money at a problem without actually changing the underlying socioeconomic model that caused the issue in the first place doesn't fix the problem? Who could have predicted??

And what about the socioeconomic model is different in their case? It's really all the same thing.

I can pick 5 things straight off the bat that haven't been improving:

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index. The HOI, which roughly measures what your mortgage rate would be vs your income, currently sits roughly where it was between 1990 and 2003 at about 60. It went down to about 40 during the 2006 bubble, and went up to around 75 when the market bottomed out, and then has returned back to 60. The HAI measures how affordable the median house price is for the average household, with 100 normalized to mean that the average household has exactly enough income to afford the median priced house. Right now, that index sits at 150ish, which means that the average household makes 50% more than enough to afford the median priced house in their region, though around 2011 it was much higher, but again, this was after the housing crash.

So to put it another way, while housing prices are in fact up, they're no less affordable.

https://www.nahb.org/en/resear...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

In other words, it's very much a moot point.

2. Healthcare costs [killingthebreeze.com].

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step. And the cause of this isn't what you no doubt think it is based on your comment about housing (increased pricing) rather it's because people are adopting bad habits, i.e. being more sedentary, consuming more alcohol, sugar, etc. And this has nothing at all to do with lower incomes or anything like that, rather it's because of the opposite: They can afford be more sedentary, afford more booze, and afford more twinkies. This is one of those things that could be fixed by behavioral/cultural changes, not socioeconomic ones.

Oh, and there's this:

http://www.washington.edu/news...

3. Income inequality [forbesimg.com]. The majority of wages have stagnated while only those at the top have seen their wages increase. Stagnant wages combined with increasing the living costs above is leaving far more lower and middle income families in a precarious position.

I found the Bernie fan! But actually this is highly misleading, and in many ways its an outright farce. I'll show you some hard numbers later, but first, I'm going to give you a lesson in economics:

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[AC-x]

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".

That matches exactly what I've been saying, the fact the site averages all those out to the same arbitrary "overall score" is irrelevant.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

Not in the US no, but given what large companies over there are able to get away with compared to most other western countries there's clearly a lack of oversight.

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index.

So in terms of *buying*, using a certain methodology shows house affordability has been stable since the 90s (well after the policies I'm criticizing had been enacted). On the other hand rent has increased dramatically, especially for those in the lower 3rd of incomes. And no, wages haven't grown to fill that gap.

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

Lol, there's no magic money tree, that money is coming from somewhere.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step.

1980: Sweden: $942 / Switzerland: $1013 / USA: $1091
2008: Sweden: $3470 / Switzerland: $4627/ USA: $7538

That is not in "lock-step" by a long shot, US spending has increased considerably more than the 2 next nearest countries.

I found the Bernie fan!

Found the trickle down believer!

In reality, when you increase your income, you've increased somebody else's wealth. How? Well, people pay you for something they want or need, and when you create what they want or provide a service that they want or need, you are creating wealth from thin air (or from raw materials,) and then giving the wealth to them in exchange for money. When the rich become richer, they increase the wealth of those who gave them more money.

LOL, people like you have been saying that since the 80s yet the income of 90% of Americans has not risen in real terms since the 70s (and if you're interested in wealth the bottom 50% of families have not see their wealth rise 1989-2007).

Trickle-down economics has provably failed to make the majority of people better off. The only people who actually put money back into the economy via spending is the middle class, when the rich get a larger share of the bigger pie they just keep it to themselves.

Now, for the hard numbers: The fact is, capitalist economies encourage the creation of wealth

The Nordic model is pro free-market capitalism, so what's your point?

Furthermore, the data more or less debunks the notion that income inequality is getting worse

Interesting that you're only linking to videos talking about statistically improv

Re:Take that Karl Marx

[ArmoredDragon]

This is a long post that I typed in somewhat of a rush, so I've probably made a few grammatical and factual errors, and missed a few things that didn't support my argument enough, but the overall message should hold up well. If you read nothing else in this, at least read the last few paragraphs.

You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".

Take another look at those figures. The tax burden in three of those countries is similar to the US, with Finland scoring higher. But that's a moot point. Remember, you're trying to argue that the US is more laissez-faire than them, so I need you to try thinking from a more nuanced perspective: Property rights, and everything from business freedom to everything to the right of that are what matter in this regard, and if you pay attention, they're all on par with the US.

Or better yet, select all four Nordic countries to see their averages, and then compare them to the US. Not a massive difference. Anyways, this is splitting hairs at this point, your original assertion that these problems are caused by laissez-faire capitalism is incredibly stupid given we have no such thing here.

Not in the US no, but given what large companies over there are able to get away with compared to most other western countries there's clearly a lack of oversight.

Actually this is rapidly changing. In fact, China just started a big crackdown:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

So in terms of *buying*, using a certain methodology shows house affordability has been stable since the 90s (well after the policies I'm criticizing had been enacted). On the other hand rent has increased dramatically, especially for those in the lower 3rd of incomes [pewtrusts.org]. And no, wages haven't grown [pewtrusts.org] to fill that gap [pewtrusts.org].

Rents are an interesting case right now because we've seen a culture shift recently where people prefer to rent so that they can move easier if they find a new job somewhere else. But this is a good effect to have, because it shows that people are more easily able to find higher paying jobs: Since the people who do this tend to have higher incomes, we've been seeing a lot of people pay higher rents than they do for mortgages. This may or may not be a long-term trend (it only happened recently, and most probably will die down during the next recession, but nobody has a magic ball, least of all me) but it has nothing to do with the problems associated with low income neighborhoods where rents mostly aren't impacted by this.

Speak of which, these policies you mentioned, just how laissez-faire are they?

With regard to that last chart you linked, it doesn't support your claim that well. Food has gone up 2 points since 96, and housing has gone up 4 points, but the rest don't appear to be significantly significant. 2 points is barely worth mention, 4 points is worth mention, but it's not exactly having a big impact.

Lol, there's no magic money tree, that money is coming from somewhere.

No...We're talking about cultural problems in these low income areas. Health care costs and health care spending make quite a difference here from the perspective of the consumer. For example, somebody on medicaid (which is common for this demographic) most likely isn't going to notice any difference if health care costs go up, especially for medicaid plans that don't ask for premiums, copays, or deductibles (my state, Arizona, does this.) The same is tr

You have to feel sorry for ULA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's disappointing to see Boeing and Lockheed being deprived of billions of dollars.

Re:You could almost say...

[Anonymous Coward]

I should "launch" my foot into your "testicles".

Re:Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG! Wake up sheeple!

In some ways...

[taiwanjohn]

Another important milestone was the recent name-check on Elon Musk in Star Trek: Discovery. In ep.4, the captain says (paraphrasing): "The Wright brothers, Elon Musk, Zephram Cochran... do you want to be remembered in that group or be forgotten as just another obscure scientist?"

My point is that even pop culture is beginning to realize that we're entering a new paradigm for space flight, and that Musk is the most visible proponent of it. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of Elon's vision will be realized. But if, in 10 or 15 years it's possible to buy a ticket to an orbit for less than $100k, it will certainly be enabled by the "entrepreneurial" space industry, and not by any government effort. And, for better or worse, Elon is the poster-boy for that industry.

Re: In some ways...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You're wrong.

The point was to fool m

Re:In some ways...

[WrongMonkey]

They just name dropped Elon Musk because anyone watching STD is too retarded to recognize any actual scientist in the world today. Would have been funnier if they'd picked Roger Shawyer.

Overstating slightly?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This seems a bit...dramatic...in its description. Yes, as of comparatively recently you can now get satellite launch services that are substantially private sector (both in who you buy them from and in the launch vehicle not being some defense contractor's ICBM work warmed over a bit); but to the degree that the private sector has found things worth doing in space(mostly communications satellites, some sensor ones) that predates the new launch options by a fair bit; and none of the asteroid mining/private colonies/etc. stuff seems to have changed much, particularly as of 2009.

This is not to dismiss the developments in launch systems; but 'space age' usually includes something to do in space, which hasn't shown up to nearly the same degree, and also existed under the prior launch model; it seems more accurate to limit the claim to launch systems.

Re:Overstating slightly?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems a bit...dramatic...in its description. Yes, as of comparatively recently you can now get satellite launch services that are substantially private sector (both in who you buy them from and in the launch vehicle not being some defense contractor's ICBM work warmed over a bit); but to the degree that the private sector has found things worth doing in space(mostly communications satellites, some sensor ones) that predates the new launch options by a fair bit; and none of the asteroid mining/private colonies/etc. stuff seems to have changed much, particularly as of 2009.
 

The legal framework for regulating asteroid mining has to come first. That now exists for firms in the US, as of Nov 2015 (SPACE Act of 2015) and Luxembourg, as of Aug 2017 (Luxembourg's asteroid mining law takes effect August 1st).

It's still early days.

Re:Overstating slightly?

[DerekLyons]

This seems a bit...dramatic...in its description. Yes, as of comparatively recently you can now get satellite launch services that are substantially private sector (both in who you buy them from and in the launch vehicle not being some defense contractor's ICBM work warmed over a bit)

It's a lot dramatic. But it's basically the same sentiment as you express above - trying to draw a false distinction between private launch providers and vehicles.

Re:Overstating slightly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't find it dramatic at all, it says began in 2009. So only 8 years in and Space-X has ramped up their launches per year (should be around 19 this year IIRC) and Blue Origin is making significant progress. Just look a the Lunar X-Prize, where 5 teams will be trying to launch their craft to the moon by Q1 of 2018. Some of the competitors have some interesting commercial aspirations.

Why Elon?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wright brothers were the ones who actually designed and built the plane. The fictional Cochran character actually designed and built his warp drive.

Elon is just a financier with an awesome publicist who created this public personae of being an "innovative genius" - it's all about self-promotion.

He has some very talented engineers working for him. Now, Burt Rutan is an innovative genius!

Re:Why Elon?

[Megane]

I guess that's just one more reason why The Orville is superior to STD.

Re:Why Elon?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to check your history, the Wright brothers build a pretty crappy plane based on years of other peoples prior art and instantly ran to the patent office to secure "their invention" and claimed anything that flew with wings owed them significant fees. They got into a patent fight with a motorcycle manufacturer that was by pretty much any measure a much better plane designer (most modern aircraft are descended from his creations). Instead of working on improving their aircraft (as Curtis (motorcycle manufacturer) and many Europeans did) they chose to focus on suing everyone in sight and sticking with pretty much their original craft with only minor improvements.

Take that Karl Marx and thanks HItler!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nazis were the ones who perfected rockets, after all.

Hey, you started it!

250 Space Ventures?!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the first I've heard about it.

All we hear about here is about Space X and rarely about Bezos' company.

I can sense the Musk fanboy-force is strong here.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

***please pay attention to the Moon update***

C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."

But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!

Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.

Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65

Creimy's "enterprise-level" chair, he talks about it all the time on slashdot:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...

Creimy's head, while his supervisor was talking to him, not with him, since it is impossible to do with Creimy:
https://school.discoveryeducat...

Creimy acting in educational resource document, he actually confirmed himself on Slashdot that he was handled by Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education! He is really a king Dumpty!:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read what Chris Reimer wrote here:
https://groups.google.com/foru...

You are such a perfect miracle imbecile Chris!

I can't believe that you are actually imbecile enough to post this thread here. It makes you look like an even more imbecile fucktard yet.

As some have stated on that thread "dot in NOT an operator", you fucktard! Apperently, you did not read the thread yourself or more likely, your ameba brain reading comprehension doesn't allow you to understand its content.

Its like asking: What is the dot operator precedence in Linux Slackware 1.2.3? You can't daisy chain dot operators in Windows versions (e.g. 3.1, 3.11, etc.)

What is the precedence in the 2.5 IQ that you possess?

And if you ever asked about real operators the word is "Precedence" you fucktard!

Dots are not operators in ANY OOP language you silly fuck!

See java:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase... [oracle.com]

For python, you could have googled it but no, you needed to grab the attention on that google group and didn't care that it made you look like a total fool.
http://reeborg.ca/docs/oop_py_... [reeborg.ca]

See example in above link:
Fido.head.mouth.teeth.canine.hurts();
Other example:
Criemer.head.brain.isHurting(); This is always false because your head is empty you dumb fuck!

But Criemer.head.isEmpty() always returns true...

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chris' case is getting worse, he spends all day replying to himself as AC on /.

The tests we ran on Chris have shown that Chris has the intelligence of an ameba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, technically, he is able to conceive some kind of agenda but it will be silly or impossible to follow on a human scale.

For example, Chris had an agenda to post anything he felt like on Slashdot which did not work well because it was based on his false beliefs that he had an infinite number of karma points as he wrote here several times.

Several people here explained to Chris that karma maxed out at some level like 50 or so but Chris kept on insisting that his python script had confirmed that he had millions of karma points!

Oh well, as I wrote before: "It isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody."

For the valuable /. users that might already have read the following, please note that there is an important update.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education has invested money to buy Chris a new chair:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...

Information about Christopher Dale Reimer and autistic people:

Autistic people have obsessions about things normal people don't care. For example, one of our autistic patient went haywire when he realized that there was a penny missing in his pocket change.

To calm him down, one of our educator pretended to have found it on the floor and gave a penny to him.

The autistic patient condition went even worse because he realized it wasn't the same penny!

Chris has an obsession with budgeting every penny. He doesn't understand that most people do not budget to the penny and have a flexible amount they allow for miscellaneous items.

I am Nancy Guerrero and I am Director of Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We use Chris' (a.k.a. creimer,cdreimer) picture in our document because he is the hardest case we have ever had to handle:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...

Our artists were inspired by the low carb diet that Christopher follows scrupulously for the small lunch box and by the picture linked below for the rest. I am sure that you will notice the similarities such as the bump on the side of his chest and more:
https://ibb.co/gVad65

Please be easy on Christopher although, I am aware that some of our staff handling Chris post joke comments here and obvoiusly, the Santa Clara County Office of Education disapprove that behavior vehemently:
https://school.discoveryeducat...

But it isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody.

Thank You dear users,
---
Nancy Guerrero
Director
Special Education
Santa Clara County Office of Education

Don't forget MirCorp

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MirCorp

First commercial lease agreement for orbiting manned space station (December 1999)
First privately funded manned expedition to a space station (Soyuz TM-30, launch April 4, 2000, return June 16, 2000)
First privately funded cargo resupply mission in space (April 27, 2000)
First privately funded spacewalk (May 12, 2000)
First contract for space tourist (Dennis Tito, June 19, 2000)

Crushed by concerted US and Russian bureaucratic efforts.

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Christopher, my love,

Never mind those "hump leg" trolls.

I am deeply sorry. I didn't feel well lately but I am better now since I had my meds adjusted. I am sorry that I called you all sorts of names and I feel truly ashamed of myself.

The python click script you wrote for me my sweet love for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work.

Could you come visit me in my studio so we could look at it?

Signed:
Your sweetee who will love you for ever.

P.S. when I posted there was a funny form that asked me to retype the word "biceps" in a text field. That's funny and I went to look at your new picture again and got turned on. Please contact me ASAP.

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

CREIMIER SAID:

All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. Won't be long before you start making "coffee money" each month.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Shitposting, Amazon affiliate spam, being fat, and being a general nuisance.

CREIMER SAID:
Only on Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

So why hasn't managed to ban this intentionally disruptive user? According to him his "trolls" can't help themselves.. he is the one in control willingly and maliciously creating disruptions. Reasons that slashdot has stated they will ban accounts at their discretion.

Why isn't creimer banned? He degrades the slashdot experience for everyone and attempts to monetize these efforts. This is effectively stealing from Dice.

Just the other day creimer attempted to dox a user by posting her name and ip address. How many chances should he be given?

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some Creimer's posts from his account that was blocked and renamed by Slashdot management:

"Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them."
https://slashdot.org/comments....

"Which doesn't violate the Slashdot TOS. If you got a problem with that, take it up with management."
https://slashdot.org/comments....

This year I've posted ~4,000 comments.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

My employers don't care about what my Slashdot trolls think. Now go off and lick your balls somewhere else.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re: Earth is flat. Accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This post was made by Chris Dale Reimer, If you like this here are some of his other posts from his old account:

If all my assets were liquidated, I would still have enough cash to buy a new car and head off to Mexico to find a chica to marry.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

You're aware that are some states in the U.S. that allow underage marriage as young as 14 years old?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
As for my comment, I've heard stories of engineers retiring at 50, moving to Mexico and marrying underage girls. Since I work with ex-military, the Philippines is a popular retirement spot for marrying underage girls as well. It's all about getting the most bang for your retirement dollars.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
That only works if you retire to Mexico, build a mansion (by local standards), marry an underage sweet thing and bequeath all your possessions to the village.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Orbital Sciences did it first

[Anonymous Coward]

Pegasus was developed with private capital and first flew in 1990. Falcon 1 was the first privately-funded *liquid fueled* orbital launcher.