I find it sad that my generation got Neil Armstrong, and this generation gets Billionaire Ego Jockeys in flying wieners.
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SpaceX and other space stuff
- Thread starter bholder
- Start date
These flyover videos come out about once a week. Give a good perspective to the SpaceX build and launch site.
I gotta hand it to Elon for at least doing some thing interesting with his money. If I had that kind of dough, I'd probably just buy a private island, fortify it like a Bond villain, have a big room with all my musical stuff (a la Stewart Copeland), then politely detach myself from the rest of the world. 
I don't.
It took 10 years and a noticeable percentage of the U.S. government budget to let a handful of astronauts walk around on the moon and being home a box of rocks. It was so dangerous and expensive that the program was abandoned once we had proved we were superior in technology to the Russians.
That was the main reason we did that. Certainly it was a monumental achievement, and one to make everyone involved feel proud. Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts were true heroes. But their usefulness was over and it was time for the country to move on.
Of course the lunar landing program was eventuslly followed by the Space Shuttle, which was intended to become a safe, reliable, and cheap method to accomplish some genuine science with astronauts in Earth orbit.
That never came anywhere near fulfilling that promise, with flights being rare, exceedingly expensive, and resulting in the tragic destruction of 2 of the 4 working shuttles plus the tragic death of 14 astronauts.
If we humans wish to make working and doing real science in space, then the most efficient way to get to the point where it can truly be safe, reliable, and cheap, is to have private sector competition get into the game. Right now, that means billionaires with big egos to finance it.
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It will be interesting to see how it pans out, in the long run.
So much of the invisible mundanities of our everyday lives, are directly connected to the space programme ;
If access to that new frontier is effectively controlled by a handful of competing private hyper-corporations, how will it effect the flow of that influence?
Will it create a bottleneck (either by design, or unintended)?
Could it unintentionally stifle development?
Will it lead to rampant licensing, and a Wild West effect on standardisation?
How will this reflect in the cost to the "consumer"? (and not just in monetary terms)
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Deleted member 165050
Guest
Well if they have any of the software team responsible for the 737 Max involved I imagine there will be car parks full of them.
And another thing... Boeing "Starliner"??? Virgin "Galactic"??? SpaceX "Starship"??? Humanity hasn't even cracked interplanetary travel yet, it's a bit soon to be talking like they're hopping around the galaxy...
Consider the aviation industry. There are only 2 "competing, private, hyper-corporstions" that manufacture virtually all large, commercial jetliners, yet there is constant development of new technology, the cost to the consumer makes it affordable for anyone to fly, and you're statistically safer riding in a commercial jet than just about anywhere else on Earth.
The technology that makes this all possible easily flows down to smaller commercial aircraft and also general aviation for individual private citizens.
Of course, governments worldwide still maintain military or other specialized use aircraft, but even those are nearly always contracted out to private corporations.
Howard Hughes was to early aviation what Bezos, Branson, and Musk are to today's commercial space pioneers - extremely wealthy, egomaniacs, spending fortunes on pushing technological boundaries.
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Deleted member 165050
Guest
I hate to say it but the only technology win the US scored in the Space Race was first human on the moon... every other win went to the USSR. First satellite, first living being in space (Laika the dog), first man in space, first woman in space, first spacewalk, first unmanned moon landing, first space station, and even had a space shuttle programme (which ended with the fall of the USSR).
The moon missions were abandoned largely because the general public lost interest, what with there being nothing new left to compete for at that time. In '69 the USSR was probably relieved that the US got there first given the huge cost and their crippled economy.
Who can be bought to do whatever, and take whatever up there. Unregulated.
No sir, I don't like it.
That's not going to happen. All governments have a common vested interest in the strict regulation of space - far, far more than how strictly commercial aviation is regulated.
D
Deleted member 165050
Guest
Some question though as to how governments can regulate something way out of their jurisdiction... just suppose one of the billionaires really does develop interplanetary or interstellar travel, what's to stop them colonising a planet or maybe one of the moons of Jupiter and claiming it as an independent world state? The next war could be with Bezosia (formerly known as Mars)...
Commercial air travel in the U.S. (and most other places) was highly regulated from very early, until public demand motivated the government to reduce regulations by the 1970s. The Civil Aeronautics Board was eventually decommissioned because there was a broad consensus (even from politicians of all kinds) that there was too much regulation.
Airline Deregulation Act - Wikipedia
A government committee literally determined what routes airlines could and couldn't fly, exactly how much they were required to charge for tickets, and even what food they were allowed to serve for meals or snacks, and in what quantity.
There is the old, well known joke about the tiny portions of food served on airplanes and it's based on the reality of air travel before the 1980s, when the government managed the business of commercial air travel and pre determined how much profit every company was supposed to make. They reasoned that too much competition would cause some airlines to fail and they sought to prevent this by micromanaging every aspect of the industry. More efficient airlines weren't allowed to reduce ticket prices because that would cause other airlines to lose business. Some companies tried to lure customers by serving better meals and providing better services but they were forbidden to do so because that was considered to be unfair competition.
When deregulation was being seriously considered, some predicted that safety would be sacrificed and there would be increasing numbers of plane crashes, but just the opposite happened, when they strengthened safety oversight by the FAA.
In the 21st Century, it's rare to find anyone seriously arguing that we should go back to the old way of doing things. The amount of regulation we currently have seems to be about right.
Airline Deregulation Act - Wikipedia
A government committee literally determined what routes airlines could and couldn't fly, exactly how much they were required to charge for tickets, and even what food they were allowed to serve for meals or snacks, and in what quantity.
There is the old, well known joke about the tiny portions of food served on airplanes and it's based on the reality of air travel before the 1980s, when the government managed the business of commercial air travel and pre determined how much profit every company was supposed to make. They reasoned that too much competition would cause some airlines to fail and they sought to prevent this by micromanaging every aspect of the industry. More efficient airlines weren't allowed to reduce ticket prices because that would cause other airlines to lose business. Some companies tried to lure customers by serving better meals and providing better services but they were forbidden to do so because that was considered to be unfair competition.
When deregulation was being seriously considered, some predicted that safety would be sacrificed and there would be increasing numbers of plane crashes, but just the opposite happened, when they strengthened safety oversight by the FAA.
In the 21st Century, it's rare to find anyone seriously arguing that we should go back to the old way of doing things. The amount of regulation we currently have seems to be about right.
There are international treaties already in existence that every space capable nation has signed onto, which prevent exactly that from happening.
When Musk or Branson or Bezos puts a rocket into orbit, they have necessarily gone through an elaborate process of securing approval from the U.S. government. That approval won't be granted unless there is a detailed, step by step plan for everything that will happen on the flight. That not only includes the exact flight path, but also what personnel and cargo will be on board. If there is anything that the government doesn't like, for whatever reason, that permit is denied.
If Musk decided he wanted to put a small satellite into orbit. that would need special permission. If he wanted to take some rich tourist on a joyride, that would need special permission. If he wanted to send a robot probe to a piece of space rock in the asteroid belt and claim it as his property, it would automatically be denied, because that is against international treaties signed by the U.S.
Rich people claiming bits of space for themselves as their own profit won't happen because the government of every space capable nation on Earth will always be motivated to retain that control for themselves, out of "public interest".
