"Privatizing" the space industry. Yea or nay?

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Leo the constellation?

Low Earth Orbit.

Fuck low Earth orbit - we should be beyond that by now.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fact Man, first a salute for your work with the space program. "Well done, that man!"

Have you seen the Popular Science article on the privatization? Thoughts, if so? I really need to PDF that sucker.

[Fact-Man]

Fact Man, first a salute for your work with the space program. "Well done, that man!"

Thank you. It was a load of quite fascinating fun while it lasted, except when Grisson and the others died in that fire, that was horrible.

Have you seen the Popular Science article on the privatization? Thoughts, if so? I really need to PDF that sucker.

Haven't had the pleasure. Maybe I'll go to their website, see if I can find it.

Cheers!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fact Man, first a salute for your work with the space program. "Well done, that man!"

Thank you. It was a load of quite fascinating fun while it lasted, except when Grisson and the others died in that fire, that was horrible.

Have you seen the Popular Science article on the privatization? Thoughts, if so? I really need to PDF that sucker.

Haven't had the pleasure. Maybe I'll go to their website, see if I can find it.

Cheers!

Gus Grissom was a Purdue Grad, like me. Grissom Hall is a shrine there.

[Nickel]

Yea.

I don't think I can predict how things would turn out with a corporate controlled space, but:

1. I think it's the best way of encouraging innovation and moving progress along. I'd like it if we could at least land a human being on another planet (or enter its atmosphere) and come back, all in the same trip, within the next 90 years. We'd never do that with government funding alone. (This is a practical reason)

2. I believe that people should have the right to travel to anywhere in the galaxy if they wanted to and were able. Corporate access to space comes a bit closer to reaching that (This is an ideological reason)

[eXcommunicate]

Yea.

Private enterprise works better and is willing to take more risks.

We won't be able to say who does what up there as well as we could when the government controlled it.

Nay.

Government programs are less willing to risk human lives in the effort.

We won't be able to say who does what up there as well as we could when the government controlled it.

I don't see it as an all or nothing prospect. It isn't either all government or all private sector. I think there is room for both the government and the private sector in space, as I believe there is room for both in Health Care and other endeavors.

However, I don't believe we are to the point to where the government has blazed a big enough trail for the private sector to follow. Space is still prohibitively expensive for a private industry to thrive in any large scale capacity.

Secondly, I believe private enterprise is more risk-averse than a government space program, specifically in the realm of ROI. I mean, there was no immediate practical benefit or profit to be made by going to the moon in 1969, yet it was a glorious achievement and most would say was a worthwhile adventure. While there were long-term benefits, most private sector corporations live and die on a quarterly basis, so such a long-term investment would terribly risky for a corporation to make. We simply haven't advanced to the point where the ROI is tangible or immediate enough for business to blast off. *eh hem*

So, at this time I feel Obama's business-leaning instincts are premature. While I think the whole Moon Shot Part Deux was right to get the axe, I am quite leery of his overtures towards business, and I am seriously pissed that we don't have a replacement for the Shuttle program in the pipeline anymore.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Leo the constellation?

Low Earth Orbit.

Fuck low Earth orbit - we should be beyond that by now.

For some things it's useful. Cheaper to get up that high, for one.

[AndroidAR]

[quote=\"Gawdzilla\"]
Gus Grissom was a Purdue Grad, like me. Grissom Hall is a shrine there.[/quote]

My school (North Carolina A&T) has a similar situation, as one of our graduates, Ronald McNair, was one of the astronauts killed in the Challenger explosion. The tallest building on campus, the main engineering building, is named after him (with a mural and a display case containing his mission patch). In addition, there is a small \"shrine\" in the mathematics and physics building, which even has a bust of him (and a model of the space shuttle).

But on the topic at hand, I think that the space industry shouldn\'t be totally privatized, since I do not think corporations would invest in scientific endeavors as much as NASA does. However, I think that space tourism should be privatized, and the non-privatized space organizations should work with the privatized ones to develop new designs and whatnot.

On that note, one space company I am interested in is Armadillo Aerospace, founded and funded by John Carmack, the guy who, more or less, programmed all of id Software\'s game engines. He\'s one of my heroes.

[mark1961]

Personally I think the Shuttle will be used beyond it's present "use before" date before Aries I/Orion is resurrected. Development on Aries I and Orion is still taking place. A test flight of the first stage of the launcher-Aries 1 worked out fine and a test of the crew escape system rocket will also happen. Again personally I would guess Obama, when the budget runs out on present NASA R&D will quietly as possible make available funds for further development. AFAIK there is no other credible US domestic successor to Shuttle. AFAIK U.S. commercial alternatives to Aries/Orion aren't so much planned yet as not even on the "drawing board".

Present Space Tourism plans outside of the Russian Soyuz alternative centre around shall we say a "creative interpretation" of what travelling in Space actually is. A high altitude flight in a specialised craft may be technically Spaceflight but it still isn't Orbit. Many miles too low and thousands of MPH too slow in my estimation.

The only credible alternative to Soyuz/Shuttle manned spaceflight is the European (well, mostly French) ATV/Ariane V cargo transporter system. Although the first vessel was successfully launched and deployed much further work will have to be done to actually transport people with it. The launcher itself will have to be upgraded and a crew capsule and launch escape system will have to be devised. This might be achieved partly by NASA releasing some of the already developed Orion technology to us Euros. The second most likely outcome IMO.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

Back to the question at hand. If it were a "not-for-profit" organisation, they maybe a "yay" from me.

I don't get the objection to making a profit. Certainly predatory buisness practices must stop. It's not the profit making that is bad, it's the lack of rules that must be abided by to make those profits. Our paychecks are in fact our profits, irrespective of whether you work for somebody else or not.

Neither am I suggesting that government entities should get out. But having a healthy innovative private market driving the technology would be a huge boost to technologies available for government science missions. Keep NASA, woods hole, NSF, etc., but drop the insistance that nobody make a profit. That just means fewer paychecks and toys for us, like this computer I'm using to say this.

I'm not against "for-profit" companies. Many have given us great advancement, like the computer, but something as important as space exploration should be an intergovernmental thing.
We can't have share holders interests at heart when it comes to this subject. If Coca-cola want to put their logo on the side of a space shuttle sure, why not? but I want to see scientists studying outer-space, not Mr and Mrs Jones from Milton Keynes.

[eXcommunicate]

What would everyone say to some kind of world-wide space agency and every country who wishes to take part gives 1% of their national budget to the agency. Just a random idea that popped into my head.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What would everyone say to some kind of world-wide space agency and every country who wishes to take part gives 1% of their national budget to the agency. Just a random idea that popped into my head.

You'll need 100 countries co-operating to get a full budget.

[eXcommunicate]

What would everyone say to some kind of world-wide space agency and every country who wishes to take part gives 1% of their national budget to the agency. Just a random idea that popped into my head.

You'll need 100 countries co-operating to get a full budget.

Why's that? NASA is only about 1% of the U.S. budget alone (the total budget, including Medicare, etc.). Imagine if 50 countries were throwing 1% into the pot alongside the U.S.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What would everyone say to some kind of world-wide space agency and every country who wishes to take part gives 1% of their national budget to the agency. Just a random idea that popped into my head.

You'll need 100 countries co-operating to get a full budget.

Why's that? NASA is only about 1% of the U.S. budget alone (the total budget, including Medicare, etc.). Imagine if 50 countries were throwing 1% into the pot alongside the U.S.

Many of those countries are skating on the edge perpetually, 1% would be make or break for them. Obamacare doesn't cost nearly as much as the Dubya's pet wars, but we're struggling to find the money for it.

[eXcommunicate]

What would everyone say to some kind of world-wide space agency and every country who wishes to take part gives 1% of their national budget to the agency. Just a random idea that popped into my head.

You'll need 100 countries co-operating to get a full budget.

Why's that? NASA is only about 1% of the U.S. budget alone (the total budget, including Medicare, etc.). Imagine if 50 countries were throwing 1% into the pot alongside the U.S.

Many of those countries are skating on the edge perpetually, 1% would be make or break for them. Obamacare doesn't cost nearly as much as the Dubya's pet wars, but we're struggling to find the money for it.

What? "Obamacare" is deficit neutral. But anyway, moving on...