Airlines And Other Private Companies Going Into The Space Industry

[exchemist]

12 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

Like it or not space exploration is going the way of the private sector. As it's been mentioned in this thread there's companies such as SpaceX and Bellend One and no doubt in the future there will be more private space companies still. That's how its always happened with travel and exploration throughout history, it starts out as something that is government funded and then goes the way of the private sector and more and more people are able to do it. 

There is an article in today's Financial Times, saying that the European space industry is also going down the route of commercial competition. So yes, this is a natural progression, once a technology has been sufficiently mastered and once commercial exploitation opportunities open up in the field in question. It was not so long ago that nuclear power was all in state hands. But now, it no longer is.

But the private sector needs a return on investment that justifies the level of risk in the enterprise. Where there is little or no commercial return, and/or the risks are high, private enterprise will not get involved. Private enterprise may also be denied access to a sector if there is no prospect of effective competition (anti-monopoly legislation). So these are the areas where governments have to step in.     

I am honestly not sure I understand what point you want to make, apart from having some kind of animus against NASA. 

[Photon Guy]

On 2/5/2024 at 11:07 PM, sethoflagos said:

Have you considered investing in this bold new venture?

Yes I have thought about buying SpaceX stock as well as Blue Origin stock. 

On 2/6/2024 at 10:22 AM, Phi for All said:

Right. Private corporations can't handle the R&D necessary. They're weak in that department, extremely weak. They need to show their stockholders that there will absolutely be a return on the investment, and they've almost always fallen down in efforts where they need to pioneer the knowledge and technology available. 

But look what the government did with the Postal Service! No private company was able to deliver letters to 50 states for the same rate, so the government made it happen. And now private interests want to swoop in and buy it all up for pennies so they can raise the rates like they did when they began taking over our utilities (oh gosh, I shouldn't get started on the stupidity of letting corporations manage our power structure).

But now we have UPS and FedEx that do much of the deliveries too. I know UPS and FedEx mostly deliver packages as opposed to letters but they are both very reliable companies and. people will often use UPS and FedEx over the postal service if they're mailing packages or anything bigger than a letter, even though the postal service mails such stuff too. Furthermore I don't get why we have to pay to use the postal service (if you're mailing a letter you have to put a stamp on it which costs money) if its government provided because something that's government provided means our taxes pay for it, unless you want to consider buying stamps just another type of tax, much like tollbooths on highways. 

 

The big limitation with government organizations such as NASA providing space travel is the limitation on how much money the government decides to spend on NASA, very few of our tax dollars go towards NASA like it or not. This isn't the 60s, the 70s, or even the 80s. We're not in the space race with Russia like we used to be. 

On 2/6/2024 at 10:22 AM, Phi for All said:

And NASA managed to take us offplanet in the ultimate pioneering effort. Personally, I think you read about the Challenger disaster and passed judgement on the whole program, which is very naive, imo. NASA has done more to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of space than any private company, and they did it without needing to make a profit. I'm very biased about the program. I'm friends with one of Buzz Aldrin's biographers, and the same guy made me aware of the problems with orbital debris, so I've studied quite a bit about how we deal with outer space as a country and a planet.

Not just Challenger but also Columbia, and it's not really NASA I blame but the people NASA hired for upper management. Some of the engineers knew that Challenger would be a disaster beforehand and they tried to warn the higher ups but the higher ups wouldn't listen. With Columbia they could've launched a rescue with Atlantis but they didn't, again I blame the people hired as management. 

NASA has done much to help us learn about space but much of that was done when we were in the space race, we're past that now. You mentioned Buzz Aldrin, one of the men who walked on the moon. That was back during the space race and since then the government has not funded any program to send anybody else to the moon, not since 1972. Why? The biggest reason is the simplest, the government hasn't seen any reason to send anybody back to the moon. 

On 2/6/2024 at 10:22 AM, Phi for All said:

I think what you're suggesting will be the downfall of our entire species if we don't stop trusting the private sector to regulate themselves. If we allow the private sector to have access to the resources available offplanet, we can expect every evil thing that's ever happened in science fiction. I don't think you understand how ruthless private interests can be if they aren't heavily regulated, and if you give them the ability to bring asteroids close enough to Earth to mine, you give them unfettered control over all of us.

But that's how it happens whenever new places are discovered and space is no exception. Just look at history, back when people first started crossing oceans that involved sailing across the ocean on a big ship that were only available to the really rich and really privileged and to the best of my knowledge such ships were provided by the various governments of the day. When the new lands were discovered (the Americas) more and more people wanted to go and private companies started taking over ocean travel. Today you can cross the oceans by simply getting on an airplane and flying across, an airplane that would belong to a commercial company such as Delta, United Airlines, American Airlines, ect. so traveling around the globe has gone the way of the private sector. Like it or not that's how I see it happening with space travel too in the future. 

On 2/6/2024 at 10:46 AM, exchemist said:

But the private sector needs a return on investment that justifies the level of risk in the enterprise. Where there is little or no commercial return, and/or the risks are high, private enterprise will not get involved. Private enterprise may also be denied access to a sector if there is no prospect of effective competition (anti-monopoly legislation). So these are the areas where governments have to step in.     

That's how its happened in history. Ocean travel used to be very risky when you had to spend months on a ship and sail across so I doubt there were much in the way of private companies investing in that. Then, as ocean travel became more and more safe, and faster, more private companies got into it. Now it's almost entirely private companies that do it. 

On 2/6/2024 at 10:46 AM, exchemist said:

I am honestly not sure I understand what point you want to make, apart from having some kind of animus against NASA. 

My point is that the future of space travel is going in the direction of the private sector. Not to bash NASA but that's the way it's going. 

[CharonY]

the argument seems a bit backwards as without NASA SpaceX would likely have failed  https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-would-be-no-spacex-and-its-brilliant-boat-landing/

 

Moreover, much of the funding is still government contracts. I.e. whatever limitation of government money you see, it also applies to SpaceX.

 

[Photon Guy]

On 2/9/2024 at 6:48 PM, CharonY said:

the argument seems a bit backwards as without NASA SpaceX would likely have failed  https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-would-be-no-spacex-and-its-brilliant-boat-landing/

Yes NASA has set the groundwork for SpaceX and other space companies but the way I see it NASA will be playing less and less of a role in space exploration in the future, even if it doesn't go away completely. 

On 2/9/2024 at 6:48 PM, CharonY said:

Moreover, much of the funding is still government contracts. I.e. whatever limitation of government money you see, it also applies to SpaceX.

For now, but Im talking about in the future. 

[Phi for All]

On 2/9/2024 at 2:40 PM, Photon Guy said:

My point is that the future of space travel is going in the direction of the private sector. 

Not if we wake up and realize the private sector only needs to fool us one last time to get all the marbles. In the words of Grand Moff Tarkin, you're far too trusting.

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Not if we wake up and realize the private sector only needs to fool us one last time to get all the marbles. In the words of Grand Moff Tarkin, you're far too trusting.

It will never be perfect, but a well thought out mix of regulated private and public enterprise will generally give substantially better results than just private or just public...though often the "well thought out" part is tainted by lobbying and less than fully honest politics.

[Phi for All]

4 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

It will never be perfect, but a well thought out mix of regulated private and public enterprise will generally give substantially better results than just private or just public...though often the "well thought out" part is tainted by lobbying and less than fully honest politics.

I think allowing anything offplanet that has as little compassion for humans as a corporation is a big mistake. We need to be able to trust them not to hold the whole planet hostage, and right now I sure don't. Ruthless business practices are so common on Earth, with corporations killing millions for profit, in "well thought out" campaigns of slavery, torture, and corruption. If they get offplanet and are allowed to keep those practices, there's nothing to stop them from gaining the upper hand for all time, nothing except their own altruism.

[J.C.MacSwell]

6 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I think allowing anything offplanet that has as little compassion for humans as a corporation is a big mistake. We need to be able to trust them not to hold the whole planet hostage, and right now I sure don't. Ruthless business practices are so common on Earth, with corporations killing millions for profit, in "well thought out" campaigns of slavery, torture, and corruption. If they get offplanet and are allowed to keep those practices, there's nothing to stop them from gaining the upper hand for all time, nothing except their own altruism.

So you feel there is no room in space for any regulated private enterprise, but think that public owned enterprise can progress safely?

Surely you would need a World Government to control that or ultimately some nation allowing private enterprise will gain dominance in space.

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

So you feel there is no room in space for any regulated private enterprise, but think that public owned enterprise can progress safely?

Surely you would need a World Government to control that or ultimately some nation allowing private enterprise will gain dominance in space.

Exploring the space around us is going to require a better motive than naked greed and profit. Find me a corporation that puts anything above profit and we can talk about them.

OTOH, when the focus is on exploration and advancement, and all the actors are using the same basic script to regulate their behavior, then perhaps we can avoid taking all our bad habits into space. Greece just signed on to The Artemis Accords, dedicated to the peaceful uses of outer space. Hopefully the world as a whole can realize that in space, cooperation and reason beats competition and aggression. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Exploring the space around us is going to require a better motive than naked greed and profit. Find me a corporation that puts anything above profit and we can talk about them.

 

Very few ventures start up for the purposes of profit or greed alone. Almost all small businesses start up with other goals, and look to making profit simply to survive.

Matured businesses and larger corporations suffer more from naked greed and holding the bottom line as paramount.

It's incumbent on the political system to align the success of these corporations (especially larger more powerful ones) towards what's good for the people rather than what's simply good for corporate profit and greed. Lobbyists and questionable politics get in the way...but despite that it generally still gives better results in most areas than public enterprises...which are not devoid of effects of greed and other less than altruistic human attributes either.

[Phi for All]

24 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Very few ventures start up for the purposes of profit or greed alone. Almost all small businesses start up with other goals, and look to making profit simply to survive.

I disagree. Every business model I've ever seen has the goal of "making money by doing/making X". They may also have other goals, but the need to maintain an increasing profit margin overshadows all else. It overshadows any moral or ethical considerations that doesn't revoke their corporate charters, and it practically guarantees that stupid, destructive decisions will be made in the name of profit when the choice between money and doing the right thing inevitably comes up.

24 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Matured businesses and larger corporations suffer more from naked greed and holding the bottom line as paramount.

And who's funding many of the private space ventures? 

24 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

It's incumbent on the political system to align the success of these corporations (especially larger more powerful ones) towards what's good for the people rather than what's simply good for corporate profit and greed.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

24 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Lobbyists and questionable politics get in the way...but despite that it generally still gives better results in most areas than public enterprises...which are not devoid of effects of greed and other less than altruistic human attributes either.

Again, I disagree. Any modern US examples of "public enterprises" have been so tainted by private concerns that they're unrecognizable from past efforts that didn't rely on them. And I think public endeavors can be more easily designed to remove corruption and greed from the process, as long as we can keep politicians and lobbyists in check.

 

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I disagree. Every business model I've ever seen has the goal of "making money by doing/making X". They may also have other goals, but the need to maintain an increasing profit margin overshadows all else. It overshadows any moral or ethical considerations that doesn't revoke their corporate charters, and it practically guarantees that stupid, destructive decisions will be made in the name of profit when the choice between money and doing the right thing inevitably comes up.

When you started your career path was that your primary goal, to make as much money as you possibly could?

I suspect it wasn't, though I also suspect you preferred to be adequately compensated for your efforts, well above that of the average human on this planet. The fact that you could be successful in doing that has much to do with the fact that you live in a (far from perfect and really does need to be regulated and improved) capitalist economy.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...

Though by all means change the bathwater and remember to wash the baby...even if the lobbyists claim the water smells great...

And don't fall for the "New improved Bathwater...now with Hydroxychloroquine!"

[Phi for All]

28 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

When you started your career path was that your primary goal, to make as much money as you possibly could?

I suspect it wasn't, though I also suspect you preferred to be adequately compensated for your efforts, well above that of the average human on this planet. The fact that you could be successful in doing that has much to do with the fact that you live in a (far from perfect and really does need to be regulated and improved) capitalist economy.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...

Though by all means change the bathwater and remember to wash the baby...even if the lobbyists claim the water smells great...

Not that the individual level has much to do with the aims of corporate America, but I sold products on commission, and I/we wanted my wife to stay at home for a few years after my daughter was born, so yes, making as much money as I possibly could was my primary goal.

I just can't pretend things haven't changed since I entered the workforce. Today's corporate greed is worse than anything we've ever seen. Young people are hamstrung compared to how it was when I was their age, and it keeps getting worse. We can't solve many of The People's problems when We have no political representation, and so many folks are struggling to make the corporations even wealthier while slowly dying themselves. It's time to stop letting them whitewash all the corruption (which they've become so good at, since 93% of all paint and paintbrushes used in the US are made using prison slave labor). 

[J.C.MacSwell]

47 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Not that the individual level has much to do with the aims of corporate America, but I sold products on commission, and I/we wanted my wife to stay at home for a few years after my daughter was born, so yes, making as much money as I possibly could was my primary goal.

I just can't pretend things haven't changed since I entered the workforce. Today's corporate greed is worse than anything we've ever seen. Young people are hamstrung compared to how it was when I was their age, and it keeps getting worse. We can't solve many of The People's problems when We have no political representation, and so many folks are struggling to make the corporations even wealthier while slowly dying themselves. It's time to stop letting them whitewash all the corruption (which they've become so good at, since 93% of all paint and paintbrushes used in the US are made using prison slave labor). 

Many small businesses do essentially that, though usually taking on more overhead and risk.

I share many of your concerns with larger corporations, though I think they are useful and potentially can be more so, especially if we can...

4 hours ago, Phi for All said:

And I think public endeavors can be more easily designed to remove corruption and greed from the process, as long as we can keep politicians and lobbyists in check.

 

...accomplish this, and thereby properly regulate corporations such that what is incentivised is more in line with the Public good.

[Ken Fabian]

I have no fear of corporate tyranny in space because space lacks opportunities for profitable enterprise. It is only in fiction that there are opportunities that are worth the effort. Space companies milking the taxpayer funded agencies is a depressingly ordinary kind of bad behavior.

Unless there is something I am missing, something big, it looks like if we take away the taxpayer funding there is no self funding commercial opportunity in space exploration or any space activities that don't directly service Earth customers. I don't count transporting astronauts to and from the ISS - or the ISS itself - as self funding.  No space tourism venture comes close to recovering costs, let alone makes a profit. If anyone can point to anything we do in space apart from ground sensing and communications satellite services that earns income from Earth customers and can be self funding I'd be interested.

Asteroid mining, in potential, is the best I can see and even that appears to be far short of viable.

For unashamedly taxpayer funded ambitions in space I think meteor defense is as good as it gets - far reaching enough to support ongoing space R&D with big ambitions, with multi-nation participation, that might end up opening up and spinning off something commercially self funding, but will be worthwhile even if doesn't.

[Outrider]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. 

Our future is already writ in the stars. I don't know this and I can't know this but I highly suspect that every day some form of life springs forth on some alien planet. There are so many of them and well, we are here.

So where all they all at?

We have a few anomalies like tabby's star. But not near what you would expect by just crunching the numbers.

We will, as a human race, burn this planet and everything on it.

Best case scenario is we blast ourselves back to the stone age. I highly doubt we are that lucky.

Again.

I am sorry!

 

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, Ken Fabian said:

I have no fear of corporate tyranny in space because space lacks opportunities for profitable enterprise. It is only in fiction that there are opportunities that are worth the effort. Space companies milking the taxpayer funded agencies is a depressingly ordinary kind of bad behavior...

 

Agree if the projections are with chemical propellants supplying the delta vee.  Which is why I respect sci-fi writers and futurists who take some trouble to posit different propulsion systems, carbon nanotube elevators, etc for their robust off-planet futures.  But for sure, chemical rockets are cranky and expensive AF.  And likely to remain so.

51 minutes ago, Outrider said:

So where all they all at?

We have a few anomalies like tabby's star. But not near what you would expect by just crunching the numbers.

We will, as a human race, burn this planet and everything on it.

Best case scenario is we blast ourselves back to the stone age. I highly doubt we are that lucky.

Again.

There may be other scenarios responsive to Fermi's Question.  And we are still at the beginning of an era of remote sensing of extra-solar planets, so it's not like all the anomalies have been studied and conclusions drawn.  Worth looking into that before dropping in a doom prophecy and confidently labeling it as "news."

Edited February 14 by TheVat
fix

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

There may be other scenarios responsive to Fermi's Question.  And we are still at the beginning of an era of remote sensing of extra-solar planets, so it's not like all the anomalies have been studied and conclusions drawn.  Worth looking into that before dropping in a doom prophecy and confidently labeling it as "news."

Might be part of the equation though...along with distance and the fact that despite there being no preferred frame in physics...the cmbr represents a pretty substantial headwind if you want to get anywhere on those scales fast.

With regard to finding new places to thrive, we might want to think about taking better care of our planet before we plan it.

Edited February 14 by J.C.MacSwell

[Ken Fabian]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Agree if the projections are with chemical propellants supplying the delta vee.  Which is why I respect sci-fi writers and futurists who take some trouble to posit different propulsion systems, carbon nanotube elevators, etc for their robust off-planet futures.  But for sure, chemical rockets are cranky and expensive AF.  And likely to remain so.

Sure, with fictional propulsion systems the impediments don't look so overwhelming. Reality is not so easy.

Not that I would expect chemical propellants to be the favored choice apart from the initial launch - I would be looking at solar electric/arc-jets using asteroid water for reaction mass (or something like), ie something with barest minimum of consumables sourced from Earth. Whilst examples of electric arc-jets do exist that is not the same as large scale, long lasting versions with proven extreme reliability suitable for such a job; every part of such a mining project would be bespoke.

 

[zapatos]

The trick to moving to another planet does not lie with finding a new propulsion system, but with finding a way to sustain life indefinitely in the craft making the trip. If no one who starts the trip is going to finish the trip then it really doesn't matter much how long it takes to get there.

[TheVat]

12 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Sure, with fictional propulsion systems the impediments don't look so overwhelming. Reality is not so easy.

Not that I would expect chemical propellants to be the favored choice apart from the initial launch - I would be looking at solar electric/arc-jets using asteroid water for reaction mass (or something like), ie something with barest minimum of consumables sourced from Earth. Whilst examples of electric arc-jets do exist that is not the same as large scale, long lasting versions with proven extreme reliability suitable for such a job; every part of such a mining project would be bespoke.

 

Yes, I was not offering speculative fiction as anything but a nod to the possibilities that writers and futurists explore.  I'm aware it would not be easy, nor is success certain.  My  guess is that commercial profitability in space would depend on something other than chemical rockets to get out of Earth gravity well.  Not only due to per kilo costs of lifting and the expense of maintaining stability and safety atop a controlled explosion but also environmental regulations that might be imposed.