Add it all up, and one point is completely clear. None of the big state-led programmes has managed to achieve even a fraction as much as SpaceX, or to a lesser extent Blue Origin, already have.
Yes, Musk’s company has had some government contracts, and it inevitably operates in a highly regulated environment. But even so, it has proved itself a ruthlessly commercial company.
Space X has also pared back dramatically on costs, massively reducing the amount of money that it takes to get into space, and it will do so even more as reusable rockets become increasingly common. It has found ways of monetising space, with its Starlink unit providing reliable internet connections wherever you are, and stable revenue streams mean the business has plenty of cash available to pour into its most ambitious projects.
The company has reinvented the way space can be exploited, and will no doubt double down on that over the next few years, especially if Musk presses forward with his plans for colonies on Mars.
Critical mission led projects with strict conditionality run by politics and the bureaucracy are going to make us so, so, rich, aren’t they?
I don’t see why this is a surprise to anyone.
Space programmes are immensely expensive and complex. For the first 60 years or so of such activity, national governments were the only bodies that could afford, organise the personnel and material and above all have the requirement to send stuff into space.
Once we were past the Wile E Coyote stage of sitting on top of a rocket and lighting a fuse, it was inevitable that a private company would start developing systems and being capable of launching rockets themselves. The only brake – as was the case with national flag airlines – is government regulation.
ps For those of you that have Instagram, there is an hilarious account called DDR Mondbasis. The idea being that Erich Honecker led his people to the Moon to set up a utopian anti fascist society. Their greatest achievement so far is the cultivation of the Space Gherkin.
To be fair… Musk et.al. *still* light a fuse under a big fireworks… It’s what a rocket is, after all..
And as Otto pointed out, the initial start wasn’t commercially oriented at all.. Space flight was entirely political grandstanding for military purposes. And as such the playground of only the largest of nations.
Even the Moon landings we mostly political, and you can argue that the real purpose of the Shuttle program was to have an excuse for the X37.
Even most of the commercial launches were done on top of military rockets adapted for the purpose both the US and Russia had left when they sort-of de-proliferated in the nuclear arms race.
It wasn’t until a real commercial market developed that there was even room for entrepeneurs like Musk and Bezos to enter the scene and upset the apple cart.
And they were expected to fail…
And to be fair.. Only Musk really succeeded.
All the other “contenders” are really only at the Mercuri program stage when it comes to actual space flight. And none of those have needed heat shields yet….
Otto
From what little I could see of the account, it looked pretty fascist.
There was a reason why Star Trek’s Captain Kirk was piloting a ship called the USS Enterprise. The creators of the show recognised that business would be the main driver of intergalactic innovation.
Not really. Humans no longer use money in the Star Trek universe, and private enterprise was depicted as being a bag of tricks used by rascals such as Harry Mudd, or the short, silver tongued Ferengi Space Jews with their Rules of Acquisition (the Space Talmud).
Star Trek promised a future where all the popular beliefs of California liberals work thanks to magic (technology). It’s a lot less realistic than Warhammer 40K.
NASA was Columbus. Musk is John Cabot. Sod state backing, just go to a bank.
Steve – TBF, the writers redeemed the Ferengi somewhat in DS9, with Quark+co’s highly commercial approach saving the Federation’s bacon on several occasions.
But probably the best use was “In the Pale Moonlight” when Sisko is forced to bribe Quark, delighting his long term antagonist:
Captain Sisko : I’ll handle it. Anything else?
Quark : No. I think we can call it a bribe. And thank you, Captain. Thank you for restoring my faith in the ninety-eighth Rule of Acquisition: “Every man has his price.”
Hopper – that was thanks to Rick Berman, the writers, and wonderful character actors like Armin Shimmerman. The original Gene Roddenberry idea was that Ferengi would be laser-whip wielding 2D baddies who would get into fisticuffs with Riker.
Quark : I think I figured out why Humans don’t like Ferengi.
Sisko : Not now, Quark.
Quark : The way I see it, Humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We’re a constant reminder of a part of your past you’d like to forget.
Sisko : Quark, we don’t have time for this.
Quark : You’re overlooking something. Humans used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We’re nothing like you… we’re better.
My favourite character is Garak tho.
One does wonder whether the space program would have followed a different arc if it hadn’t commenced by being military. With the military application, the assumption was rockets would be one time use disposables. The point of them. With using them as vehicles a secondary consideration. If you started from the point of wanting a vehicle, reusable is going to be a very early aim. You don’t build airliners where you jettison the engines & wings to land.
One can see a route that would take you through high speed high altitude atmospheric flight, then adding the deltaV would achieve first suborbital skips then full orbit. It’d likely be some sort of space plane. Not sure what the timescale would have been. It’s a far more complex & expensive prospect. But you’re not wasting trillions on military rocketry
My favourite is rule 285: “No good deed ever goes unpunished”
Seems to hold true in all circumstances
Von Braun had a blueprint for the X20, which was indeed a spaceplane.
It was originally a Nazi design for an aircraft that could bomb anywhere on earth by flying into space and then coming down into the atmosphere. Can’t remember how it was supposed to get home.
Anyway Wernher adapted the original for the USAF. It became the Shuttle eventually, but only after massive changes to the payload requirements and deciding that it was not practical to stick the aeroplane on top of the rocket.
If you watch the beginning of the Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin ( a man barely alive ) is flying just such a prototype.
Professor Quatermass created a private rocket company and look what heppened there !
Musk did get some government contracts, but he ended up creating a market in Starlink.
It’s not like he could use any materials extracted under the Outer Space treaty. So he had to make a new market using stuff that space has that hasn’t already been…nationalized isn’t the word, perhaps globalized?
The reusability and turnaround time are the keys to that having the market (or any other market) profitable. The uses where you employ a vehicle that is completely expended every time are extremely limited, generally to “if we don’t do this, we die”. Only a government which can extract money under the threat of violence can hide this for long, and even they run out of room eventually.
Steve and Starfish – agreed, the RoA have become sometime of an i-ching of sci-fi.
#139 “Wives serve, brothers inherit” would be enough by itself to have the whole DS-9 series cancelled in the fevered atmosphere of 2020-2022
I agree with what Steve says in his first comment. US SciFi in the 60s & up until today has never been the other SF. Speculative fiction. Pretty well all of it. Asimov, Heinlein, Dick, the lot, was cowboys & Indians or action war stories rewritten with spaceships. There was little science about any of it. Just gizmos suited plot lines. And the stories were populated by graduate suburban Californians. Even the aliens. So when discussing them, you might as well be discussing Hansel & Gretel. They contain no reality whatsoever.
For real SciFi, Speculative Fiction, you can find some starting to be written in the 70s but very little at first. And progressively more up until today. But the old crap is still being written. Because it doesn’t ask very much of its readers. SpecFic is hard going, because one has to deal with some very complex & different concepts. Aliens are actually alien. Not humans with different coloured skin & pointed ears. They behave in an alien way. There are no humanoid robots, because the human form is only vaguely optimal for something being run by a human brain needing a human body to support it. With that evolutionary history. Aliens will have their own evolutionary history & machine intelligence adopt a form most suitable for machine intelligence. Neither will have monkeys as their template.
Pretty all SciFi films like Star Treck, Star Wars etc are the cowboys & indians with space ships version SciFi. Since you’d have difficulty finding an audience for the tougher stuff. Even films like Gravity aren’t real SpecFic. The first collision with the debris is vaguely possible. Orbital mechanics would prohibit the second intersection. The two objects are in different orbits or there wouldn’t be a velocity difference. So there can’t be an intersection on the next half orbit or subsequent orbits. But you’re not going to find an audience eats orbital dynamics for breakfast.
I think (on the basis of zero evidence) that Enterprise was chosen because USS Enterprise was one of the most recognisable USN vessels. If it had been a British series, it would have been called Victory.
United Star Ship Saucy Mrs Flobster
. . . USS Enterprise was one of the most recognisable USN vessels.
The first USS Enterprise was a captured British (Canadian built) vessel named George.
Ironically she was the flagship of one Col. Benedict Arnold.
Otto
DDR Mondbasis – that’s brilliant and many thanks.
Freundschaft!
@bloke in spain
– The first collision with the debris is vaguely possible. Orbital mechanics would prohibit the second intersection. The two objects are in different orbits or there wouldn’t be a velocity difference. So there can’t be an intersection on the next half orbit or subsequent orbits.
That’s for interactions between regular elliptical orbits. The movie plot point was that the Russians had “shot down” a defunct spy satellite . Any explosively accelerated debris with a large vertical vector component will be at risk of high speed collisions with objects on differing orbital planes. Vertically accelerated objects will oscillate up and down about the plane of their orbit; it’s the up and down movement that facilitates such trans orbital collisions, frequency and amplitude partially determining the likelihood of repeat approaches. Orbital inclination also gets a vote so a 90 minute repeat is still unlikely. But in the movie the satellite destruction started a “Kessler Syndrome” debris cascade which is why everything was getting shredded (implausibly fast, of course).
Amazingly, in an 8 year delayed example of life imitating art, the stupid drunken pikey bastards (also known as Russians) did actually fire a missile at a defunct spy satellite, partially validating the movie scenario. The ISS was endangered with the crew having to suit up and decamp to escape craft ready for rapid deorbit. It was only dumb luck the station wasn’t hit. There have been repeat manouvres to avoid that debris field (along with that from an even worse Chinese Communist satellite interception (500 miles up!) in 2007).
However, things like orbital transfer between Hubble and ISS (hundreds of miles height difference) using a Manned Manouvering Unit (jet backpack) are preposterous and straight out of Buck Rogers.