Over at Forbes. I’m going to see if I can find a way to rebut it there.
14 thoughts on “More Dumb Space Commentary”
Ugh. Couldn’t even finish it. Hope you get a rebuttal!
Oh, man, that article is terrible. Go get ’em, Rand.
NASA’s human spaceflight program isn’t likely to last much longer
Bad as this Forbes article was, the proposition of the future of human spaceflight is a good question which Rand’s newest considers.
We should list the justifications, great and small, to see if any have legs. One justification, like it or not, are jobs in the districts of congress critters.
I don’t see how we can just remain in the cradle. I’m just bewildered by those that don’t see it.
I don’t see how we can just remain in the cradle. I’m just bewildered by those that don’t see it.
I’m bewildered by those who think the current overall state of our technology can support moving out into space. From where I sit, vast advances in robotics and AI are going to be needed to be sufficiently productive in space to make large efforts there worthwhile. Otherwise, we’ll be spending dollars to earn pennies, and the enterprise will continue to be a wealth destroyer, not a wealth creator.
To put it another way: the opposite of “now” isn’t “never”, it’s “eventually”. One can both believe we can’t remain in the cradle forever, and yet think much spending on space has been, and remains, premature.
I’m bewildered by those who think the current overall state of our technology can support moving out into space.
Extra terrestrial resource utilization leading to self sufficiency will require a very long, involved and expensive development program. However, high flight rate RLVs that can bring launch costs down to $100/kg to LEO are reasonably possible within 10-20 years (basic fuel cost being around $10/kg to LEO). Very large Bigelow type inflatable habitats that enable hundreds even thousands of people to live in space are also reasonable to expect within this time. And all of this can be made possible for perhaps a tenth of NASAs current budget.
I do not think space spending was premature. Unless you work at it you will never get any better. My opinion is that we can do business in cislunar space, and probably as far away as the asteroid belt, with existing technologies. Once you get further away solar panels start having issues. The problem is bootstrapping the market and developing the necessary business models to sustain exploration.
As in any business you need to have some clients. Since all the paying clients are presently here on planet Earth, someone needs to figure out a product which is cheap enough to extract, transport back to Earth, that actually is profitable to sell. Presently the only viable product is information.
In past exploration efforts the profit came from either trading, which we cannot do since there is no one to trade with in space, or resource extraction. This could be mining, cash crops, or whatever. Until someone figures out a way to grow coffee in the Moon (ah) I guess it will have to be mining. The prices for metals have been exploding in recent years. So perhaps someone should redo the math on the business case for space mining once again.
Like here on Earth the place the ore is at is less important than how pure the ore is. I guess visiting an asteroid does not seem like such a stupid idea right now eh? The broken chunks of the inner core of a planet are certain to be rich in metals. Send it back to Earth, aerobreak it, and it is yours. How many more advances in robotics would you need to do something like this? I bet next to none. Extract the energy and mass to do the acceleration from space and you will have much lower transportation costs.
I do not think space spending was premature. Unless you work at it you will never get any better.
The second sentence there does not mean the spending isn’t premature. If something is sufficiently far from practicality, linear efforts to achieve it now are pointless and wasteful.
It’s NOT premature because we’ve already been given an example. SpaceX was profitable before they flew a single rocket and continues to sign up new customers to date.
We may never find anything in space that is profitable to mine for return to earth. We don’t need it to build a space economy (that’s just simplistic thinking.)
Trucking companies are generally profitable. The first spaceship with enough internal volume and delta V could be as well because once available would reduce the cost and risk of any other human mission. NASA couldn’t avoid buying tickets to fly on it if somebody was willing to spend about $2b to put it in earth orbit. That is a lot of money and would require a lot of vision, but the sooner it’s done the less money NASA would be able to waste trying to build their own architecture (a business they shouldn’t be in.)
What does it take for a trucking company to be profitable (and support other companies profits as well?) Routes. Destinations. Cargo.
They can be profitable along with other niche companies even if most space ventures are not. Establishing permanent bases will start out being almost total losses and their is very little chance of it being otherwise (unless they happen to save humanity from some disaster.) Those bases are however necessary for any progress beyond. The utility of a trucking company goes up the farther out you put the destinations but short haul (lunar) can profit as well. The advantage is less because the low lunar gravity allows construction of a taxi cycling from LEO to lunar surface and back, but a high internal volume truck can make even that vehicle more efficient (Lunar orbit to surface being a much quicker round trip.)
Oh and once you have vehicles needing fuel, it won’t be space companies providing it. Our old friends the oil companies have the money (and chemists and geologists) to develop a space fuel infrastructure.
Launching humans into orbit today is like building an aircraft carrier in 1800. After all, kites had proved that airplanes were technologically possible. And the fuel costs were zero, the wind is free. So if a big government had spent enough money in 1800 they could indeed have built a big ship to launch big kites and balloons and called it an “aircraft carrier.” Alas, the only historical importance such “infrastructure” would have had would have been weakening the finances of said government. Ditto for Apollo, Shuttle, ISS, and current plans for grand astronaut BEO adventures. They were and are the ultimate bridges to nowhere.
Googaw, that analogy is weak, besides which balloons were used effectively to provide military information long before flying vehicles became very effective. AFAIK, balloons and blimps during WW1 were a more important military target than any other aircraft. The red baron became an ace because of balloons and they were the majority of his (87?) kills.
Government will have a role, but a leading role is not perhaps the best idea. Wilber and Orville had government competition and it was a very expensive joke.
We could certainly begin developing industry on the moon now and done right would cost a tenth of Apollo.
We have volunteers waiting to go one way to mars, again that’s right now, and there is really nothing preventing us but will. The cost of doing it that way is considerably less than other options.
The payback only happens after we start.
So go develop it already, Ken. Stop the talking and go do. Far easier said than done, eh?
Similarly, people talked about all sorts of crazy schemes centuries ahead of when they might have made sense (or just nonsensical in any century), from angels dancing on the heads of needles, to Leonardo’s corkscrew human-powered helicopter, to the grand plan sketched out for Napoleon to invade Britain by balloon and tunnel. All astronomically easier sketched than done.
These NASA- and sci-fi-inspired grand HSF plans for big rockets, space stations, moon bases, trips to Mars, and so on are fun to talk about, idiotic to try to do. Unless you are a NASA contractor who can make a nice profit by defrauding the political system with such schemes, as has come to be the long established practice.
Oh, BTW, “I know how to do it for a fraction of the price” is the oldest fraud artist’s line in the book. Funny how everybody for 40 years has _known_ space travel could be done for a fraction of the price, but nobody has actually _done_ it for a fraction of the price. They’ve just spent $100s of billions of taxpayer’s dollars trying. Funny how that works.
Funny how everybody for 40 years has _known_ space travel could be done for a fraction of the price, but nobody has actually _done_ it for a fraction of the price.
Perhaps on your planet. On mine, SpaceX has done it for a fraction of the price. And an even smaller fraction of the cost.
Don’t confuse him with cost Rand. He’s having a hard time understanding price as it is.
I love those saying Elon had to face reality and raise his prices, totally ignoring that since govt. was happy to pay more, Elon was happy to take it to increase his manufacturing capacity.
His plans are greater than people imagine and includes profit the entire way(MHO.)
Ugh. Couldn’t even finish it. Hope you get a rebuttal!
Oh, man, that article is terrible. Go get ’em, Rand.
NASA’s human spaceflight program isn’t likely to last much longer
Bad as this Forbes article was, the proposition of the future of human spaceflight is a good question which Rand’s newest considers.
We should list the justifications, great and small, to see if any have legs. One justification, like it or not, are jobs in the districts of congress critters.
I don’t see how we can just remain in the cradle. I’m just bewildered by those that don’t see it.
I don’t see how we can just remain in the cradle. I’m just bewildered by those that don’t see it.
I’m bewildered by those who think the current overall state of our technology can support moving out into space. From where I sit, vast advances in robotics and AI are going to be needed to be sufficiently productive in space to make large efforts there worthwhile. Otherwise, we’ll be spending dollars to earn pennies, and the enterprise will continue to be a wealth destroyer, not a wealth creator.
To put it another way: the opposite of “now” isn’t “never”, it’s “eventually”. One can both believe we can’t remain in the cradle forever, and yet think much spending on space has been, and remains, premature.
I’m bewildered by those who think the current overall state of our technology can support moving out into space.
Extra terrestrial resource utilization leading to self sufficiency will require a very long, involved and expensive development program. However, high flight rate RLVs that can bring launch costs down to $100/kg to LEO are reasonably possible within 10-20 years (basic fuel cost being around $10/kg to LEO). Very large Bigelow type inflatable habitats that enable hundreds even thousands of people to live in space are also reasonable to expect within this time. And all of this can be made possible for perhaps a tenth of NASAs current budget.
I do not think space spending was premature. Unless you work at it you will never get any better. My opinion is that we can do business in cislunar space, and probably as far away as the asteroid belt, with existing technologies. Once you get further away solar panels start having issues. The problem is bootstrapping the market and developing the necessary business models to sustain exploration.
As in any business you need to have some clients. Since all the paying clients are presently here on planet Earth, someone needs to figure out a product which is cheap enough to extract, transport back to Earth, that actually is profitable to sell. Presently the only viable product is information.
In past exploration efforts the profit came from either trading, which we cannot do since there is no one to trade with in space, or resource extraction. This could be mining, cash crops, or whatever. Until someone figures out a way to grow coffee in the Moon (ah) I guess it will have to be mining. The prices for metals have been exploding in recent years. So perhaps someone should redo the math on the business case for space mining once again.
Like here on Earth the place the ore is at is less important than how pure the ore is. I guess visiting an asteroid does not seem like such a stupid idea right now eh? The broken chunks of the inner core of a planet are certain to be rich in metals. Send it back to Earth, aerobreak it, and it is yours. How many more advances in robotics would you need to do something like this? I bet next to none. Extract the energy and mass to do the acceleration from space and you will have much lower transportation costs.
I do not think space spending was premature. Unless you work at it you will never get any better.
The second sentence there does not mean the spending isn’t premature. If something is sufficiently far from practicality, linear efforts to achieve it now are pointless and wasteful.
It’s NOT premature because we’ve already been given an example. SpaceX was profitable before they flew a single rocket and continues to sign up new customers to date.
We may never find anything in space that is profitable to mine for return to earth. We don’t need it to build a space economy (that’s just simplistic thinking.)
Trucking companies are generally profitable. The first spaceship with enough internal volume and delta V could be as well because once available would reduce the cost and risk of any other human mission. NASA couldn’t avoid buying tickets to fly on it if somebody was willing to spend about $2b to put it in earth orbit. That is a lot of money and would require a lot of vision, but the sooner it’s done the less money NASA would be able to waste trying to build their own architecture (a business they shouldn’t be in.)
What does it take for a trucking company to be profitable (and support other companies profits as well?) Routes. Destinations. Cargo.
They can be profitable along with other niche companies even if most space ventures are not. Establishing permanent bases will start out being almost total losses and their is very little chance of it being otherwise (unless they happen to save humanity from some disaster.) Those bases are however necessary for any progress beyond. The utility of a trucking company goes up the farther out you put the destinations but short haul (lunar) can profit as well. The advantage is less because the low lunar gravity allows construction of a taxi cycling from LEO to lunar surface and back, but a high internal volume truck can make even that vehicle more efficient (Lunar orbit to surface being a much quicker round trip.)
Oh and once you have vehicles needing fuel, it won’t be space companies providing it. Our old friends the oil companies have the money (and chemists and geologists) to develop a space fuel infrastructure.
Launching humans into orbit today is like building an aircraft carrier in 1800. After all, kites had proved that airplanes were technologically possible. And the fuel costs were zero, the wind is free. So if a big government had spent enough money in 1800 they could indeed have built a big ship to launch big kites and balloons and called it an “aircraft carrier.” Alas, the only historical importance such “infrastructure” would have had would have been weakening the finances of said government. Ditto for Apollo, Shuttle, ISS, and current plans for grand astronaut BEO adventures. They were and are the ultimate bridges to nowhere.
Googaw, that analogy is weak, besides which balloons were used effectively to provide military information long before flying vehicles became very effective. AFAIK, balloons and blimps during WW1 were a more important military target than any other aircraft. The red baron became an ace because of balloons and they were the majority of his (87?) kills.
Government will have a role, but a leading role is not perhaps the best idea. Wilber and Orville had government competition and it was a very expensive joke.
We could certainly begin developing industry on the moon now and done right would cost a tenth of Apollo.
We have volunteers waiting to go one way to mars, again that’s right now, and there is really nothing preventing us but will. The cost of doing it that way is considerably less than other options.
The payback only happens after we start.
So go develop it already, Ken. Stop the talking and go do. Far easier said than done, eh?
Similarly, people talked about all sorts of crazy schemes centuries ahead of when they might have made sense (or just nonsensical in any century), from angels dancing on the heads of needles, to Leonardo’s corkscrew human-powered helicopter, to the grand plan sketched out for Napoleon to invade Britain by balloon and tunnel. All astronomically easier sketched than done.
These NASA- and sci-fi-inspired grand HSF plans for big rockets, space stations, moon bases, trips to Mars, and so on are fun to talk about, idiotic to try to do. Unless you are a NASA contractor who can make a nice profit by defrauding the political system with such schemes, as has come to be the long established practice.
Oh, BTW, “I know how to do it for a fraction of the price” is the oldest fraud artist’s line in the book. Funny how everybody for 40 years has _known_ space travel could be done for a fraction of the price, but nobody has actually _done_ it for a fraction of the price. They’ve just spent $100s of billions of taxpayer’s dollars trying. Funny how that works.
Funny how everybody for 40 years has _known_ space travel could be done for a fraction of the price, but nobody has actually _done_ it for a fraction of the price.
Perhaps on your planet. On mine, SpaceX has done it for a fraction of the price. And an even smaller fraction of the cost.
Don’t confuse him with cost Rand. He’s having a hard time understanding price as it is.
I love those saying Elon had to face reality and raise his prices, totally ignoring that since govt. was happy to pay more, Elon was happy to take it to increase his manufacturing capacity.
His plans are greater than people imagine and includes profit the entire way(MHO.)