The Billionaires' Space Club 235
theodp writes Silicon sultans are the new robber barons, writes The Economist, adding that "they have been diversifying into businesses that have little to do with computers, while egotistically proclaiming that they alone can solve mankind's problems, from aging to space travel." Over at Slate, NYU journalism prof Charles Seife is less-than impressed with The Billionaires' Space Club. "It's an old trick," begins Seife. "Multimillionaires regularly try to spin acts of crass ego gratification as selfless philanthropy, no matter how obviously self-serving. They jump out of balloons at the edge of the atmosphere, take submarines to the bottom of the ocean, or shoot endangered animals on safari, all in the name of science and exploration. The more recent trend is billionaires making fleets of rocket ships for private space exploration. What makes this one different is that the public actually seems to buy the farce." Seife goes on to argue that "neither [Elon] Musk's nor [Richard] Branson's goals really seem to break new ground, despite all the talk of exploration."
RAH had this in the 50's (Score:3)
The one who figures out asteroid mining is going to be the real winner!
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And I for one will applaud him the way Heinlein would've done — not call him a "robber"...
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Yeah, right up until the corporate bonus boosting short cut sends an asteroid crashing into the earth instead of putting it in orbit. The brutal reality is by far the majority of get super rich schemes burn up, the rapid rise burning up on re-entry as it crashes back to earth. I trust corporations a whole lot less in fact an order of magnitude less than the government. In fact the main reason not to trust government currently relates directly to the corporate ownership of government.
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Re:RAH had this in the 50's (Score:5, Insightful)
Space exploration and colonization are hopeless fantasies. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend insane fortunes to explore and colonize the most inhospitable places there are, for no apparent benefit.
Hopeless or not, we have to do it. Right now all of humanity is in a single interconnected biosphere, that is one rich crazy dickhead away from becoming uninhabitable. How many people are out there right now claiming that we can do anything we want to the Earth and humanity can never become extinct, because God? We need to get sustainable populations off of this planet and somewhere they can survive for when the inevitable happens and one of those mouth-breathing morons hits the wrong button somewhere and releases super-Ebola into the atmosphere or something.
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Re:RAH had this in the 50's (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so special about our particular DNA configuration that we would have to preserve it at huge costs ?
We are the only living organism in the known Universe that possess such a high level of intelligence. Until we discover another species that can plan thier survival on interstellar basis, we are special and worth preserving.
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Re:RAH had this in the 50's (Score:4, Insightful)
There are seven billion people on the earth. I think we can work on more than one endeavour at once.
Re:RAH had this in the 50's (Score:4, Informative)
Look at the title of the story you are replying in: It is billionaires that are funding it. Nothing about public funds being discussed here.
You just seem to trying to find any excuse in order to troll the space enthusiasts of this site.
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Stop wasting precious resources and time.
Re:RAH had this in the 50's (Score:4, Insightful)
I have just the organization for you, and all fellow misanthropes: http://vhemt.org/ [vhemt.org]
Please visit this site and abide by its recommendations. For the good of humanity and for all the promise of our future, encourage all your fellow Greens to do the same.
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Hopeless or not, we have to do it. Right now all of humanity is in a single interconnected biosphere, that is one rich crazy dickhead away from becoming uninhabitable. How many people are out there right now claiming that we can do anything we want to the Earth and humanity can never become extinct, because God? We need to get sustainable populations off of this planet and somewhere they can survive for when the inevitable happens and one of those mouth-breathing morons hits the wrong button somewhere and releases super-Ebola into the atmosphere or something.
The "we've got to get off of this rock!!!" argument is nonsensical when you consider that the Earth is currently the most habitable place within several light-years and it's been that way for at least the past 3.5 *billion* years. Just over the past 550 million years we've seen severe ice ages, runaway greenhouse warming, an asteroid impact, several massive volcanic eruptions... these events were severe enough to devastate the biosphere and wipe out most of the species on the planet, but in each case some o
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So what we need are people with gigantic piles of money who are not in their right mind.
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Re:RAH had this in the 50's (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody in his right mind would build a worldwide communication network that would shoot information anywhere in the world with negligible friction, either. But there were entrepreneurs who just went out and did it, so it will be these very people who are most likely to open up extraterrestrial destinations for us.
I can personally remember a time when getting a long-distance phone call meant that somebody had died.
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> We've spent the last half century turning into a knowledge society
And all of those billions of computers run on energy, as does the rest of civilization. Modern civilization is based on replacing human and animal labor with mechanical and electrical power. The amount of solar energy passing closer than the Moon is equal to the whole world's fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. We just have to learn how to exploit it. Leveraging resources already on location is part of that equation.
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More importantly, you don't build large-scale infrastructure like China's new Silk Road bullet freight operation out of thin air. Large-scale infrastructure of this kind will require large amounts of pure metals. Having large new sources of supply in turn encourages bigger projects. How much copper is it going to take for the Silk Road to go maglev?
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Do I buy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm well aware of fake "philanthropy". Some of the more respectable philanthropy even fails. Supposing that some billionaire actually funds the lab that finds the cure for cancer - he has bought and paid for his brand of immortality. The world doesn't need or want any more pyramids, so cancer will do the trick.
All the same - if enough people are competing to accomplish something is space, SOMEONE is going to succeed.
Yeah, I buy it. Hell, I'd work for little more than a pretty meager wage if I could be reasonably sure of ACCOMPLISHING something meaningful in space.
Re:Do I buy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why The Economist is over-stating the argument. Anonymous charity is a goal of many religions, but self-promoting charity is better than no charity at all. If the philanthropy achieves its charitable goal, then it doesn't matter if it's self-serving, and one could argue that the wealthy patron has honestly earned the fame and recognition that they receive. If it does not achieve its goal, or does so inefficiently, then the public is not likely to be fooled.
If it doesn't succeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
If [self-serviing private philanthropy] does not achieve its goal, or does so inefficiently, then the public is not likely to be fooled.
If self-serving private philanthropy does not achieve it' goal, nobody is harmed except the self-serving private philanthropist.
If PUBLIC philanthropy does not achieve its goal, the general population has been looted and received no benefit in return.
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If PUBLIC philanthropy does not achieve its goal, the general population has been looted and received no benefit in return.
That's a pretty broad brush. What exactly is your definition of "public" philanthropy? And how do you define its success or failure?
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If public philanthropy is denied on the premise that private philanthropy is superior, then the public has been defrauded.
Re:Do I buy it? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's especially weird about this article is that neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit...
Re:Do I buy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit
Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to retire on Mars, and making orbital launches affordable is a first step towards that. It sounds a little nutty, but I wish him the best of luck anyway. If he succeeds, we should all benefit in the long term; if he only makes a fool of himself, at least he's not doing it with my money.
Re:Do I buy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's especially weird about this article is that neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit...
Nor have they "egotistically proclaim[ed] that they alone can solve mankind's problems, from aging to space travel." Nor "all the talk of exploration." Nor "shoot endangered animals on safari".
Seriously, the guy is nothing but a walking strawman.
There's plenty of things you can criticise the "PayPal mafia" and NewSpace over, especially Thiel and Branson respectively, but nothing that the Professor is going on about even comes close to a valid criticism. (Or even something that has anything to do with reality.) It's bizarre that someone would say it, but crazy that a major newspaper would actually publish it.
"The more recent trend is billionaires making fleets of rocket ships"
A) "recently", for something that's over a decade old, suggests that he's only just heard about it and because he only just heard about it, thinks it's new.
B) "fleets of rocket ships" is how a child would see it. Suggesting the guy is not only ignorant, but is surrounded by ignorant people.
"neither [Elon] Musk's nor [Richard] Branson's goals really seem to break new ground"
VG won't be doing anything special, (although even a private sub-orbital system is new; nothing like SS2 exists. X-15 with passengers and open space.)
But Musk already has the cheapest launcher on the market (perhaps ignoring a few micro-launchers), is about to develop fly-back first stage (something the industry has been wishing for since the early sixties), and is developing a private manned capsule, and is developing a heavy lift launcher that costs less than any other medium-lift launcher on the market even if they doesn't achieve reusability, and he's working with NASA to develop a Saturn V F1-class engine for a Saturn V class launcher, and he wants to go to Mars.
Not breaking new ground? What the fuck does this idiot want from them, a warp drive?
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What the fuck does this idiot want from them, a warp drive?
Yes, a warp drive would be nice, if it's not too much of a bother.
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Will you buy it? (Re:Do I buy it?) (Score:4, Insightful)
It sound like you are disapproving... Will you refuse any treatment developed with a "silicon sultan's" money — because the benefactor's purpose was not sufficiently pure in your opinion?
Will you demand, the laboratories be staffed by people of all races and genders, and that any developed drugs be manufactured by unionized workers and/or be "Fair Trade" certified — before you agree to accept the cure?
Will you reject it, because "not everyone" can afford it — or will you, perhaps, wish, such "unfair" drug was never developed in the first place?
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Or the alternative, nobody's going to succeed. That happens often enough as rich people want to live forever, well so far that's not for sale. if I got the choice between dying myself or two of my organ transplants saving lives, I'd choose living. Doesn't matter if a thousand or a million or a billion lives would live without me, you've no moral right to ask me to sacrifice my life.
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I could hate you for bringing me back to reality. But, you're right. The ultimate goal, is to get mankind out there among the stars. And - that may never happen. Every attempt may fail. We MAY not even establish any self sustaining colonies here in the solar system. But, I sure as hell don't want to accept that idea as likely. I suppose you've seen this little video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That's the short take from a longer video, which is somewhat less "exciting" I guess the term might be.
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And we can all recall Howard Hughes, a billionaire as eccentric and any and who actually produced quite a bunch of breaking tech.
These guys do have a lot of money, and they can just go and invest a part of it in something they fancy, even if it doesn't make sense. If it does, they will have hit the jackpot as Hughes did, of not, well, they had their fun.
I don't understand all this bitching: They have the funds and they do what they want with it, right? It's always better than investing in churches and / or
Re:Do I buy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell do I care how the 1% of the 1% spend their money?
In a certain sense, I grew up poor in a rich (extended) family. Most of the other families in my neighborhood had motor boats and went water skiing in the summer. My family had a $150 canoe from K-mart. But I never went to bed hungry out of economic necessity. And when I got accepted to MIT, my family paid the full tuition.
But then I ended up living overseas and seeing first-hand levels of poverty and human suffering that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Before that, I didn't really understand poverty. Sure, growing up I heard about famines in Africa and urban decay in the inner cities. But it never really hit home that there were vast numbers of good innocent people who, through no fault of their own, were trapped in vicious soul destroying poverty. I wasn't a bad person but at a subconscious cultural level without really thinking about it I accepted that the world mostly a good and just place and that most people who were suffering in desperate poverty somehow deserved it: if they really didn't want to be poor then they could just "make some good choices" and stop being poor.
So why does it matter what rich people spend their money on? In the long term, an economy can increase it's productive capacity through scientific discovery and technological advances. In the very long term, we'll have technology that would allow most people in the world to live lives of comfort and leisure while robots do almost all of the work. But, in the short term, the economy has a limited productive capacity - that can either be used to produce frivolous luxury goods for rich people or to lift poor people out of poverty. And rich people control most of the economy. In a certain sense, I believe in the power of the human spirit. I believe that humanity can achieve incredible things - but only if it wants to. If the (rich) people who control the world's resources and economy mostly want frivolous luxury goods for themselves then that's what humanity will achieve. On other the other hand, if it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all the world's rich people truly care about lifting poor people out of poverty then poverty could be eradicated from the world in a single generation.
Mostly rich people really don't understand poverty because it's so far outside their own life experience but many of them have also not thought carefully about whether the purpose of life is to do as much as they can for themselves or do do as much as they can for others (and many naively pretend that the two are exactly equivalent).
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This did not deserve a flamebait mod. Somebody mod it back up again.
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I would if I could - we ALWAYS seem to have mod points here, but not me, not today. I agree with AC. Like him, I grew up relatively poor, in a rather wealthy town. It wasn't until I walked the streets of Djibouti that I saw genuine soul grinding, body destroying poverty. No, rich people don't understand poverty - and in fact, there are only a small percentage of Americans who probably have seen it face to face.
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I remember seeing starving Ethiopian kids on TV when I was a kid, and it left me deeply shaken up. But over the years, I realized that you saw all kinds of things on TV- GI Joe and Transformers and the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon and exploding coyotes, and the little Ethiopian kid with the distended belly sort of entered that realm. One more image on TV and you can just change the channel.
And then travelling in Africa I saw a starving kid, face to face. Me looking at him, and him looking back. And
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The 'dont care AC' here. You are 100% correct. I think maybe I overstated my potion a bit.
Even a poor neighborhood in the US does not understand the abject poverty some people in 3rd world countries lives in.
However, my point is I can neither control nor influence what these people do (just as you could not control what your extended family did with their money). In any manor whatsoever. I would rather they spend it on their pet space project than pumping it into some hedgefund that just shuffles money
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Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime.
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Teach a million men to fish, and soon the oceans are empty.
What the hell is this guy smoking (Score:5, Insightful)
not gonna bother clicking any of the links. This guy is either incredibly ignorant and been living under a rock for the past few years, or his 401k is heavily vested in defense contractors. SpaceX is shaking the space launch industry to the very foundations and turning everything upside down. SpaceX is already cheaper than them (by a lot), but if the R program succeeds (we'll know in a few days), basically Elon will wipe out ULA and Ariannespace and there will be nothing left of them except for a few crumbs thrown at them by their buddies in government.
Re:What the hell is this guy smoking (Score:5, Interesting)
Ariannespace already treats SpaceX as a credible threat and is making significant changes to their next generation Ariane launch vehicle specifically to go in a direct competition with the Falcon 9. I don't know if they are going to succeed in being able to drop launch costs below $1k/kg like Elon Musk seems to be striving for, but they sure want to stay in the game and try to at least maintain market share against SpaceX and the stream of steady launch contracts that are now going to America that used to not happen.
SpaceX is definitely winning more launch contracts than they are currently launching, so I expect that even an increased launch rate is going to be sustainable for that company into the near future. This is even without the reusable launchers that SpaceX is trying to develop as I consider that to be merely icing on the cake and a long term extra profit thing even if the upcoming launch pancakes the 1st stage after stage separation.
ULA is merely trying to compete against SpaceX in the halls of Congress instead with lobbyists. I wonder how that will work out in the long run?
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Are you sure there's any cake under that icing? As I recall the single-use launch vehicle accounts for 90-95% of the cost of a typical launch, SpaceX included. Make it reusable and you cut launch costs to around 1/10th to 1/20th of the current level. Even a single reuse would cut costs almost in half, a handful of reuses would bring the price down enough that it might start making sense to look at the cost-effectiveness of other aspects of the launch as well. Of course that's based on reusing both stages
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I think it actually mostly depends on the level of cost savings you achieve with the stage reuse. The side boosters shouldn't be a problem in any case, they're being recovered from fairly small speed and downrange distance (you only need a small amount of reserved fuel for recovery), so the payload decrease will be fairly small, and certainly smaller, percentage-wise, from what a reusable Falcon 9 will achieve. But recovering the core stage of a Falcon Heavy (from a higher velocity, even if downrange) shoul
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Why would I want to launch something in space just to bring it back. If it's not required to insure the survival of the crew I could make it significantly lighter and cheaper, and instead of all that extra weight that will just be coming back for another trip I could be sending up that much more payload. This re-usable rocket bullshit is what stalled the space programs over the past 40+ years.
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You may not have noticed, but there hasn't been a single reusable non-STS launch vehicle yet - in fact, not even STS was properly reusable (SRBs corroded, ET burned up), so I'm not even sure it counts. And those "significantly lighter and cheaper" vehicles you called for and eventually ended up with are called Delta IV...hey, wait a minute! Those aren't actually cheap at all! Bummer.
And why would you want to launch something in space just to bring it back? Because it's much cheaper than to build it again, o
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SpaceX is making a profit off of their expendable rocket program.... and beating the Chinese Space Agency on a cost per kilogram into orbit even doing just that. Mind you, the main way that SpaceX is going to try to get launch prices cheaper is simply to reuse the first stage by flying it back to the launch pad... something that won't ever make the trip into space anyway. Most of the fuel that the stage will be firing is the reserve fuel that normally isn't used in a nominal flight but will be used in an
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Do you understand why rockets use staging? Do you realize that the first stage (by far the heaviest and most expensive part of the rocket) does not go to space?
Re:What the hell is this guy smoking (Score:4, Informative)
I'm suggesting that some of the methods that SpaceX has employed to reduce costs of their rocket in terms of applying mass production techniques and treating the manufacturing of rockets more like how automobiles are manufactured on an assembly line has made a huge impact in terms of the cost of a launch. They are currently manufacturing more than a couple Merlin 1-D engines each week and plan to ramp up that production rate to even higher levels. They have also streamlined a number of things in the vehicle design to drop prices considerably including using consumer grade electronics instead of mil-spec equipment (using redundancy instead to achieve higher reliability) and several other innovations to really drop costs that haven't been used earlier.
That is the cake I'm talking about which other companies haven't been able to achieve... for various reasons. The Merlin 1-D engines aren't the highest performing engines and definitely have some strong limitations, but they are very cheap to manufacture. The same goes for the body of the rocket and other parts too. The vertical integration of SpaceX has also helped in terms of keeping the supply chain tight and keeping costs under control.
I also question how much actual savings will happen with reuse as there are definitely fixed costs that really limit how much it can reduce costs. 1st stage reuse at best only saves about half of the cost.... when done over the course of nearly 20-30 launches for amortization and assuming even low fixed costs. That still is useful and can make SpaceX very competitive, but it isn't nearly the earth shattering cost reduction that some are suggesting. SpaceX isn't even talking much any more about 2nd stage reuse, and all of the contracts using the Dragon spacecraft currently require a new capsule on every launch.
In other words, SpaceX really can't be depending on reuse for profit and instead must depend on other ways to cut costs in order to survive as a company while charging so little to the end customers. Admittedly, SpaceX officials have quoted a price point of $7 million per launch of the Falcon 9 to deliver 10 metric tons to LEO as something they are aiming at (mentioned at a satellite conference in Indonesia last year with commentary by other launch providers simply saying SpaceX is quoting nonsense). That is about 1/10th of the price currently, but I would assume that includes more than just reuse savings.
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Ariannespace already treats SpaceX as a credible threat and is making significant changes to their next generation Ariane launch vehicle specifically to go in a direct competition with the Falcon 9.
The sad thing is that in 2020+, they'll have a launch vehicle somewhat competitive with the 2014's Falcon 9 v1.1. Unfortunately, without a time machine, such marginal progress would seem less than useful.
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Even space launch economics aside, the dragon spacecraft can return cargo to earth from LEO.
This is a technology that only only a number of countries you can count on your fingers can do. Fewer still with anything actively doing it. Even if SpaceX stops developing tech tomorrow, it's still had an immediate impact the US and the world's ability to do research in space now and for years to come.
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This is a technology that only only a number of countries you can count on your fingers can do.
I think you can put that on a single digit. The Soyuz spacecraft can basically return the three member crew and essentially a postage stamp. Well, it is about a hundred pounds of extra baggage, but essentially nothing on a practical level. The Dragon spacecraft really is the only vehicle currently in active use that has this capability at all.
Yes, Russia obviously has the capability and even flew the Buran spacecraft that had some capability of returning stuff from orbit. The Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft
Re:What the hell is this guy smoking (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the bit where running a space transport company with long term cargo, people and fuel transporting plans and goals, including but not limited to resupplying the ISS is equated with "shoot[ing] endangered animals on [a] safari".
Why not just call Musk an apartheid-lovin fascist nazi-commie from South-WeHateBlackPeople-Africa?
Re:What the hell is this guy smoking (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, once you run an Internet company, you're never allowed to be successful at anything else. It doesn't matter if you run a highly successful and profitable space transport company, that's just vanity and hubris. It doesn't even matter if you weren't a billionaire when you founded said space transport company, and that it was your post-dot-com companies such as said space transport company that made you a billionaire... you're now in the "billionaire robber baron space club".
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We're talking about journalists here, not historians.
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In addition to your excellent points, SpaceX made history by being the first private spacecraft to berth with the ISS. NASA and SpaceX have a very complementary collaboration schedule in place. The cost-competitiveness of SpaceX's programs will make for a long-term paradigm shift in space exploration and commercial ventures for the private sector.
Re:What the hell is this guy smoking (Score:4, Informative)
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Yup I agree. It's true that a lot of billionaire philanthropists are full of it, but not all of them are.
Musk has made a well-defined and significant contribution: Development of a cheap reusable rocket. This isn't some wishy-washy concept like "paradigm shift in how we interact with our technology" or "revolutionary new power source that could change the world if only people listened!" This is something that can be measured in pounds-force, tons to LEO, and gallons of LOX.
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More important, what Elon Musk has provided for spaceflight is a huge reduction in cost that can be measured as dollars per kilogram to orbit. The Space Shuttle typically got somewhere in the range of about $20k-$40k/kg to LEO (depending on how you calculated the cost of launching a shuttle.... getting the order of magnitude on that number is dubious at best and no two independent sources give the same number). Typical in the launch industry is about $10k/kg as a general rule of thumb (if you can get chea
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If the reusable rocket thing pans out, it's likely that that number will drop even further in the future.
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I'm pretty sure if you gave SpaceX $150 billion they could also send a bunch of astronauts to the moon. Hell, even the ULA could do that, and they are wasteful behemoths.
SpaceX carried out its entire Falcon 9 development and launch program (including ISS resupply mission) with less money than a single shuttle launch.
Don't get me wrong, Apollo was great, and the Apollo program was done _extremely_ well given the time constraints ("...by the end of this decade") and technological abilities of the time. It was
Someone's mad (Score:5, Insightful)
You can practically feel the envy radiating off him. "You can't be rich and a good person too, that's not fair!"
"all in the name of science and exploration"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I just haven't seen it, but do they actually claim this? Sources? I've always thought of these things as rich peoples hobbies, on their own money, for their own fun. I assume the talk about things isn't even the primary goal, but just a necessity as unusual things tend to draw attention anyway. Consequently, relations to fan-boys and media have to be managed. But that's just a side-effect?
Troll. Go away. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuff' said.
I have a huge problem... (Score:3)
... with the author's conflation of "shooting endangered animals on safari" with the pursuits of a James Cameron, Elon Musk, or Richard Garriott.
So, I guess I took the clickbait, huh.
What's with the "robber" nonsense? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's with the "robber" nonsense? Whom did the "silicon sultans" rob and of what? Are the toiling masses of the downtrodden not better off with Internet-connections to a dazzling variety of sites and cellular phones in their pockets?
Perhaps, comparing value-creating capitalists to the highway plunderers of the dark-ages — as has been the Illiberal Socialists' wont for nearly 150 years [wikipedia.org] — is not entirely warranted?
Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense? (Score:5, Interesting)
What are "robber barons" anyways? John D. Rockefeller [wikipedia.org], founder of Standard Oil is an excellent example of one. He gained an early lead in the oil industry. Then he used some rather extreme tactics to preserve his lead, none of which benefited consumers. For one, he bought up rail lines surrounding his competitors, and used this ownership to deny his competitors the ability to transport their oil. Those competitors responded by packing their oil in barrels which could then be loaded onto multiple means of conveyance (i.e. trucks). This is why oil is still measured in "barrels". Rockefeller responded by attempting to control the market on the compound that was used to seal the barrels from leaking. The government eventually responded by breaking up Standard Oil into many different companies.
The above doesn't sound like Space X under Elon Musk. Space X is the plucky newcomer disrupting the existing American launch contractor United Launch Alliance (ULA) and its cosy relationship with the US military. If anything, ULA, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing fall under the moniker of "Robber Baron". This writer sounds like a troll acting in the best interests of the decaying American launch industry.
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"I can't believe these NEW fatcats think they're as good as our OLD fatcats!"
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Then he used some rather extreme tactics to preserve his lead, none of which benefited consumers.
Other than the fact that between when Rockefeller started providing products for his customers and when he finally called himself a billionaire, he was selling the same product for less than 10% of what he was originally charging. I suppose that didn't help the consumer in any manner?
I'm not saying he was a saint and that there was no room for criticism, but you are also flat out wrong that his actions didn't help the buyers of the products he was selling. That he clearly stopped other potential competito
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Yes, but... Global Warming! Oil is EVIL! Cheap Oil Will Kill Us All!
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I'm not saying he was a saint and that there was no room for criticism, but you are also flat out wrong that his actions didn't help the buyers of the products he was selling. That he clearly stopped other potential competitors from entering the marketplace is true, but he also was hardly the only person to shut out subsequent potential competitors from entering into an industry either. Sadly, most business regulations and laws are designed explicitly to encourage that kind of behavior too.
Just because others do it doesn't make it right. Just because organizations like Rockefeller's have purchased and corrupted our political system doesn't make it right. Just because similar organizations have purchased most of the media and broadcast the subtle propaganda that you have so faithfully reproduced doesn't make it right. Rockefeller illegally used his dominant market position to supress actual competition. That you so casually defend such reprehensible behavior speaks more to the effectivenes
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Perhaps the prices would have dropped down to 5% or less of what he was originally charging if there had been real competition.
The price dropped due to improvements in technology, not due to generosity on the part of Rockefeller.
Anyways when you get right down to it, capitalism is about capturing government to ensure your profits.
Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense? (Score:4)
They robbed the workforce of long term employment stability in exchange for trinkets.
When in history did anybody ever have long-term employment? It was the so-called Robber-Barons that provided such long term stable employment contracts to their workers in exchange for loyalty. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, they were instead plundered by knights as they pillaged farmland and took random women as mistresses and whores (often involuntarily... and legally). Or you can go back to your hunter-gatherer tribe.
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It was the so-called Robber-Barons that provided layoffs. Business cycle theories don't tell you much about what happened before as they do after.
Knights in general did not engage in pillaging of serfs because the serfs didn't have much to pillage.
Re:What's with the "robber" nonsense? (Score:5, Informative)
So yeah, how can we live in a world with such high "productivity" and yet have less than people had 40 years ago?
Capitalism. ;-p
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It isn't capitalism. It's crony capitalism or bankism. The laws are written such that the ruling elite--those in control of the banks directly and indirectly--define the direction that the world goes in.
Seems that it is the inevitable result of capitalism. The most efficient wins and writing the rules always means that you define efficient.
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You are talking about a very short period of prosperity that was artificially created by having the government dump a whole pile of money largely created by debt extending barely over a twenty year period of time. It was also something largely not true anyway even at the time where it wasn't as widespread of a practice as you are claiming either... certainly not for smaller businesses including mom & pop retail outlets.
It is a dream world that never existed that you are pining for and expecting conditi
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You are talking about a very short period of prosperity that was artificially created by having the government dump a whole pile of money largely created by debt extending barely over a twenty year period of time.
You forgot the part about bombing the crap out of the rest of the world, and handing half of it over to Commies who kept their workers out of the global economic system.
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3) Pension plans no longer exist in the private sector.
I'd like to suggest that this is a good thing, why? Because now you can control your own pension plan. There was no guarantee that your pension plan would exist when you wanted to retire, because there was no guarantee that the company would exist. Also, you aren't locked into a single company. You can move around and not lose your retirement.
A person should have control of their own retirement account, not leave it in control of a corporation.
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The thing is you have to make enough to save for that retirement fund.
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Branson philanthropy? When? (Score:3)
Now, there are plenty of others who try to spin their adventures as being for "humanity", but I don't recall an adventure of his where he went for that label.
Uninformed Drek disguised as Journalism (Score:2)
Neither article is well researched and the "Billionaire Space Club" in Slateis particularly awful in terms of even pulling out legitimate statistics other than from the author's hind end. In the rare instance (like his quote of $35 million for space tourists on the Soyuz spacecraft) that he seems to get something close to reality, it is so dated and obsolete that he might has well be making up that figure too. I have no idea where the "$20,000 per pound to take cargo into orbit" figure came from as that i
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To be fair, SpaceX's valuation is probably similar to or higher than ATK at this point. They disputed the $10 billion figure, but the estimate of their valuation in 2012 was $4-5 billion, and they've added a rather large amount of future business to the books since then, including a lot of regular launches, plus stuff like the multi-billion dollar NASA contracts... ATK, for their part, has a market cap of $3.7 billion.
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The value of SpaceX as a corporation would largely be due to the nearly cult-like personality of Elon Musk and a whole bunch of people trying to get a piece of the action that he is doing with the company, not so much what is on the books for launch contracts.... which would barely be about $2 billion (being generous including NASA and DOD/intelligence contracts that are a matter of public record). They only had six launches this year (still pretty good), and being very generous with $100 million per launc
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I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying with the exception of their book of business. I'm not sure how you came up with a figure of $2 billion including NASA contracts, when their CCtCap contract alone is for $2.6 billion. And using your average of $100 million per launch, well, they've got a good deal more than 20 flights on their manifest...
One of their biggest weaknesses seems to be their launch frequency. People keep telling me I'm crazy when I predict they're not going to hit anywhere close to
As the saying goes... (Score:4, Insightful)
They hate us 'cuz they ain't us.
Too much whine for breakfast? (Score:2)
Somebody pissed in Seife's corn flakes this morning, and he's taking it out on anyone more accomplished than himself. Which is pretty much everybody.
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On Slashdot, we of the dark side don't thump Bibles. We thump "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."
Traditional funding vs. individual billionairs (Score:4, Insightful)
There are only two groups outside of individual rich people who can fund these endeavors: governments and normal investment. Governments are already in the game. India just launched their first heavy lift vehicle, for example.
Regular investment will never take that kind of risk. Perhaps in the past you could have raised money on Wall Street or the equivalent, but these days big financial institutions expect government subsidized guaranteed profit. It's so much easier to buy legislation, manipulate the system and control regulators then invest in long term innovation. Acquisitions and mergers along with zero interest prime rate funding lines their pockets without any bothersome "investing". Why bother with risky space investment, for example?
So it's fine if big egos go after these kinds of things. There are a lot worse ways that the ultra rich spend their wealth. Would you rather see Musk with Tesla and SpaceX, or Ellison with his billion dollar yacht?
By the way, you are subsidizing Ellison's yacht and purchase of the island of Lanai in Hawaii. He took out a loan against his stock in Oracle, [cnbc.com] so the interest he pays defers his income taxes. To quote another rich asshat, "taxes are for little people."
100km High Club (Score:2)
Are NASA/Russian astronauts allowed to have sex in space?
SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)
I've been following SpaceX recently so I thought I'd point out a few things about them in regards of breaking new ground.
The company went from being founded to launching its first commercial payload to orbit in about seven years. (Which seems pretty quick in aerospace timescales)
They're consistently delivering supplies to the ISS for about half the price of their competitor using the Dragon capsule which is also able to return cargo back to Earth.
The Dragon capsule was designed with carrying passengers in mind, and version 2 of the capsule which will be undergoing launch abort tests soon is scheduled to start taking astronauts up to the ISS in about two years or so.
It will also be capable of landing propulsively.
They've undercut the prices of all existing competitors significantly, making them scramble to design new rockets to match SpaceX's price, but they'll only be ready around 2020.
Meanwhile SpaceX has been testing reusing the rocket's first stage.
The upcoming mission to the ISS will have its first stage attempt to land on a barge at sea, with the ultimate goal being landing back at the launch site.
Elon claims a theoretical potential hundred-fold price reduction for launches, but even a ten-fold reduction would have a significant effect on the industry.
In the longer term, SpaceX has plans for much larger engines and spaceships, with the ultimate goal of landing on Mars and eventually enabling people to move to Mars for around $500K.
Oh god, not THAT slate article (Score:4, Funny)
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It's a big empty void aside from a very very interesting rocks. We live on one of the larger rocks. Some of the other large rocks are potentially habitable, though a lot more difficult than our current one. The smaller rocks are of scientific interest.
There may even be other easily-habitable rocks, they are just a lot further away and currently inaccessible.
Total BS (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, ppl like Paul Allen is the one that pushed the cable companies to carry the internet. Likewise, he funded Scaled Composites jump into the X-Prize and winning it. This was the real start of private space going forward.
Now, we have Ellon Musk building up companies such as PayPal, Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Between these 4 companies, he employs more than 100K ppl. BUT, more importantly, all 4 have changed society for the better.
Paypal helped bring retailing to the net. Prior to paypal, few wanted to put their CCs on the net (in fact, only idiots did).
Solar City was key to bringing down the costs of solar installs. The reason is because they focused on getting the INSTALLATION to be cheap and fairly quick, while buying from various makers and forcing their prices way down. Now, they are building MULTIPLE factories that will do 1GW/year of solar modules.
Tesla has forced ALL of the other car companies to produce hybrids and electric cars. In fact, Tesla has made such an impact on the car makers that all of the majors are banding together to push fuel cells. In the mean time, Tesla has installed over 300 super chargers around the world, and will almost certainly have 600-1000 units by end of next year. In the mean time, they are busy producing a line of factories in which the first one will more than double the production of li-ion batteries.
Now, he has SpaceX which has created the world's cheapest launch system. But, he is not content to stop there. He is working on recovering the first stage of F9 and 3 stages of FH. If this is successful, then sometime next year, he will cut the prices up to 50% off. And again, he is not interested in stopping there. He is instead focused on creating a rocket that will launch 200+tonnes to LEO, so as to send ppl to the moon and mars. All of this is forcing other companies and govs. to change.
The author has a point that many of the billioniares are doing NOTHING productive with their money. The right solution is to drop taxes on new companies that are solving issues. This would encourage others to jump into these kinds of ventures. And it far far better to have 8 failures combined with 2 successes in new arenas, then to simple have the money sitting around doing nothing.
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Space is very unforgiving. It's why a ~$350 million test stand was built in Mississippi
No, it's really not.
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"It's why a ~$350 million test stand was built"
I think you forgot your sarcasm tag, the test stand in Mississippi is widely believed to be an egregious example of runaway federal government pork spending. Built for a rocket engine being designed for a launch system that no longer exists. The rocket motor itself was idled long before the test stand was completed but politically connected individuals continued to get money funneled to it even after it exceeded its original estimates by a factor of three.
htt [popularmechanics.com]