What the government has not taken into account, in my opinion, is that I firmly believe there are vast amounts of money to be made in space. Once private launch capabilities are up and running, there will be companies looking for industrial opportunities that are uniquely suited for zero gravity.

And, in any case, we’ll have Americans developing space flight capability. Would we really want to cede this to the Chinese or Indians or Japanese? They’ll be up there soon enough, but we need to be there as well.

I think Elon Musk is a international hero for putting long term exploration and habitation on his list of goals. Without people like him doing what he preaches I have feared for space exploration for a long time!

The US spent somewhere between $5-10 Billion on the Ares I rocket. And that never flew. In fact, they only thing to fly from that was the Ares I-X, and that test flight alone cost $445 Million (and its test benefits are questionable in this case).

So, as I said, if you don’t think that they aren’t already lobbying in a huge way because their profits are on the line, you are deluding yourself. To put it bluntly, space is already in the hands of the
“robber-barons.” The question is, can we get them to do something useful with it or not.

And I doubt your problem is really about space, but its about more fundamental issues. But my suggestion for that is to talk about it elsewhere.

And lets turn this discussion to something slightly more interesting – would you block the development of what is going on with SpaceShipTwo?

That was nothing. Wait until private capitalists’ profits are on the line.

And the cost-plus contracting is a problem that should have long ago been solved. The problem is that this country is too in love with these corporations to do so.

And as for “commercializing” space? No thanks. Look what businesspeople — I would say snakes in suits, but I don’t want to insult snakes — have done to “deliver result” on Earth and how they’ve put profits over people which resulted in untold suffering and destroyed the environment, all to put a dollar in their pockets.

I would rather we do the sensible thing and cut the military in half and use that money to keep space out of the hands of the robber-barons and capitalist criminals.

Space has had privatized profits, and that includes all NASA contractors. NASA has had a long love affair with the cost plus contracting world.

The real question has been and is whether we can actually make space cost effective, whether we can commercialize space. Because THAT will actually require companies to focus on delivering results, not merely effort.

Oh, don’t be so naive. Once these private companies start privitizing the profits (having socialized the risks and R&D costs) what do you think the odds are that they’ll hire lobbyist in Washington and make campaign donations to certain politicians to eliminate through legislation NASA from ever competing with these companies?? NASA just gave away human spaceflight in the US to private businessmen. Suckers.

I’m not sure I understand people complaining about NASA contracting with private industry to launch astronauts to space.

If you go back to Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Shuttle, NASA was a contracting agency. They didn’t build all that stuff themselves, they contracted with private industry – companies like McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, etc., to build the actual equipment. NASA would design the rockets, spacecraft and instruments, and then award contracts to build particular parts to different companies around the country. Then, NASA would receive the components, assemble them, and launch them (although the contracting companies were heavily involved in those steps as well).

This way, NASA is changing the way it gets to orbit. Instead of designing the spacecraft, they merely design the capabilities and let the private company do the detailed design. Instead of handling component assembly, they let the private company do that. And instead of running the launch operations, they let the private company do that.

So I don’t see the big deal.

@24 Messier Tidy Upper : Unfortunately it’s not just the murderous Jihadist thugs who have been killed. Many innocents have also been killed. Most just in the wrong place at the wrong time. War is very messy.

Yes. That’s very true and very sad and inevitable and always been the case throughout all human history. War is a horrible, messy thing. Always has been, still is despite our efforts to make it, well, slightly less so.

This is a whole other and very different and much more political topic which I don’t really want to discuss here. I’ll just note that the current war and its causes isn’t as simple as some seem to claim, there’s plenty of blame on both sides – not just the USA’s. Yes, the Bush administration made many bad errors here, no question of that – but *everything* isn’t *just* their cause and fault.

One last thing to remember – in this war – the war on the Jihadists one side, the Western Coalition of willing nations is trying to minimise civilian casualties and is hurt by them, the other side – the Jihadists – is hiding amongst civilians using them as human shields, firing from behind them to draw the inevitable retatilation and also deliberately blowing up innocent civilians and maximimising the casualties because they grotesquely benefit from the sectarian chaos and bloodshed that ensues.