NASA Fails, Private Sector Steps Into the Gap

Today, if you want to go to space, you have to see a Russian. The space shuttle is now like the battleships: history. NASA has lost its reason for existence. Now the private sector steps in.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/tec...nch-the-worlds-largest-plane-6705761?click=pp

This is really not much of a technological leap. We know a lot about heavy-lift aircraft. A C5B can lift off from Petersen AFB with TWO combat loaded M1A2 tanks aboard. Yeah they have to hit the tanker repeatedly but tanks were taken this way from interior US bases to the Sandbox in 2003. Likewise we have experience launching spacecraft from aircraft dating back to the 1960s.

What worries me is the possibility that a humiliated federal government strikes back by regulating and/or taxing the Roc out of the sky.

 

You do know that NASA is working on a shuttle replacement, right?

 

Why would the Govt be humiliated?

Where would our space exploration situation be without the Govt?

 

Your hero, Obama cut the space program. We got extremely far with the government in the past, now we are going nowhere...thank you Mr. President. It's such a nice thing you did by killing NASA!

 

Good to see you supporting govt spending. That admission is rare with conservatives nowdays.

 

The private sector will never be able to fill the gap as it concerns space exploration and exploitation; it is too capital intensive and there is no immediate profit incentive.

 

NASA hasn't been killed. It has been subverted for other purposes.

Since it was sold to the people on the basis of manned space travel and doesn't seem to be interested in that, the people don't need NASA any longer.

 

That's a good point. Obama has effectively killed JFK's legacy in favor of farcical climate research.

 

Obama did not cut the space program. He cut Bush's multi-billion dollar useless moon-return boondoggle.

Bush was the one who cut the Shuttle (and rightfully so, the (*)(*)(*)(*)ed things are 60 year technology and are falling apart). He also cut its replacement, the Venture Star, back in 2001 because "it was too expensive", even though the entire program cost less than two months' operations in Bush's Iraq War.

 

The Space Program is important. Unfortunately not so with Obama.

 

It's not important to Obama?

Is that why he increased their budget and had them begin work on a shuttle replacement?

 

The military has a massive space program. They no longer use the shuttle to launch their payloads, so since that is where the money always was it is now dried up. The military is the future of the U.S. space program.

 

You just watched the last movement from NASA 2 days ago when the shuttle went over DC. There will be no more shuttles or space program under Obama. It's a smoke screen.

 

Bush cancelled the shuttle, not Obama.

Obama has ordered NASA to begin working on a replacement.

You are right about one not being ready until Obama is gone because it likely won't fly until 2015-16.

BTW, if Bush hadn't cancelled the "too expensive"-yet-cheaper-than-two-months-operations-in-Iraq Venture Star in 2001, we'd have a working SSTO by now.

 

The space program was a war footing response. When the cold war ended, so did all reason to go into space. If China declared tomorrow that they would build bases on Mars, we would be there in 10 months.

The good reason for exploration is plain innovation and the multiplying benefits that come from it and the fact that as the richest nation on earth we could do it.

 

In my opinion, if you want to colonize space it should be left to the private sector to do. Government should be stepping out of the way and supporting the private sector by offering incentives to get up there.

Give them a reason to make a profit up there and corporations will be there in a tenth of the time it would take NASA and at a tenth of the cost. The private sector will have little interest in exploration or science outside of the business aspect so that is a gap that NASA can fill building upon the success of private industry.

Start with tourism and allow those interested to pursue this with the government behind them. The government doesn't need to pay but they should not burden those individuals with cumbersome regulations and should offer any technical help they can.

 

That flies in the face of economic history. Early stages of colonization have never been driven by private enterprise. The footholds and initial investment have always required government investment.

 

Technically it was the government, NASA, that began the process by exploration and visiting the moon, landing rovers on Mars and what have you. They operate at far too high of costs to effectively do anything anymore especially given our current economic status. The only people that can reasonable assume the financial costs are corporations.

The industrial revolution was driven by a Laizze Faire attitude from government and it grew by leaps and bounds. I guarantee you that if NASA found oil on an asteroid somewhere and told Exxon they are free to go get it if they want to pay for it, that we would have ships built, processes developed, and people trained far quicker than NASA would ever get it done.

Using the private company breakthroughs, NASA could implement far more meaningful projects without having to go through the research themselves and the extreme amount of waste that accompanies all government agencies.

 

Except we're not at that point yet in space colonization. Putting men on the Moon and rovers on Mars isn't the equivalent of building a government subsidized colony in Virginia. It's the equivalent of sending Hudson to map rivers or DeGama to see we can go around Africa.. We haven't even gotten to the point of building a colony in space yet. We have a lot of very completely unprofitable work that still needs to be done.

BTW, we won't find oil in space. Or coal. Space will forever be the realm of renewable energy and nuclear. There are minerals to be mined in space that could be profitable (platinum comes to mind), but we need the (government-funded and very unprofitable) infrastructure in place before those can even be exploited.

 

I will respectfully disagree. Government often comes on the heel of private enterprise. Columbus set sail for profit, not for the betterment of Spain. Many examples of this throughout history.

Government may have not gotten to the point of building colonies yet with the way they operate, but the technology exists or is within reach to accomplish this. It only needs more focus and better more reliable financial backing to become a reality.

I know we won't find oil but there is certainly profit to be made in space. These ventures should be made known to private industry and encouraged to be pursued. The government should let them at it and see what happens. Humans often have been able to overcome obstacles when they have determination behind them.

Private industry will get us into space much quicker than NASA ever will. Just look at all the people already starting to cross that threshold. The barrier of space is so close to breaking that all it needs is one solid push from the government and we will be up there.

In another 100 years we could possibly run into the problem of not having enough humans to fill all of our earthly and space requirements. It, in my opinion, should be one of the biggest issues that politicians are focused on.

 

And Columbus is a bad one. He may have been in it for personal profit, but his entire operation was subsidized by the government of Spain.

Columbus is not an example of private enterprise. His expedition is an example of (to use the current euphemism) a "public-private partnership"

No we don't. Lots of technology that we need for space exploration has not gone through any kind of the unprofitable testing that will be necessary to make space travel practical (for instance, artificial gravity, energy based propulsion, or manufacturing in space)

For things like tourism, sure. But the more expensive operations with vastly higher risks and no possible means of insurance, like space colonization or mining, will be the realm of governments until the costs can be brought down and the technologies made practical.

 

I am not talking about deep space exploration but rather staying within our galaxy. We have the technology today to effectively build and support a small colony on mars. There are private plans out there that you can look up that would cost far less than any proposal the government could come up with. Far more dangerous of course but its certainly possible.

Private companies often have extremely huge and expensive research and development processes in the hopes of discovering something new before someone else does. Look at the pharmaceutical companies and the amounts they spend without a guaranteed profit. If there is a route into space companies will spend the money to develop ways to mine that certain mineral or build that new base.

Oil companies spend insane amounts of money trying to figure out more efficient or new ways of doing things. At this very moment you can find them all over the world and at the bottom of the deepest seas looking for the next new source of energy that might bring them bigger profits. They will certainly jump into this if they feel there is money to be made.

All we have to do is give them the freedom to go after it.

 

Whoa, there! You are getting way ahead of yourself AND showing that you know little about how space travel actually works. Forget the galaxy. Getting out of our solary system is a practical impossibility unless we figure out a way to violate the laws of physics.

Mars IS deep space from our current position. We don't even have the capability to reliably get a man into space under all-weather conditions. We aren't going to be putting any profitable space ventures up any time soon (except for maybe tourism and even that will be a game for only the mega-rich).

Any colony on Mars we can build with current technology would do nothing more than pick up rocks. We have rovers that can do the exact same thing for a thousand times less cost and with no risk to human life.

I tell you what: Post a link to one of these cheaper-than-government private plans and we'll see.

Pharmaceutical companies don't have to shoot their research into orbit with a massive likelihood of failure and their investment being unrecoverable and the researchers involved all dying.

Oil companies can afford to do that because they are working in a field that has already had immense work done for them and because they make ridiculous profits.

Think for a second as to whether or not oil companies would be able to do that exploration without the billions that governments spend on satellites, geomapping, and geological surveys.

 

My mistake. I did mean solar system not galaxy.

A colony on mars would do far more than pick up rocks. It would establish a human presence outside of earth and allow us to begin finding and working out the problems that comes associated with that. You don't know the problems that will arise until you actually do it.

The proposal suggests that companies could drum up $160 billion for a human mission to Mars and a colony there, rather than having governments fund such a mission with tax dollars.
Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, was quoted in a release in the Journal of Cosmology by Dr. Rhawn Joseph. The plan covers "every aspect of a journey to the Red Planet — the design of the spacecrafts, medical health and psychological issues, the establishment of a Mars base, colonization, and a revolutionary business proposal to overcome the major budgetary obstacles which have prevented the U.S. from sending astronauts to Mars," said Levine.

http://www.space.com/10819-mars-private-funding-manned-mission.html

There is no doubt that government cannot justify spending the amount of money it will take to get us up into space. It will not happen unless private industry funds it. In these economic times there is no government that has the political clout to invest in an unknown thing but corporations can and will if they can turn a profit.

 

Any megaproject will create large amounts of spin-off technology. People need to come up with a better reason than "we'll make some cool toys along the way." There are better reasons than that, but they're usually considered flights of fancy.

If the only goal is "innovation", we might as well pick megaprojects with more immediate utility.