this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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I can't stand Musk, but SpaceX is going really well, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean... If you're referring to Starship, they didn't expect it to work 100% on the first few tries (unlike some media, who report on it as if they failed).
This may be an unpopular opinion but corporate space flight is stupid at this point in humanity's history.
Any efficiencies that can be pointed to come from skirting regulations in ways NASA can't or from stock assumptions that might lead to foreign sales and or monopoly, which should be a consideration no matter whose doing it... if it's illegal for NASA to sell space IP to another company, than it should be for any company.
People say government doesn't work, but we have never had a chance to see it work with Republicans throwing albatrosses across it's neck and cutting at its heals and slashing their hamstrings at any chance they get.
I totally agree, but funneling taxpayer money to space exploration makes rich people richer faster than, say, using that money to build homes or feed the hungry.
This means useful idiots are always going to support it over any alternatives.
Stupid at this point in humanity's history? Why should it be stupid to make it cheaper to fly payloads into space when we have unprecedented demand for renewable energy? Without interference of the atmosphere we could harvest solar energy much more efficiently and reliably.
We are likely to see a space elevator build in 100 years and it will be a good thing for humanity. For example we'll be able to remove nuclear waste from earth and send it away for good with negligible costs.
These are just two economic examples. From a scientific perspective cheap space flight is valuable because it enables a lot of advances, like the next generation of space telescopes, working as interferometers without atmospheric disturbances.
So I think it's everything but stupid for humanity to expand it's space operations if this is accompanied by meaningful regulations. The latter of course will require a lot of energy to achieve.
No one is saying to stop space activity. All of that could be done through government agency if we really wanted to. Inefficiency doesn't come from some nebulous bureaucracy, it comes from actually observing regulations and taking safety and environmental considerations into account.
If space is that important for humanity, than you may as well suspend the regulations. All a corporation is doing is skirting those regulations and acting as a middle man to collect some money for doing so. Adding profit does not make an organization more efficient, as it means money is going to things that don't support space.
It should never be falling on for profit companies. That's how you end up with super corporations being in charge instead of governments and that is a disaster waiting to happen. All that was needed was to actually start seriously funding programs like NASA again.