

SpaceX Falcon 1 on Launch Pad  (Source: SpaceX)










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By Ringold on 8/5/2008 5:38:51 AM , Rating: 2
there's the simple expedient of making a launch simpler and cheaper. With less than 5% of a launch being fuel costs, there's no reason a launch couldn't be far cheaper than it is today, even assuming the same payload and engine performance.

But no one is "starting from scratch". Even for a company like Space, nearly all their design is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In 20 years or so, private launch vehicles will have evolved quite a ways from their public counterparts, but for now, those designs are very similar.

The above two are the key elements to the debate, as I see it. The technical issues -- you're nit picking each other on specific points. Those don't matter, they aren't where private enterprise will win. They'll will because government, by its very nature, is incapable of being as innovative in the application of technology as private enterprise, and government agencies are culturally incapable of achieving great change. I like again Bigelow's application of inflatable modules; technology they took from NASA and worked in to a low-cost alternative.

It might be possible that NASA will have a long, long life as the institution that does the expensive R&D that the industry itself can not afford to undertake on its own. To argue that private industry can't more efficiently make use of technology though is really a direct attack on the whole of economic thought. I don't even mean conservative schools of economic thought, as even liberal economists were upset recently at the news of Russia nationalizing some of its farms, for example. Thats a different industry, but identical issues at play in terms of maturity of technology. Right down to NERVA -- the 'nuclear' equivalent in ag being GM seed.


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