Is it a job only for government employees?
As a commenter over there says, can’t they find some astronomer other than Tyson for an opinion on this?
I’d go further, and ask why they imagine an astronomer knows anything about it.
12 thoughts on “Opening The Frontier”
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While I appreciate the effort that everyone has put into dispelling the nonsense that comes out of Tyson’s mouth, it won’t stop him from repeating the same shtick next week and the week after.
Oh, and is he an astronomer? Last I checked, he hasn’t published anything in years. I think “popular science author” is a more accurate title.
All Elon Musk or anyone else has to do to prove Tyson wrong is to do what they say they can do without government subsidies,
Elon Musk isn’t saying they can or would do it without government playing for it.
He’s a big government kinda guy and wants his slice of the pie.
If proof worked for these guys the SLS would have been killed billions of dollars ago.
I agree with Mark, but let’s hold SLS and Orion to the same standard.
That’s a great post at The Speculist. Concise and to the point.
Governments already have opened the space frontier, so there’s no reason why future missions must necessarily be conducted by governments.
It’s amazing that Tyson has managed to overlook the gulf between the discretion of royalty in the sixteenth century and those of political leaders of today; the former didn’t have to justify each bit of government expenditure to the mass of mental mediocrity we call the electorate, in this regard the likes of Elon Musk, Paul Allen and Robert Bigalow are more akin to Ferdinand and Isabella than are the politicians controlling most governments of today.
Except that most of those expeditions were funded privately, the royals just giving them certain rights that made it easier to finance them. And in some cases invested in them themselves, for example Sir Frances Drakes global expedition, something the history books then to gross over.
The nature of people is a constant. It’s all just a question of risk and reward.
Ken,
Yes, and so far the perceived risks associated with space settlement exceeds the perceived reward in the eyes of investors which is why government contractors like Elon Musk are dependent on government funding for their business models to work. That is why space is still waiting for its “Netscape” breakout.
There are cracks in the dyke Thomas.
government contractors like Elon Musk are dependent on government funding for their business models to work.
This has never been true for SpaceX. They were about one failure away from giving up and government funding had nothing to do with it. That failure didn’t occur. Soon after they became profitable and have remained so since. No, the government $1.6b contract made them more profitable, but they were already profitable without it.
They treat the government as any other customer. That’s why Elon has always reserved the right to say no to the next contract. It worked. The government backed down.
waiting for its “Netscape” breakout
You never get those breakout moments unless somebody takes risks before that moment. People are trying. I maintain we are very close to the first demonstrations of such. Crewed Dragon is almost a reality. Government is actually slowing that up because Elon is making the smart move of letting the government pay for it. Once that happens an opportunity for leasing space in orbit on an inflatable habitat becomes real. Bigelow may be the front runner on that but his company isn’t alone. The demand for researchers in orbit is much greater than three. That demand is going to make a lot of profitable space activity happen real soon now (around five years from now.)
I can see it now…
“When SpaceX has unsold seats on it’s Dragonrider, they turn to hotels.com to fill them at much lower rates.”