Posted on 03/31/2017 4:51:04 AM PDT by IBD editorial writer
Final Frontier: When NASA retired its shuttle fleet in 2011, space buffs moaned that the U.S. was abandoning its leadership in space. The opposite happened. In fact, it was arguably the best thing that could have happened to space travel, as private companies rushed in to fill the void.
This week provided two stunning examples of the fierce private-sector competition and resulting rapid advances in space travel.
On Thursday, SpaceX — the private company owned by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk — achieved a huge new milestone with its launch of a recycled Falcon 9 rocket that it had previously launched and then landed on a floating platform.
Musk said this "is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight" because it will drastically cut launch costs.
The day before, Jeff Bezos announced plans to send paying customers into space using his Blue Origin-built rocket and space capsule by next year. The Amazon.com (AMZN) founder says Blue Origin — which has also successfully landed and reused a rocket booster five times — is on track to conduct the first human test flights later this year.
Musk, meanwhile, announced plans to send two paying customers on a trip around the moon in 2018 aboard its privately built Dragon spacecraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Both Musk and Bezos have a background in Engineering in contrast to the financial background of so many CEOs. Thus, they dream of something beyond the high profits and success they have earned.
All these guys invest in new tech, new ventures, also Google, look at all the stuff they came up with and are coming up with. All except Mark Zuckerberg who besides Facebook, seems to only care about investing in anything that destroys US borders.
There's A New Space Race On, Courtesy Of The Taxpayer
Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies
Say what you want about Musk, his politics, or where he gets some of his money, the man is a visionary on par with Nikola Tesla and is NOT afraid to fail. If you look back on all of the things he’s done, you’ll see that he’s not graced with a knack for success. He’s just not afraid to keep pushing despite adversity.
Well put.
These guys are just leveraging what’s available. They’re not doing it to get subsidies; the subsidies exist precisely to promote the kinds of things they’re doing. They’d be stupid to not accept the money shoved at them.
"Musk...is NOT afraid to fail."
Maybe not, but if he had experienced one more rocket explosion, he would have had to close shop. He's that close on funding.
Neither one of these guys are setting a very good precedent for aerospace employment, either. My son is a top honors senior at Purdue, graduating in May with an Astronautical Engineering degree. He has already written off even considering SpaceX for the way they treat their engineers. It's like an engineering job mill, just churning through talent one after the other. Job life expectancy there is very low and ones who stay work excruciating hours. Along with that, we all know how Bezos treats Amazon employees.
It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out in the end.
This is great in many ways. It bothers me to think of humanity as being ‘rock bound’.
I also believe ‘ACC/Etc’ to be narrow minded & illogical.
If preservation of the species is the goal, then getting off planet and ‘stabilized in space’ ASAP should be the highest priority.
On man influenced climate change.
With nobody being able to accurately and consistently predict the internal temperatures and transfer method/zones etc. of heat in the earth: ACC arguments are BS at best
Look up core temp estimates last 25 yrs; Kola bore hole and its story; deep sea thermal vents, recent articles revising the temp estimates upwards of the, core, mantle and revisions of interactions with the crust and possibly how the ‘plates’ are floating more then was once thought. All of this is the result of heat and where it comes from.
In other words if you do not have a temperature starting point of the central/main/closet heat source, everything else is mute. Remember, if earth’s core were cold there would be no life, period.
Now lets say you do develop a reliable core temp.
Can you identify all the variables which may effect that temp.
Next question would be “where is the heat going?”
Add to this the type of motion we are moving in, the speeds, the velocities; think about the ‘inclined spiral around an axis’ motion the earth is doing, while dancing around the sun.
The point of all this is that like a boat moving through water; the planets, stars, etc all experience a ‘bow wave’ also.
This infers a ‘medium’ which infers ‘friction’, now it my or may not effect temperatures on a planet. But, can you tell me conclusively either way.
Add to that one thing the myriad effects of ‘unknown’ things, the ‘jetsam’ of possible other species floating around, dark matter, dark energy, gravitational waves, whatever.
Yes, we should be concerned about achieving efficiency; which understood properly leads to an overall cleaner environment. But so what, if you get taken out by a space rock; or other celestial influence that effects the orbits in such a way as to remove the earth from the ‘Goldilocks’ zone.
This really is possible and a lot sooner then you think. Okay maybe around 1 million years more or less, but still. Anyway it is not the things you see in space that will are concerned about so much, it is the things we cannot see.
Point is, the more we as humans learn about cosmology and the objects out there, their motions. Especially the one we cannot see, the more concerned I become about being ‘rock bound’.
Irony: The climate change nuts get their way and everybody rides bikes on the day the planet gets taken out by a rock.
“Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.” Daniel 2:34 KJV
I want Kona coffee.....
Time to head for the asteroids and the moon.
Yes. In this instance I would like to be younger, it seems the exploration of space, at least in the solar system, is about to get really exciting all the way around.
Told my wife last night that there was a new space race in town. Looking forward to see what happens!
Frivolous space travel causes like a super big carbon footprint! We are not only polluting earth we are polluting space! Where are the concerned environmentalists demanding Mr. Bezos use electric rocket ships?!
I’ve been in working in IT for over 20 years, and I can tell you that cutthroat is the name of the game. Any company can find an engineer. If you want to be treated “well,” you have to bring more to the table than a fancy degree. I’m not dismissing Musk’s or Bezos’ behavior, but I’ve seen plenty of “good engineers” come through my IT departments with little more than a head full of mush. The real world demands more than what colleges are churning out. You can’t teach work ethic.
Both Musk and Bezos have a background in Engineering in contrast to the financial background of so many CEOs. Thus, they dream of something beyond the high profits and success they have earned.
Actually there are more engineers as CEOs of large companies than any other profession. My own Uncle was a CEO of a large company and his degree was in mining engineering.
Musk and Bezos (a detestable, lying liberal) have picked up a hoard of rocket engineers that left NASA, when Barack Hussein ended the science program and engaged the Muslims in an outreach effort.
Yep, he’s the classic limo liberal but he doesn’t really take chances that might break his bank account.
Thank you for setting the record straight.
I can remember a time when all the miners were lead by engineers. It usually was a good thing.
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