The free market won't go to the moon and won't take people into space at all until the technology improves by 100 or 1000 times. We couldn't bring gold down from orbit at a profit right now.
No one has come up with a real use for space that the market has any faith in, and is not likely to find one anytime soon. It is the chicken and egg problem of our time. No one wants to invest in cheap access to orbit until they can identify a potential market, but no one has a firm idea what the market will be until the cost is lowered.
Can I get a sip of that omniscience elixir you've been drinking?
We couldn't bring gold down from orbit at a profit right now.
Because gold is going for about $400 an ounce and can be found here on earth. He3 would draw a better price, but the market doesn't put the cart before the horse. I would rather let the market devote resources to developing a need for hauling goods back from the moon, than end up with another government boondoggle like the ISS.
No one has come up with a real use for space that the market has any faith in, and is not likely to find one anytime soon.
Drunk on the elixir, no doubt! :)
No one wants to invest in cheap access to orbit until they can identify a potential market, but no one has a firm idea what the market will be until the cost is lowered.
First, how will government know what technology to develop lead to lower costs? It doesn't operate on a cost analysis basis because it doesn't operate on a profit basis. Further, it's not even a matter of having costs lowered, it's a matter of having a market demand to satisfy the costs in the first place. There isn't one today. If Bush and Co. want to announce they're making a 'Louisianna Purchase' of the moon, or trying to build a moon base and gravity catapult to dictate world peace (our kind of world peace), then let them, and sell it on those merits to the taxpayers and voters. Don't try to sell it on merits that don't exist.
One would have hoped the wreckage of Eastern Bloc economies wouldn't be so distant a memory as to dissuade people from the language of government compulsion 'stimulating' economies. They merely distort them, to the fancy of politicians and bureaucrats. Free markets operate to satisfy the producers who make them possible. Hint: that ain't the starry-eyed politicians and bureaucrats.