Another look at the increasing regulatory burden impacting commerical space
Link here. The author does a nice job summarizing the problems now becoming evident as the administration state strives to expand its power and control. Though he gives space to both sides, allowing the defenders of that administrative state to explain why strong regulations are good, he doesn’t bow to those defenders, as do too many modern journalists.
That he quotes me extensively (and has has told me personally that he is a regular reader of Behind the Black), might have something to do with this. He isn’t parroting my positions, however, in this essay, but giving his own perspective.
Definitely worth reading.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. The author does a nice job summarizing the problems now becoming evident as the administration state strives to expand its power and control. Though he gives space to both sides, allowing the defenders of that administrative state to explain why strong regulations are good, he doesn’t bow to those defenders, as do too many modern journalists.
That he quotes me extensively (and has has told me personally that he is a regular reader of Behind the Black), might have something to do with this. He isn’t parroting my positions, however, in this essay, but giving his own perspective.
Definitely worth reading.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A point a made in a discussion the other day that actually seemed to make people think was to point out that in an “unregulated” sector, the business are still concerned with their reputation, civil liability, etc., and will self-regulate to a possibly adequate degree. As the government intrudes with regulations, more and more the industry will settle on “do what we’re told, and that’s good enough” and then eventually, “regulatory compliance is costing us too much, we need to start cutting corners and trying to sneak through loopholes” or even “lets outright cheat the regulators.” Examples such as Volkswagen and Boeing are easy to find.
And then of course you can also point out that the FDA, EPA, FTC, FAA all seem to be doing a bang-up job, don’t they? Sure, let’s sign up for more of that.
Add to that the little understood fact that anti trust laws were never designed to help the consumer, they were designed to help the losing competitors.
Some dragon to slay after the Spanish American War got the US the questionable Cuba etc.
Speaking of commercial space, Elon musk just finished a employee? presentation today of accomplishments, goals, upgrades, and future expectations including another launch pad in Texas!
He has the expectations of several lunches a day from multiple countries, with the goal of Mars in eight years. 34 minutes with applause and hesitations removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8GZ0H0xSFo&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D
Such accomplishments and confidence is refreshing.
What if China was as skilled and as ambitious as SpaceX, launching hundreds of Starship clones every year? Wouldn’t there be legitimate concern that they were being reckless? Putting too much stuff into orbit and causing an increase in space junk? Starship exploded on both of its launch attempts. Is there a chance it will explode higher in the atmosphere? Once in orbit, is an explosion impossible? Sure hope so. If we think the FAA is overly political wait until the EU and UN claim jurisdiction and regulate traffic of objects in Earth orbit.
“There’s going to have to be multiple distributed layers of authority, each being able to tackle something different.”
I have no idea what that means in practice. It sure doesn’t sound good!
From the Michael Puttré essay:
Maybe, but there is plenty of precedence. Several heavenly bodies have already been “mined” for rock an regolith samples, yet no one has suggested that the mining country does not have ownership and control over those samples and can choose what to do or not do with them. NASA has many pounds of Moon rocks that have yet to be closely examined and are still in storage for future research.
The book and movie The Martian explained it simply: space is like international waters. We have precedence for behavior, rights (ownership), and law in international waters Michael Puttré notes that the whole world shares the risk of the poor use of international waters (even coastal waters), too. Even as explorers were landing in the New World and proclaiming it as the property of their countries, there were limits to how much of he New World actually belonged to their homeland, to the point where at least four kings were granting land in the New World, and the Pope declared what land belonged to Spain and what land belonged to Portugal. There is plenty of precedence for exploring, colonizing, and mining (exploiting) new worlds. If we don’t explore and exploit, then we cannot fullfill the Outer Space Treaty’s directive “that space must be developed for the common benefit of all humanity.” It must be developed.
The funny thing is, this is how the world sees these innovators, as billionaires. However, Elon Musk, Eren and Fatih Ozmen, and Peter Beck were not billionaires when they got into this business. These are the most successful ones, who have achieved their original goals (the Ozmens are only a few months away from achieving their first goal) in a decade of founding or buying their companies, yet the billionaires, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, took closer to two decades to achieve theirs. Other non-billionaires are also becoming successful with their new rockets’ first flights, and they, too, have founded their companies less than a decade ago. There seems to be a disadvantage to starting out with too much money.
The many founders of companies that have already failed from lack of funds may disagree with me on that point. Perhaps there is a sweet spot in the necessary amount of startup funding. Too much and there is not the need (hunger) to generate revenue, too little and funds run out before revenues can begin (starved to death).
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Max,
Thank you for the link. Musk used the phrase “mind blowing” a little too much, but considering the slow pace of government-space (e.g. NASA), the commercial space advancements we have seen over the past dozen years really are mind blowing. It is what we had expected back in the 1980s with the Space Shuttle, with a rapid increase in commercial space due to the low cost and easy access that the Shuttle was supposed to give us with its expected 64 flights per year. The rapid advancements we are seeing now should seem like standard operating procedure. NASA used to be this innovative. If only Congress would again let NASA innovate rather than regress back to Apollo era methodologies using Shuttle era technologies, we could make so much progress in space that it would be (yes) mind blowing.