19 comments

• Blair Ivey

  October 25, 2025 at 8:50 pm

  Back in the 1970’s it was posited that on-orbit manufacturing would take place in dedicated space stations. The market will eventually demand such sources of supply, but the current trend seems to be reusable capsules for short-term production. Good for exploring market and methods, but brings a high marginal cost to goods.
• Jeff Wright

  October 26, 2025 at 12:21 am

  A shuttle payload full of products might be what VC guys need to see.

  Space factories should have come before RLV construction.

  However wonky STS was—it had downmass that Falcon/Dragon couldn’t touch.

  You have to get products in people’s hands.

  Once that happens-THEN you will see private investment blossom.

  It might be that the best RLVs can exist only with materials made in a microgravity environment to start with.
• Blair Ivey

  October 26, 2025 at 1:14 am

  I always thought the Shuttle’s return payload capability was among the more impressive specs. These day, anyone can push stuff uphill, but 16 tons down is nothing to sneeze at. And up to seven people, which I don’t think any operational vehicle can do.
• Dick Eagleson

  October 26, 2025 at 12:57 pm

  Blair Ivey,

  Marginal cost depends upon a lot of factors. One-and-done small re-entry capsules, for example, are vastly cheaper than a crewed space station of any size. A robot space station designed for production runs of tons rather than pounds might be better – especially if the vehicles that transport the raw materials up and finished product back down are reusable. But small capsules can be made reusable too, so larger scale doesn’t necessarily translate to lower marginal cost.

  A lot would depend upon the cost, mass, volume and durability of the production equipment involved. The larger any of these numbers are, the more the economics would seem to favor robot space stations. Only having to launch heavy, bulky production equipment once would definitely beat having to launch even miniaturized versions repeatedly as would be necessary with the small-capsule-only approach.

  Different products may also yield different optimization points on this spectrum of infrastructure approaches. The coming decade should see a lot of such questions answered for particular products or product categories.

  Agree that Shuttle’s 16 tons of potential downmass was impressive, though I’m not sure it ever came close to actually returning that large a load.

  And, for people of my generation, it also instantly brings to mind a certain song by the late Tennessee Ernie Ford.

  Jeff Wright,

  I don’t know why you keep insisting that space manufacturing should have preceded the advent of reusable vehicles as the opposite is what has actually happened – and quite correctly so. Perhaps this notion is of a piece with a lot of your other nostalgic laments for 1960s-era/Soviet-era tech that has come and – deservedly – gone and, even more so, for 1960s-era concepts that were never implemented. I can only analogize this to someone who thinks the era of wood and fabric biplanes was the apex of aircraft technology and that it has all been downhill since 1925.

  Perhaps space-made materials will someday allow even better reusable vehicles to be built, though I find that unlikely, especially absent any hint as to what such materials might be. The reusable vehicles we already have were sufficient to get the space manufacturing ball rolling. The upcoming next generation of such will be still better even absent any created-in-space unobtanium.
• Jeff Wright

  October 26, 2025 at 7:04 pm

  My stance has nothing to do with nostalgia (the sharp noses and wings of early designs would certainly have melted).

  I remember hearing about how Nautilus X concept guru Mark Holderman happened to visit some type of petroleum expo where part of a platform was re-created—and how blown away he was.

  Even with Elon’s help—many investors will always see space as profitable only in terms of communications….and even that looks to be threatened down the road:
  https://medium.com/@brandontbrasson/neutrino-e65bcafc9a69

  As much as many hate government—it has a place:
  https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2025/10/26/governmentnecessary-and-intolerant-n2665473

  Securing resources and transportation I see as vital as Defense. I think Uncle Sam should in fact push orbital manufacturing.

  Right now, neutrino-comm seems a long way out. That might change quickly.

  Were I a petroleum-guru, I might wonder if the large tanks of oil I have might double as those water-filled detectors all the pointy-heads in cosmology are enamored with.

  Where some space-advocates hoped space-based solar power would finally get the god-tier financing the energy sector enjoys behind the space sector—-it may very well be the case that the black gold guys find a way to take comm away from spaceflight.

  If that happens (unlikely, I know)—spaceflight craters. In that environment, reusable LVs are WORTHLESS.

  Why?

  Because if all you need a a weathersat or mil-sat every once and awhile, the ULA model works perfectly well. Expendability is a plus here instead of a minus….otherwise folks will still want lower SpaceX launch costs for the handful of satellite launches that remain—and that might not be enough to keep the doors open.

  American off-shoring has done great damage.

  I could see spacelaunch itself being thought of as something from the buggy whip days—with some wiseacre suit making cracks.

  That may not stop Europe or China, which will support spaceflight for its own sake without regard as to the bottom line (exploration, prestige, etc.)—but I can easily see American spaceflight going the way of textile mills if manufacturing isn’t stressed and NASA starved.

  That Ayn Rand garbage will have come home to roost for good.
• Blair Ivey

  October 26, 2025 at 9:54 pm

  “. . . the buggy whip days—with some wiseacre suit making cracks.”

  I like the callback.
• Edward

  October 26, 2025 at 9:56 pm

  Blair Ivey wrote: “Back in the 1970’s it was posited that on-orbit manufacturing would take place in dedicated space stations. The market will eventually demand such sources of supply, but the current trend seems to be reusable capsules for short-term production. Good for exploring market and methods, but brings a high marginal cost to goods.”

  Back in the 1990s, I pondered the advantages and disadvantages of dedicated unmanned manufacturing satellites vs one-shot or reusable reentry satellites similar to the modern capsules, such as Varda’s. It had seemed to me that a satellite or space station dedicated to one product would need a large annual production rate in order for the facility and operational costs to break even, possibly even continuous manufacturing, where the next raw materials delivery arrives shortly after the last manufacturing batch is loaded and undocked for reentry. Problems ensue if the automatic machinery malfunctions.

  Manned orbital manufacturing is inherently expensive and would be best when combined with other activities requiring man’s attention for the (hopefully majority) time when the manufacturing facility does not need personal attention.

  I agree with Blair Ivey that the reusable capsules are best for exploring new materials or methods. For each batch of product, the mass of the manufacturing facility has to be launched along with the raw materials. The more permanently orbiting manufacturing facility is best after optimization has been worked out by using the reusable capsules. Enough optimization so that the permanent facility does not become obsolete before it has paid for itself. Like all free market economic endeavors, space entrepreneurs have to be wary that someone else will build a better mousetrap.

  These are the early days of commercial space operations. Innovations, improvements, and optimizations are more easily developed than in the more mature industries. Where the money is to be made is still in flux, but we already know that communications are important for our modern world. I wonder how humanity ever managed before the homing pigeon.
• john hare

  October 27, 2025 at 2:08 am

  That Ann Rand garbage involves letting the parasites wither on the vine while the productive move forward. I can understand why you dislike it with welfare cases like Marshal being abandoned.

  The ends of the spectrum are the free market and the slave market. Your choice is sad.
• Jeff Wright

  October 27, 2025 at 2:31 am

  I seem to remember smoke signals/fires atop hills could transmit messages—but it requires serious minded folks.

  Today’s tech is about how to get out of working.
  That might result in technical advances—but that mindset can undermine society.

  Where tech-brahs love to talk about disruption—WWII was won via logistics. That level of commitment requires Eisenhowers, not Elons.

  ISS is larger than everything save VAST’s largest concepts—and there we still got little back. Some looked at space laboratories as pathfinders, not production.

  One problem is that if you ask private money for support—they will turn around and ask “what does NASA think about this?”

  And vice-versa.

  Elon may not make friends, but he can get things moving—but even he pales in comparison to a Rickover—who was closer to Mike Griffin.

  Manufacturing in space is actually something I want military money behind. Rickover never had to prostitute himself in front of that punk Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.

  And speaking of the powers that be—-it looks like some are getting a taste of their own medicine:

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S92fTz_-kQE

  While a part of me wants to cheer at management getting a taste of its own medicine…sometimes businesses also have to be unpleasant.

  AI worries me in that it is one more way for academics to get into power behind the scene.

  A man is nothing without work—a sack of meat.

  When I saw jobs end—I considered them as murder victims. GOP country clubs consider corporations as people—I consider jobs as personhood.

  Again, I think Greens and some executives look at folks as problems—not resources.

  Yes, there are spongers. But if I came into money—I would do more, not less.

  We all should try to make a mark upon the world.

  Sadly, that belief is falling away.

  AI could liberate us—but it can’t stifle drive just as easily.

  Thomas Sowell was wrong.

  Culture matters.
• Jeff Wright

  October 27, 2025 at 2:34 am

  Blast made the wrong link
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ozVb14bNwzQ
• Edward

  October 27, 2025 at 3:08 pm

  Jeff Wright,
  You wrote: “Where tech-brahs love to talk about disruption—WWII was won via logistics. That level of commitment requires Eisenhowers, not Elons.”

  I’ve heard half a dozen “WWII was won because of” stories, and all of them are good. I’m sticking with the code-breaking story rather than the proximity fuze story, because if the Japanese had taken Midway, Pearl Harbor would have been in serious trouble, and probably unusable, and fighting the war from the continent would have been difficult.

  Eisenhower was more politician than logistician. I am reading a book on Patton, and Eisenhower put too much favor on Montgomery, who didn’t move fast enough, being more cautious, and not enough emphasis on Patton’s ability to race around an enemy and cut him off before he could regroup in force. Patton had his own logistics guy, who didn’t bother Patton with the details, he just stole as much fuel as he could to keep Patton’s army on the move. Patton would plan around the amount of fuel in his hands, which often meant smaller attacks with less backup than he would like.

  Musk, like Trump, knows how to delegate. Let someone else handle the logistics, because that is what that guy is paid to do.

  “ Some looked at space laboratories as pathfinders, not production.”

  Finding a path is only useful if you let someone use it. Producers were not allowed to use Skylab, the Shuttle, or ISS. Now we have some commercial companies finding the paths for usable commercial space stations, and they cost significantly less than ISS or the Shuttle. They aren’t just finding paths, they are finding efficiencies. Other pathfinders are investigating manufacturing via reusable reentry capsules, which had been impractical under government-controlled space. Now the We the People are in control, we are beginning to get what W,e want.

  “One problem is that if you ask private money for support—they will turn around and ask ‘what does NASA think about this?’”

  That may have been true in the past, but I think scores of space startups are finding funding without investors bugging NASA for their thoughts on the project. NASA has a very different mindset on the methods of using space, and these methods are not so useful to commercial space.

  “Elon may not make friends, but he can get things moving—but even he pales in comparison to a Rickover—who was closer to Mike Griffin.”

  You may have that backwards. Rickover revolutionized the submarine portion of the Navy, but Musk has already revolutionized the launch industry, the commercial space industry, commercial manned space, and the communications industry. If (or maybe I should say “when”) he revolutionizes large-scale retanking in orbit, he will revolutionize the exploration and utilization of the entire solar system.

  I think Rickover already pales in comparison with Musk.

  “Manufacturing in space is actually something I want military money behind.”

  Excellent choice. Then all we will get manufactured is what the military or government wants.

  I want private money behind the vast majority of our activities in space so that the vast majority of what we get from space is what We the People want.

  “When I saw jobs end—I considered them as murder victims.”

  When I had my jobs end, I did not consider myself as a murder victim. Instead, I would find a new job. No coffins, just coffee and resumé’s.

  “Thomas Sowell was wrong.”

  I wouldn’t know, because you didn’t give a reference.
• Dick Eagleson

  October 27, 2025 at 5:36 pm

  Edward,

  You and I are pretty much on the same page anent space manufacturing.

  Jeff Wright,

  “My stance has nothing to do with nostalgia.”

  Sure it does. Your invincible infatuation with Marshall, for example, is based on obdurate refusal to see the enfeebled and senescent mess it has become and imagining it to still be its von Braun-era self.

  Interesting story about Holderman, though I’m entirely unable to see its relevance to the current discussion. You have a more-than-marginal tendency to, W.C. Fields-like, suddenly exclaim the equivalent of, “Ah look over there! A buffalo stampede!” Damfino why.

  Many investors are like teen girls – always chasing after the latest fad. Communications is a well-established space-based business. When other such business sectors arise and prove themselves, the investors of limited vision will try to climb on-board, but the late arrivals never do as well as the more perspicacious early pioneers.

  Sure, government has a place. No anarchists here. But fire has a place too. And, like government, it always bears watching lest it get out of control. From a political philosophy standpoint, you are a substantially uncritical advocate of government. That’s different. I’d analogize that to being a firebug.

  Neutrino comm seems a long way out because it is. It may eventually have some role to play, especially over interplanetary, and even interstellar, distances. One could, for example, maintain constant touch, from Earth, with any human or automated facility located anywhere on any significant solar system body even if the Sun, Earth and the extraterrestrial body were all in the way along a point-to-point path.

  Still light-speed-limited of course.

  The idea that neutrino comm has any capability of suddenly replacing existing space-based comms – and, thus, rendering Musk a pauper – is just another goofy manifestation of your long-obviously serious case of Musk Derangement Syndrome.

  In the first case, space-based comms are hardly the only things Elon does by way of creating wealth.

  In the second case, barring the sudden advent of some significant crypto-physics, neutrino comm will never be available in iPhone-sized packages usable by humans. Batteries powerful enough to run teensy particle accelerators – should the latter such even be possible to construct – don’t exist and never will if they are to be based on chemical, and not nuclear, reactions.

  Particle accelerators that produce neutrinos tend also to produce a lot of other energetic particles that no one with sense wants to have anywhere near one’s body – particularly one’s head. All the wowser hoo-raw nonsense from some years ago about cell phone radios producing brain tumors would actually be true about teensy particle accelerators. Sheesh.

  Then there’s the problem of detecting the damned neutrinos if one doesn’t live inside an enormous tank of water or some other suitable liquid. If it was possible for neutronium to exist at room temperature and in the form of a few square inches of foil then one would have something that would make neutrino-based signals readable in a hand-held size format. Of course even that quite modest bit of neutronium would mass so much only a native of planet Krypton or the God Thor would be able to lift and use an “nPhone” built around it. Conveniently, they would also be immune to the extraneous particle accelerator radiation flux.

  So, a comic book device usable only by comic book characters and only by some of even those. I don’t anticipate ever finding an “nPhone” under my Christmas tree.

  “Securing resources and transportation I see as vital as Defense.”

  Past US administrations/regimes have done an unimpressive job of securing resources. The current administration is doing its best to make up for past derelictions – in that respect as well as many others.

  Transportation – by which I assume you meant space transportation – has been a signal realm of governmental failure. Fortunately, we have Elon to pull us out of that particular well.

  But it’s not like government has been any great shakes at providing terrestrial transportation either. That’s especially true of Democrats who seem unaccountably enamored of 19th-century tech like railroads and fixed-rail urban mass transit.

  Once again, it is Elon who is charting the way forward on terrestrial transportation – along with much else.

  For the second time, neutrino comm is not going to send us back to the days of yore when space launches were rare and entirely expendable. SpaceX didn’t start out launching rockets in three figures per year, but reuse made launch cheaper even in the early days of F9. There is nothing – especially comic book comms tech – that is going to save ULA and the other dinosaurs of aerospace – your invincible nostalgia notwithstanding.

  “American off-shoring has done great damage.”

  It has. I fail to see the relevance of that observation to this discussion, however. It is certainly not a cudgel with which to beat Elon Musk. His industrial empire owes less to off-shoring than pretty much any other one could name.

  The only neglect of manufacturing has come from the legacy primes. They all used to know how to do mass production – especially during WW2. But they’ve all long since lost the knack. Fortunately, Elon has resurrected respect for manufacturing and much of NewSpace and NewDef have followed suit. Elon has his Gigafactories hither and yon and Palmer Luckey is building Arsenal 1 in Ohio.

  “That Ayn Rand garbage” is pretty much all that’s keeping the US in the game these days. Who is John Galt? He’s Elon Musk.

  You also shouldn’t single out textile mills as a metaphor for industrial decline and off-shoring. There are actually some new US-based textile mills that are digital and robotic, though they run without benefit of many Norma Raes.

  “I seem to remember smoke signals/fires atop hills could transmit messages—but it requires serious minded folks.”

  They could. But the folks involved needed to be patient as well as serious-minded as the bandwidth of smoke signals and the Beacons of Gondor are unimpressive. The latter also required beaucoup maintenance and garrisoning for extremely infrequent use. No wonder Gondor was looking more than a tad down-at-heel by the time Denethor was in charge.

  Today’s tech is about automating scut work of many kinds. Most of the skilled trades have nothing to worry about for quite some time yet, but office drones are another matter. But not all forms of work are particularly ennobling of the human spirit so perhaps it is simply that a better balance is in the process of being struck. In any case, it is generally those most enthused about government that seek ways to avoid work.

  WW2 was won by technology, production, logistics, intelligence, strategy and tactics. All were essential. And the first three definitely required Elon – or, rather, his back-in-the-day approximations. One of these was Henry Ford. Another was Henry J. Kaiser. Ike played his part, but he was at the end of the pipeline.

  “One problem is that if you ask private money for support—they will turn around and ask ‘what does NASA think about this?’ And vice-versa.”

  Once upon a time, maybe. but not these days. Private money isn’t much interested in what NASA lifers think anymore. And NASA has never been much interested in what the private sector thought except for its coterie of legacy contractors. And what they have always thought is “we should get more money.”

  “Elon may not make friends, but he can get things moving—but even he pales in comparison to a Rickover—who was closer to Mike Griffin.”

  Yeesh – where to start?

  Elon has made a lot of friends. You are not one of them and you don’t seem to know any of them, but your parochial disconnect is not based in reality.

  Of course Elon has made a lot of enemies, too – all of them the correct ones.

  Taking nothing away from Rickover, but he was a one-trick pony. It was a very good pony trick, to be sure, but only one. Matters could hardly have been otherwise given that he was career military. Elon has shown us lots of tricks – with more coming all the time.

  Mike Griffin is probably the paradigmatic proof that a massive load of credentials is not synonymous with accomplishment or wisdom. He’s had some base hits, but no real home runs. And, unlike Elon, Griffin really is a master at alienating people.

  “Thomas Sowell was wrong.”

  About what – other than having a low initial opinion of Donald Trump?

  “Culture matters.” It certainly does – something Sowell, among others, has been beating the drum about for decades. There are plenty of broken sub-cultures in the US besides the obvious such as those of inner cities. There are NASA, JPL, Goddard, Marshall and the legacy primes as well. Some of the forms of breakage are even the same across all of those named here – a desire to get something for nothing being foremost on that list.

  john hare,

  Amen, brother.
• Dick Eagleson

  October 27, 2025 at 6:24 pm

  Edward,

  It’s damned spooky how much we sometimes think, and even express ourselves, alike without reference to the other’s work until after we post.

  A few further thoughts:

  George Marshall is really more like Musk than Eisenhower. Both were/are geniuses that had/have the ability to build very large, very effective organizations that were/are best-in-class from modest starting points. Both were/are also good at “herding cats” and looked for direct reports with that same talent. Marshall had Ike. Elon has Shotwell. Elon herds the engineer “cats” and Shotwell herds all of the others.

  I gave Rickover shorter shrift than he deserves. He actually had a fairly consequential Navy career before the whole nuclear power thing. In the 1930s, he was largely responsible for refitting the electrical and other systems of capital ships to withstand the firing of their own guns and to withstand battle damage. He never had a combatant command, but he certainly did more than his bit toward winning the then-coming war.

  And post-war – ship systems wonk that he was – Rickover was first off the blocks about harnessing nuclear power for naval propulsion. And he was another of those guys who could scratch-build a high-quality, best-in-class organization to tackle a formidable scientific-technical challenge.

  There is a pattern here.

  And to your list of Musk accomplishments you could also add creating the modern electric vehicle industry, the utility-scale and residential-scale power storage industry, the virtual power plant industry, revolutionizing the tunnel boring industry, hugely advancing the AI state of the art, pioneering man-machine interfaces and rescuing free speech from the woke barbarians.

  I also second your “no murder victims here” attitude towards being either tossed overboard or finding oneself in the water after the entire ship sinks anent employment. I’ve had both happen to me several times each. Never pleasant, but more like paper cuts than bullets.
• Jeff Wright

  October 27, 2025 at 8:43 pm

  Musk certainly did more for electric cars than anyone else–it worried me that it could be a distraction.

  I lament how you look at MSFC guys as spongers. These aren’t baby mamas with kids by multiple fathers–I know some guys…they simply have been underfunded.

  Sowell is best known to me as a purist–he and O’Rourke had different ideas as to how much culture matters in economics. Sowell didn’t think it mattered at all. Had he (and Mr. Eagleson) been correct, China would have collapsed right with the Soviets.

  P.J. seems to be correct so far–in that China persists. That has to be cultural. Russians are most happy when miserable these days.

  It is my opinion that had Marshall had real money, we could have had troops rockets long ago. I think ABMA deserved the largesse the USAF got instead.

  My guys could easily could have gotten Explorer I off first. Ike wanted to let the Soviets set the precedent. Like Area 51, I think having real national money behind engineering is wise. Elon is a unicorn. He can do what he likes.
• Blair Ivey

  October 28, 2025 at 12:22 am

  Dick Eagleson noted anent Musk accomplishments: ” . . . hugely advancing the AI state of the art, . . .”

  I am not altogether sure this is an achievement. Sure, someone is going to advance the art, and better to have ‘friendly’ researchers, but I believe the labor market is near the limit of what level AI current society can accept. Maybe throttle back a bit, and allow people to catch up.
• john hare

  October 28, 2025 at 1:50 am

  @Blair,
  Perhaps not AI. I am in the process of developing a system of construction that does lend itself to considerable automation in concrete construction. We are just finishing a reinforced concrete house designed to handle F5 tornados. Not 3D printed, that is a chimera. Shotcrete is an older technology mostly used for swimming pools locally though it has far more use nation and world wide. When we shot the walls of this house, there were 8 men involved that day and 6 on the day we shot the roof. That will go to 3 people shooting walls and roof in one day. Stucco crew spent two days on the walls that can be textured in the original structure.

  Long winded way of saying that I am using my personal house as a prototype in development of structure that can be assembled in far less time by far less people than is currently normal. And be lower maintenance. Multiply what I am doing by many thousands of other innovators and the construction trades will get a lot done to reduce the sweat involved.

  Company expression. “We get paid by the square foot, not the sweat gallon.”
  Another. “A wasted dollar takes friends with it when it leaves, and the ungrateful jerk won’t even send a postcard.”

  At 69 years old, setting up a new company if real customer demand matches the talk by most that see it in progress. How’s that for arrogance?
• Edward

  October 28, 2025 at 8:26 pm

  Jeff Wright,
  You wrote: “I lament how you look at MSFC guys as spongers. These aren’t baby mamas with kids by multiple fathers–I know some guys…they simply have been underfunded.”

  I seriously wish that they had made some significant contributions, these last few decades. Much of NASA has been underutilized by Congress and various presidents, and one president set NASA adrift, with no help from Congress. Frankly, NASA was turned from a technological marvel of human achievement (a Wonder Of The World) into a quivering pile of shredded political football, seeking significance in the modern world. Government squandered the talent, skills, knowledge, and brains of its once and only star performer.

  Yet another form of government waste.

  It should never have been so easy for Musk to create a private commercial space program that outshines NASA, creating his own pool of talent, skills, knowledge, and brains that often go out and start their own commercial space companies.

  As for MSFC, it missed the ship when it didn’t build and fly rocket engines that were marvels of engineering. The DC-X (Delta Clipper) and the X-33 (VentureStar) were genuine opportunities for MSFC to shine, but instead NASA was skimpy on the cash (lacked government funding) and suffered the cost of that lost opportunity.

  Without that NASA leadership in rocket engineering, several startup companies have, on their own, renewed the shine and reputation of the rocket-scientist. The Merlin engine advanced rocketry a bit, but then various startups did their own pioneering with methane as a fuel, creating the BE-4 and Raptor engines, both of which are successful. The raptors are showing that modern engines can be full of the best parts: no parts. Then there are the aerospike engines being tried on small launchers, Stoke Space’s unique propulsion configuration, and the recent rotating detonation rocket engine by startup Venus Aerospace.

  Wouldn’t it have been so much better for NASA if they had been the ones to fly these on their own rockets, and wouldn’t it have been nice if Marshall had had a replacement design (or even concept) ready for when the Shuttle would eventually be retired?

  Well, it would have been better for NASA, but the way it turned out, it was good for us, because now instead of getting more of the very little that government wants, We the People are taking control of space and are making sure that we get what We want, as measured by what people are willing to buy and pay for, and as measured by profits.

  “Had he (and Mr. Eagleson) been correct, China would have collapsed right with the Soviets.”

  Not really. The Chinese are very different than the Soviets were, and the Soviets had a quarter century head start on the Chinese. The Chinese have survived this long, because they moved in the direction of both free markets and a little capitalism, which has saved them from disaster, so far, and has brought out of poverty somewhere around half a billion people. Very different culture. Very different results. Probably a similar end, though.

  “Ike wanted to let the Soviets set the precedent.”

  Not really. He didn’t mind the Soviets being first, because then the precedent of overflights would be set, since the U.S. wouldn’t complain, but he was adamant that the U.S. not put anything even remotely military into orbit in order to make sure that the Soviets didn’t complain and set a very different precedent. Eisenhower was eager that the scientific community put up a scientific artificial satellite, because both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had announced that they would orbit the Earth for the International Geophysical Year. Eisenhower would have preferred that the U.S. get there first, but the Soviets did. Eisenhower hadn’t expected the resulting science-gap scare and the education-gap scandal in America.

  Dick Eagleson,
  Your list of Musk accomplishments is much more comprehensive, and includes more than I would have thought of, even if I hadn’t concentrated on space accomplishments.

  You wrote: “Never pleasant, but more like paper cuts than bullets.”

  Good way to phrase it. Hurts when it happens, but it is recoverable.
• Dick Eagleson

  October 29, 2025 at 2:09 am

  Jeff Wright,

  I see this “distraction” thing quite a lot anent Musk. The space cadets worry that Tesla, X, xAI and DOGE are “distracting” Musk from what he should really be doing, namely working full-time on SpaceX. The car guys think the same about SpaceX, X, xAI and DOGE. Neuralink and The Boring Company seem to get a pass from the car guys and space cadets as both seem to regard them more as Musk hobbies than “distractions.”

  The biggest actual “distraction” in Musk’s life – as he explained to Joe Rogan during one of their several quite revelatory discussions – is his own mind. Even with all he has done and is doing, he has more good ideas bubbling up constantly than he can possibly address in a single lifetime. “You wouldn’t want to be me,” is how he put it. Maybe not. But I can still lament the fact that he wasn’t part of a litter of identical quintuplets – with all due apologies to Mother Mae.

  Don’t worry about “distractions.” Pretty much all of Musk’s jobs have been part-time. It’s how he rolls. He’s been doing it for decades. Musk is very probably the master multi-tasker in all of human history. The only figures from the past who might challenge him for that distinction are Thomas Edison, Archimedes and Alexander the Great.

  “I lament how you look at MSFC guys as spongers. These aren’t baby mamas with kids by multiple fathers–I know some guys…they simply have been underfunded.”

  How else is one to regard 6,000 people who have sucked up tens of billions over 40 years while producing nothing but a handful of aborted concepts and expensive failures? Look at the freakin’ scorecard boyo! X-33, X-34, NASP, OSP, Ares 5, Ares 1, Altair, SLS, Orion! All stillborn except the last two and those underperform at insane cost and are pretty much just waiting for the axe to fall – even if they don’t kill a crew in the meantime. And these schleppers are your heroes? For the love of God, why? Underfunded! The mind fairly boggles to hear such arrant nonsense uttered with all appearances of a straight face.

  You don’t seem to know squat about Sowell. He has been, and remains, a prolific author. Read his books. There are also seemingly hundreds of hours of Sowell appearances on YouTube dating back decades – long, medium and short. Watch a few. That “culture doesn’t matter,” for example, is what Sowell’s detractors believe, not what he believes. I get the distinct impression your opinion of Sowell consists entirely of stuff you have heard or read by lefties of one stripe or another. Broaden your horizons.

  That would apply to the late, great P.J. O’Rourke too. I have all of his books. He was many things, but never a Sinophile. He knew the Soviet Union wouldn’t last because he visited it. One of the funniest things he ever wrote – published in Harper’s if I recall correctly – was his chronicle of a cruise trip he took to the USSR where most of his fellow travelers were, literally, “fellow travelers” – aging U.S. commies making their hajj to Moscow. These latter were quite miffed when Soviet authorities granted O’Rourke special privileges, such as factory visits, not offered to his cruisemates. He was a notorious right-winger by that time, and the Soviets knew that. But he was also a Contributing Editor to Car & Driver and the Soviets were still trying to market Ladas to the West – thus the privileged treatment. Some animals are more equal than others.

  Anyway, the PRC did come uncomfortably close to falling along with the Soviet Union. Or at least uncomfortably close by the standards of its ruler of the time, Deng Xiaoping. Absent a brutal atrocity in Tiananmen Square, the animal high spirits of 1989 might have done in the PRC as well.

  O’Rourke traveled in the PRC, but long after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He had never been one of those – far too many and too credulous – who thought the Soviet Union would be a permanent fixture of world affairs and I am aware of no such opinion of his to the effect that the PRC would last forever either.

  “China persists. That has to be cultural.”

  It’s not cultural so much as inertial. The PRC, in fact, won’t last. China, in fact, won’t last. It has terminal demographics. Half of its current population – which is already rather smaller than the conventional wisdom figure of 1.4 billion – will be dead by mid-century and the Han ethnicity will be almost gone by century’s end. Four decades of the One Child Policy, along with the drastic drop in fertility rates that has always accompanied rapid urbanization and industrialization, doom the PRC – and China, more broadly – irretrievably. The average age of a PRC citizen has doubled in the last half-century. The PRC population’s average age is rising more rapidly than that of any other large nation. There are fewer and fewer children being born. Much of the PRC – particularly its largest cities – have fertility rates below half of replacement level. As the late Herbert Stein once observed, “Things that can’t go on – don’t.”

  The PRC regime, itself, will implode far sooner than either of the mid- or end-of-century temporal benchmarks. That’s because it is also broke. The PRC national debt to GDP ratio is already far higher than ours with nearly all of the debt growth having occurred over the past dozen years. The combined debts of cities and regions is at least equal to the national debt and has been on the same upward curve. The PRC banking system is fundamentally insolvent with non-performing “loans” to state-owned entities dominating the books.

  Against all of this, the PRC continues to treat empty or barely-occupied housing developments and transport infrastructure as additions to national wealth. Ghost highways and ghost railroads serving ghost cities are not wealth, they are evidence of epic mismanagement.

  The PRC also supports the world’s 2nd-largest military establishment and may actually be spending more on weaponry annually than we are at this point. Their notional military budget is lower than ours, but theirs doesn’t include nearly as much in salaries for its conscript formations and nothing for benefits to veterans, both of which are major items on the US War Department’s budget.

  Then there is the PRC internal security apparat – the various population monitoring and secret police organizations. These actually cost as much or more than the regular military and have larger headcounts.

  The PRC has sought to pay for all of this by becoming the world’s workshop and exporting most of its output. The rest of the world is no longer willing to play that particular game of ball anymore because the PRC has also sought to use its trade as leverage to lean on other nations in various ways.

  The place, in sum, is a house of cards waiting for a vagrant breeze, a supersaturated solution awaiting arrival of a seed crystal – pick your analogy. It’s a metastable mess and will go the way of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact as or more quickly once the precipitating event occurs. The PRC lives on borrowed money and borrowed time.

  There are, of course, legions of credulous Westerners who see none of this and take the PRC’s well-organized founts of self-congratulatory happy talk completely at face value. The “inevitable” rise of the PRC and the equally “inevitable” decline of the US are favorite themes. American lefties are particularly inclined to parrot this twaddle as they so badly want it all to be true. Like their ideological fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who never ceased trying to hand this nation to the Soviets, the PRC is now the remaining Great Red Hope.

  “We will bury you,” a Soviet dictator once famously declared – famously then at any rate. There seem few enough who remember that utterance now. But the speaker of it is many decades dead and so is his erstwhile nation. The doughty Ukrainians are busily cutting the guts out of most of what remains of that failed empire – may they continue and soon succeed. Today’s credulous PRC partisans are going to be just as gobsmacked as were their pro-Soviet forbears when their own “most favored nation” follows its Soviet predecessor into the shadows.

  “Russians are most happy when miserable these days.”

  We shall see. Thus far, the average Russian hasn’t been much inconvenienced by Putin’s disastrous war. That has recently changed hugely what with more and more widespread gasoline famines and electricity blackouts now that the Ukes are really taking the gloves off and dishing back what they’ve been receiving the past three-plus years. A lot of Russians, it now seems, will have ample opportunities this winter to let their alleged gloomy masochism reach full flower as they are stuck in their homes, freezing in the dark. Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to hear many cries of, “Thank you Mistress! May I have another?”

  “It is my opinion that had Marshall had real money, we could have had troops rockets long ago. I think ABMA deserved the largesse the USAF got instead.”

  Just how useful those notional troop rockets would have been in that era seems, at best, a hard case to make. And then there is the fact that Huntsville wasn’t exactly cash-strapped at that point what with the Kennedy-LBJ Moon program getting 4+% of the federal budget. Going to the Moon was a much easier sell.

  “I think having real national money behind engineering is wise.”

  The evidence suggests otherwise with the one exception being WW2’s total national mobilization context. Certainly, anent manned space technology, the last four decades have been a desert where government engineering is concerned.

  Blair Ivey,

  AI isn’t yet near the point of displacing most human workers. But in an era of sub-replacement-level fertility rates in the entire developed world, we should, I think, see the imminent arrival of genuinely useful autonomous humanoid robots and self-driving vehicles as something closer to answered prayers than to a curse. That said, the factories are likely to notably trail the offices in replacement of human labor with AI. It will be still longer, if ever, before the skilled trades are much affected.

  One area to which I think almost no real consideration has been given is the potential of Optimus and his buddies to replace a lot of agricultural stoop labor now mostly done by illegal migrants at considerable cost to the US social order. Humanoid robots could render agriculture into something more resembling ultra-large-scale gardening than conventional farming.

  Monsanto and Union Carbide won’t be happy, but I can foresee a time not long hence when robots recognize and pull weeds and also selectively remove and kill pestiferous insects in fields, obviating the need for toxic chemicals. Fans of organic agriculture should be pleased as should HHS Sec’y. Kennedy or any like-minded successor.

  john hare,

  Oh yeah, go for it Dude! All best wishes! Keep us informed!

  Edward,

  Ditto, my brother!
• Edward

  October 29, 2025 at 1:37 pm

  Dick Eagleson,
  “Musk is very probably the master multi-tasker in all of human history. The only figures from the past who might challenge him for that distinction are Thomas Edison, Archimedes and Alexander the Great.”

  Thomas Edison’s secret was that he invented the think tank. He had a multitude of thinkers working for his company. One difference between Edison and Musk is that Musk has more than one think tank, each with its own thinkers.

  “Against all of this, the PRC continues to treat empty or barely-occupied housing developments and transport infrastructure as additions to national wealth. Ghost highways and ghost railroads serving ghost cities are not wealth, they are evidence of epic mismanagement.”

  Many economists seem to use wealth as a measurement point, but I disagree. I think of prosperity as a measurement, because wealth can be held by a few, but a prosperous nation has a better distribution of the fruits of the wealth. Rather than a nation with many in poverty and a few with wealth (e.g. the Soviet Union), a prosperous nation has a large and healthy middle class (e.g. the United States). Prosperity comes from the ability to innovate and from the benefits of that innovation. In the United States and several western nations, profits are the personal reward for innovation and for finding better efficiencies for existing products (also innovation). Where there are no personal rewards for innovation, there is little progress. Lack of reward was one of the Soviet Union’s problems with its space program in the 1960s.

  They had only one guy who was innovating ways to look like the Soviets were beating the Americans in space, but the Americans had far more than just the one famous innovator, which is why America figured out a very efficient way to perform Project Apollo. America’s NASA and several of her companies and universities working on Apollo came up with a host of methods and lots of hardware that lightened payloads, kept people alive in harsh environments, and navigated despite the landmarks being few and literally far between.

  It is no accident that the American Saturn V worked virtually perfectly on its first test launch and why the Soviet N1 never made it to orbit. The incentives were and are better in the U.S. than they ever were in the S.U.

  China might do well in its improvements upon the technology that they steal, but they still have to steal the technology.

  China’s ghost cities look like they have value, but doesn’t all real estate (that is why it is called real)? However, any building that lies empty is not as valuable to the community, society, or the nation as the building that is occupied.

  Worse, the word is that these empty buildings were not built with quality in mind. But then, if no one will occupy them (residential, commercial, or industrial), why waste precious national resources when building them?

  “ The PRC has sought to pay for all of this by becoming the world’s workshop and exporting most of its output. The rest of the world is no longer willing to play that particular game of ball anymore because the PRC has also sought to use its trade as leverage to lean on other nations in various ways. ”

  Trump’s tariffs may have an effect on this game of ball. If American’s greatly reduce their purchase of Chinese goods, will that nation’s revenues fall too low for the nation to stay viable? Could Trump become China’s Reagan?

  “And then there is the fact that Huntsville wasn’t exactly cash-strapped at that point what with the Kennedy-LBJ Moon program getting 4+% of the federal budget. ”

  I suppose that is the real proof that free market capitalism is better than communism/socialism/marxism (however people want to describe the Soviet Union, because these days I’m hearing a wide variety of weird descriptors of its governance system). The capitalist America was able to spend such a large portion of its federal budget on the successful Moon mission without going bankrupt. (Too bad we are now spending a larger portion of our federal and state budgets paying people to not work — to not be productive.) That makes it matter less that we had used a Soviet style central-control system to manage the endeavor.

  Unfortunately, a similar central-control management system has failed to perform the much less daunting task of doing it again to Beat the Chinese™. This time around, the incentives are not the same, so the results are different. We are having some amount of success, but it takes far longer.

  Fortunately, one of our capitalist free market companies has expressed interest in getting back to the Moon, so maybe when NASA fails to create a sustainable lunar base, our free market capitalist commercial space industry can do the job and make a profit with their own lunar base(s).