I’ll be a little impressed when it becomes intelligent enough to not help students cheat on their term papers and stops aiding and abetting fraud. It is impressive, though, that AI is able to make up stuff and create web pages just to support its lies.

1862 to 1942 (pre-WWII):
– Astronomy and the great telescopes used to be built and operated by citizens, not the government
– Telephone
– Electric light
– moving pictures (with color and synchronized sound)
– wireless telegraph, which led to:
– radio (voice & music) and:
– television
– TNT/Dynamite (high explosives)
– synthetic dyes
– synthetic fertilizer
– anesthetics and surgery
– antibiotics
– The automobile
– the airplane
– the rocket, invented before WWII, but government made it practical (capable of taking payloads to orbit) a decade after WWII
– Air conditioning and refrigeration.
– government commissioned the invention of the jet

1942 to 2000 (government takeover of scientific exploration — central planning and control):
– the transistor (invented by citizen scientists)
– the laser (invented by citizen scientists)
– the integrated circuit (invented by universities but developed for NASA), which led to:
– The internet was military until someone invented hypertext transfer protocol (http) to make obsolete the file transfer protocol (FTP)
– the microcomputer (but these computers are used little differently than the telephone, television, and boardgames), which led to:
– the cell phone (created by citizen scientists and engineers, but these are used little differently than the telephone, television, boardgames, and the camera)

2000 to 2025:
– Additive manufacturing, AKA 3-D printing (invented by citizen engineers)
– the reusable, low-cost orbital launch vehicle (rejected by government scientists but invented by citizen engineers)

I count 8 revolutionary inventions in the past 83 years but 17 in the 80 years before that. The rate has decreased.

And, yes, Thomas Edison’s only personal invention was the think tank, giving him the right to have his name included on the patents from his lab.

A century ago, government did not do much scientific funding. Many of our great observatories were funded and made by wealthy citizens. Now if government does not want to do it, it may not get done. It certainly explains why we have had such a drop-off in the number of revolutionary inventions.

Big telescopes are still being built by private citizens in modern times. The Keck Telescopes are examples.

I’m more concerned with government doing things it shouldn’t be doing than with any alleged lacunae in their agendas. Anything actually worth doing that is not yet being done will be taken on by private means sooner or later – assuming, as Blair notes – that government doesn’t actually get in the way.

I don’t know that we have had “a drop-off in the number of revolutionary inventions.” What such inventions do you count in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries?

I think the most pervasive and influential inventions of the 19th century were the concept of interchangeable mechanical parts and cheap and abundant steel. The first came early in the 19th century and the second at mid-19th century. Both made possible most of the rest of the great inventions of the latter half of that century. And steel continues to be very important, of course. A third great invention of the 19th century was organized research and development – the only invention of Thomas Edison’s that he couldn’t patent but which made possible most of the others he could.

In the 20th century, electronics was a major field for invention as were automobiles, aviation and rocketry. Then, at mid-century, semiconductors re-invented electronics and have been getting more and more important since.

The key invention of the 21st century seems likely to be practical artificial intelligence. AI is already pretty significant and will only become more pervasive and more useful from here on. One should also give a nod to Elon Musk’s re-invention of rocketry as a reusable technology and his development of practical electric vehicles. Precise genetic editing is also a 21st century invention and will have enormous long-term importance.

So where’s the lack? I’m not seeing it.

And regulate out of existence anyone who tries.

A century ago, government did not do much scientific funding. Many of our great observatories were funded and made by wealthy citizens. Now if government does not want to do it, it may not get done. It certainly explains why we have had such a drop-off in the number of revolutionary inventions.
__________
Blair Ivey wrote: “Intelsat will pay Northrop Grumman $13 million per year for the time MEV is attached to IS-901, or $65 million total.”

About the time that the Intelsat 900 series was being built, I used the following rule-of-thumb costs for a geostationary commercial communication satellite: $100 million for the satellite, $100 million for the launch, and $50 million for the insurance. Launch costs have come down a bit, and insurance prices have also become lower over the past quarter century. The $65 million cost is around this estimated replacement cost, so Intelsat may have gotten its money’s worth.
__________
And, Jeff, you are correct. That is the one.

More and more of such refilling business will be in MEO and LEO, not GEO. The future of Expensive Big Fat Targets in GEO is dim. Essentially all such military capability will be repotted from EBFTs into proliferated, far cheaper satellites with shorter replacement schedules deployed in MEO and LEO.

And, if Astranis and other small GEOsat makers are successful, remaining GEOsats will be smaller and far cheaper which will change the extend-vs.-replace computation.

Yeesh…

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/13/northrop-grummans-space-tow-truck-has-finally-arri.aspx

And this bit of union protectionism:

“MEV-1 also needed a licence from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA license is required because the MEV-1 has cameras for docking that could also image the Earth, thus necessitating a remote-sensing license.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle

It is surely only a matter of time until satellites are equipped with standardized refueling ports, and can be tanked up in orbit… Even pinko, Commie me can see this being a lucrative business for private enterprise

Commercial space is finally with us… Let private companies deal with the commercial stuff, and let government deal with the scientific stuff that has no direct commercial pay day, but advances our understanding of the cosmos… ( Not just NASA, but ESA, JAXA, and the Chinese space agency, who seem pretty happy to share their samples, and findings…. Some things are bigger than politics!)