“The solar system is open for business”
Link here. The article gives an independent look at the surging capitalism that appears to be driving the resurgent rocket and space industry in the U.S. and elsewhere.
As the author notes in his conclusion:
There was a time when space enthusiasts waited on taxpayer-funded space programs to realize their dreams of routine spaceflight and humanity’s expansion into the cosmos. It’s been a very long wait. Now, privatized launch services are opening up access to space. A new wave of exploration missions is widening human knowledge of the solar system. It’s only a matter of time before entrepreneurs, particularly those with deep pockets, figure out how to make money out there.
I plug this article not because he quotes me extensively, but because he came to these conclusions independent of me, and only called me for comments because he thought I might add depth to his conclusions. That the ideas I have been pushing since the late 1990s are now percolating into the larger culture is a very very good sign.
While in those early days the reporters I spoke to were routinely horrified by the idea of a privately financed space mission and wondered if the government should even allow it (they really would say this), today the idea is now considered the right way to go.
This is progress, even in this time of blacklists and a government focused on crushing its citizens.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Link here. The article gives an independent look at the surging capitalism that appears to be driving the resurgent rocket and space industry in the U.S. and elsewhere.
As the author notes in his conclusion:
There was a time when space enthusiasts waited on taxpayer-funded space programs to realize their dreams of routine spaceflight and humanity’s expansion into the cosmos. It’s been a very long wait. Now, privatized launch services are opening up access to space. A new wave of exploration missions is widening human knowledge of the solar system. It’s only a matter of time before entrepreneurs, particularly those with deep pockets, figure out how to make money out there.
I plug this article not because he quotes me extensively, but because he came to these conclusions independent of me, and only called me for comments because he thought I might add depth to his conclusions. That the ideas I have been pushing since the late 1990s are now percolating into the larger culture is a very very good sign.
While in those early days the reporters I spoke to were routinely horrified by the idea of a privately financed space mission and wondered if the government should even allow it (they really would say this), today the idea is now considered the right way to go.
This is progress, even in this time of blacklists and a government focused on crushing its citizens.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Great Article!
(I would expect no less from the Mercatus Center.)
related-
“What’s Your Moonshot?”
Don Boudreaux/ Mercatus Center
November 21, 2017
https://youtu.be/41g_Mpfcnd0
3:17
“…..In 1978 after 40 years of bureaucratic rule, a bipartisan effort opened up the airline industry to competition. The changes were transformational. Air travel, once only for the well-off, is now a common way to get home for the holidays. Overnight shipping was virtually impossible; now it’s practically a requirement for customers and business alike. To what problems can we apply this paradigm now? What else is locked-in and off-limits to innovation? Tell us: what’s your moonshot?”
Wayne, the rise of fracking … in the face of Climate Change Cultism and its hold upon our government … is another example of the transformational thinking you describe. It has not only transformed our economy, it is indirectly transforming the geopolitics of the MidEast now by putting our nation in a position where we can walk away from the region if needed 0- and they know it.
It appears that the essential element in such transformations, is assuring that government intervention in these areas is kept to a minimum. Unfortunately, it also appears that avoiding such intervention requires initially remaining under-the-radar of the State’s busybodies, so that they don’t care enough to intervene until enough success is achieved to make that intervention politically suicidal.
Given the desires of our technocrats to micromanage us in their self-righteous hubris, staying under-the-radar is not assured.
“This is progress …”
And those who engage in it are progressives.
The backward ones bear the wrong label and language is powerful. Space owns the narrative, I wonder?
Government works to frustrate free enterprise and capitalism, the places where entrepreneurs thrive. It will attempt to stifle it in space exploration, as well.
Robert wrote: “That the ideas I have been pushing since the late 1990s are now percolating into the larger culture is a very very good sign.”
In the 1990s, Dr Alan Binder attempted to make the Lunar Prospector probe using private funding. He ran into the same kind of problems, people thinking that commercial space exploration was not the way to go.
From the article: “‘… a lot of the resource talk is about water because the profit centers in space are not going to be profit centers for us on Earth. They are going to be profit centers for other people in space, like water. You can make money providing water.”
During the California Gold Rush, the miners were not the ones who made the most money; it was the suppliers, the shopkeepers.
“The fate of these firms and other early space ventures comes down to the formidable barriers to entry—first and foremost, the high cost of access to space.”
The author of the article, Michael Puttré, failed to note that the reason Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was to reduce that cost of access to space. He has succeeded, and if Starship works as expected, that cost will drop even more dramatically.
From my view I think we will need government hands on and hands off.
The new entrepreneurs are entering the space markets, Keeping them back are the traditionalists (e.g. JAXA) and the bureaucrats in the “free market” countries who see their kingdoms threatened.
But then there is the governance of space. This is THE New World. I think contrary to popular belief, the laws of space ore not even close to being written – or even considered. We have not even seen what the issues will be. There are thousands of situations that the new industries that have not been invented yet have not encountered. Here we need some type of government hand.
Then there is the governments themselves in space. China and Russia. How will disputes be handled – presence of power rules? Will issues in space require terrestrial action? The Space Force, will it conduct “Freedom of Navigation” and “Safe Passage” exercises? Our overwhelming capability enable that now. Will we have that capability in space?
It’s a new world and it needs government and it doesn’t need government