Sorry, but you can't convince me that the test of a reusable rocket system is supposed to involve destroying the launch site—which was reusable on every prior generation of space flight technology—and launching debris thousands of feet away.
#SpaceX is not a serious company, it's a clown show, and it should not have a single dollar in government funding, much less billions.
@maxkennerly @theogrin @michaelgemar @GreenFire
It *is* hugely expensive to *buy* those products too. What you just described is not something inherent to private enterprise, it’s simply the argument that government can’t tool up a whole new industry cheaper than those who *already* own the assets.
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@michaelgemar @theogrin @GreenFire @maxkennerly
That dynamic isn’t at play (yet) for space exploration, and government is giving away mountains of money and prior R&D. I don’t think most people realize how much government funded basic science, and ‘economic stimulus’ underlies most supposedly efficient private enterprise.
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@GreenFire @michaelgemar @theogrin @maxkennerly
It’s easy to look efficient if you can externalize half the cost.
The same logic is behind the rush to privatize government service…
if it’s off *my* books, it stops existing to economic conservatives, but we all know that it’s either government or the people who pay the piper in the end.
@maxkennerly @theogrin @michaelgemar @GreenFire
Not necessarily at this point, because private enterprise already owns the materials and factories (some of which Canada gave or sold to them at a discount)… I am making the observation that the putative ‘efficiency’ of private enterprise is a fairytale.
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@theogrin @maxkennerly @michaelgemar @GreenFire
As an example: air travel.
If you take all the money Canada has poured into the aerospace industry for r&d and in subsidy, and add to it all the downstream effects and costs that will be borne by government (or directly by citizens), and add that to the cost of buying transportation from ‘private’ enterprise, it not nearly the awesome bargain it’s made out to be.
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@michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin @maxkennerly
“but SpaceX is *cheaper* than any other launch provider NASA uses”
But that’s true only if we discount those foundations you just mentioned and sweep them off the books… so when we compare private vs government provision we’re comparing apples and oranges, or perhaps it would be more apt to say we’re comparing cucumbers and pickles.
@DavidM_yeg @michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin @maxkennerly don’t forget that govt is required to meet strict tolerances. They need to focus on specific mission parameters from the initial design.
Private companies like SpaceX don’t. They can cut corners. They can create a rocket like Starship that has zero capability to do any of its mission parameters and leave that to a nebulous future design that they will still have to figure out.
@michaelgemar @DavidM_yeg @GreenFire @theogrin @maxkennerly not talking Falcon which is based off of proven technology decades old.
We are talking specifically Starship.
@michaelgemar what I am trying to say is that you are comparing apples and oranges. SLS was designed from the start to meet all mission parameters. It is ready now for human flight. For cargo.
Starship is absolutely not. It definitely has no capability to take humans. They still have to design and test that. So any costs used need to factor all of that in too.
Basically - the costs used by Musk are hiding key details.
@Danielsand SLS costs are by no means transparent. And the process that developed and supported it is, to put it bluntly, corrupt.
As for Starship, it is *also* part of the Artemis program — a variant of it will be the lunar lander. But unlike SLS, the price NASA is paying SpaceX is *fixed*, so it doesn’t matter to NASA how much it costs SpaceX to do the development — if SpaceX spends more, they just make less.
@michaelgemar @theogrin @GreenFire @maxkennerly
I have a couple of questions:
Who built and paid for the launch facilities that launch services are using?
Do they really pay fair price for using them or is their use subsidized?
Who will pay for the damage done in this most recent misuse of those facilities?
@theogrin @maxkennerly @GreenFire @michaelgemar
re Starship that’s good to hear… but how much of SpaceX is government funded (not the vc rhetoric, but actual contracts and funding?)
@michaelgemar @theogrin @GreenFire @maxkennerly
I haven’t heard a convincing argument that private enterprise is inherently better that government development.
Here’s what I think:
Private enterprise is great at externalizing, offloading, and downloading costs, reducing quality and immediate expense. *Sometimes* there’s value in that.
Governments can spend the money needed for development and quality and safety before it will ‘pay a return’.
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@theogrin @michaelgemar @GreenFire @maxkennerly
The best results often come from an interplay between these factors
BUT
the Pollyanna idea that business is inherently efficient is wasteful and harmful, especially when it is used to line to pockets of the wealthy.
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@DavidM_yeg @theogrin @GreenFire @maxkennerly I complete agree with all these sentiments. (As I said earlier, the most obvious area where private business has been terrible is healthcare.) There’s nothing magic about private business.
But the flip side in the space domain is large contractors who get fat sucking up public money with giant cost-plus contracts to produce vehicles designed to spread funds to as many congressional districts and states as possible.
@maxkennerly @theogrin @GreenFire @timjclevenger @michaelgemar
… and there it is. There’s always hidden subsidies somewhere.
@michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin I think "physical goods" requires some differentiation.
If the government is purchasing physical goods that have a competitive non-government market, sure, purchasing from private industry is likely more efficient. Passenger vehicles, chairs, printers, etc.
But for customized items or goods without a competitive non-government market like spacecraft and weaponry, well...
@michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin There's a commercial market for the smaller satellite-launching rockets.
There's no commercial market for manned spaceflight—puffery from investors about space tourism doesn't count, as Virgin Orbit's failure shows—and that's a huge source of SpaceX's revenue. That's just government money going to billionaires so they can blow stuff up for lulz.
@maxkennerly @GreenFire @theogrin SpaceX is using its commercial launchers for crew as well — the only difference is what’s on top of the rocket.
And as NASA has shown with the hugely-expensive crewed Space Launch System, they are terrible at low-cost launch capabilities.
@maxkennerly @michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin
Am I the only one worried about musk being the go-to guy for putting stuff into orbit?
I feel like it's almost a certainty that in the next decade or two, they'll be a catastrophic domino/pinball effect with all the junk that'll be deposited up there, costing us A LOT of satellite capabilities & maybe even the ability to do anything in space.
The Kessler Syndrome will be another one of those things we let happen, because of convenience and money
@michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin @maxkennerly
While that may be true, shouldn't the government also *own* parts of the company then, according to its subsidies?
It's already showing that Musk doesn't align with US policy in every case and sees himself as unbound by any interests (i.e. taxes from company, capabilities) behind that financial support (cf. Ukraine and Starlink).
@michaelgemar @GreenFire @theogrin @maxkennerly It would be quite simple for the government to produce those capabilities. Simply nationalize the existing companies.
The government is already paying huge subsidies and never-to-be-repaid loans huge manufacturing corporations (cars, aircraft, microchip, pharmaceuticals and space to name but a few). If we are paying the bills, why aren't we calling the shots?
The risks are already nationalized--why are the profits privatized?
@davidr @michaelgemar @theogrin @maxkennerly
If China makes our Cold War go hot, those industries most likely will have to be nationalized I reckon in order to meet that challenge.
Hopefully, that doesn't happen and thankfully Russia has proven to be a paper tiger.
@GreenFire @michaelgemar @theogrin @maxkennerly aye. I don’t have it on me. But there was reporting out there that showed he was not cheaper in any way than a normal rocket on a per launch basis.
He either outright lies about the cost, or did not include the most costly aspects in his calculations that he boasts about.
@Danielsand @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly
As it's been noted elsewhere in threads, one of the benefits of private companies is the externalization of costs, and the obfuscation thereof. It can be all too easy to say 'x project doesn't use y government funds' when it's spread over z subsidies for a groups.
Externalities are the bane of proper financial reporting.
@theogrin @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly or they outright just don’t include the most costly elements in their reporting of cost figures.
For example when Musk was talking about how cheap his tunnels were - he didn’t include any of the actual expensive costs that the municipal tunnels must.
@theogrin @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly
See:
“The figure does not include the costs of research, development or equipment, the company said, and it is not clear whether it includes the money spent on property acquisition or labor.”
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-elon-musk-tunnel-20181218-story.html
Boring Co.'s first tunnel runs for a mile through Hawthorne. It isn't a wildly popular route, but Musk hopes research done there will help his company build a network of tunnels that will whisk commuters beneath Southern California at speeds of up to 130 mph.
@Danielsand @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly
In other words, there was money, and it changed hands, but exactly what happened to it is a matter not only for fiscal scholars, but the philosophers.
@theogrin @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly yup. Musk is not some magical genious that can do things faster, cheaper or better. He is just very good at hiding how funds are spent and the media refuses to ask him about it.
Take another example - the myth that Tesla does not marketing or advertising. It is blatantly not true under the slightest scrutiny.
@GreenFire @michaelgemar @theogrin @maxkennerly
I just read a study report on that.
It only seems to have been true for the telecommunications industry.
@HistoPol @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly
Only to a certain extent, at that. We're in the midst of a group of cases in the US and Canada where there is typically only one telecom for internet and phone in a given area, due to an elaborate strategy of noncompetition, which allows prices to be set at a whim. I have my doubts that my landline, for example, something which I need, is worth $70/month, but that's how much I have to pay for it.
@HistoPol @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly
This is ultimately the reason why capitalism doesn't ever work for public services, because the point of a business, under capitalism, is not to provide a service. It's to extract as much money for as little effort as possible. Providing that service may allow them to extract that money, but without enough regulations to basically turn it into a public industry again, they will always defraud the customers to no end.
I agree with you on this. However, at any time when there is no competition, the rules of the market cannot apply.
USD 70 is outrageously high and seems to be the drawback of living in a remote area.
I see this as an outlier problem, from a market perspective. This is highly unusual for most consumers, I'd say.
IDK, what are the costs of a satellite phone in your region?
@HistoPol @GreenFire @michaelgemar @maxkennerly
I live smack-dab in the middle of a university city in south-central Ontario, Canada -- not exactly the boondocks. And this is from Bell, who used to be the name in US/Canada telecoms. And we're fortunate - in some areas like St. Catherines and the Niagara region in general, Cogeco has a stranglehold on the market. We get to choose between Bell and Rogers here.
Basic cell phone? Local calls, no data, a handful of texts? $40/mo.
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