A Cautionary Tale of New Space
Selling Space: Entrepreneurs Offer Dreams and Schemes in the Hope of Making a Buck Off the Cosmos, Houston Press
“… Dula is not just a NewSpace pioneer, he’s a defendant in a $49 million fraud suit calling him a con artist with a warehouse full of antiquated space junk that was never meant to get off the ground. It’s the second time an investor has accused him of fraud — a Houston woman, Donna Beck, previously sued him for allegedly duping her into an asteroid-mining scam. Beck and Dula agreed to dismiss the case, with prejudice, in early 2014. In the years after Dula accepted his prestigious [Space Frontier Foundation Pioneer of NewSpace] award, his space capsules have been to London’s Parliament Square, Saudi Arabia and an auction house in Brussels. They just haven’t been to space. The man who would sue Dula, Japanese billionaire Takafumi Horie, was actually considered a con man himself in his native country, where he was convicted of manipulating stock prices in his Internet company and sentenced to 21 months in prison.”
There must be some filtering at work, because “invest in space!” definitely does not seem like something that most people would be willing to do* – it’s not like other cons. Maybe the only people left who give folks like Dula money are the truly deluded, the equivalent of the folks who buy into Nigerian Money Order scams.
* Although it does have the combination of massive dreams, low funds, and speculative profitability.
Hmm….. I wonder if the Mars One folks should be added to that list?
I used to think they were scamming people, but now I think they’re just that delusionally optimistic about it. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I agree about Mars One. They believe in their business model, just as the dozens of failed Ansari X-Prize teams believed in their designs.
New industries are high risk. Individuals who are not able to tolerate such risks shouldn’t be investing in them.
And sometimes the investors are the ones that drag the firm under. XCOR appears to be a good example of that with the new investors driving the creative engineers that founded it out believing they could run it better.
It’s a tough business, and a speculative one. Art Dula is an honest man who to my knowledge never said anything that wasn’t accurate. But people with money either believe they will get a quick and sure return on their investment, or they don’t invest at all. There doesn’t seem to be anything in writing to show he promised them profits or misrepresented himself. If they invested thinking it was a sure thing, what they heard may not be what he really said;
I’ve never heard his sales pitch, but it is possible to put together completely true statements in a way which creates an incorrect impression. When someone does that on purpose, I’m not sure “honest” is the right description. Not that I necessarily mind. Doing that well takes talent, and if the victim was looking for a quick, easy and unbelievably good profit, I don’t object to a good con job.
And the “Excalibur” scam continues.
For some reason, people have made Art Dula some kind of space commerce “saint”. And year after year, with no progress made except shipping around old Soviet space hardware on display they have no right to fly, people still refuse to see that the emperor has no clothes.
This just sounds like the classic case of a sour startup investor trying to
blame their high risk decision on someone else.
There was a reason Art Dula won that award. He was key to licensing the first commercial space launch in the United States in 1982. His Congressional testimony regarding that launch led directly to the creation of the FAA AST and the current favorable regulatory regime for space commerce. He was also instrumental in making Russian boosters available for commercial use in the West via International Launch Services. He also arranged the sale of both the Russian rover and the Russian Moon dust at auction, establishing a precedent for private ownership of both rovers on the Moon and lunar samples. He also rescued the last piece of Sputnik which now is on display in the Smithsonian. As Robert Heinlein’s lawyer he was key to creating the Heinlein Trust and ensuring that Robert Heinlein’s works inspire a new space generation.
Just comparing that record to the investor that is filing the lawsuit says it all.
Space ventures are always high risk. His idea to use surplus Russian hardware was basically good, he was unable to raise enough capital to close the business model. It is no different than dozens of other failed space ventures over the last 30 years.
if you want to pick a space scam, then the current NASA “Journey to Mars” has all the rest beat hands down. The current agency leadership has no intention of going to Mars, but they will happily milk the tax payer of every dime they can.