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Commercialization

Has Space Commercialization Finally Arrived?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 28, 2018
Filed under
Has Space Commercialization Finally Arrived?

What Trump Gets Right About NASA, Space Exploration, Eric Stallmer, CSF
“Today, a new generation of commercial space companies is taking the lead on space exploration and aerospace innovation. … Other firms are developing commercial spacecraft systems to reach the moon and asteroids, land on the surface of other planets and preparing to deploy commercial habitats in space. Despite this progress, some inside the space community remain nostalgic about the government owning and controlling space assets. Late last year at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space annual conference, for instance, then-NASA administrator Charlie Bolden told audience members that he “is not a big fan of commercial investment in large launch vehicles. … The alternative, which lawmakers need to begin insisting on? Firm, fixed price contracts. Under this model, which works best with privately owned space hardware, taxpayers shoulder far less risk – and companies are incentivized to complete projects on time and under budget.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

54 responses to “Has Space Commercialization Finally Arrived?”

  1. Michael Spencer says:
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    One wonders about the timing of this. What if a President took this course in 1992? or 96? or 2006?

    The current President comes along with half-baked concepts, easy explantions for very difficult, nuanced problems. Some of this spaghetti against the wall will make sense, some not. Is he right about space? Or is it a conicdence of timing?

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      The Obama Administration did try to kill Ares I and Ares V. It was Congress who mandated NASA build SLS. Ugh. Hopefully we’ll see SLS die soon. Every year it lives is more money wasted.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        The Obama Administration was successful in killing Constellation and a return to the Moon, and would have downsized NASA if given the opportunity. But after recognizing the votes that would be lost in a battleground state like Florida it just turned it over to Senator Nelson in exchange for a symbolic victory.

        Also remember that the commercial efforts under the Obama Administration was mainly due to the efforts of Lori Garver, so its not surprising the Administrator Bolden saw little value in them.

        By contrast Rep. Bridenstine, as a former space entrepreneur, both understands and sees value in space commerce and would support it at NASA. That is probably the real reason Senator Nelson and Senator Rubio oppose him.

        • Michael Kaplan says:
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          Do you have any evidence that Obama “would have downsized NASA if given the opportunity?” Sounds like “fake news”. Obama had Constellation cancelled after it because clear that its goals were incompatible with any achievable budget. It will be interesting to see what 45’s return to the Moon program will look like once some reality is introduced. Human landing’s not cheap.

          • mfwright says:
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            When Obama was campaigning in 2008 he suggested cancelling VSE and use the funds for education, shocked Democrats got him to back off on that suggestion. However Constellation was running way over budget, way behind schedule so it made sense to kill it. His announcement while visiting KSC will always be remembered regarding the Moon, “been there, no need to go back” but everyone missed his proposal to add money for R&D of a heavy lift launcher.

            But wait, it gets murky. Wayne Hale posted in his blog he was not pleased with Augustine II commission because options to be presented had to be limited to $3 billion [a little more could have provide better options of worthy of a nation’s space program].

          • Eric says:
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            Here is an article by Jeff Foust from 2008 that explains what people refer to when they say this. You make up your own mind what this meant:

            http://www.spacepolitics.co

            Another article from 2007 where he said he would cut NASA to pay for education programs

            http://www.spacepolitics.co

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            How much sense does it make to take what any politician says in a campaign as actual policy when they are in office? If we did that, we’d have a total field day with 45. What evidence exists that Obama wanted to downsize NASA?

        • tutiger87 says:
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          And you don’t think Trump would, if given the means and opportunity?

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Do what? Kill NASA? From what I have heard by folks who would know both are big supporters of space exploration.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Bolden played both sides of the isle. His public face down played New Space for heavy-lift and deep-space, but behind the scenes NASA under his administration pushed a very big rock down a very slippery slope that everyone here could see was only going to lead in one direction. Then NASA started NextStep…a deep space development program…as another Space Act Agreement thing. I picture him in a cloak and top hat, waving a magic wand shaped like SLS, making Congressional funding disappear and pulling partnership agreements out from behind brightly colored napkins.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          While I’ve been quite critical of the General, I will say that you are quite right about the difficulty of his job.

    • Bob Mahoney says:
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      Can you specify which half-baked concepts of which you write?

      And sometimes easy explanations are what is missing from discussions that have become unnecessarily nuanced for the sake of nuance.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I’d agree that, from time to time, nuance seems piled upon itself and for its own sake, and that a more direct approach is better.

        I’d also say that a fair amount of wisdom is required to tell when to use a hammer, or not.

  2. Fred says:
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    There are some things private industry just isn’t going to do. Anything that doesn’t make them a profit. So it needs to be a mix, no one solution for everything. But, yea, cost-plus contracts should be avoided.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Agreed, but over the last 10 or so years we’ve seen the private launch industry change focus dramatically. SpaceX was the laughing stock of the “old space” companies 10 years ago.
      But 2017 saw SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 more than any other launch vehicle in its class. SpaceX is currently dominating the launch industry and the “old space” companies are scrambling to play catch up.

      It’s shake-ups like this that prove that private industry can build new launch vehicles far cheaper than the government ever could with cost-plus style contracts.

      But when it comes to things like building the next generation space telescope, yeah, only the government can realistically do that given the complexity and high cost. That will eventually change too, given time, but when the government is investing billions of dollars in a program like the James Webb Space Telescope, investors will NOT want to compete with the government, so there will be “no money” for a commercial large astronomical space telescope.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      That is not correct. Just look at all the museums and observatories funded by private wealthy individuals, the expeditions funded by private groups like the National Geographic Society and private museums.

      Most of the exploration of Antarctica and the Arctic was funded privately before WWII. But when the U.S. government started funding polar exploration as part of the Cold War private industry stopped since it didn’t see any point being in competition with the deep pockets of the tax payers. The 1947-1948 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition was the last one privately funded, and the first to include a woman.

      I know its hard for folks raised in the big government science era following WWII, but if NASA disappeared tomorrow space exploration would go on privately. There would be a transition period as there usually is when government funding drys up, but it would transition to the pre-WWII private funding model again.

      • Michael Kaplan says:
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        Sounds like a fantasy. Hard to imagine a privately funded space science program that would produce scientific results of even 1% of what SMD does.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          I guess to someone who grew up with big science it seems that way, but take a look what privately funded observatories and polar explorations did in their day. Before WWII it was almost all private. The only government observatories in the U.S. were the Naval Observatory and the Smithsonian, and the Smithsonian Institution was founded originally with a private gift.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            That was then. This is now. If you spend any time looking at the highest priority scientific questions that are the focus of our efforts to address, most require the resources far beyond the willingness and ability of private donors to provide. The complexity of the hardware needed to pursue modern science is mostly far beyond the kinds of facilities you are describing. And in most cases, the pursuit of this science will have little a priori “technological dot product” with commercial needs.

          • imhoFRED says:
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            It is possible to get science out of massively bloated projects like JWST, but is is NOT required to spend that much to do good science.

            Kepler is a great example of a mission that cost much, much less than JWST, but literally exploded with scientifically significant results. It was funded with gov’t money, but the scale of it would have fit within a private observatory budget, especially now that SpaceX has lowered launch costs.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            I love Kepler, too, but you are comparing a Discovery mission with a Flagship. Even at the Discovery class, one is talking ~$700 life cycle costs. I’ve yet to see a non-Government $700M space science mission. Show me one. There are folks out there trying to create one, but nothing yet as far as I know.

            HIstory tells us that costs scale for space observatories with Cost ~ (Aperture diameter)**2.4. There’s a lot of great science that can be accomplished with smaller apertures (under 2m), e.g., Discovery and MIDEX, but the highest priority science usually requires increases in apertiure to obtain the required sensitivity and/or resolution to accomplish the science. Aperture size goes up driving pointing and stability requirements. If observing in the IR, ==> cryogenic temperatures. This stuff isn’t cheap. Maybe new architectures, e.g., in-space assembly/manufacturing, could change the cost-aperture relationship in the future.

            Launch costs are not normally cost drivers for space astronomy missions.

          • fcrary says:
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            I guess I disagree in three ways.

            First, I don’t think we should be comparing Kepler and JWST based on Discovery or flagship status. That’s about cost and programatics. I’d rather look at the science, and what equally good science could be done for the same price. What could, for example, 20 smaller (Kepler-sized) telescopes do relative to JWST? (I’m using $8.8 billion and $450 million; lets either include launch and extended mission costs or not.)

            Second, I don’t think the “highest priority science” necessarily requires large apertures. A committee, writing a decadal survey, may have said that. But they may or may not have been asked to consider opportunity cost (if we go for big-aperture missions, we’re bailing on all the science that can be done with smaller apertures). Even if they did consider this, they weren’t looking at a realistic cost for something like JWST.

            In the case of planetary, many people involved in the decadal survey said Curiosity would not have been as high a priority if they had been told it would cost over $2.5 billion rather than $600 million. The following survey was specifically charged with getting realistic cost estimates and taking them into consideration when setting priorities. I’m not sure how this works for the astrophysics decadal surveys.

            Finally, I think launch costs are, indirectly, a driver for space telescopes. Consider sounding rockets (and many of them are, briefly, space telescopes.) They operate on almost an “oops, that didn’t work, let’s try again” philosophy. High launch costs are one of the reasons no one does that with orbiting space telescopes. That drives requirements for reliability and that drives cost.

            In a similar way, mass drives cost. A Falcon Heavy could get about 12 tonnes to the planned orbit for JWST if expended everything. JWST is actually about 6.5 tonnes. There are many places where it would be easy to solve a problem by throwing mass at it. When the launch vehicle doesn’t allow that, you usually end up having to solve the problem by throwing money at it.

          • imhoFRED says:
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            Agreed, and well said.

            Two thoughts that seem to echo your points:

            1) Cheaper missions, that are scientifically useful, can be made if the program focuses on price as meaningful metric. Not sure we live in that world, however.

            2) Bespoke, fit everything into a relatively tiny space, and tiny mass, and have it handle every contingency for decades, with exactly one try to get it right, is a horrible way to structure any program. Why do we build spacecraft that way in 2018? We don’t have to do it that way — even in a gov’t, cost-plus world.

          • imhoFRED says:
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            >. Launch costs are not normally cost drivers for space astronomy missions.

            Granted huge apertures are silly expensive in today’s spacecraft design space. It may be wise to look at the price/performance trade-offs and say: “that’s just not practical with today’s approaches”.

            Note, that much of your argument sounds like a tautology; If I spend billions it will always cost billions. It certainly isn’t an approach that will cause price improvements over time.

            Low launch costs make things cheaper, even in the zeroth order. Kepler could have been 600M instead of 700M.

            Now, let’s consider higher order effects of lower launch costs. If we don’t accept the tautology that expensive mission must always be equally expensive then it becomes possible to look toward future designs where reasonable cost is a requirement. Discover class missions show that it is possible to do this even with today’s bespoke, cost plus world.

            I look forward to instruments/spacecraft from companies like Planetary Resources. Approaches like theirs make it possible to imagine an order of magnitude drop in mission costs.

      • fcrary says:
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        Let’s be careful with the phrasing. Most of what you describe was privately funded. But that funding wasn’t from private _industry._ The people who got rich by founding a company may be willing to fund science and exploration, but the company they founded might be reluctant when there is no prospect making of a profit.

        And, since you mentioned polar exploration, how many of those privately funded expeditions used ships built for the purpose? I think you’ll find most were build as whalers and purchased second-hand to support an expedition. (Nansen’s _Fram_ being a notable exception.)

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Exactly. When entrepreneurs make money they spend it on things they want to do, not just on things that will make a profit. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, Paul Allen, etc. are prime examples. Yes, they have created space firms, but profits from them are secondary to their dreams of space exploration.

          Yes, most of the ships were built originally as sealers, whalers or in the case of the U.S.S. Bear, revenue cutters. But that is because in the polar regions, as on other frontiers, entrepreneurs led the way. That is one area where space was different as a frontier, with science going first, and it why space exploration has moved so slow, at the speed of government. That is finally being corrected despite the best efforts of NASA to assimilate those entrepreneurs.

          • fcrary says:
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            My comment about the ships was that personal, private funding did not produce the vehicles used in early polar exploration. The ships, and the engineering behind them, were almost entirely the result of for-profit commercial ventures. It isn’t clear if the private donars could have supplied the funds to design and build those ships. (And, even for the government-funded US IGY program, the ships were existing Navy ships, such as leftover WWII transports. I.e. also built for a non-science and non-exploration purpose.)

            I think that means we can’t count on private donations fully funding space exploration. I think it is much more likely that profitable, commercial ventures (better weather and communications satellites and the resulting market for low cost access to space) will pay for a good part of the transportation infrastructure. Private, non-commercial funding could very well ride on the shoulders of that and support planetary exploration.

  3. JadedObs says:
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    Its interesting to watch space advocates in the Trump administration making the same mistake that the Obama Administration did – namely assuming that “commercial space” will be the answer to how can we do all the things we want to do in space without investing more government money. The simple answer – just turn it over to the commercial sector – hasn’t worked for the “commercial” crew program for either SpaceX or Boeing, each of whom are way behind schedule, and its not clear that the rest of the ISS related commercial ventures from Nanoracks and Made In Space to the ISS Cargo services companies will survive once the government’s support for ISS is gone.

    To succeed commercially, there has to be a real non-government market – something that has long existed for medium class launchers like Falcon 9 but not for a Falcon Heavy or for asteroid mining (mostly targeted at providing resources for non-existent human exploration missions to Mars). That so many of these efforts are supported by space enchanted billionaires masks this defect since people like Bezos don’t need a market – he can just sell a tiny part of his Amazon stake to support his space hobby.

    Commercial space can be viable where commercial markets exist – satellite launch and broadcasting, probably Planet’s observing capabilities and likely One Web and its system for providing internet access everywhere. But missions to Mars or the Moon will need government investment to be real – and just because you can use commercial services to support this doesn’t mean its a commercial market. And while the animal spirits in the commercial sector can do great things, that does not guarantee success or quicker results – how long have Virgin Galactic, Stratolaunch and others been working to develop their new commercial space systems without NASA involvement? Stallmer’s piece is based on the illusion of certain commercial success that in the end may prove no more enduring than Roton, Kistler or Lynx; this road to Mars is paved with bankruptcies.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      You need to turn your clock forward a couple of decades. First of all, government investment hasn’t brought us back to the Moon, and has been chasing Mars and Constellation/SLS for far longer than Virgin Galactic an Stratolaunch have been things…and spent an order of magnitude, or two, more money doing it. Commercial space already owns satellite communications (and makes lots of money at too BTW). It would own Earth observing already if NASA would get out of the way and let it.
      And while the road to private funded Mars is paved with the oxen skulls…at least there is an actual road to pave. Government estimates want to pave that road with gold and cost plus contracts and keeps running out of money…go figure.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        And one-off billion dollar lifters, don’t forget.

      • JadedObs says:
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        Its not a question of moving my analysis forward – its all about the market. You are correct, as I pointed out, that commercial space owns satcom and actually already has a lot in Earth Observation (e.g. Digital Globe) a market that will likely grow as Planet and others start offering new services. But you haven’t said anything about the exploration market – lunar or Mars. A market is what is needed to drive true commercial investment and its not there yet on a magnitude to support a human exploration program when the only one proposed is servicing government mission requirements – which are woefully underfunded.

        While progress has been slow on SLS and Orion, it has been slow because the spending has been too low and subject to whip sawing between the Republican Congress and Obama OMB plus CRs, sequestration, etc.
        In 1966, at NASA’s peak funding, it received $43.5B in 2014 dollars; by 2016, it was at $19.8B (both from the NASA Budget Wikipedia site). We don’t need that kind of money now with all the knowledge we’ve gained, infrastructure that’s in place, etc. but $4B a year is not a credible human exploration development plan – just look at what the National Research Council said or what Norm Augustine’ s Constellation review concluded.
        If you’re think a billion dollar launcher is unacceptable, (Shuttle was higher when launching the ISS), then you’re not seriously thinking through what exploration will cost. Wishing for the commercial cost saving fairy to make human exploration possible is a self delusional fantasy.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          The cost savings has already been demonstrated enough to negate the language that you use to describe it. It will continue to improve with an expanded market as the lower costs enable new industries.

          You are correct that money is the driver and that marketable, profitable business models have to exist for return on investment. However, there are venture capital firms and individual billionaires that are content with the situation as it stands as far as investment potential. All that awaits is the capability. None of these ideas can be supported with just the Soyuz launching humans into space.

          There are products, technologies, and even services that are already known to be available for an expanding space economy to exploit. They are enabled by lower launch costs per pound. Where do you think equipment launch costs need to be, for example, to mine platinum from certain astroid impact points on the Moon?

          • JadedObs says:
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            Great generalities – where are the specific examples? How many commercial space stations has Bigelow sold? How many seats besides NASA’s on Dragon2 or Starliner have been sold? How many Google Lunar X-Prizes were won? Did venture capitalists fund the commercial crew non-recurring developments because they saw the incredible market opportunity? No – NASA did. Would SpaceX even be in business if Musk didn’t have the government as a customer for Falcon 9?
            What is the magic dollar per pound cost to orbit when a true commercial exploration program becomes possible? Already, NASA gives free transport, power and crew time to those doing ISS research – yet the number of companies using it are pretty limited and would likely be zero if they had to pay full cost – and that’s just to do research.

            Spacecraft aren’t free; neither are complex spacecraft to do ISRU and crew life support on another world. What will be sold commercially to pay back these costs? For that matter, what will the value of platinum be if we could start bringing tons of it back from asteroids or the moon? It’s all wishful thinking.

          • SouthwestExGOP says:
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            JadedOps – I will not repeat too much here but a short while ago you would have also contended that WorldView and other commercial imaging companies were wasting their time.

            In a couple of years we will have more examples but we have enough now – to conclude that we need to commercialize more space operations. The government has contributed and needs to not impede progress.

          • JadedObs says:
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            I agree – where there is a market the government should cede the service provision to industry and should not compete. Right now, that market is the one for digits from space – whether for telecom or imagery (including World View!) ; the private sector has aggressively entered this market enabled by government and in fact, the USG gets the bulk of its telecom services from private sector providers. But it happened because there already WAS a demand for telecom and aerial imagery in the private sector and space became a better way to provide it. There is ZERO private sector commercial demand for transportation of people to the moon or Mars and we don’t really even know how to do the latter safely. Until government demand and technology development matures this opportunity it is a fantasy to think that the private sector can do it other than by working under a government contract.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Wrong …. two people demanded a lunar flyby from spacex.

          • JadedObs says:
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            Lets see if or when they fly. A Dutch tv network wanted to do a Reality show fly by of Mars with a couple onboard – that’s not a market, its a stnt.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            In six years we’ve come closer to all that stuff than we came in 40 years of relying on cost plus, military-procurement, $1000 hammer contracting.
            And you didn’t answer my question. What do YOU think the $ per pound launch cost is to mine platinum on the moon profitability?

          • JadedObs says:
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            Sorry but I’m not sure how to answer; Platinum is expensive because its rare – if it becomes more abundant, its price will fall rapidly (yes, it does have some industrial applications so demand could grow but not dramatically). So investing a lot to mine and return platinum to Earth is likely a self limiting opportunity that would soon lead to bankruptcy.
            As for most of the companies pushing asteroid or lunar mining, they seem to mostly be targeting providing water ice and raw materials in space to reduce the cost of going to Mars or elsewhere without hauling up through Earth’s gravity well. But before THAT market emerges, government(s) need to decide they want to prioritize going to Mars and make the investments in technologies and vehicles to support the astronauts.
            Regarding your observation on the last 40 years, the USG and international partners decided in the early 70’s to prioritize human research in LEO and developed a fleet of reusable space vehicles that launched nearly 600 people and some incredible spacecraft – like Hubble – into orbit and also assembled the football field sized ISS. Exploration advocates often hate this decision but its what our political process agreed upon and NASA and its way of doing business delivered – and eventually, this became the market demand that commercial companies used to develop the ISS cargo resupply systems – including Falcon 9, Dragon, Antares, – as well as Bigelow, Nanoracks, etc.
            When government invests to develop a base on the moon or Mars and needs support, this same model may work but for now, its just not there and so dismissing what produced what we have now ignores this history.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            You would not have to return it to earth for it to have asset value all you have to do is legally own the refined and certified content of the mineral.

          • JadedObs says:
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            so what do you do with it?
            And even if you treat it like gold bullion in an orbiting vault, its gonna get pretty low value once a lot is mined.

          • fcrary says:
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            For more practical purposes, you could say the same thing about Bitcoins. And I don’t need to launch hardware into space to mine them.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            No it would not be same at all because there is no underlying metal asset.

            If you were one of the astronauts that landed on the moon and you carried with you a 1 ounce gold piece. Do you think as soon as you landed on the moon that the gold piece would suddenly have no value?

            If you were on the moon with that gold piece and you talked to someone on earth and decided to sell them that gold coin could that person who bought that gold piece claim it as an asset? Yes they could.

            We routinely on earth buy and sell mineral assets without the minerals every moving an inch. The only thing that changes is who owns how much at any given point in time. An asset is an asset anyplace on earth AND leo earth orbit and out to GEO. Hardware in LEO carries asset values just like anywhere on earth.

            Why people suddenly think it will be different if you add a few miles is simply beyond me.

          • fcrary says:
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            Are we going to do the William Jennings Bryan thing again? I think you need to look one layer deeper in your comparison to terrestrial commodities.

            Yes, I can buy and sell ownership of commodities without every seeing or touching the material in question (and without any desire to ever do so.) But why? If I accept it in exchange for something the seller wants, I’m doing so because I have faith that someone else will accept it from me, in return for something I want. As long as I can make that assumption, physical contact with the commodities isn’t necessary. But why would I have faith in that assumption? I think that’s where your idea is more like bitcoins than the terrestrial commodities market.

            With bitcoins, the faith in other people accepting them is purely psychological or sociological. I believe people will accept them because a whole lot of people seem to accept them. But that’s why their value fluctuates so wildly. The value is tied to a mass consensus that can easily change.

            “Real” money, unless it’s backed by something (and I’m not sure if any of those exist anymore), is a little better. The faith that people will accept dollars in exchange for something I want is based on two facts: The government requires it (that “legal tender for all debts public and private” thing) and, even if someone refused (e.g. if a store owner had a psychotic episode and insisted on payment in coffee beans instead of dollars), the government will still pay in dollars and accept tax payments in dollars. So the faith that a dollar is worth something rests on the fact that the government says so and the belief that the government is financially secure enough for that to mean something.

            For commodities, the faith is based on the belief that someone, somewhere actually wants the stuff and is willing to pay for it. I might not, when I buy a piece of paper saying I own it. The person I sell it to may not care either. That piece of paper could change hands a thousand times without reaching anyone who cared about actually holding or using, for example, platinum.

            But even if we have no use for platinum, the value of that piece of paper rests on the fact that, if I wanted to, I could find someone who actually wanted the stuff, plans to use it for something, and is willing to pay me $32,400 per kilo for it. As long as someone, somewhere is willing to do so, that piece of paper has value which we can trade back and forth.

            Which gets back to extraterrestrial commodities. Is there anyone, anywhere who wants to pay $32,400 per kilo for something they can not touch or use, and will never be able to touch or use? The value of a piece of paper saying I own a kilo of lunar platinum depends on that. It people don’t have faith in that, then there is nothing but a social consensus to back up the certificate’s value. And that’s no different from bitcoins.

          • fcrary says:
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            “As for most of the companies pushing asteroid or lunar mining, they seem to mostly be targeting providing water ice and raw materials in space to reduce the cost of going to Mars or elsewhere…”

            Actually, the most serious idea I’ve heard was to use extraterrestrial water to refuel and otherwise support geostationary communications satellites. It isn’t clear if the numbers work, but extending the lifetime of communications satellites is worth quite a bit of money.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            How many seats have been offered for sale by Boeing or spacex?

          • JadedObs says:
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            I don’t know but if they had any sign ups, as with Virgin Galactic, I bet they’d tell everyone – pretty bad marketing to keep it quiet.

    • SouthwestExGOP says:
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      JadedObs – yes Bill Housley is right that you are firmly stuck in 1975. A mission to the Moon is not a single piece – as SpaceX and AKT/Orbital (as two examples) create better rockets, capsules, operational space vehicles, etc etc a Moon program has far more pieces to pick from. SpaceX reuses rockets now, that will drive the cost of getting to orbit down.

      For Lunar or Mars missions we need government investment but we can now choose less expensive pieces since these companies have taken existing concepts and reimagined them. They will find ways to expand the market as the commercial imaging companies have done.

      Space commercialization has slowly been arriving – we have commercial comm sats, commercial imaging sats, etc etc.

      • JadedObs says:
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        Just because I haven’t drunk the “Commercial space can do everything” Kool-Aid doesn’t mean I don’t recognize its accomplishments. While we don’t really know how much SpaceX makes in profits since its privately held and we don’t know how many re-uses they will get so its hard to say if it’s worth the reduced payload, inspection and any refurbishment to re-use the boosters – but that’s an example where we know there is an external commercial market – space launch. What about crew landing vehicles for planetary surfaces? How about nuclear thermal rocket engines to get to Mars?, etc. Saying commercial can’t do everything – or in this case an exploration program – does not mean it can’t do anything!

  4. fcrary says:
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    Since former Administrator Bolden was mentioned, I’ll point out a quote from him which just showed up on Ars Technica, in an interview with Eric Berger. “”First and foremost, the job of an administrator is to take care of the people of NASA,” Bolden said.” I’m afraid that more-or-less defines the problem.

  5. Bill Housley says:
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    We’ll…just as COTS was already on it’s way to being a thing before Obama let the public in on it, so to was NextStep already patterned off of it before Trump and Pence “suggested” it.
    Really glad they’re backing it though. How long have we wondered here what direction this administration would take?

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      We wait while the WH leaarns how to ‘make a deal’ in Washington. It seems Prof. Nelson is amongst the teachers.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        No, we wait to see who will be in charge of NASA’s future, Senator Nelson or President Trump. Sadly, since President Obama gave in to Senator Nelson on space in his Administration he thinks he is running the agency.