Right now, where we truly are, there's no money to be made in space. There's a national security angle - yes, but that's limited to Earth orbit. For space to be profitable, we need to be building in space and for THAT to be profitable, we would need to be harvesting materials FROM space - asteroids. This negates the huge cost of lifting materials out of Earth's gravity well. But we need a demand signal to pay for that - which is what? I agree with you wholeheartedly that NASA is not the answer - not even part of the answer. I'd much prefer we leave it to geniuses like Musk to figure out the answer - to create that demand. Just as nobody needed an internal combustion engine 120 years ago, or nobody needed to fly, or candles and lanterns worked just fine after dark.
I watched the first several seasons of Apple's For All Mankind. It posits an alternate space race... and in later seasons NASA becomes a big revenue stream for the government. It lost me there.
Right now, where we truly are, there's no money to be made in space. There's a national security angle - yes, but that's limited to Earth orbit. For space to be profitable, we need to be building in space and for THAT to be profitable, we would need to be harvesting materials FROM space - asteroids. This negates the huge cost of lifting materials out of Earth's gravity well. But we need a demand signal to pay for that - which is what? I agree with you wholeheartedly that NASA is not the answer - not even part of the answer. I'd much prefer we leave it to geniuses like Musk to figure out the answer - to create that demand. Just as nobody needed an internal combustion engine 120 years ago, or nobody needed to fly, or candles and lanterns worked just fine after dark.
I watched the first several seasons of Apple's For All Mankind. It posits an alternate space race... and in later seasons NASA becomes a big revenue stream for the government. It lost me there.
Peter, you’re an engineer and thus being far too logical and reasonable! BTW, is Pournelle’s Iron Law named after the sci-fi author?
Same inn other parts of the government. Signal to noise seems to be optimized for noise