Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The New Space Race

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 40 posts

Re: The New Space Race

#21

Post by larrydag »

arcanus wrote: post #2

NASA is listed as one of the competitors, but really, NASA is also driving a great deal of this innovation through contracting rocket use (for ISS refueling, etc.) to private companies. They are creating the market. A real question is: what is a viable business model that will necessitate these rockets? Aside from space tourism and placing satellites, what successful business ventures might exist at lower $/orbit cap…

Asteroid mining. New startups like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Ventures will want to send satellites and vehicles into orbit or deep space for exploratory research.

Re: The New Space Race

#22

Post by vermontdevil »

badminton1 wrote: post #10

Nobody here is mentioning ISRO. ISRO might not have the most advanced technology, true, but their cost effectiveness compensates for that. They're also catching up very quickly.

This article focuses on US companies or agencies that are involved with the Space Race.

But I do get your point and agree out of the non-US, India is in excellent position to be a competitor.

Re: The New Space Race

#23

Post by _lbaq »

DavidSJ wrote: post #18
Lewton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, technically spacex vertically landed a rocket in 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw

If you're willing to count a 40 meter hop, then 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4PEXLODw9c

C'mon, this has been done before by both private and government funded projects

DC-X 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls

Re: The New Space Race

#24

Post by vermontdevil »

arcanus wrote: post #2

NASA is listed as one of the competitors, but really, NASA is also driving a great deal of this innovation through contracting rocket use (for ISS refueling, etc.) to private companies. They are creating the market. A real question is: what is a viable business model that will necessitate these rockets? Aside from space tourism and placing satellites, what successful business ventures might exist at lower $/orbit cap…

NASA also owns the SLS rocket. Granted they are not building it themselves, but it's 100% theirs.

So in other words they would be competing with Falcon Heavy or the future MCT from SpaceX among others.

Re: The New Space Race

#25

Post by mikeash »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #19
746F7475 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... For some reason everyone who is interested in this stuff is SpaceX fanboy and when Blue Origin released their success after SpaceX's failure(s) everyone just seemed to be little them. Then SpaceX did theirs and everyone went nuts over it.

They're not comparable. Blue Origin's work is commendable, but landing a sub-orbital rocket, even re-using one, is not on the same scale as what SpaceX has done, the engineering is just on a different level. The X-15 program was landing sub-orbital vehicles, and re-using them, that had gone above 100km decades ago. The difference between Blue Origin's efforts and the X-15 is primarily the landing.

In addition to the enormous difference in difficulty, there's a correspondingly enormous difference in utility. Suborbital is good for some light tourism and brief science experiments, but not a whole lot. Orbital is extremely useful for things like communications satellites, to the point that a lot of people will willingly pay hundreds of millions of dollars just to put something up.

Blue Origin's vehicle is basically a fancy toy, while SpaceX is opening up space.

Of course, Blue Origin is working on opening up space too, they just haven't got there yet. Once they start putting things into orbit, I'll be tremendously excited for them too.

Re: The New Space Race

#26

Post by aetherson »

larrydag wrote: post #21
arcanus wrote: post #2

NASA is listed as one of the competitors, but really, NASA is also driving a great deal of this innovation through contracting rocket use (for ISS refueling, etc.) to private companies. They are creating the market. A real question is: what is a viable business model that will necessitate these rockets? Aside from space tourism and placing satellites, what successful business ventures might exist at lower $/orbit cap…

Asteroid mining. New startups like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Ventures will want to send satellites and vehicles into orbit or deep space for exploratory research.

It is super unclear that even if you had extremely cheap access to orbit, you could make asteroid mining pay off.

If cost to orbit was cheap enough, people might be interested in orbital solar power.

Re: The New Space Race

#27

Post by jbooth »

snovv_crash wrote: post #13
dkbrk wrote: post #4

This article has a bunch of problems and is fairly typical of mass-media reporting in this area. Suborbital vehicles such as SpaceShipTwo, New Shepard, and Lynx are lumped together with orbital launch systems. I do not think the distinction is made adequately clear in the text either; it would be very easy for a layperson to be seriously misled. Falcon 9 isn't described separately, just as a note on the Falcon Heavy.…

I wonder just how unbiased the Washington Post is now that Bezos owns it. The article does come off quite New-Shephard heavy.

Any bias in the article is probably about 4 levels of reporting away from Bezos. More likely that the author found various defense contractors being extremely available to chat, living in the DC area and all, and trying to get an article out on a deadline while not being an expert on the subject matter.

Re: The New Space Race

#28

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

One metric I'd be interested in, if it could be objectively measured, is rate of technical progress in private vs. government efforts, and, total $ spent by both enterprises.

Intuitively, I would say it is much faster in private industry, however, it is also more dispersed and not coordinated.

Re: The New Space Race

#29

Post by mikeash »

jbooth wrote: post #27
snovv_crash wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder just how unbiased the Washington Post is now that Bezos owns it. The article does come off quite New-Shephard heavy.

Any bias in the article is probably about 4 levels of reporting away from Bezos. More likely that the author found various defense contractors being extremely available to chat, living in the DC area and all, and trying to get an article out on a deadline while not being an expert on the subject matter.

Bias can exert itself in subtle ways. Merely the knowledge that the big boss has a stake in this area is enough to bias reporting on it, the big boss doesn't have to get involved personally or even have the slightest potential of doing so.
Post reply on HN