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Rocketlab acquires Iridium

investors.rocketlabcorp.com

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Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#231

Post by stinkbeetle »

brookst wrote: post #153
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights. I'm sure SpaceX and others will be against this until suddenly, they're not, when they realize they're one of the few that can even afford to pay it. Like when Amazon finally had warehouses in all fifty states and suddenly quit campaigning against onlin…

I really don’t see how making people pay for their externalities is “gatekeeping”. If your business model relies on spewing litter everywhere, complaining about gatekeeping when someone makes you pay to clean it up isn’t even disingenuous, it’s transparently manipulative. The public is tired of privatized profits, socialized costs. Space seems like a great place to draw that line: if you can’t afford to clean up your…

The problem is regulations like these rarely "pay for externalities".

They impose compliance costs or costs to skirt the regulations.

CO2 emissions have not been solved despite all the regulations and taxes, quite the opposite they keep increasing and will continue to do so for a long time before even thinking about coming down. In large part because production was moved off shore to countries which have less regulation and higher emission intensity of production, which actually has the opposite effect.

Workers rights were not solved, the abuses were just off-shored to countries that still enslave people and abuse workers and allow child labor.

Tax evasion has not been solved, it's just permitted under complicated legal structures.

All these things are a godsend for bloated multinational corporations who can pay the compliance costs without blinking, and have little to worry about organic competition.

Space regulation and taxes won't solve anything. If the government had any kind of track record you might be a little open minded about it, but at this point the burden of proof would be on the people claiming that this time, taxes won't be used for corruption and graft. If there is money to be had in it, the government will take their cut and in exchange allow multinational corporations to offshore the problem to other countries.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#232

Post by wolvoleo »

marcosdumay wrote: post #184
proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

> Apparently they don't just completely vaporize, but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. That's not clear. There's no empirical evidence of it, and the computer models we have don't have definitive results. Those alarms are not really proper.

Ignoring problems until they become too big to pooh-pooh away is how we got into the climate crisis. And some countries are still pooh-poohing it away.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#233

Post by bilsbie »

proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

Seems pretty negative and pessimistic.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#234

Post by inemesitaffia »

wolvoleo wrote: post #232
marcosdumay wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently they don't just completely vaporize, but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. That's not clear. There's no empirical evidence of it, and the computer models we have don't have definitive results. Those alarms are not really proper.

Ignoring problems until they become too big to pooh-pooh away is how we got into the climate crisis. And some countries are still pooh-poohing it away.

evidence based alarmism.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#235

Post by inemesitaffia »

versteegen wrote: post #225
panick21_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before they ever launched a rocket they were a primarily American company. That literally just a fact. It was created by somebody from New Zealand and a lot of early operations was in New Zealand nobody is denying that.

That is false. They were a purely NZ operation launching sub-orbital rockets before they got into DARPA contracts. What you meant to say is "Before they ever launched Electron", and I'm pretty sure that is false too, they weren't "primarily" American, the majority of the workforce was in NZ until years after that.

SpaceX has most staff in California.

It's a Texas company.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#236

Post by shakna »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #187
shakna wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they always got the decay correct, we wouldn't have confirmed debris impact on the ground. It would be destroyed long before it reached. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/after-fiery-displa...

That satellite's orbit very clearly did decay, though. The problem in that instance is the descent wasn't controlled, but that's a different kind of failure than the one this thread is worried about (i.e. satellites lingering for many years without active collision avoidance).

Decayed without breaking down, is my point. There was a failure. Which means failure is a possibility and not something to just dismiss.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#237

Post by ilamont »

b112 wrote: post #219
dreamcompiler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The instant the Soviet Union collapsed, we reduced NASA’s projects and budgets. The instant we beat the Soviet Union to the moon we reduced NASA's projects and budgets. That's why the Space Shuttle was such a ridiculous kludge.

Yes, and you're 100% right, but context is needed here for others even if you know this next bit. The original shuttle designs were much, much better. I remember reading tech specs and looking at schematics in Discover and Popular Science years before the final design. Maybe Omni too. Then it ended up in committee, politicians got involved, and funding was cut in parallel (even before the wall came down, it was clear…

There used to be a space science mags for kids.

Odyssey was published by the same person who operated Astronomy magazine, and in my tweens and early teens I gobbled up the stories about the space shuttle and the images coming back from various missions such as Voyager.

I don’t remember if I saw it in the school library and asked my parents to subscribe or they subscribed for me, but it really helped to maintain a lifelong interest in space flight and astronomy (along with whatever science fiction I could get my hands on).

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#238

Post by ninjagoo »

proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

> Another note on space junk is the effect on our atmosphere with all the "burning-up" of various materials.

Is this a huge concern? According to NASA [1], about 44 metric tons of meteors and meteorites enter the atmosphere daily, or about 16,000 tons annually, or about 35 million pounds. Of which 5000 tons is estimated to reach the ground. [2]

[1] https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/ [2] https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/more-5000-tons-extraterrestrial...

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#239

Post by Joel_Mckay »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #221
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market can't be timed (by honest players), as I remember buying into Ubiquiti Networks at around $12/share thinking I might see a 8% bump after the old legal event subsided. Then just sort of forgot about that tax-sheltered holding for a few years. I also don't do the 3 month portfolio shuffle dance 95% of stock investment people try to ride. The heavy cost of putting stuff in space is still not solved, but broad…

F9 has dropped the cost 10x. Starship will drop it another 10x. When will it be solved?

When both businesses reach a profit mode. Unlikely to happen within the next few years. =3

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#240

Post by Teever »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #100
Centigonal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hank Green did a video recently advocating for an "orbit value tax" -- like a Georgist Land Value Tax, but for orbits. This tax would, among other things, help fund orbital cleanup and internalize the externality of polluting orbital shells. It's an idea that deserves more discourse IMO. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLjW6zuYmos

Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights. I'm sure SpaceX and others will be against this until suddenly, they're not, when they realize they're one of the few that can even afford to pay it. Like when Amazon finally had warehouses in all fifty states and suddenly quit campaigning against onlin…

Regulations designed to prevent the rise of negative externalities in a nascent industry is exactly the role of government.

If you don't believe in a role for government in regulating access to space despite (despite it having that role since the development of the technological means to access it) than can you suggest a solution to the negative externalities that we unfolding this very moment?

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