Ed:
Bottom line; If you want to explore space beyond LEO, government sponsored exploration is the only way to do it for the next 20 to 30 years. There is no profit in right now for a private company to take on that expense.
On the supplier level private companies are very involved in space exploration and that’s why I used the term “government sponsored”. I’m sure if you had the money Boeing, LockMart or Energina will be happy to build you any kind of spacecraft you want.

p.s. I like what you’ve done with the underside of that bridge.

Again I answer — I never claimed private citizens had flown to the Moon. Pretending that I said something I didn’t is dishonest, Chris. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

As for LEO, the last I heard, Dennis Tito was living happily in his California mansion and Mark Shuttleworth was still in South Africa.

They took the same risks riding Soyuz that NASA astroanuts do. How is that possible if private citizens are cowardly and unable to take risks?

Could you please answer *my* question? Do you have any evidence that all private citizens are risk-averse cowards?

> When the world had a space race America developed Apollo and landed on the moon. The Russians
> developed Suez and Mire.

The French and Egyptians developed Suez. I have no idea about Mire, wherever that may be.

How does that prove that private citizens are too cowardly to take risks?

> There are undoubtedly countless other examples of leaps in technology which can be directly attributed to the space race.

They’re easily countable, actually. How does that prove that private citizens are too cowardly to take risks?

> A race for the best position both militarily and with respect to cultural influence will entice these
> nation-companies to outdo one another. This will boost private industry efforts.

Trying to out-do one another in making space expensive won’t boost private efforts any more than it did in the past.

Even if it did, how would that prove that private citizens are too cowardly to take risks?

Why do you keep avoiding my question?

> And it was indeed built with huge grants and subsidies form the federal government.

Which does not prove a government space race will have a similar effect on spaceflight. If it could, we would have a huge commercial spaceflight industry today. The fact that you have to point to analogies, instead of rocketships, shows how flawed your case is.

That’s irrelevant. Gresham’s Law says that good money drives out bad. In space transportation, government money has driven out private money for the last 40 years. The Wikipedia is a poor substitute for an economics textbook.

> I’m not the one revising things.

I’m not going to argue with someone who isn’t interested in facts. Again, I’ve discussed this with Dr. Pournelle in person. He understands the connection between the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s Moon speech, even if you do not. He’s even written about it, in other books, if not in the one you read.

The Boeing web site you read has some inaccuracies also. The 747 project was already started by the time Boeing lost the C-5 contract.

Sometimes, you need to read more than one source.

Again I ask. Where are all these private (thanks for the spelling lesson, never has been my strongest trait) citizens who have flown to the moon or even attained LEO? If as you seem to claim, private citizens can do so much better without government support than why haven’t they? Its not like NASA is putting up an effort to stop private space exploration so what exactly is you’re problem with them? I do believe the time is coming when private companies will carry the average man around the solar system. However without government support these efforts are going to move slowly or not at all. I do not think the entire space program will collapse in the absence of a new race. I just think it will be productive especially if it is sustainable. The more nations that enter the race the more sustainable it will be.

>>>>Evidence please?

When the world had a space race America developed Apollo and landed on the moon. The Russians developed Suez and Mire. There are undoubtedly countless other examples of leaps in technology which can be directly attributed to the space race. It was only when the space race started to dwindle down and the fall of the Soviets seemed inevitable that innovation in space technology started to stagnate. This was the cause of our current rut – not the original cold war space race, but the end of it. Another good example of a race that produced results is the Manhattan Project. There are many more that I will not cover here. The fact is, competition spurs technological development. It’s the same thing that makes private industry work so well. Try to look at it this way and maybe you will get past you’re self supplied logic and actually learn something. The nations of Earth pretty much amount to massive private companies. Due to a lack of real return on investment there is no drive to develop a space infrastructure. A race for the best position both militarily and with respect to cultural influence will entice these nation-companies to outdo one another. This will boost private industry efforts.

PS: I know it’s a bit off subject. But I know a lot about this so I thought I’d share. Ma Bell was not a name for AT&T. It was in fact the blanket term used to describe the multiple Bell companies that existed when this countries telecommunications infrastructure was first being built. And it was indeed built with huge grants and subsidies form the federal government. Without this support it may or may not have been built but it undoubtedly would have taken much longer.

That does not follow. I looked up Gresham’s Law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_Law

You misunderstand it – it refers to the situation where people are required to accept currency worth less than its face value. If by “bad” money you meant government research money, people don’t have to accept it by law; you don’t have to accept it by law. In fact, the Wikipedia explanation goes on to say:

“These examples show that in the absence of legal tender laws, Gresham’s law works in reverse. If given the choice of what money to accept, people will transact with money they believe to be of highest long-term value”

That’s what Burt Rutan has already done by working with Paul Allen and Sir Richard Branson in preference to NASA.

> Why do we “need” to have such a race?

I wasn’t the one who said this, I was merely trying to explain why someone would.

> Then you might ask Dr. Pournelle about Apollo and
> the Bay of Pigs. I can tell you what his answer
> will be, because I have discussed it with him in
> person, and much more recently than 1970.

I’m not the one revising things.

Yes, and it’s also been observed that it failed to produce affordable access to space.

So again, why should we repeat it?

> Rather, I base my arguments in part on ideas put forth in the 1970 book by Possony, Pournelle and
> Kane “THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY” – it’s particularly pertinent reading in the context of a
> new space race:

Then you might ask Dr. Pournelle about Apollo and the Bay of Pigs. I can tell you what his answer will be, because I have discussed it with him in person, and much more recently than 1970.

>> Evidence, please?

> In my own case, I have a risky but very high payoff launch concept that I’m trying to develop. I can say
> with no doubt without a doubt that the project would be dead already were it not for government support.

That does not prove private enterprise won’t back risky projects, it only proves that it won’t back your risky project.

> Having watched someone else’s anti-misting Kerosene project try to get off the ground for years one becomes
> skeptical that market forces have any interest in certain classes of new technology.

What does new technology have to do with beating the Chinese or the Japanese to the Moon? Wasn’t that done in the 1960’s, with 60’s technology? Or have you just changed the subject?

> If this is true then surely it’s trivial to make private launchers that blow away the competition (including
> the launchers of all competing foreign entities) no matter what the goverment is doing in space

That does not follow. Look up “Gresham’s Law.” But even if it did follow, it would not explain the point you keep dancing around: why you think we “need” to have a “multination space race.”

Why do we “need” to have such a race? What terrible thing will happen if we don’t have one?

*LOL* At least we’re agreed on that.

> I’ve repeatedly asked you why we “need” a
> “multination space race” that does nothing to
> reduce the cost of getting into space. You still
> haven’t answered me.

In the past a relationship between military conflict and technological progress has been observed. Theodore Von Karman discusses this in his biography, The Wind And Beyond. For many the idea of such a relationship is emotionally hard to accept. If you believe in such a correlation, technological progress above and beyond that of peactime is an outcome you would expect.

> Historical revisionism aside, Kennedy called for
> landing a man on the Moon because he needed a
> political distraction after he left men to die
> on the beaches at the Bay of Pigs.

Do you believe that this is why Bush is a big supporter of the Exploration Initiative? In both cases, I fail to see how or why a new space project that takes years to bear fruit helps deflect any significant amount of public attention from an ongoing conflict in which people are dying.

Rather, I base my arguments in part on ideas put forth in the 1970 book by Possony, Pournelle and Kane “THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY” – it’s particularly pertinent reading in the context of a new space race:

http://www.baen.com/sot/

“There are no battles in this strategy; each side is merely trying to outdo in performance the equipment of the other. It has been termed ‘logistic strategy’. Its tactics are industrial, technical, and financial. It is a form of indirect attrition; instead of destroying enemy resources, its object is to make them obsolete, thereby forcing on him an enormous expenditure….”

On the subject of the 747:

Historical revisionism aside, the government was indeed responsible for spurring the creation of the 747. According to Boeing’s own account it was created to be a military transport, and later transitioned to the civil side when Boeing didn’t win the contract:

http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/747.html

“The incentive for creating the giant 747 came from reductions in air fares, an explosion in air-passenger traffic and increasingly crowded skies. In addition, Boeing had already developed the design concepts and technology of such an airplane because the company had bid on, but lost, the contract for a gigantic military transport, the C-5A.”

>> We (people who care about space exploration)
>> need our governments (plural) to take on risky
>> R&D projects that privet industry cannot or will
>> not take on.

> Evidence, please?

In my own case, I have a risky but very high payoff launch concept that I’m trying to develop. I have been actively seeking support from both private and goverment sources. I can say with no doubt without a doubt that the project would be dead already were it not for government support.

Having watched someone else’s anti-misting Kerosene project try to get off the ground for years one becomes skeptical that market forces have any interest in certain classes of new technology. When the goverment doesn’t fund promising work at Caltech I haven’t yet seen private interests step in. The research simply dies and the idea is lost. Without the goverment, many promising avenues of enquiry, perhaps even most, would not exist.

> The question, which you and Donald still haven’t
> answered, is why we should *want* to keep
> spaceflight prohibitively expensive.

If this is true then surely it’s trivial to make private launchers that blow away the competition (including the launchers of all competing foreign entities) no matter what the goverment is doing in space or what people say on a space politics blog. Maybe that’s what SpaceX is about to do. If they succeed, I will be the first to wonder why it didn’t happen sooner.