Today marks the fourth anniversary of the formal unveiling of the Vision for Space Exploration in a speech by President Bush at NASA Headquarters. In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I discuss that we’re entering a critical year for the Vision, not just because of the uncertainty about who will be president in 2009 and what his/her space policy will be, but also because of financial concerns and other issues. It’s tempting to call every year critical for the future of the exploration program, but the confluence of these factors, any of which could delay or completely derail the program, would seem to make this year particularly important.
A few other articles in this week’s issue also have some policy relevance:
- Sam Dinkin interviews Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, who has been critical of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts (and human spaceflight in general). Weinberg, unsurprisingly, doesn’t see much use for human spaceflight and would rather the money be spent on robotic exploration and other research, including observations of the Earth and searches for near Earth asteroids.
- Dwayne Day writes about Tsien Hsue-shen, the Chinese rocket engineer named person of the year by Aviation Week magazine last week. The policy tie-in here is how allegations of espionage by Tsien when he lived in the US—of dubious credibility at best—are used to this day in discussions of China’s space program.
- Taylor Dinerman examines the prospects of flying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) now that recent delays have made it more likely the current shuttle manifest can’t be completed by September 2010. Getting AMS flown, either on the shuttle or via an expendable launch, would require supplemental funding from Congress, he argues, although Mike Griffin hinted in his AMS speech last week that the money to fly AMS could come out of other programs in NASA’s astrophysics budget, like the Beyond Einstein program.
Jeff, it’s like you coordinated to make a them issue. Nice!
I doubt that future Presidents may bring USA out of the spaceflights leadership leaving it to China… my concern (explained on ghostNASA.com and on forums and blogs) is that the ESAS plan and hardware is seriously flawed
Sam,
Well done. Your interview was very revealing.
I was really struck how a very smart man like Weinberg has so little self reflection, and such minimal insight into the nature of his own biases. He comes off as hypocritical, and I don’t think he knows it.
For example, Weinberg goes on and on, arguing against federal expenditures on human spaceflight saying (for example): “These grandiose plans of having people do incredible things like going to Mars when there really isn’t anything useful for them to do there.”
So when you ask him for a justification for basic scientific research, instead of stating how USEFUL it is, he states that he does not think it has any real use, and his primary argument is whether it is “interesting”, which is a completely subjective criteria.
TSR: Maybe we’ll come up with a use for dark energy?
Weinberg: I don’t think so. I think cosmology, the study of the universe in the large, in a way has an unfair advantage over other branches of physics, because it does appeal to people in a way that, say, particle physics doesn’t. Even in particle physics, people have been fascinated by quarks and antimatter. I think it does make life more interesting for a lot of people. It’s something that at a certain level can only be done with government money.
In other words, what Weinberg is saying is that “human spaceflight” is not interesting to him personally. He then either assumes that everybody else shares his opinion, or he does not care what other people are interested in, or he thinks that his personal interests should have greater weight than other peoples interests.
I noted that you challenged him on this, and he backs off, and then he lists two other arguments for science, specifically:
WEINBERG: “The aim of the kind of work I do is not to make life better. I hope to make it more interesting.â€
and
WEINBERG: “I don’t say that’s the main justification. That’s a justification. There are a number of justifications. One justification is that people find it interesting. Another justification is, as R. R. Wilson said, in effect, something that makes our civilization worthwhile. It’s something we’ve accomplished and contributed to the march of history. I think that’s really the most fundamental one.
Many people argue that expanding humanity into the Universe, to become more than we are, is worthwhile. To challenge ourselves, to grow, to expand our civilization, so that our children, and children’s children do amazing things that we can only dream about is worthwhile. The core of Kennedy’s speech was to do things that are hard.
Many think that the first fish coming out of the sea (on to land), or the first apes coming down out of the trees, or the exploration of Columbus, Magellan and Lewis & Clark contributed to the “march of history.”
In fact, the root word of “worthwhile” — “WORTH” — is a value judgement and completely subjective. Worth is in the eye of the person judging. You can’t legitimately argue “X is not worth anything to you.” You can only argue “X is not worth anything to me.”
Weinberg does not appear to get this.
Weinberg’s final argument for federal support for basic scientific research is hilarious.
WEINBERG: “Then there’s all the other ones that we point to that we don’t really care about, that are real—when I say “we†I am talking now about the working scientists—the spinoffs.”
I don’t think he even understands how revealing your interview was.
Weinberg is smart, but he is certainly no Dick Feynman. Feynman was a man who could step outside of himself, and challenge his paradigms, assumptions, and thinking processes. Feynman was always challenging assumptions, biases, and digging down to first principals.
Weinberg may have won an Nobel Prize. But I am not impressed by the man’s thinking.
Good job Sam.
– Al
These grandiose plans of having people do incredible things like going to Mars when there really isn’t anything useful for them to do there.†…So when you ask him for a justification for basic scientific research, instead of stating how USEFUL it is
To be honest, its not hard to imagine a far more useful, but far less grandiose approach to space development than the current modus operandi.
Reader,
I agree. But that is not Weinberg’s argument. He is not arguing about which objective has “more use” (e.g., utility).
He attacks humans to Mars because it has “no use”, then in the same interview he states that the thing he arguing for has “no use”.
– Al
right, i wasnt trying to justify his argument there.
By the way, theres an active slashdot frontpage post right now about “what would you do if you were a president?”
Out of ~550 comments, when i checked, about 10 contained the word “space ” and few of them were “myspace”. A sad benchmark, especially considering that slashdot crowd should have above average awareness and knowledge about topics like these.
Interesting analysis, Al, and one I largely agree with. A good job yourself!
— Donald
Through some mobilization of the masses, we have a human space-flight question at position 31 for the Democratic debate. The Republican side needs a couple of more votes to get there, but not bad seeing as how it was only Saturday night that the question went up in the first place.
Go vote now: http://dyn.politico.com/debate/#%23
or fax one of the candidates: fax.marssociety.org
Sam,
One thing I wish you would’ve asked – and that is when Steven Weinberg thinks we’ll see cheap access – that I always find rather revealing. I reviewed Obama’s space policy over at Dailykos, and with one of the commentors, it turned into a discussion of whether we should support private industry in space or not. It ultimately turned into a question of when cheap access is comiing. And thats the key point, and I Weinberg even acknowledged that
And so thats why I think the question always has to be asked – how soon are we from cheap access? Because, of course, cheap access will determine whether we can make things economically self-supporting.
Anyway, my 2 cents – your millage may vary
Unless things change…NASA is lost. A major re-think is required. If my instincts are right Lock-Mart won’t deliver the Moon super-duper moon system everyone talks about. Most of America’s energy and brains is absorbed by military ventures and trying to survive an economic chaos. ‘…Batten down the hatches’ ’cause there’s a big storm approaching and it will be awhile before we have clear sailing once more.
Ferris Valyn hits the bullseye. However maybe the question should be about how we can profitably add to the market for cheaper access.
Al Fansome I don’t agree with Dr. Weinberg but I think your reading/interpretation exaggerated his points: he simply believes other possible uses of resources are more important than humans beyond LEO at this point in time and the immediate future. According to his premise/conclusion/tautology (it feels like a bit of each to me) I don’t think he’s being irrational or unreasonable (but still wrong).
I think his fears, understandable and important as they are, are somewhat misguided. I’m far more worried about the things we don’t know about (or understand) than the ones we do (recommended reading: the Great Filter). Nukes, asteroids, technological/scientific hubris, the great unknown, no matter which it seems to me a spread out humanity stands a vastly better chance. Getting past 1 AU in a self-sustaining way should do wonders (at least for now a multi-generation task –might as well start).
how soon are we from cheap access? Because, of course, cheap access will determine whether we can make things economically self-supporting.
Ferris, you consistently write as if cheap access were an external switch that’s going to be flipped — by better designs, better models for operations, or both — and that will enable higher volume and profitable, self-sustaining space activities.
What if it were an effect at least as much as a cause? What if cheap access requires not only bright ideas but actual, cumulative experience — thousands of launches and flight hours, scores of successive designs incorporating lessons learned from those hours, incremental refinement of operations, with some setbacks and dead ends along the way?
And what if all that represents an aggregate investment much greater — 10x, 100x or more — than the scale of New Space so far? What if most of that had to come from actual operating revenues and actual ROI-oriented investment, rather than pre-VC “angels” or COTS-like set-asides from government programs?
The bad news is that (given where we’re starting) such a scenario implies cheap access will be bootstrapped slowly, in frustratingly small steps, perhaps over five to ten decades, rather than as the “breakthrough” within five to ten years I’ve repeatedly seen you suggest.
The good news is that it has some contact with engineering and economic reality.
there are certain significant breakthroughs along the way this way or another. If SpaceX flies Falcon I, thats a significant breakthrough for small launcher market, in US. Not a panacea, but significant step.
If they meet Dragon Falcon V targets, again, significant steps.
A truly reusable craft flown suborbital with paying customers, again a significant step.
Cheap, after all is a relative measure. For instance, apparently orbital tourism is cheap enough for some folks even now at Soyuz ticket prices.
One of these significant “breakthroughs” is highly likely to happen in next five to ten years, even if in the grander scheme of things they can only be considered baby steps.
If SpaceX flies Falcon I, thats a significant breakthrough
No. If they fly it repeatedly and reliably…
And if (once there’ve been enough flights to yield meaningful numbers) their costs and prices are indeed as much below prevailing levels as Musk hopes…
And if those lower prices indeed capture enough of the existing market, and/or bring enough new customers out of the woodwork, and/or attract enough ROI-minded investors, to pay for the next design iteration without dipping further into Musk’s personal wealth…
Then “breakthrough” will be a description instead of a hope.
I sincerely hope all those things happen; I also know that each of those steps depends on hard numbers yet to be measured, and that each of those steps is one at which the majority of high-tech, high-entry-cost startups falter. Comm/sensing satellites aside, private space access for commercial customers is an unexplored economic and operational trade space of high dimension. In the nature of things, there are likely to be many more dead ends trajectories than paths to a “sweet spot.”
Understand, I’m very far from deprecating “baby steps.” In fact, I think they’re the only steps with a reasonable chance of success — and that most of the frustration and impatience space fans have built up over the decades comes from the insistence that breakthroughs simply must be just around the corner. I doubt that attitude will prove any healthier for investor support of New Space than it has been for the political support of government space.
“how soon are we from cheap access?”
We’re 8 to 24 years for microwave thermal and laser thermal rockets.
I am breaking this into 2 sets, to see if it’ll post.
Monte – Never confuse what appears to be the flip of a switch to something that is actually flipping a switch. I make that point because, for a lot of people, the rise of the internet was the equivelent of flipping a switch. But if you actually look what happened prior to 1994, there was significant work being done, that put everything in place for the explosive growth. And that growth wouldn’t have happened without the work done prior to it.
I make this point because, I suspect, it will be a similar situation for cheap spaceflight – in the next 3-5 years for suborbital, and 5-15 for orbital, the cost of access will fall through the floor. And to many people, it’ll appear to have come out of nowhere, but when you look at the history, you’ll be able to see the hard work that went into the development of cheap access.
Actually, I would argue that it absolutely DOES require that – I don’t believe it could be any other way.
Before I begin, I should differentiate between sub-orbital and orbital, because suborbital is further along than orbital However, I would also argue that we actually do have a fair amount of cumulative experience. This is especially true on the suborbital side, although there is some on the orbital side (which is why I put cheap sub-orbital access happening in the next 3-5 years, and cheap orbital access happening in 5-15 years).
This is part of the reason I am excited about NewSpace, and think that cheap access is really going to happen – because hardware is being built that allows for the development of a knowledge base built upon experience. And the sub-orbital hardware and knowledge base will have direct application in developing orbital vehicles (again, the time delay between sub-orbital and orbit )
Continuing on –
Here again, the business and market developments of sub-orbital companies would and will come into serious play. Developing cheap sub-orbital access (which, as I said, does have exactly the kind of experience you talked about), will interested Wall Street at large. Investment firms are interested in 1 thing – making money – if you can show them real money being made in the sub-orbital market (with your sub-orbital business), and you can show them something reasonable that will get you to orbit (again, based on the suborbital vehicle), then you will have access to the kind of capital that you think will be needed. Probably significantly more (look at the internet). Wall street will be falling over themselves to invest in the industry. And access to that money will allow for the needed development of cumulative experience.
Further, I would also argue that many of the NewSpace are operating exactly like you talk about – yes, companies like SpaceX have money because of a super-angel, but the flip side is that they understand they have to produce a quality product. I think a great example of this is the situation of Armadillo – yes, it is true that they are largely being self-financed by Carmack, but the interest in their mod vehicles (and even Pixel and Texel) as a product is large enough that they are getting contracts.
The main point I am trying to make is that the “breakthrough” will happen BECAUSE we’ve had 50 years of spaceflight. Its not great, by any strech of the imagination, but that 50 years, plus the 3-5 years of sub-orbital development, will be more than enough to convince Wall Street at large that the game is about to change.
And thats why I say 5-15 years (or 5-10, depending on my mood of the day)
Monte: The bad news is that (given where we’re starting) such a scenario implies cheap access will be bootstrapped slowly, in frustratingly small steps, perhaps over five to ten decades, rather than as the “breakthrough†within five to ten years I’ve repeatedly seen you suggest.
I think you have hit the nail directly on the head. Unfortunately, based on past experience learning to travel confidently through comparably difficult frontiers — e.g., learning to travel confidently over the world’s oceans — you are likely to be correct, or even optimistic.
— Donald
Monte, one of your “ANDs” should be and SpaceX keeps its prices low. Why should it once it has proven its viable? Musk’s incentives at that point will be to keep it expensive. It might get captured especially if he sends the firm public and sells it off. I imagine there was a lot of NewSpace-style excitement about Orbital Sciences before it got expensive.
Re: cheap access
This would make the point of government funding of science/robots vs. people largely moot because private industry and many governments would compete to expand humanity.
Al: thanks! You made my day.
Sam, as I recall, Orbital Sciences had to raise their prices after several Pegasus failures showed them that launch vehicles were not quite as cheap and easy as they’d hoped. NASA threataned them with leaving the vehicle if the failures continued. It’s early days, but so far SpaceX, unfortunately, seems to be learning the same lesson. Given this history, we should at least consider where we go from here if it really does prove impossible to dramatically reduce launch prices quickly.
— Donald
Sam: Yes, some NewSpace enthusiasts — after explaining how the profit motive is far more powerful than sluggish, fickle government policy — do seem to forget that entrepreneurs and investors will be taking their profits at some point. I recall one sci.space.* poster who projected gross revenues for Virgin Galactic, subtracted estimated operating costs, and described the result as what VG would plow back into R&D and building Spaceship Three.
I imagine there was a lot of NewSpace-style excitement about Orbital Sciences before it got expensive.
Indeed there was. And about Rotary… and Beal… and Kistler v 1.0… and on back to OTRAG and Conestoga and Percheron (Gary Hudson v 1.0) and…
You can not have a “netscape” moment without obscene profits. Without the lure of EXTRA normal profits capital simply will not take the risk on a 7% ROI when they can get that same rate with AAA rated bonds. The speed of those events are largely determined by ease of access. With the dot com boom you had VERY cheap access to aspects of it, making a simple website and cashing in for example. But the insane inital profit margins of INFRASTRUCTURE, routers, servers etc is what was needed. Extra normal profits AUTOMATICALLY draws capital if it is not a monopolistic or controled industry, (goes to ease of access) and with that extra capital flowing in creates OVER production, again, a vital element for this process to occur because it is the over production that drives down initial prices as cost cutting spurred by competition takes place. If launch prices come down and we exclude the human cargo factor, I do not see a HUGE change occuring in the overall space launches. The planet only needs about 100 launches a year at today’s prices, reduce the launch cost by 50% and it would probably increase to a couple hundred launches a year for satellites. I do not think that will give you the launch rate you need to drive down prices.The true success for an enterprise is repeatablity of the model ( e.g. national pizza franchise) and or consumable product ( a newspaper) and or the repeated use of the product.( a automobile) So that means you have to create a launch system that:
A) Is reusable.
OR
B) Is so cheap it can be consumed profitably
AND
C) Has an endless cargo/consumer.
D) creates obscene EXTRA normal profits.
For me, newspace will not take place until someone can start systematically launching human cargo AND make OBSCENE profits doing it.
Vladislaw: There is one other possibility, the route we’ve been following the past thirty years — and the future I think most likely — of steady, hard, and, unfortunately, very slow improvement. For all its many faults, the Shuttle launch system (including the Orbiter as payload) is cheaper per unit mass to orbit (probably by more than half) than the Saturn-V was, and is probably more reliable (though since there were no Saturn failures, that is unprovable). Even after all the price increases, the EELVs are cheaper (by far) than the Titan-IV they replaced, and are not likely to be less reliable, though it is too early to say anything here. I don’t know, but I would guess that Pegasus and the other Orbital vehicles are cheaper than the Scout.
This history, and the discussion above, is why I think we should relegate revolutionary change to the “nice-to-have” category, and work on creating markets with incremental improvements on the vehicles we have. If you do that, worst case is you get larger markets for the current industry, and hopefully economies of scale. Best case, you get the kind of market pull that might motivate someone to caught up a revolutionary change.
Sure, going this route will result in taking a lot longer than any of us would like to open the Solar System. But, anyone who ever thought doing that was going to be easy — whatever economic theory you believe in — needs to buy better drugs.
— Donald
Sam, as I recall, Orbital Sciences had to raise their prices after several Pegasus failures showed them that launch vehicles were not quite as cheap and easy as they’d hoped.
It didn’t help that they had designed a crummy launch vehicle. It was never cheap, or intended to be, on a per-pound basis. The idea was to make it “cheap” on a per-launch basis. On that it partially succeeded.
Donald,
that would be comparing apples as oranges. What we HAVE been doing the last thirty years is a government program. Market mechanisms do not apply. What I was refering to was what would have to happen in the private commerical sphere to have a netscape moment and what the “enabler” is, in my opinion it is human cargo for the private launch industry. When I spoke about ease of access, you have to remember that, like for example the auto and airplane industries, anyone could slap it together and give it a go. Rockets have NOT enjoyed that same freedom of access since Goddard. The government has HIGHLY regulated the industry to pretty much INSURE people did not go after the market like in historical examples. The government’s recent actions in the commerical sphere of space launch has opened up the industry, personally I feel it is because the military wants suborbital planes for the modern warfighter and by letting it enter the commercial sphere the military can order them in 10-15 years and no one will bat an eye because they will be considered common and it will not raise an eyebrow when they order them. But if the military ordered them today, congress would jump on the weapons in space debate and kill it. It is pretty simple, if the military thought suborbital commerical planes were a threat to national security, suborbital space tourism would not even be on the table.
Since it IS on the table I have to assume it was green lighted by the military.
So if Virgin Galatic can fly that plane for 200K a launch, with 6 customers at 200K a pop, that, to me, would be EXTRA normal profits and capital would come flooding in, If they drop their price to 100K which has already been hinted at after the first 200 founder flights, it would still be making a a half million dollars a pop and you would still see it.
Burt Rutan has stated that SS1 cost 80K per flight. So SS2 at 200K per flight I would think is in the ballpark. If it ends up costing a million dollars plus a flight, it will not be enough, in my opinion, to be the trigger. entrepreneurial start ups in totally new industries, historically, have to have the allure of enormous profit potential. Witness the Dot.com boom and how capital POURED in from every direction because of the lure of instant millions. It is that inflow of HUGE HUGE capital amounts to build infrastructure that will make it happen. Nickel and diming our way forward with government will never achieve it.
Vlad, $30 million in backlog at VG with 5 ships going once a week carrying six passengers would work through their backlog in five weeks. Then what? Listen to yourself. You are touting a $60 million per year (they filed one launch per week with the space port) project that is a side show for $20 billion/year company. One of Virgin’s 38 planes, an A340 lists for $218 million. One needs to point to more than $30 million/year in orbital demand and $60 million in suborbital demand to say there is demand for space services. All of the $100 billion in space services of all sorts amounts to Louisiana’s economy. It’s less than 1 part in 600 of the world economy. Space tourism 1 part in 2 million of the world economy.
The web could replace faxes, postal mail, newspapers, television, radio, record stores, video rentals, book stores and cable TV. What can space replace? Make a friggin value proposition instead of a hockey stick revenue curve. Even if the optimists at Futron are right, it’s $700 million/year potential. That’s 4-5% apple’s revenue, 1-2% of Microsoft’s.
To be clear, it’s not enough to have a winner, a netscape moment, and obscene profits. There need to be successful competitors. Netscape stays the same without Internet Explorer. There need to be four super low cost entrants that succeed to bring their products to market to drive each other down to the price of the highest cost one of the four as it goes out of business. There may be a quantum leap, but the only beneficiary if it’s Elon Musk will be Elon Musk for a long time.
Make a friggin value proposition instead of a hockey stick revenue curve.
The Space Motto contest is closed; we have a winner
One should remember what has happened during the past five years and realize that’s it’s extremely unlikely less will happen during the next five.
If only three out of five of the following “big item” possibilities happen during the next five years (hello 2012) it would in my opinion still amount to at least a doubling of progression/capability/improvement. Pick any three:
A – at least six private manned suborbital flights (there were three during the past five years).
B – at least one successful launch to orbit including orbital insertion of a payload with a privately funded and developed rocket (pretty much a first all things considered).
C – at least one launch of a man-rated/accessible privately owned development version of a inflatable module (two that were not man-rated/accessible were launched during the past five years).
D – at least one privately funded robotic moon mission (a first).
E – at least one launch and use of a (possibly rudimentary) space tug (a first).
I think we’ll see far more, in fact I find the above 100% improvement downright laughable as an extremely conservative estimate (but I can be as wrong as anybody). We might even see a few new payload markets with high potential.
DINKINS: There need to be four super low cost entrants that succeed to bring their products to market to drive each other down to the price of the highest cost one of the four as it goes out of business.
Sam,
An economics question.
I was about to say that having one low-cost entrant has little impact on prices, as the entrant has an economic incentive to charge a little bit below highest cost entrant. Which means you need competition. But you already said that.
What I want to know is the basis for you saying we need FOUR super-low-cost entrants to significantly drive down market prices.
Was that just a random choice of number on your part? Or is there some economic research that shows that two (2) or three (3) low-cost entrants probably is not enough?
I do agree that the highest cost player that can *survive* in the marketplace sets the general price level.
– Al
VladislawL: What we HAVE been doing the last thirty years is a government program. Market mechanisms do not apply.
At best, this is an oversimplification. Politicians do things for reasons: to keep their constituents happy, to get reelected, and often to preserve existing infrastructure. This is a “market” in the broadest definition of the term, and I argue that it behooves us to consider this a market and act accordingly. Thus, the Space Station is a market as long as it is in space and needs re-supply, and it does not matter one whit why it someone is willing to pay for that, only that they are. It is clear, so far, that politicians are willing to fund the continuance of the Space Station, so it is a market that we can use — the largest and fastest growing.
I’m not sure there was a “Netscape moment†in the automobile industry. Remember that there were many decades of development before the personal automobile became reliable enough to become widespread. Then, it took huge government subsidies and active opposition to alternatives to make them ubiquitous. All in all, getting from invention of the automobile to where we were in the 1950s took most of a century. And, this is for a transportation system for which the destination already exists; aside from the Space Station and certain useful orbits, that is not the case in space.
Historically, have any “Netscape moments” happened in large scale technologies like launch vehicles? Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any. “Netscape moments” seem to occur in networks of small scale technologies (the Internet, the PC) which do not take huge up-front investments, particularly in infrastructure, and where network affects can make themselves felt. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this question.
— Donald
Re the Weinberg interview: it’s only fair to point out that to the extent his prestige may carry weight beyond his expertise, the same applies to Stephen Hawking’s positive views on space — which many space fans are happy to cite. Great contributions to cosmology don’t make him an authority on the odds of species-killing catastrophes, or on the comparative merits of different “insurance policies” against them.
There’s irony in the historical linkages and parallels here. High-energy physics gained a much higher profile — and many years of public $upport disproportionate to spending on other sciences — from nuclear weapons, just as big rocketry was pursued first for V2s and then ICBMs. In the 1969 Robert Wilson testimony Weinberg cites (“it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending”), you can hear the turn from “our wizards will come up with the next X-bomb” to justification in terms of the inherent beauty and philosophical importance of its goals.
The same progression has happened — is still happening — in justifications for space spending, with the national-defense angle crucial in the kick-start after Sputnik, a more diffuse “prestige and leadership” argument predominating in the 1960s, and other motives gaining traction in the years since.
So I suggest that after we get over our irritation with Weinberg for raining on our parade, there might be something to learn from his perspective. He’s deeply confident of the importance of what interests him, and doesn’t try to justify it in terms of security, or “the US needs to be number one in quark-gluon plasmas,” or “grand unification theory will kick off the next industrial revolution.” A little more of that confidence, and a little less insecure “what’s the killer app for space this year?”, wouldn’t hurt space advocacy.
Historically, have any “Netscape moments†happened in large scale technologies like launch vehicles?
No — or at least not without ignoring crucial qualitative and quantitative differences. Information technology (software as well as hardware) has so many unique features that it doesn’t make much sense to compare any other technology or industry to it. (If we must, then publishing, telecommunications, and broadcasting are a lot closer to IT than anything in transportation.)
That some space fans keep comparing space to IT tells you more about their wishful thinking (PCs got cheap fast, the Internet became popular fast, both made new fortunes fast, and so can we!), and about overlapping geekitudes in many of us, than about any meaningful similarity. Comparisons to the history of aviation are a little better, although not all that much.
Monte: I fully agree, in spades. I have long thought that both the Internet and the airline industry are very poor models for space development. In both the former cases, destinations (cities) existed first, so it was much easier to justify development.
As you probably know, I think the development of blue-water transportation is a much better model. There were no developed end-destinations and the task was of comparable difficulty — though, realistically, probably easier. You have to carry your own supplies and there are only limited opportunities for living off the land before you reach your destination. The bad news is that, starting from the first Neolithic boat trips to islands visible on the horizon (comparable to where we are in spaceflight today), it took humanity 10,000 years to develop confident travel over the world’s oceans, and even today more than 500 people die every year in deep sea accidents.
I fully expect colonizing the all the disparate and widely-separated worlds of the Solar System to take at least as long as it took us to colonize the continents and islands of what is, after all, our own world.
This is called an outsider’s real-world reality check, and it’s one that, in my opinion, the space community desperately needs to take seriously.
— Donald
DONALD: Historically, have any “Netscape moments†happened in large scale technologies like launch vehicles? Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any. “Netscape moments†seem to occur in networks of small scale technologies (the Internet, the PC) which do not take huge up-front investments, particularly in infrastructure, and where network affects can make themselves felt. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this question.
Donald,
I agree that there is unlikely to be a Netscape moment.
IMO, the best we can hope for is a Lindberg moment. There was a huge shift in public perception and attitudes about the flight after he successfully flew across the Atlantic.
– Al
Donald: I don’t think we need to ratchet back expectations for Solar System spacefaring to the “millennial” level. Only in the last few centuries have we had systematic science, systematic technology development, and systematic synergy between commerce and innovation. If we don’t kill ourselves with them, they can work a lot faster than the cut-and-try, tradition, and word-of-mouth that paced prehistoric and early historic shipbuilding.
If nothing else, at the 50-to-100-year scale and beyond the door is open to wild cards from outside space effortsper se: that old standby the hypersonic airliner (or bomber :-() might come through, and become our yearned-for flyback first stage. Existing technologies will mature for non-space purposes: exotic materials like nanotubes, robust (and trusted) small fission reactors, tough high-efficiency photovoltaic films, etc. And sooner or later there’s going to be wholly new science: if not the MacGyver terawatt D-cell, something else as game-changing as that.
My criticism of both overly grandiose NASA projects and over-hyped NewSpace projections stems not from doubts that their goals are ultimately attainable or worthwhile, but from the belief that promising them sooner/cheaper than is possible actually slows down their realization. It disillusions too many young space enthusiasts in the years between 15 and 30. It turns off too many legislators and potential investors. And it fosters a “dude, where’s my jetpack?” cynicism in the public.
We seem to be talking about Netscape Moments, and Lindberg moments, without actually defining what the hell we are talking abou.
IMHO, the netscape moment doesn’t really come from the public’s perception – it comes first and foremost from Wall Streets perception. Historically, when Wall street sees potential profits, money will be made avaliable for development/construction/operations. A great example of this can be seen with the rise of mathmaticallly modeled Hedge funds, for one, or the launch of major internet radio.
This brings me to my primary point – the Netscape moment happens when we start seeing liquidity events, in the NewSpace industry IE when Musk, or Bigelow, or someone else launches an IPO, or we see OldSpace purchase NewSpace.
For everyone (Sam, and Al and Monte and Donald) who has questioned the time frame and possiblity of a “Netscape moment” – when do you expect to see liquidity events happening, from NewSpace companies?
Because IMHO, the liquidity events will be tied directly with cheap access. So when do you think they’ll happen?
Monte: they can work a lot faster than the cut-and-try, tradition, and word-of-mouth that paced prehistoric and early historic shipbuilding.
That is true. However, the project is much bigger, too. Recall that each Lunar-sized world in the Solar System — and there are a lot of them — has a surface area as great as that of Africa. That’s a lot of territory to explore and utilize. Even if I am off by an order of magnitude, I’m probably not off by two orders, and I hope we can agree on “it will take a long time.” Game changing technologies will not change these fundamental “geologic” (for want of a better word) facts. Likewise, game changing technologies can be two-edged swards — self-reproducing nanotechnologies that might achieve the goal quickly are unlikely to be a good idea.
from the belief that promising them sooner/cheaper than is possible actually slows down their realization. It disillusions too many young space enthusiasts
This, I fully agree with. Over-promising in endemic, sets unrealistic expectations and hopes, and, as is clear from some of the discussion here, it disillusions even ourselves.
Ferris: A great example of this can be seen with the rise of mathmaticallly modeled Hedge funds, for one, or the launch of major internet radio.
But, both of these are very poor models. Using already existing infrastructure, they cost almost nothing beyond the “network development” cost to deploy — that is, you have to develop the idea, but deploying it is almost free. It will be a very long time, if ever, before spaceflight of any kind is in that category.
This brings me to my primary point – the Netscape moment happens when we start seeing liquidity events, in the NewSpace industry IE when Musk, or Bigelow, or someone else launches an IPO, or we see OldSpace purchase NewSpace.
But this has already happened. It is precisely the history of Orbital Sciences. If that’s all it takes, why are we where we are now?
For everyone (Sam, and Al and Monte and Donald) who has questioned the time frame and possiblity of a “Netscape moment†– when do you expect to see liquidity events happening, from NewSpace companies?
It will happen when some (or preferably several) commodities that take a lot of transportation capacity and are large enough and valuable enough to demand the investment of a small part “Grandma’s retirement money” to deploy the transportation to obtain them, are found. Comsats and applications satellites (military and civil) have been that in the past, and tourism appear to be a second application, but it is very hard to see what comes next. I’ve made some stabs at it with my Space Station market theories, supplying a lunar base, and obtaining oxygen for use in orbit, but I freely admit that these, especially the latter, have a long way to go.
That is the difficult row we need to plough. I’m afraid there are unlikely to be any Apollo-like shortcuts. You, and too many here, by looking at the transportation first are starting at the wrong end of the equation. If you want much investment of private capital in spaceflight, you have to demonstrate the demand first. In this sense, all the broken promises of the past where entrepreneurs have received (insufficient) private capital and failed have probably been counter-productive. SpaceX succeeding will be a giant step in the right direction, but they, too, clearly have a long way to go. It is worth noting that the company with what is probably the best chance is using little or no private capital except a personal fortune and is attempting the smallest technological step.
So when do you think they’ll happen?
If you mean to develop cheaper transport up front before the market is already generating revenue for someone, for truly private capital and for full orbital or cis-lunar transport, this will occur a long time in the future. Nobody here wants to hear this, but I believe it is the truth, and nothing yet has convinced me that I am wrong, much as I would like to come to believe that.
— Donald
Your missing the point – its the amount of capital that is available – consider LTCM launch, in the 90s (okay, I know that ended bad, but the point is there) – between the announcment of LTCM, and its beginning of trading, it raised $1,011,060,243. To date, I believe the last report was that Musk had spent $100,000,000 on SpaceX. Many sub-orbital companies only require something in the tens of millions of dollars (or even less).
The point I am trying to make is, that when Wall Street comes in, it will bring more resources than we could ever imagine, with 1 goal in mind – cheap access.
There has been much discussion about the problems with Orbital, but I’ll leave that to the side – the more important point I said was events – as in more than one. OSC is one data point.
Thats the kind of investment I expect would and will become available, espcially for the companies that prove themselves in the sub-orbital market.
As for your concern about what comes next – This is my suspicion, and I suspect it’ll be bigger than expected
Further, I would argue that there is more interest than just tourism, for sub-orbital spaceflight. I make this point because what will become apparent is that key for many of these developments, like the ones Pickens talks about, is that we’ll need more time in zero-g.
Actually, I would argue that its not necassarily SpaceX that is the best positioned, for a variety of reasons. I do agree that broken promises have hurt the industry – that I won’t deny. However, I do believe that demand has and is being demonstrated. I go back to Pickens’ talk, where he talks about the interest from the drug companies.
I would also point out that, when new industries are being founded, you usually only have to prove 1 market, and then associated and secondary markets grow up, that aren’t expected. It was video games that drove PCs by quite a bit.
The big problem I feel you make, Donald, is you seem to discount the possiblity of leveraging success in the sub-orbital market to producing a viable orbital vehicle.
let’s look at some numbers and see what capital flows would do in relation to them.
Virgin plans on 5 suborbital planes and has an option for 4 more, 9 x 6 passengers equals 54 per week x 52 weeks, ( branson has been quoted as saying once a day per ship once it is validated) that is 2808 passengers per year, if he makes 500,000 per flight you are looking at 1.4 billion in gross revenues. The PE ratio of a publically traded stock (branson has been quoted that he will not take it public until the ships are validated) is the price to earnings ratio, historically for high tech stocks that runs around 8 times the market average, about 88 in this case. the minute branson took this public he would have capitalization of a 100 billion dollar company, about a third of the size of GE. It is that simple. When the other companies now wanting to jump on the band wagon, ( and capital is looking for the cheapest entrance cost to the EXTRA normal profits) new start ups will start to flurish on just the PROMISE of profits, but not until at least ONE company is making them first. Branson will only be the 800 pound gorilla until the second successful entrant. To try and stave that entrant off in an UNPROTECTED market, that company will usually drop prices dramatically, reducing the potential extra normal profits for the next entrant and slowing capital inflows ONLY to themselves as they are continued to be seen as the leader and keeping them dominant in the market. Flush with cash the start traditionally then starts to vertically intergrate the supply chain to achieve economy of scale. They will buy up all the small tech companies that supply them, for example if space dev built their engines they would buy it up to better control the supply chain and to deny those parts to the competitor. This of course encourages MORE small start ups to fill those gaps and more and more capital starts cascading in trying to cash in at the cheapest entrance costs.
This is all, of course, premised on at least ONE successful entrant that makes obscene EXTRA NORMAL profits to start the capital formation flows.
“I’m not sure there was a “Netscape moment†in the automobile industry.”
When henry ford introduced the assembly line and standardized parts it was the netscape moment and all new entrants had to copy that business model to now be successful.
“Vlad, $30 million in backlog at VG with 5 ships going once a week carrying six passengers would work through their backlog in five weeks. Then what? Listen to yourself. You are touting a $60 million per year (they filed one launch per week with the space port)”
I am talking about capital formation and capital flows, what if ALL 50 states now see that they ALL have to have a space port to stay competitive? Or multiple space ports as the down range potential increases? 250 million x 50 states? Plus all the new start ups to service them? All the space suit companies, space lap tops etc etc etc. I am just talking about what will happen if one company can pull it off and make extra normal profits, it is not magic, but it does happen, in a NEW and UNPROTECTED industry whenever a company makes extra normal profits capital AUTOMATICALLY flows there. not some of the time, not most of the time, EVERYTIME.
They have 30 million in revenue for how many launches? Gosh if they can make 30 million a year for absolutely NO launches for years, how much will the revenue stream be if they actually start LAUNCHING?
“Historically, have any “Netscape moments†happened in large scale technologies like launch vehicles? ”
I do not think so because of the fact the “market” as been NASA and not the general public. Remember what I have said before, there has to be an ENABLER for a netscape moment, what can MAKE IT HAPPEN. For websites it was the internet. In the auto industry it was standardized parts and the assembly line ( assembly line equals specialization, cars were built one at a time in garages and shops, specialization is one of the four factors that can produce economy of scale) In my opinion, that enabler is HUMAN CARGO, because there is NO OTHER cargo that has the potential to create the flight rates needed to bring down costs. Think of this, if one MILLION people flew into suborbital space per year, that would equal to how many people fly in planes in EIGHT HOURS. So even if a million people are doing suborbital up and downs or down range point to point it is still just a fraction of the potential of how many people already fly. And why I say ONLY human cargo can be the enabler for low cost space flight.
“The point I am trying to make is, that when Wall Street comes in, it will bring more resources than we could ever imagine, with 1 goal in mind – cheap access.”
The “cheap access” they will be looking for is NOT cheap access to space but cheap access to the EXTRA normal profits. As the first entrant’s stock price rises, increasing the PE to levels new capital will try to avoid, capital will flow to OTHER new entrants, because 10 million invested in a new start up increases your percentage of ownership potential. (for example, today 10 million would buy you a 30% interest in space dev) Like you saw in the dot com boom, private investors wanted to have a piece of the next BILLION dollar company and it was cheaper to buy into a new company at 2 bucks a share and have a % of ownership, then to pay 600 a share for a google and try to be % owner.
>>DINKIN: There need to be four super low cost entrants that succeed to bring their products to market to drive each other down to the price of the highest cost one of the four as it goes out of business.
m,
>What I want to know is the basis for you saying we need FOUR super-low-cost entrants to significantly drive down market prices.
Was that just a random choice of number on your part? Or is there some economic research that shows that two (2) or three (3) low-cost entrants probably is not enough?
Suppose that Lockmart can produce their rockets for free. But the Government will pay them billions. They are really smart. Expect them to tacitly coordinate to get nearly all the money the government is willing to pay. It’s harder to coordinate with three, but possible. Industries with three players are pretty stable. If you get three new entrants that are low cost, they will kill off all the expensive oldsters (or get bought) and promptly start acting like oldsters. Three may be enough for competition to start a positive feedback loop. It might not. With four, it’s a lot harder to keep them from strong price competition. So sometimes two is enough (AMD and Intel where marginal costs are quite low compared to fixed costs of factories), sometimes three is not enough. If there are two companies that do reusable rockets or space elevators or some other low marginal cost technology, two might be enough. But one is not. The one will stay enough under the next cheaper provider to get lots of business, but they will maximize revenues given their costs and their competitors prices.
Vladislaw: capacity to sell 15,000 flights is great if the demand is there. What evidence do you have that demand is more than 500 at $200,000/flight? That’s a lot of money. $100 million. Have you bought a ticket on VG yet? Do you still think NOx is totally safe? What makes 2009 different from 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 about the likelihood of VG getting their Space Ship Two flight tested and certified? I talked to someone at Virtuoso Travel that got burned recommending that people buy a flight. It’s vaporware. I am in favor and I was very excited in 2004, but after 5 years of failure to follow through, Bayesian statistics puts the probability of follow through in the sixth year at less than 1 in 5.
Follow the demand curve from the Soyuz demand. $20-35 million/year for a week in zero G. Another bunch of millions from people flying in reduced gravity for six minutes on a dozen parabolas. Not surprisingly, zero G if it costs $500/minute is not too popular.
Scuba diving by comparison has six million adherents worldwide spending about billions. Cost matters. Neutral buoyancy can be had for a lot less than a space walk.
re: netscape moment
SpaceX will probably have one. That will spur a lot of investment in space. That will result in a lot of funded companies competing for markets that may or may not exist. Many will fail. This is good and healthy, but no guarantee of a virtuous cycle or a breakaway company that is profitable. Iridium anyone?
Keep up the good work, Sam. It’s always helpful to season the “markets are magic!” attitude with some, y’know, actual economics 101.
It’s always helpful to season the “markets are magic!†attitude with some, y’know, actual economics 101.
Bankruptcy 101 : http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Sam,
Thank you for answering my question on the market characteristics.
DINKINS: Follow the demand curve from the Soyuz demand. $20-35 million/year for a week in zero G. Another bunch of millions from people flying in reduced gravity for six minutes on a dozen parabolas. Not surprisingly, zero G if it costs $500/minute is not too popular.
I agree the market is not large at $200k per flight. Not many people are willing to pay the cost of a new home for 5 minutes of zero gravity.
The price will need to come down rapidly to sell more tickets, and to keep the SpaceShip One flying to its capacity. I think it needs to come down to the price of a new premium car to tap into much larger numbers. I have heard Virgin and Burt claim that the price will come down, and that they have lots of room to do so. I hope they are right.
DINKINS: re: netscape moment
SpaceX will probably have one. That will spur a lot of investment in space. That will result in a lot of funded companies competing for markets that may or may not exist.
I hope you are right, but there are many other obstacles, which you don’t mention, between here and that hopeful future. Let me describe some of those obstacles.
A close reading of the article on Elon Musk in Inc. Magazine (where he was named Entrepeneur of the Year) suggests that Musk himself is one of those obstacles.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071201/entrepreneur-of-the-year-elon-musk.html
Upon reading this article you will see that:
1) Elon is a control freak.
2) He micromanages his people, who is many cases know a lot more than he does about building rockets. (If he is not hiring people who know more than he does, then he is not hiring good people.)
Elon is the President and CEO and Chairman of the BOD of SpaceX. He is also the Program Manager, and the Chief Systems Engineer. If this was not enough for any superhuman, Elon is diluting his focus with Tesla Motors and a solar energy installation company. And he has five (5) very young children who need a father.
Something has to give.
Now, maybe Elon will overcome his need to be in control, learn to delegate, and institute control systems that allow him to delegate. I hope so. We will see.
3) NOTE: Elon was forced to sell Zip2 and PayPal over Elon’s wishes. The only reason that PayPal was sold to Ebay is because there was a palace coup at Ebay, and Elon lost control.
Why was there a palace coup? Read the article … it is because Elon is a control freak, and was micromanaging things at PayPal. It appears that he was driving the other people at PayPal nuts. (Who thinks this may be a problem at SpaceX where nobody can pull a coup?)
For all these reasons, we can assume that the lesson Elon learned from PayPal is to not give anybody else any control. This may become an issue in an IPO. An IPO will require Elon to institute a real Board of Directors, real outside investor controls, meaning Elon will need to give up some control.
On top of this, the possibility of learning to delegate means you think you have something to learn. Unfortunately, Elon thinks he is a great manager, which means he is convinced that being a control freak and micromanaging his people is a good thing. He actually compares himself to Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. I have read about Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, and neither of them share Musk’s management weaknesses.
All of the above create challenges to a successful Netscape moment at SpaceX.
Next, a successful IPO by SpaceX in itself is not a Netscape moment. It will not be the equivalent of a Netscape moment until the OUTSIDE investors make LOTS of money.
Remember, both SpaceHab and Orbital and SpaceDev have successfully gone public. None of the outside investors of any of these companies have made LOTS of money.
Another data point — very recently MDA sold its space division to ATK (another type of exit). MDA’s stock price went up when they sold their space division to ATK (e.g., this is an anti-Netscape moment, as the stock market rewarded ATK for getting out of the space business.)
I am a big advocate for commercial space, but don’t get your hopes too high for a SpaceX Netscape moment.
– Al
“Vladislaw: capacity to sell 15,000 flights is great if the demand is there. What evidence do you have that demand is more than 500 at $200,000/flight? That’s a lot of money. $100 million. Have you bought a ticket on VG yet? Do you still think NOx is totally safe? What makes 2009 different from 2005″
Well one of the reasons you are seeing the rise in suborbital tourism is the results obtained with two reports, the Zogby poll, and the Futron report.
http://www.futron.com/pdf/resource_center/conference_presentations/Starzyk%20-%20RAeS.pdf
This set the number at 16,000 that study was done in 02′ with an expected start in 06′ they recently updated that by moving the timeline out to reflect Virgin’s start date and raised the price from 100,000 to 200,000 for the first three years then prices fall again as in the first study.
The newest data http://www.futron.com/pdf/resource_center/white_papers/SpaceTourismRevisited.pdf shows that number reduced from 14,000 to 16,000 people per year in the 2021 timeframe. About 12-13 years.
That is what I was basing my numbers on, and that is all based on one main competitor and the rise of start ups, If several companies come on board faster then projected in 2006 then prices would fall faster and passenger rate would increase.
No I didn’t buy a ticket yet, I have the 20,000 for the deposit saved and I have an 8 plex apartment building I have owned for 14 years that I will sell when they are flying. I am 50 years old so I should live to do it.
A netscape moment takes place when something is created in the commerical sphere that ALLOWS people to do something they were unable to do before. When the US government learned they could ACTUALLY send a man in space with a rocket, that was a eurka moment, but since it did not slide into the commerical sphere it wouldn’t be a netscape moment.
Prior to the LEGALIZATION of suborbital space tourism by the US congress and legel outline drafted by the FAA commercial human cargo was ILLEGAL. As soon as this changed ( changed because I believe the military wants suborbital capability for the modern warfighter and green lighted space tourism as a security risk so that commerical space tourism would develope and then the military could buy it off the shelf.) You NOW had an ENABLER, and that enabler is HUMAN CARGO, commerical companies have ALWAYS had the ability to launch NON human cargo and we have never seen prices fall like in most lifetime industry curves. If a commerical firm can NOW launch people into suborbital flight AND make EXTRA normal profits doing it, capital will automatically flow there. WHEN that cascading effect of capital formation starts and it starts racing to the extra normal profits THAT is the netscape moment. Lets say that the Virgin ship did NOT allow passengers but ONLY shot off a micro sat or nano sat or something, how many NEW launches would there be a year? 10? 20? still not the flight rate you need to bring costs down and to spur on lots of competition. So again as I have said, Burt Rutan’s SS1 was not the enabler, the legalization of human cargo was/is.
Sorry needed to answer a point for a friend. I had said earlier that the model had to be REPEATABLE and have EASE OF ACCESS for capitalization, an UNPROTECTED industry. Let’s say the US patent office gave a patent to Rutan for 20 years for ANY suborbital craft. So, in effect, it blocked ANY other type of craft from being created, that would be a government sponsered monopoly versus a natural monoploy, say owning the ONLY water hole in 100 miles. When an enterpreneur makes some sort of break through that allows bringing to market a new product or service and there are no protection mechanics in place barring access of new entrants and capital ( patents, government regulations, state zoning laws et cetera) Other people look and see the money being made and say “hell I can do that!” That is why it was so important when the FAA wrote up the rules it didn’t put up any road blocks for capital formation. You can BET that if and when Virgin is successful they will be back door lobbying to have codes and regulations put in place to bar access by other players, tightening up the entrance requirements, every business loves the thought of being a monopoly. If that happens it will slow capital formation.
Thank you Vladislaw I got tired of the “using napkin economics as a nay-saying argument” and I hope that gave them pause for thought (general points about avoiding hype and unreasonable expectations are valid –but it can be overdone).
If it didn’t I’ll point out the simple fact that they’re betting against a group of very successful people. Or perhaps they think Elon Musk, John Carmack, Jeff Bezos, Robert Bigelow, Burt Rutan, and Sir Richard Branson lack knowledge of economics? If so who cares? They make things work, they’re willing to spend the money, they have had more than their share of success so far. Most of them aren’t explicitly aiming at personal near-term investment returns, at least not in a narrow-minded sense, and that’s ok too even if it might make some people here freak out ^_^ (appropriate quote: “They didn’t tell us you could do that!”, any of you recognize it? Hint: it’s from a rather big change in (macro-)economics last century).
Anyway I bet the general drive and knowledge goes for many of the lesser-known entrepreneurs as well (like for example Paul Breed or David Masten), at least it looks that way from the outside. Most of the companies I’m impressed by are chugging along nicely without any sort of desperate need for cash.
Even in the unlikely case every single one of them fails it won’t magically uninvent or disappear their efforts so far, significant progress will still have been made.
Al Fansome: Elon is vision-driven, throw Elon out and you throw out the vision too, do that and you’re left with something like the current-day PayPal which is simply one of the shittiest companies around and which only survives to this day because they established a significant market share early on. In other words the main reason it still exists is the work of Elon, not those that ousted him. As long as it’s Elon’s money, Elon gets to do whatever he goddamn pleases.
Someone hasn’t spent enough time around entrepreneurs to get to know the type of character traits they tend to default to ^_^ (and that successful entrepreneurship almost always requires).
A netscape moment takes place when something is created in the commerical sphere that ALLOWS people to do something they were unable to do before.
By “Netscape moment” most people mean some combination of
1) the IPO in August, 1995, and the stock’s first-day jump from $28 to $75
2) Netscape’s 3-4 revenue doublings during 1995
3) The flood of investment from then on into anything that looked like it might be the next Netscape.
I hate to say it, but none of these reflects “allowing people to do something they were unable to do before.” More or less HTTP-compliant browsers had been circulating widely among the geeks for several years, and (allowing for lesser bandwidth) nearly all the core functions now on the Web today had been around quite a bit longer. I’m no pioneer, and I was a CompuServe junkie and daily forum participant, shareware downloader, and sometime Lexis/Nexis user at least 12 years before the Netscape IPO.
So the Netscape moment was in fact almost entirely a tipping point in perception… and had very little to do with bringing new technical capability to market.
1) the IPO in August, 1995, and the stock’s first-day jump from $28 to $75
2) Netscape’s 3-4 revenue doublings during 1995
3) The flood of investment from then on into anything that looked like it might be the next Netscape.
I hate to say it, but none of these reflects “allowing people to do something they were unable to do before.â€
The internet ALLOWED anyone to become a website maker ( geocities for example) and ALLOWED anyone to surf the site with an off the shelf, icon driven software package with no geek speak needed.
“More or less HTTP-compliant browsers had been circulating widely among the geeks”, verus an off the shelf, icon driven software package allowing you to “surf the web” and visit any HTML 1.0 website that could be put online by ANY html programer because of the enabler of routers and servers
it took it out of the geek world and it became the enabler for website makers to have their site readable by anyone with a computer and limited working knowledge of the web, dial up etc. you no longer had to be a geek but it enabled anyone to surf.
If you used AOL you paid a HUGE HUGE premium but with a netscape browser you were freed from AOL, Compuserve ect. you could just use netscape and surf to ANYONE’s site with the high cost of the premium service.
One of Netscape’s stated goals was to “level the playing field” among operating systems by providing a consistent web browsing experience across them. The Netscape web browser interface was identical on any computer. Netscape later experimented with prototypes of a web-based system which would enable users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network, no matter what computer or operating system they happened to be using.
consumers were provided a “consistent web browsing experience” an off the shelf, commerical product became that enabler and netscape gained a 90% market share.
Virgin is going to try and provide a consistent suborbital experience with an off the shelf, commerical product for the transportation of HUMAN cargo, the human cargo being the enabler. if human cargo was still illegal for commerical suborbital transportation then there would be no reason to build an SS1 to launch micro sats or nano sats because the market still would not be that big. I keep coming back to it, the legalization of human cargo NOW provides a enabler for the creation of a transportation system for it because you can get the high flight rates with humans that you cant get with just sats and and a couple cargo launches.