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.

I hate to say it, but none of these reflects “allowing people to do something they were unable to do before.”

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

Bankruptcy 101 : http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/