In contrast, the government pays ULA a billion a year for “services” that seem pretty ill-defined, but definitely don’t include actually launching anything. With the Atlas V now engineless, their symbionts in Congress will no doubt try to increase the fees-for-no-services fraction of ULA’s income. I don’t think they will be long-term successful.

The same largely applies on the NASA side. SLS gets, by NASA standards, huge appropriations, but will, in the end, most probably never fly. January 2017, when a new administration takes office, looks increasingly like the upper limit on life-support for NASA’s BFR (Big Fake Rocket). As more and more people become aware that trims to the SLS program already made to stay within the current and realistically projectable budgets (advanced boosters, J2X-based upper stage) will limit it to never boosting more than 93 tonnes to LEO, an operational, and way cheaper, 53-tonne-capable Falcon Heavy will be an unanswerable alternative by the time the next president, whomever it may be, takes the oath of office.

Beyond ISS, I see Bigelow-based habitats in LEO and elsewhere constituting a growing market for crew and cargo launch services. You don’t. Fair enough. I’m content to await events to prove my case. I have to be, as there isn’t any other way to get that particular job done. By the time ISS reaches the end of its currently extant support in 2020, the intervening six years should be more than sufficient to decide which of our visions proves out. One of us will be a seer and the other a sap. I eagerly await your incremental schooling as events unfold.

Except it is. Just as it pay farmers to grow wheat- or not.
No ISS, no Space X. Nothing is stopping Musk from launching out on his own– except the very parameters of the marketplace he wants to service. The private enterprisewed resources you embrace are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They fly nobody. Because they can’t– the risk outweights the value of the return. That’s why governments do it. History ha shown commercial never steps up to carry the load but attempts to socialize the risk on the many to benefit a few. Commercial space has no future because there zimply no reasonsble market for it. So capital is invested in oil wells, not balloon hotels. You fly nobody and claim parody through false equivalency. Space X launches satellites. That’s old hat. Even North Korea and Iran are doing that.

And that will be true – right up until he does. In a year or two at the most your song’s gonna need some new lyrics.

and needs government to subsidize his efforts.

The government pays SpaceX for development and launch services rendered. That ain’t subsidy. Under cost-plus contracting, the old-line aerospace majors get paid handsomely for what often turns out to be no service and no product. Technically, that ain’t subsidy either, but it’s close enough you sure can see it from there.

SpaceX seems to have comfortably passed the point where government revenues are critical to its financial success, but the government will constitute a nice incremental market, even if probably a fairly static or even shrinking one, as time goes by. Even if NASA should succumb to old-school procurement politics and drop SpaceX from CCtCap, it would likely only accelerate the entry into service of Dragon V2 and Falcon Heavy. When it’s time to railroad, you railroad.

Launching satellites is a laudable effort and he lucked out on his third attempt.

By my count he failed on his third attempt but “lucked out” on his fourth and every attempt thereafter. After awhile, it begins to look like luck has less to do with it than skill.

but humansd have been lofting satelites for half a century.

True. And in the next half-century, most of those lofted will probably be courtesy of Mr. Musk.

Following in the wake of government efforts simply reaffirms the point- commercial never leads, but is a follow aling, cashing in whwn it can.

Navy seaplanes were the first multi-engine craft to cross the Atlantic. Thereafter, though it took getting through a couple more decades and an intervening World War, it was commercial airlines that made a mass-market business of doing so. The commercial efforts quickly dwarfed their pioneering government predecessors. We’re on the cusp of that tip-over in space launch and human space travel.

If the U.S. government is able to actually continue space exploration, more power to them. But if they are, as I fear, terminally mired in a dysfunctional system of space-irrelevant pork-based looting by dinosaur legacy contractors and politicians and literally insane procurement regulations, then even exploration will be taken over by those who will shortly have the goods to pursue it and no institutional obstacles to doing so.

But it a short term effort. Without the ISS, its dead end. Isn’t it. For as we know, LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no where, fast.

As has often been pointed out, it’s not necessarily the things you know, but the things you know that ain’t so that mess you up. I assume you think of ISS as the indispensable rationale for LEO crew launch services because it’s marinated in that government holy water you seem to worship. You think it’s a short-term deal because ISS has little likelihood of still being on orbit in a decade’s time and may come down much sooner.

The fate of ISS is increasingly unconnected with the future of LEO space infrastructure. In three or four years, I expect Bigelow to have as much or more habitation volume in LEO as does the ISS. A few more years down the road and he’ll likely have multiples of ISS’s habitation volume and as much or more mass on orbit as ISS – not necessarily all in one chunk. There might even be Bigelow habitats elsewhere in cislunar space by the early 2020’s. Reusable F9’s and Dragon V2’s will be busy. So might Dreamchasers, though that is a longer shot. There’s plenty to do in LEO. It’s a ticket to every place.

The government space establishments and the old-line contractors which serve them have had most of their cozy arrangements upended by Russia’s renewed aggressions. They will be flailing for the foreseeable future to regain footing. Some will fail. NASA will continue to waste much and produce little until privately developed vehicles render their expensive and inferior efforts redundant. The next five years are going to see more change in the space sector than any comparable span since the Apollo era. It will be driven almost entirely by commercial efforts.

The Russians will posture and thump their chests but their population continues to shrink and their space industry has significant problems that will not very likely be solved by the re-nationalization currently under way there. Nor will Russia likely be able to spend nearly as much on space as they have recently indicated an intent to do. Their space-related exports will follow their weapons exports into decline leaving them essentially a petro-state. The future does not seem friendly to states whose finances depend upon ever-increasing fossil fuel energy prices. Fracking, in the U.S. and elsewhere, will limit Russia’s energy export earnings.

The Chinese seem serious about space, but do not exhibit any notable urgency about their efforts there. They will, without doubt, continue on their planned path, but, like our own purely governmental efforts, may well be passed by commercial ventures of several kinds in the next decade or two.

Having lived in PDRey for a decade, trhe old 747 assembly build was put to use y Musk. but it’s still a quaint hobby shop. He has flown nobody. and needs government to subsidize his efforts. Launching satellites is a laudable effort and he lucked out on his third attempt. but humansd have been lofting satelites for half a century. Following in the wake of government efforts simply reaffirms the point- commercial never leads, but is a follow aling, cashing in whwn it can. But it a short term effort. Without the ISS, its dead end. Isn’t it. For as we know, LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no where, fast.

You sit in America. Wher spacefight has always been a reactive policy. It was Hitler’s Gemnany that pushed rocket development and Soviet Russai that led the way into space– and has not waidered from that commitment through some incredible upheavals. . The PRC is coming along fast as well. HSF isn’t restricted to Americans. and as Tom Stafford once lamented, it may very well just fade away.

Except they don’t. As goddard leared from Goggenheim and the German rocket clubs discovered in the ’30s. and it was government, not private industry, which responded to the Sputnik– another government project of scale. No sire, in the long run, there is simply zero evidence the private enterprise will ever lead the way in this field. Except, perhaps, in the movies– see ‘Destination Moon’ for details. Great business plan and the profit motive was uranium on Luna. Fiction, of course. In the real world, it is governments that use HSF as leverage in projecting geo-political power. The most recent case in point- Putin’s ‘threat’ to deny re-upping contracting rides to US astrronauts up to the ISS. A projection of geo-politics that ha zero to do with space exploration.

From where I sit, the future of government-run “space exploration” consists entirely of pork, patronage and PowerPoint. A few Congressmen with no real interest in space will do their best to keep aging armies of functionaries ensconced in a few big government centers comfortably employed demonstrating that they are no longer capable even of duplicating the achievements of their illustrious predecessors, now all long-retired or deceased. So long as government funds are expended in sufficient quantity to keep these space mausoleums staffed, their congressional symbionts will be happy. Actual accomplishments being decidedly optional, there won’t be any to speak of. One unbuilt rocket to nowhere will simply succeed the last until the public catches on to the scam and/or the current congressional beneficiaries of this farce die or retire.

A few more years will tell the tale. I don’t think it will be yours.

It is space projects of scale that matter. Which is why, in the long run, short-sighted forays by deep-pocketed NewSpace hobbyists do not.

HSF is, in effect, a loss leader in this era for projecting national power and nurturing a perception of leadership. And in politics, perception is a reality. Which makes a drive to establishing a permanent foothold on Luna, seen around the world by all peoples in their evening skies, all the more imperative for the United States in this century.

Commercial is welcome to come along for the ride– to supplement and service an exploration/exploitation outpost on Luna, established by governent(s). But commercial will never lead the way in establishing such a facility on their own The largess of the capital requirements involved to establish and sustain such a facility coupled w/t low to no ROI prevents it; the very parameters of the market it is trying to create and service.

That’s why governments do it and have led the way in this field since its creation back in the days of the third Reich surplanting the German rocket clubs while the struggling efforts of the Guggenheim-financed Goddard went largely ignored. Not to mention the struggles of Korelev in Soviet Russia in the same era which blossomed only due to government backing. Private enterprise has never led the way in this field and never will in this era– particularly with an economic model that is quarterly driven to show profit. It always been a follow along, cashing in where it could.

Profiteers make for poor rocketeers when it comes to HSF. For half a century after governments have been flying people into and back from LEO as well as voyages to Luna– commercial has failed to even attempt to fly anybody into and back from LEO safely, let alone attempt BEO ops. The risk outweighs the value of the return. And that has not changed. that’s why governments do it.

Accordingly, the future for HSP rests with government– as the latest player to join the club, the PRC– well knows. And Luna awaits a revisit by fresh generations, embracing ‘the thrill of just beginning’– as Goddard said.

The rationale for HSF by the United States government in the 21st century was made in the 20th century by President Kennedy. It is as valid today as it was in 1962: “We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.”