• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
American Dreaming

American Dreaming

Ideals and Realities of the American Dream

  • Home
  • Human Spirit
  • Perspective
  • Economics
  • Science & Tech
  • Fulfilling the Dream

Commercial Space Flight

2019-11-20 by Peter Kosen

The idea of space travel is embedded deep within the collective psyche of the United States of America and has been for a very, very long time. It saw its first light in the public’s fascination with the novels of H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds) and Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon and a Trip Around It) and the fantasy stories of John Carter of Mars written by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In the 1920s, the American physics professor Robert Goddard became the inventor of the chemically fueled rocket. He did so nearly alone with just a small private team of mechanics and engineers because the scientific community of the time did not consider rockets to be particularly interesting. But the idea was kept alive in the public’s imagination by the publication of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon rocket adventure stories.

The real trigger for massive development, of course, was military, and started when Wernher von Braun of Nazi Germany took Goddard’s invention and developed it into the first intercontinental range ballistic missile, the V-2, and started using them to rain down bombs on London toward the end of World War II.

Both the United States and Russia took this hint and kicked off a major arms race in the 1950s, dumping increasingly massive amounts of resources into developing their own ability to rain bombs down on top of each other in case the need should ever arise.

On the United States side, work on a massive rocket engine called the F-1 that was eventually the base for the Saturn V moon rocket was begun in 1955 under President Eisenhower within a new space agency that was initiated by his administration. Seven years later, after experts were confident that it could be used to boost a capsule all the way to the moon, President Kennedy gave his famous speech committing the nation to send a man on the trip.

Much of the rest is fairly widely published and well known history. The Apollo project went to the moon and came back home nine different times, landing people on the surface six times. And since then we have had the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.

So, in the United States, space flight is just one of those things that we do.

And, of course, the people at NASA are the ones who make it all happen.

Except … that’s not quite right.

THIS IS A STUB ARTICLE WHICH WILL EXPAND ON THE FOLLOWING TOPICS:

What a lot of people don’t realize is that most space launches are not by NASA. Most are commercial. (Some are military.)

But the title of the article is “space flight” and when we say it that way, we’re normally talking about sending people up into space.

Government did the initial development primarily in the context of national defense. And that provided an excellent foundation for the start of a new industry. But space launch vehicles, in spite of all the excitement of the fire and thunder of the launch, are basically just delivery trucks to orbit. And it’s not the proper role of the government to be incrementally developing delivery trucks.

Delivery trucks – even orbital ones – are, or, rather, should be, within the purview of commercial industry.

Unfortunately, because it is a fundamentally political organization that operates at the whim of the U.S. Congress and President, NASA has an on-again, off-again, sometimes on-again, mostly off-again, under-funded, bloated, horrendously expensive manned rocket development program called the Space Launch System (SLS). We’ll go into the details elsewhere, but this system uses old technology and left-over hardware from a failed program to attempt to replicate and maybe make incremental improvements on basically the same thing that NASA did 50 years ago.

Because doing familiar things while spending as much money as possible doing them is as far as Congress is able to think. So, SLS, rather than being a space launch system, is more of a congressional jobs program.

Boeing, the prime contractor for SLS, is a traditionally good company who, except for recently when they figuratively got caught with their pants down and several hundred people died on their newest version of their ancient 737 airliner, generally makes good, safe, traditional airplanes for passenger air travel.

But they are not a radical innovator in the field of space launch vehicles, a field that they’ve been involved in since near the beginning of the space program.

In the past few decades some radical innovators have sprouted up through the fertile domain of capitalism who are developing things that are exponentially both more aggressive and more efficient than anything we’ve seen in the past.

Since they’re not as well known as some of the more flamboyant companies, we’ll start with Bigelow Aerospace.

It was started by a guy who, back in the 1950s as a little kid decided he wanted to get into the space business.  He then got into an innovative real estate project with the specific purpose in mind of making enough money to start a space travel company.

Since he’s in the hotel industry, his space product is an expandable habitat module. There is currently a prototype of it attached to the International Space Station.

His larger version could be launched using cheap heavy launch vehicles to put up in only a few launches a structure larger than the current space station at a small fraction of the cost.

Next: Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) and his space company Blue Origin is an example of what can be accomplished with the concentration of wealth and extreme income inequality that is enabled by capitalism. He has an active test version of a fully reusable vehicle capable of launching into space. He is developing an orbital launch vehicle. And he is working on engines for a vehicle capable of going to the moon.

His motivation is entirely commercial. Hotels in orbit. Vacations on the moon. Mining the asteroids.

Elon Musk and the SpaceX story.

Originally he thought in terms of, “If there is a will, there is a way.” But he abandoned that, seeing that the “ways” that had been figured out up to that point were horrendously inefficient and expensive and therefore not sustainable. So he changed it up to basically, “If you build it, they will come” with the intention of developing systems that could be cheap, reusable, efficient, and sustainable.

Include here example of prejudice in NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine’s tweet and story of him and Elon Musk quickly kissing and making up.

Main conclusion:

It’s sometimes good and necessary for government to do initial technological development, especially if there is a national security reason for it. But sustainability equals commercial viability and not bloated parasitic government programs that keep doing things the way they’ve always been done. Government should be supportive of (or at least not get in the way of) commercialism, efficiency, and innovation.

Posted Under: Science & Technology

Primary Sidebar

Related Articles

There is no “Poverty Line”

The term is absurd. Okay, at this point, I’d like to … [Read More...] about There is no “Poverty Line”

Civil Asset Forfeiture

This is the story of a good government gone bad. … [Read More...] about Civil Asset Forfeiture

White Nationalists

Can we please just treat these people as they deserve to be … [Read More...] about White Nationalists

Value and Price

Sometimes it seems as though the concept of “value” is … [Read More...] about Value and Price

Castles on the Hill

There is a prejudice in the world today that is not quite … [Read More...] about Castles on the Hill

What is the American Dream?

For some people, the American Dream may be a comfortable … [Read More...] about What is the American Dream?

The Percent Wealth Tax Heist

Let’s just start right in on the obvious: First of all, … [Read More...] about The Percent Wealth Tax Heist

Was it Aliens?

Some people look at the tech explosion of the 20th century … [Read More...] about Was it Aliens?

What about the Gold Standard?

Use of the gold standard is a controversial … [Read More...] about What about the Gold Standard?

The Government Should DO something about that!

I’d like to give a shout-out to all of our “progressive” … [Read More...] about The Government Should DO something about that!

We Hold These Truths

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are … [Read More...] about We Hold These Truths

Participate!

The genesis of this site was originally driven by my … [Read More...] about Participate!

Musings of the Site Founder

I remember when my awareness of and interest in the national … [Read More...] about Musings of the Site Founder

To What (or Whom) do we Owe our Allegiance?

One time, a few years ago, I was discussing politics with an … [Read More...] about To What (or Whom) do we Owe our Allegiance?

The Space Shuttle was a Failure

The loss of both the Challenger and the Columbia … [Read More...] about The Space Shuttle was a Failure

A Proper Conservative

Political dialog these days seems sometimes to … [Read More...] about A Proper Conservative

A Proper Welfare System

When someone who grew up in the Soviet Union tells you that … [Read More...] about A Proper Welfare System

The Long View

I don't want to show that much profit in this quarter.  … [Read More...] about The Long View

I’m not going to Mars. (But maybe you can)

Yes, we’ll deal with both of the statements in the title … [Read More...] about I’m not going to Mars. (But maybe you can)

Privilege will always exist & it is immoral to try to eliminate it.

How’s that for a provocative, click bait title? I’m looking … [Read More...] about Privilege will always exist & it is immoral to try to eliminate it.

Footer

PROMOTING THE REALIZATION OF THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

  • We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness;
  • Without Regard to Race, Color, Religion, Sex, National Origin or other Personal Characteristics;
  • Dismissing “Liberal/Conservative” & “Right/Left” and other shallow tribalistic labels in favor of meaningful dialog on each issue that affects our society;
  • And promoting an environment of freedom and opportunity that maximizes the full expression of each individual Human Spirit.

Recent

  • The Sunrise Story
  • Personal Adventures
  • We Should be Going Nuclear
  • I’m not going to Mars. (But maybe you can)
  • Why should we allow exploration of space instead of fixing poverty on Earth?

Search

Copyright © 2023 · American Dreaming