Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon.com, is releasing images and videos of his new private spacecraft. His “Goddard” vehicle recently made a short test flight and is the first step towards achieving commercial exploration of space.
Says Bezos: “We’re working, patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go; and so that we humans can better continue exploring the Solar System.”
Lower costs? Greater access? Sounds quite different from the socialist “alternative.”
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The Goddard vehicle resembles the ill-fated DC-X all too closely.
Free market economics can not trump poor engineering choices.
I find the articles by Jeffrey F. Bell in spacedaily.com a refreshing breath of realism in an area ripe with technological naivete.
Who said anything about “trumping”? If the design is bad and the incorrect engineering choices are made, then it will fail. Not so, necessarily, with government.
Bad engineering isn’t very profitable. But if it does fail, at least only private, willing investors will lose out, not taxpayers. And if several people or groups are working on it, then you have several experiments, and are much more likely to find a good solution, as opposed to government bureaucrats putting all their eggs in one basket (i.e. the space shuttle).
I’m enthusiastic about the failures. Look at the years before now, how “backyard” rockets were exceptionally rare.
Now things are beginning to look up, especially in terms of variety. This Goddard model looks much like the Phoenix, which certainly did work. Except, they tried to do it through NASA and NASA made sure it wouldn’t compete with the Shuttle.
SpaceShipOne, Goddard, the folks at Armadillo Aerospace, all trying different ways. More! MORE! Let’s all find out which works better.
I read an interesting opinion a long time ago: Economic confidence can also be seen in how many businesses fail. People _started_ those businesses because they had confidence.
It’s time to go back and re-read Viktor Koman’s _Kings Of The High Frontier_.
I’m reminded of the old Biosphere 2 project. People think of it as a failure, but the point is that people can learn more from their mistakes than from their successes, especially in science.
Some Biosphere links (both good and bad):
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/biosphere
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/305/1
http://www.permanent.com/s-bio2m1.htm
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