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Unread 07-10-2004, 14:21
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Re: SpaceShipOne captures X-prize!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
Does anyone else find it slightly scary that COMPANIES will be building rockets to put normal people in space?

I mean, I'm all for innovation and pushing the envelope, but god knows how safe company xyz's rocket is. NASA does more testing than anyone could even imagine... and the price of one shuttle is astronomically high. One has to wonder how safe these things will be.

There better be some serious regulation and oversight on these bad boys.

No, I think exactly the opposite. I think that this is a great example of how work done by private enterpreise outperforms government work. NASA and their contractors have a "high cost culture" that leads them to say, well, if its going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, then its just going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Because private enterprise cares about money, they find ways to do things cheaply and effectively. As an example, check out SpaceX, a company developing launch vehicles that will cost one third of current ones. They claiming that there vehicles will also have breakthrough improvements and safety and reliability, and their reasons make a lot of sense. When things are run by the government, they just get stuck in a time frame, and don't move forward. Ignoring SpaceX, launching a satellite today costs basicly the same amount that it did thrity years ago. This is because the launch contracts were done mainly through the government.

To install serious regulation, like you said, would be to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." Regulation on these companies is already far too much. For instance, going back to SpaceX, they have been ready to go for quite a while, but have been swamped with endless regulation from all kinds of agencies that has pushed their launch dates back and back. In order to improve both the safety and the cost, the government just needs to let the companies take care of themselves.

It baffles me that people have so much mistrust for corporations, when they are the reason that we have everything we have that is good. Computers for instance, are largely unregualted, and look at the phenominal performance and cost increases that have ocurred. And, by the way, most companies are actively taking actions such as creating lead-free products on their own, not becuase of government mandates. Supermarkets are another great example. There's a reason why they don't sell you rotton food, and its not regulation. Its because if they sold you rotton food, then you'd never go there again. There are so many stories of people from the former soviet union, and even people from somewhat socialist european economies, who come to the United States and are absoluteley flabbergasted at the selection and cost of our supermarkets. If less regulation was used across the board, all industries would see this sort of improvement. Space travel is no exception. If we want to see tickets to space for less the one hundred thousand, with safety and reliability, the thing to do is just tell the regulatory agencies to ease off. Of course, there are some checks that do need to be made-- but not nearly the number that currently exist.

In conlusion, thirty years ago, NASA said that they could provide space travel to average citizens in thirty years. At 600 million per launch, they're far from their goal.
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