Chugging along. So much mindless training this week.
But I feel like I’ve gotten a lot accomplished ahead of the deadlines.
Two billionaires have each taken a trip to the edge of outer space what significance does their actions have on the future of space travel (T2K)
First, this shows the Austrian view of economics is true — products should get cheaper over time. Yes, that seriously fucks with the never-ending price inflation that the Keynesians on. Tech advances make things cheaper over time.
One of the common things is Friedman’s Pencil example. How much does a run-of-the-mill pencil cost? A few cents. How much would it cost you to produce one, yourself? A lot more than a few cents.
I used to have a boss who was really big on the do-it-all-yourself mantra. We were doing some wiring for a network product that used CAT-5e breakout blocks. Wiring up a single unit was probably $10 in product, but it took probably three hours to do all the connections. What I figured out how to do was take pre-fabricated cables, cut them in half, and punch down the cut ends of the cables. The cables to cut in half were cheaper than the $10 in products, and the labor to do the punches on the pre-made cables probably only took about 25% of the time.
When it comes to going to space, from a purely research and economic perspective, that, as the price drops, this falls into private industry is not at all surprising.
What’s really prevented it is law/government. Nice launchpad you’ve got there. Do you have a permit? No? Okay, well, I’ll take that, then.
How much would production of something equivalent of the Mercury capsules cost using off-the-shelf products today?
Probably a lot less than what it cost to initially-create them in the 1950s.
The billionaires, however, are producing more vehicles even more advanced than the Mercury capsule. The rockets are reusable. The vehicles are reusable. They have landing options better than an ocean spashdown.
Private industry does all of this without stealing money from people to pay for it.
Government can help most by doing nothing. If there’s something the state would like to buy, great. See: SpaceX’s missions to/from the ISS.
As for the future, costs will continue to decline.
The production costs of the vehicles will get cheaper.
Even if fuel increases in price, the vehicles will require less of it to get where they’re going.
If someone wants to make it too difficult to pursue in the US, they’ll go somewhere else.
Oh well.
Maybe they can still do that. If there’s nowhere on land where they’re allowed, they’ll move to a floating platform in the oceans. You can leave.