Entry 64, on 2004-10-07 at 14:33:39 (Rating 1, Science)
A privately funded spacecraft, Spaceship One recently won the $10 million X-Prize for the first private spacecraft to reach an altitude of 100 kilometers twice in a 2 week interval. Some people are saying that they did it so easily and safely that they wonder why NASA can't achieve cheap, safe space flight in a similar way.
I think this is very unfair. The first point is that what Spaceship One did was a lot easier than what the Shuttle does. Spaceship One does not reach orbit, and it can't carry a useful payload. The second point is that Spaceship One is based on technology NASA developed 40 years ago. For example, launching a spacecraft from a large jet launch vehicle was pioneered by NASA with the X-15 project.
So I don't think its realistic to hold this up as an example of how wonderful private enterprise is and how inefficient a government run bureaucracy is. In fact, it demonstrates just the opposite, because it shows how non profit organisations have to do all the hard work while private enterprise comes along and does the easy stuff, often based on existing pioneering work, takes all the credit, and makes all the money as well.
Its great that another technology is progressing which will have some use in advancing space travel as well as the more frivolous commercial applications, such as space tourism, but don't mistake this for genuine cutting edge pioneering work, because it isn't. Just be happy that private enterprise is taxed and that money is used to do the real forward thinking and risky science and engineering.
Comment 1 by OJB on 2024-08-07 at 16:14:20:
Well, has my opinion changed or has government incompetence got a lot worse since I wrote this 20 years ago? Maybe a bit of both. My current opinion would be more generous to private enterprise, because while I still think that research with no immediate payback is still best done by government institutions like universities, I think the next step, which involves sorting out all the technical details, deserves a lot more respect than I gave it here.
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