# The Space Shuttle is a Failure, Deal With It **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 7, 2005, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150 "2005-04-07T02:58:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2005, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150/101 "2005-04-16T04:06:13Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > Then we are probably in full agreement. I’m mighty gung-ho about these aerospace entrepreneurs. For one thing, they’re not wasting my money. You do realize that NASA only gets about $0.40/per tax _payer_ a year, don’t you? So, if, for example, NASA wastes _half_ their budget, you’re out $0.20. We could have gone to freakin’ Mars for what the damned war in Iraq has cost us so far. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2005, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150/102 "2005-04-16T04:16:26Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > **Sam** , you and I are old enough to remember what life was like before PCs became more common than toasters. The first home computer was introduced, IIRC, in 1974, but not too many people had them. Even when the Apple ][was introduced, it was still basically a curiosity for most people. PCs didn’t start becoming commonplace until the 1990s, finally exploding in the late 1990s and turning into toasters (i.e. everywhere). What happened? The technology hit a critical mass, thanks, in part, to the internet. Now, suborbital flight seems to have hit a bit of a critical mass thanks to the X-Prize. After all, Rutan’s claimed the prize, so what’s the point in continuing? Plenty, judging by the partial list of folks you mentioned above. Now, we’ve got [America’s Space Prize](http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_bigelow_041108.html) which aims to do the same thing for orbital flight that the X-Prize did for suborbital. We’ve gone from the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk to “Lucky Lindy” in a couple of freakin’ _years_. It took decades to get aircraft that far. How many people would have predicted in 1974 that we’d have the kind of computer networks that we’ve got now? How many more people would have believed those predictions? > > Yeah, engineering a spaceship is a helluvalot more complex than engineering a PC, but remember, the hard part is figuring out how to do it the first time. Once you do that, _anyone_ with the tools, the money, and the desire can do it. Rutan’s not only got all three, but he’s got more brains than half the folks at NASA. For me to say it _can’t_ be done, means I think I’m smarter than Rutan, and I _ain’t_ going there. Once again, I was talking about asteroid mining in particular, and you’re trying to turn this into an argument against Rutan and the value of entrepreneurs in the space business. I think everyone in this thread is in agreement that Rutan’s a hell of a guy, and Spaceshipone was a hell of a craft, and we all hope that Rutan makes billions building spacecraft that people use to do cool things with. My point is specifically that mining asteroids is a huge technical challenge, the magnitude of which seems to be grossly underestimated by the people who use asteroid mining as a justification for the space program. Unless they caveat that claim with ‘one day in the far future, but we should be planning for it anyway’, then I have to disagree. Hell, just imagine the political hue and cry that would arise the minute someone started talking about disturbing a ‘planet buster’ asteroid from its orbit and herding it close to Earth. Resolving that alone could take a generation. We’ve been arguing about bleemin’ ANWR for twenty years, and nuclear power for forty. Just the sheer political challenge of building the required huge nuclear reactors in space would be daunting. But the technical challenges are even greater. The reason the PC industry took off as wildly as it did is because it was a breakthrough that opened up a whole new irange of capabilities. That and the relatively low barrier to entry in the industry (other than primary chip makers), and you had the makings of an industrial revolution. Why you think this is the correct model for private spaceflight is beyond me. Space flight will always be difficult enough that relatively small numbers of companies will be involved. And the money will be big enough and the problem complex enough that we’ll be talking about multi-year design cycles. A better analogy might be the development of ocean-going shipping. The first ocean crossings happened centuries ago, and commerce began shortly thereafter, but it was a long, long time until people routinely travelled back and forth across the ocean. So far, the only financially viable indiustries we’ve identified in space are tourism and satellites. There may even be enough tourism to create a thriving, multi-billion dollar industry. But if even that happens, I wouldn’t expect that industry to be that size within 30 years. A better analogy to the PC industry would be if we can get a space elevator to work. That’s a paradigm shifting technology. Dropping the price to orbit by a factor of 100 or 1000 could spawn applications we can’t even dream of today. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2005, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150/103 "2005-04-16T04:34:13Z")
Nope, **Sam** , you’re misunderstanding me. I’m _not_ ruling out asteroid mining simply because of Rutan’s accomplishments. Several of the X-Prize teams have already booked university research projects on their flights, and the X-Prize committee is working to book such flights on _all_ X-Prize team vehicles. Space tourists may be the first group of civilians to make it into space, but the scientists won’t be far behind. If Rutan can put a 200 lb tourist into space for $200,000, he can put a 200 lb scientific payload for the same price. Given that NASA’s charging $10K a pound at the moment, you’re going to see folks switch their research projects over to Rutan whenever possible. One of those research projects yields big results, and the push to get the costs to go into space down, are going to accelerate dramatically. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2005, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150/104 "2005-04-16T05:13:20Z")
Well, perhaps we’ll relive this thread in 20 years. For the record, I hope you’re right. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2005, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150/105 "2005-04-16T05:18:49Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Well, perhaps we’ll relive this thread in 20 years. For the record, I hope you’re right. Are you kidding? We’ll be doing this again in six months. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-space-shuttle-is-a-failure-deal-with-it/298150.md?page=5)