I get the impression, from his array of ventures, that Musk has a positively amazing hand at identifying which risks to take. I am very curious what the various pies he has his fingers in will look like without him, come the time.
We get it. You don’t like Musk. I like having reusable rockets for delivering ISS payloads. I like that the US has a domestic rocket for manned flight and we no longer have to rely on the Soyuz.
Well, someone in the US does, anyway. The US could have almost certainly developed one itself, but that would have meant properly funding NASA for it.
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NASA seems to going the way of the Army Corps of Engineers. Less engineers and scientists and more Managers and subcontracting.
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Yeah, he’s a raging asshole and I don’t see how people can’t see that. It does frustrate me that he’s the focus of such uncritical hero worship. I’m not the only one thinks that, either…
But that’s not my real problem here. I’m concerned about how we’re willingly handing yet another public institution that has had great success to the private, for-profit sector.
I’d much rather work with the Russians, the Chinese, and anyone else for something that should clearly a human endeavor, rather than for the benefit of a chosen few.
I mean, have people really forgotten all the sci-fi books and films warning about the privatization of space travel? HOW we conduct space exploration, in terms of the type of institutions we use to do so actually DOES matter. 
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But look, one of the billionaires people have been stanning has shot rockets as high as the ISS, which was put up as a public work two decades ago! Plainly that’s a future to be excited about.
(/s forever)
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True. These hero-naires have really broke new ground… /s
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So very true it hurts the cows.
But when has that ever been true? With very few exceptions AFAICT the entire Apollo project was designed and built by private corporations, paid for with public money. It’s not like NASA has some huge public rocket manufacturing arm, right? The major, significant difference I see here now is that instead of NASA paying “cost-plus” contracts that enrich private companies to develop technology, they are instead now paying far, far less to purchase those technologies from those companies as one of many buyers - allowing countries like Costa Rica, who had never launched a satellite before in their history, to do so:
That satellite was launched as rideshare on a SpaceX mission where the primary customer was NASA.
SLS may well be for the exclusive use of NASA, but it’s enriching a whole bunch of companies, it’s not providing NASA or any other “public institution” the capability to build or launch rockets. However, unlike many projects of the past, the commercial launch capabilities being built now are giving a whole lot of countries access to space that never really had it before.
Worse, that “public” SLS rocket was just told not to consider its’ use for “science missions” for at least the next decade or so.
Or worse: Spend public money just to enrich private corporations in the correct congressional districts:
As a Canadian, I am a huge proponent of public institutions, but AFAICT NASA rocketry has never really been a public institution to begin with. They’ve always been private corporations building rockets that they can’t sell to anyone else. Great for the USA (I guess?), great for those entrenched companies and the senators they lobby, but not so much for advancing spaceflight for the entire planet, IMHO.
Maybe now that the capability of human spaceflight has moved beyond the control of a few governments, we can actually start to see some hope that politics and pork-barrel spending will no longer control our access to space going forward. It’s a step in the right direction, even if it happens that the CEOs of these companies are assholes. The progress they’ve ushered in is what’s important, IMHO.
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But who could we possibly tax to fund that?!?
Yes, it was indeed both private and public institutions working together. Let’s not forget colleges and universities either, who played no small role in training people in the necessary fields and in contributing necessary R&D to the entire process as well. But no arguments there that it was a private-public partnership. It was probably one of the most beneficial ones, because it did not subordinate the public good to private gain.
NASA had a decisive role to play in coordinating and directing the goals and is very much a public institution, despite working with private corporations. Some of that was an outcome of the space race with the Soviets, of course. But that’s always how the US government has functioned. But during the Cold War, there was a much greater sense of subjugating private gain for the public good, in part because the CW was seen as an existential threat that corporations were willing to focus on more than profit.
I hoped that after the Cold War that expertise from all governments and private entities on what we’d learned during the space race could be shared widely for our collective benefit. But it’s shifting to the focus not being on exploration of space to further our knowledge, but to a greater focus on how space can be profitable for a few individuals instead.
At the end of the day, I don’t believe that Musk, Bezos, or Branson are thinking much beyond how this benefits them and their corporations. If it came down to the public good vs. their private gain, they’d go with private gain. Maybe I’m wrong on that. 
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The original apollo program involved dozens of contractors and scores more subcontractors. North American, Grumman, Boeing, McDonnell, Rocketdyne etc who then subbed out to their subcontractors. The Apollo space suits were made by a company that specialized in brassiere!
But when Reagan came in the decline of NASA really took off. All the human spaceflight dollars became tied up in the Space Shuttle white elephant. All those afore-mentioned companies became deregulated and were able to do buyouts and mergers, and even the shuttle became managed by a Boeing-Lockheed partnership called “United Launch Alliance”. Coupled with two losses of shuttles all innovation was crushed essentially, and after all there was no competition with ULA. While they were at it they cut the workforce in half.
I have coworkers who always dreamed of NASA work, but ULA’s stranglehold on the hiring process meant it was darn near impossible for experienced engineers to get in(unless you were related). Now at least folk can bounce between SpaceX, Northrop, Boeing and back again. I had written myself out of direct Space work years ago, but now I actually have opportunities I could take today if I wanted (it’s complicated).
So yes, I’d love if NASA was able to act like they did in the late 1960’s, and I don’t care for Elon, but I can’t deny that there is far more opportunity now than 10 years ago.
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Once more, I don’t think that the continued gutting of NASA and turning over more aspects of space flight to private corporations will work out like some think it will. It will not be focuses on actual exploration of space to expand our horizons for all of humanity, It will be for profit and exploitation, or entertainment for the elite few.
But since it’s clear that message is not getting through I’ll leave it to you folks.
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The only one of these three who did more than technically his space is also the guy who nearly destroyed earth-bound astronomy because he had a cool idea for how he wanted to use space, and didn’t check with anyone about the shared resource.
I genuinely don’t understand how people can see this, handing the future of space over to men like him, and see it as anything but the end of any hope the rest of us will get more than a trickle down from its use.
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Absolutely agree. Space exploration should be the province of governments, not private corporations. But given the current state of things, the US gov’t has so badly mishandled the shuttle replacement that without SpaceX the west would still be completely reliant on the Russians. Space vehicle development needs to be made immune from the whims of congresscritters looking for pork to bring home to their districts. You can’t cheaply develop a vehicle within the timelines dictate by a 4-year electoral cycle, unfortunately.
Or bezos Saturn V Fleshlight
Of course the criticism of this as a big dick measuring contest between billionaires is not wrong. But there is the implication that the space race wasn’t a big dick measuring contest between superpowers. I mean better a trip to the Moon than another hundred nukes, but it really wasn’t about science first.
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