Privatizing Space

[don]

Maybe this isn't quite so simple to do . . . .

Virgin Galactic @virgingalacticSpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly.
Additional info and statement forthcoming.

One dead.

Analysts have been sceptical about whether Branson’s plans for commercial space travel can be achieved. The launch date has been repeatedly delayed.

Almost 700 people, including Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie, have paid to book a two-hour journey on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which would include a planned five minutes of weightlessness.

British entrepreneur Richard Branson passes his SpaceShipTwo rocket

Private unmanned craft carrying supplies for International Space Station crashes and burns on Nasa launchpad in Virginia

People who were watching the rocket launch turn to leave as smoke and flames engulf the sky.

The company behind a resupply mission to the International Space Station that ended in a spectacular explosion over a Virginia launchpad has defended the use of ageing Soviet rockets amid growing questions over Nasa’s reliance on private contractors to fill gaps in the US space program.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment, ranging from “classified cryptographic” gear to school science experiments, was destroyed in a giant fireball on Tuesday evening after technicians detonated a self-destruct mechanism six seconds after launch because of a “catastrophic” equipment failure.

[SpaceOptimist]

Re: Privatizing Space

Not simple at all. On a day like today all I want to say is that I'm sad for their loss.

[shiny!]

Re: Privatizing Space

Not simple at all. On a day like today all I want to say is that I'm sad for their loss.

Same here. So sad.

[GRG55]

Re: Privatizing Space

More people in the USA will die this day, this week, and this year from influenza than from efforts to expand the boundaries of the human experience into space over those same time periods. Which would you rather die doing?

I am fascinated by the immediate connection being made with "privatized" space. Space can't be privatized any more than the oceans.

At one time most of the ships on the ocean were owned by one sovereign or another and engaged in building empire, sustaining empire, or plundering someone else's empire. Even the privateers held government commissions. Now the government ships are "defending territory" or "projecting power" and in the definite minority.

I can't see why space can't, won't and shouldn't follow a similar pattern.

It's not simple, not by any means. But which grand human endeavor ever was (even the global financial crisis took some serious "engineering" )

Even NASA and the US government fell into the trap of thinking it was routine. So routine they invited a social studies teacher from New Hampshire on board for a "routine" shuttle mission.

I fly a piston engined light twin aircraft. It allows me to explore further than I can by other means. Flown properly it is a joy. But mishandled under the right circumstances (such as falling below Vmca) it will kill me. That's not a good enough reason for me to stay on the ground...

[astonas]

Re: Privatizing Space

Thanks, GRG55, for reminding us that all advances come with risks.

We all will die, someday. Much may be said for doing so in pursuit of a world with more possibilities than the present one.

But bodily safety is a basic human desire, and having the courage of one's convictions is no easy, or common, thing.

So it is all the more sad when a person like this test pilot, who clearly possesses that courage, and knowingly puts that safety at risk, is lost to the world.

R.I.P.

[metalman]

Re: Privatizing Space

Thanks, GRG55, for reminding us that all advances come with risks.

We all will die, someday. Much may be said for doing so in pursuit of a world with more possibilities than the present one.

But bodily safety is a basic human desire, and having the courage of one's convictions is no easy, or common, thing.

So it is all the more sad when a person like this test pilot, who clearly possesses that courage, and knowingly puts that safety at risk, is lost to the world.

R.I.P.

test flights are dangerous. a sample...

1927 Apr 26, US Navy officers Cmdr. Noel Davis and Lt. Stanton Wooster were killed when their aircraft crashed near New York while trying to take off with a huge load of fuel for a final test flight prior to an attempt to cross the Atlantic.
1927 May 8, French pilots Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli took off from Paris in their airplane named L’Oiseau Blanc (the White Bird), in an attempt to cross the Atlantic. Pilots and plane vanished during the flight.
1935 Oct 30, The US Army Air Corps held a competition to see which company would build the country’s next-generation of long-range bombers. Boeing’s “flying fortress” crashed shortly after takeoff and Martin and Douglas won by default.
2009 Mar 25, One of the US Air Force's top-of-the-line F-22 fighter jets crashed in the high desert of Southern California, killing test pilot David Cooley (49), an employee of prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.
2009 Apr 29, A Boeing 737 on a test flight from Brazzaville crashed southeast of Kinshasa, killing 7 people.
2009 Oct 17, In the Philippines a propeller-driven plane on a test flight crashed and burst into flames in a suburb of Manila, killing at least four people onboard.
2011 Apr 2, In New Mexico four Gulfstream employees died in a crash of a test twin-engine business aircraft at the airport in Roswell. In 2012 the National Transportation Safety Board ruled that pressure to speed flight tests for the new $65 million G650 was to blame for the crash.

[Ghent12]

Re: Privatizing Space

More people in the USA will die this day, this week, and this year from influenza than from efforts to expand the boundaries of the human experience into space over those same time periods. Which would you rather die doing?

I am fascinated by the immediate connection being made with "privatized" space. Space can't be privatized any more than the oceans.

At one time most of the ships on the ocean were owned by one sovereign or another and engaged in building empire, sustaining empire, or plundering someone else's empire. Even the privateers held government commissions. Now the government ships are "defending territory" or "projecting power" and in the definite minority.

I can't see why space can't, won't and shouldn't follow a similar pattern.

It's not simple, not by any means. But which grand human endeavor ever was (even the global financial crisis took some serious "engineering" )

Even NASA and the US government fell into the trap of thinking it was routine. So routine they invited a social studies teacher from New Hampshire on board for a "routine" shuttle mission.

I fly a piston engined light twin aircraft. It allows me to explore further than I can by other means. Flown properly it is a joy. But mishandled under the right circumstances (such as falling below Vmca) it will kill me. That's not a good enough reason for me to stay on the ground...

Silly GRG55, falling below Vmca will not kill you unless you lose an engine (except unless your Vmca is always lower than stall speed). It's not an unsafe assumption to make that you will lose that engine right when you need it the most, of course.

I do not share such a rosy outlook for the immediate future of space travel. Barring absurdly expensive capital investments in things which are almost purely theoretical at present (space elevator and warp drive, specifically), there is really no reason beyond curiosity to travel as many miles upwards as we commonly do laterally today. To our knowledge, there is nobody to trade with out there. There are no realistic plans to establish settlements out there, and no capacity to do so regardless. About the only thing with a potential positive return on investment, beyond the normal fare of sending robots (i.e. satellites) out there to gather and relay information, is the prospect of asteroid mining.

While people may alternatingly resent the state or the rich, at present and for likely the rest of our lifetimes they are the only ones even capable of sustaining the dream of making humanity a space-faring species. Take that for what it's worth, coming from a raging free-marketer.

[GRG55]

Re: Privatizing Space

Silly GRG55, falling below Vmca will not kill you unless you lose an engine (except unless your Vmca is always lower than stall speed). It's not an unsafe assumption to make that you will lose that engine right when you need it the most, of course.

...

Silly? Really??

What I wrote was: "But mishandled under the right circumstances (such as falling below Vmca)..."

By definition Vmca means there is power only from one engine. And in a twin that does not have counter-rotating props, by definition the manufacturer's Vmca figure is when the critical engine is the one that has failed (there are a number of other criteria that also apply in determining Vmca, including a non-feathered prop, and the aircraft at its gross weight...but I expect you know all of those. )

A Vmca below Vs is not common, but a few aircraft such as the turbo Seminole have that personality trait.

[Fiat Currency]

Re: Privatizing Space

About the only thing with a potential positive return on investment, beyond the normal fare of sending robots (i.e. satellites) out there to gather and relay information, is the prospect of asteroid mining.

While people may alternatingly resent the state or the rich, at present and for likely the rest of our lifetimes they are the only ones even capable of sustaining the dream of making humanity a space-faring species. Take that for what it's worth, coming from a raging free-marketer.

It's an interesting debate Ghent12, and one that I cannot argue with 100% certainty.

However, I strongly believe the private sector should continue to pursue space travel, and quite frankly more countries should be should supporting NASA activities. IIRC - NASA's budget is about $40B. Both the DHS and the NSA have substantially larger budgets, and at the risk of getting smacked, provide far less useful activities for the monies consumed. So on those points - you are mostly correct. The pursuit of space is far more costly than it is dangerous (not to downplay the serious danger).

Perhaps this is a field of expertise for you, and if so, I'm curious why you singled out asteroid capture and mining (mostly for minerals), versus mining Helium-3 on the moon which is at least an energy source. Just curious.

[don]

Re: Privatizing Space

“We would love to finish what we started some years ago … I think millions of people would one day love the chance to go to space.” Richard Branson

Once upon a time, millions of Americans would have daydreamed that they might do that one day, after they became rich. Not so much of the latter self-delusion anymore - once practically a staple among the middle class - after getting the economic shit beat out of them for seven years. The following is one person's take on one aspect of space tourism, albeit one that if public perception is still important, and it may very well not be, may be looked back on as a signpost of real change.

If Branson’s project tells us very little about the human condition except for its frivolity and emptiness, this consumer switch – from stuff to experiences – has more general implications. Neoclassical economics and, lately, politics have us all characterised as consumers. We realise our identities with the stuff we buy, having arrived at an advantageous price through the rigorous pursuit of our own consumer interests.

We interact with institutions as customers. And the people in those institutions are vendors. While this language of the self-interested consumer penetrates the social landscape ever more deeply, there is a simultaneously growing certainty that we will never be happy through the purchase of stuff – that even if resources were infinite, the act of consumption is self-defeating. All it does is stimulate the desire for more things. It’s really no more than a fetish. No material item in the history of mankind has ever brought anyone the fulfilment of a smile from the right person.

Steadily, it has become accepted wisdom that a life well lived accrues memories, not things. Then, as soon as that realisation became mainstream, Branson steps in to monetise it: anybody who thinks you can’t put a price on a happy memory just hasn’t given enough thought to how expensive an experience can be, if you throw enough fuel and tech and lives at it. No idea is too big or too small to be co-opted by the market, even the idea that “the market doesn’t have what you need and will do nothing to meet your elemental human yearning” will find its way into someone’s marketing strategy.

However, the marketing team may have won the battle but lost the war. When huge sums are spent on experiences, this embodies wealth in a new and useful way. Political discourse has great difficulty expressing what’s wrong, exactly, with inequality. Who cares if there are more billionaires than ever? Who cares how much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in how many hands? If it makes us all richer, does it matter how rich the richest are?

The counter argument is that, sadly, it makes us all poorer, via a number of mechanisms – my favourite memorably put by the economist Stewart Lansley: “A tsunami of hot money raced around the world at speed, in search of faster and faster returns, creating bubbles – in property, commodities and business – that eventually brought the British and global economies to their knees.” These arguments don’t stick; the causality is endlessly debated, as the culprit slips away.

However, when rich people start dropping sums that could rid whole villages of cholera – on a trip that extends humanity in no direction, that is probably pretty boring for a lot of the time and not dissimilar to flying overnight – the picture changes. This is what inequality actually looks like: rich people burning money on fun. That’s what the world works to service. That’s why things have to be the way they are.

The high-net-worth spacemen may discover what gangsters have known since The Lavender Hill Mob: getting the money is the easy bit, it’s when you try to spend it that the world wakes up.

[don]

Re: Privatizing Space

on a more positive aspect of the private space exploration mosaic . . .

Sam Howe Verhovek is the author of “Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World.”

Not a Flight of Fancy

Space Tourism Isn’t Frivolous, or Impossible


SEATTLE — ONE clear winter day in 1909, in Hampshire, England, a young man named Geoffrey de Havilland took off in a twin-propeller motorized flying machine of his own design, built of wood, piano wire and stiff linen hand-stitched by his wife. The launch was flawless, and soon he had an exhilarating sensation of climbing almost straight upward toward the brilliant blue sky. But he soon realized he was in terrible trouble.

The angle of ascent was unsustainable, and moments later de Havilland’s experimental plane crashed, breaking apart into a tangled mass of shards, splinters and torn fabric, lethal detritus that could easily have killed him even if the impact of smashing into the ground did not. Somehow, he survived and Sir Geoffrey — he was ultimately knighted as one of the world’s great aviation pioneers — went on to build an astonishing array of military and civilian aircraft, including the world’s first jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet.

I thought immediately of de Havilland on Friday when I heard that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, a rocket-powered vehicle designed to take well-heeled tourists to the edge of space, had crashed on a flight over the Mojave Desert, killing one test pilot and seriously injuring the other. The in-air “anomaly,” as it was first described in a company Twitter posting, comes on top of an explosion in 2007 during a rocket-fuel test that killed three employees on the ground at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

These sacrifices were not just tragic; to many people there was something needless or even obscene about them. Brave men are dead in service of a for-profit venture in which a bunch of thrill-seeking billionaires and Hollywood A-listers have plunked down deposits up to the full $250,000 cost for a ticket to slip the surly bonds for several minutes of floating weightlessness and trophy photography 62 miles above the Earth, at the very edge of our atmosphere. For some whose job it was to make that happen, this has truly been a view to die for.

But whether or not Friday’s crash was preventable, it was far from pointless. It is worth considering that to a striking degree, the criticism of “space tourism” today echoes the scoffing of a century ago that greeted the arrival of powered flight.

Certainly the Wright brothers and others like de Havilland were involved in what we now view as an epic quest, but many experts of the day were certain that flight, however interesting, was destined to be not much more than a rich man’s hobby with no practical value.

“The public has greatly over-estimated the possibilities of the aeroplane, imagining that in another generation they will be able to fly over to London in a day,” said a Harvard expert in 1908. “This is manifestly impossible.” Two other professors patiently explained that while laymen might think that “because a machine will carry two people another may be constructed that will carry a dozen,” in fact “those who make this contention do not understand the theory of weight sustentation in the air.”

In recent years I have interviewed a wide array of people involved in the private space industry, including both pilots involved in the crash on Friday. Almost universally, they viewed themselves as pioneers at the dawn of an era of exploration whose apogee is beyond our generation’s imagination. Just as the Wright brothers did not have a precise image in mind of jumbo jetliners ferrying people around the world so routinely and so safely at more than 500 miles per hour that we have long since stopped considering it a miracle, we can’t really know where we’re headed in space.

But, they insist, we certainly need to go there. “I think it is actually very important that we start making progress in extending life beyond Earth and we start making our own existence a multi-planetary one,” Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX (its goal: “enabling people to live on other planets”) once told me. He called the venture a “giant insurance policy” for the survival of our species. Seen in this light, the first round of space tourism is simply seed capital for something much grander. It’s possible that tomorrow’s budget-minded space travelers will thank today’s 1-percenters, just as you can credit early adopters of expensive, behemoth mainframe computers for your $250 desktop.

One could argue, of course, that space tourism is more grandiose than grand. After all, one of the enduring ironies of the initial space age is that we spent all those billions of dollars to produce, among other things, magnificent and iconic remote photographs of Earth that fired the environmental movement to focus on protecting our lonely, beautiful, fragile blue island of a planet.

And as a general matter, we are less excited about the possibilities of space exploration than we were a half-century ago. But if we are ever to reach Mars, or colonize an asteroid or find new minerals in outer space, today’s work will prove to have been a vital link in the chain.

There will be tragedies like the crash of SpaceShipTwo and nonlethal setbacks such as the fiery explosion, also last week, of a remote-controlled rocket intended for a resupply mission to the International Space Station. There will be debates about how to improve regulation without stifling innovation. Some will say private industry can’t do the job — though it’s not as if the NASA-sponsored Apollo or space shuttle missions went off without a hitch (far from it, sadly).

But at the heart of the enterprise there will always be obsessives like Sir Geoffrey, who forged ahead with his life’s work of building airplanes despite his own crash and, incredibly, the deaths of two of his three sons while piloting de Havilland aircraft, one in an attempt to break the sound barrier. Getting to routine safety aloft claimed many lives along the way, and a hundred years from now people will agree that in that regard, at least, spaceships are no different from airplanes.

[don]

To the Stars!

Off to the Stars, With Grief, Dread and Regret

Movie Review: ‘Interstellar,’ Christopher Nolan’s Search for a New Planet

By A. O. SCOTTNOV. 4, 2014

Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in "Interstellar."

Like the great space epics of the past, Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” distills terrestrial anxieties and aspirations into a potent pop parable, a mirror of the mood down here on Earth. Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” blended the technological awe of the Apollo era with the trippy hopes and terrors of the Age of Aquarius. George Lucas’s first “Star Wars” trilogy, set not in the speculative future but in the imaginary past, answered the malaise of the ’70s with swashbuckling nostalgia. “Interstellar,” full of visual dazzle, thematic ambition, geek bait and corn (including the literal kind), is a sweeping, futuristic adventure driven by grief, dread and regret.

Trying to jot down notes by the light of the Imax screen, where lustrous images (shot by Hoyte van Hoytema and projected from real 70-millimeter film) flickered, I lost count of how many times the phrase “I’m sorry” was uttered — by parents to children, children to parents, sisters to brothers, scientists to astronauts and astronauts to one another. The whole movie can be seen as a plea for forgiveness on behalf of our foolish, dreamy species. We messed everything up, and we feel really bad about it. Can you please give us another chance?

"Interstellar" follows a team of NASA astronauts searching the stars for another planet where humans might be able to relocate, now that climate change has made Earth almost uninhabitable. CreditMelinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures

The possibility that such a “you” might be out there, in a position to grant clemency, is one of the movie’s tantalizing puzzles. Some kind of message seems to be coming across the emptiness of space and along the kinks in the fabric of time, offering a twinkle of hope amid humanity’s rapidly darkening prospects. For most of “Interstellar,” the working hypothesis is that a benevolent alien race, dwelling somewhere on the far side of a wormhole near one of the moons of Saturn, is sending data across the universe, encrypted advice that just may save us if we can decode it fast enough.

What our planet and species need saving from is a slow-motion environmental catastrophe. Rather than explain how this bleak future arrived through the usual montages of mayhem, Mr. Nolan (who wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan) drops us quietly into what looks like a fairly ordinary reality. We are in a rural stretch of North America, a land of battered pickup trucks, dusty bluejeans and wind-burned farmers scanning the horizon for signs of a storm. Talking-head testimony from old-timers chronicles what sounds like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, until we spot a laptop on the table being set for family dinner.

The head of the family in question is Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a widower who lives with his two children and his father-in-law (John Lithgow). Once a NASA pilot, Cooper now grows corn, the only thing that will grow after a blight has wiped out most of the planet’s other crops. The human population has shrunk to a desperate remnant, but the survivors cling to the habits and rituals of normal life. For now, there is plenty of candy and soda and beer (thanks to all that corn); there are parent-teacher conferences after school; and Cooper’s farmhouse is full of books and toys. But the blight is spreading, the dust storms are growing worse, and the sense of an ending is palpable.

The Nolans cleverly conflate scientific denialism with technophobia, imagining a fatalistic society that has traded large ambition for small-scale problem solving and ultimate resignation. But Christopher Nolan, even in his earlier, more modestly budgeted films, has never been content with the small scale. His imagination is large; his eye seeks out wide, sweeping vistas; and if he believes in anything, it is ambition. As it celebrates the resistance to extinction — taking as its touchstone Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” with its repeated invocation of “rage against the dying of the light” — “Interstellar” becomes an allegory of its own aspirations, an argument for grandeur, scale and risk, on screen and off.

Dick Cavett, a son of Nebraska, used to ask (quoting Abe Burrows), “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?” Cooper and “Interstellar” are clearly marked for something other than agrarian pursuits, but the first section of the movie is the richest and most haunting, establishing a delicately emotional tone and clear moral and dramatic stakes for the planet-hopping to follow. Cooper is devoted to his children, in particular his daughter, Murph, played as a young girl by the preternaturally alert and skeptical Mackenzie Foy and as an adult by Jessica Chastain. When her father is recruited for a secret NASA mission to search for a habitable new planet, Murph is devastated by his departure. Her subsequent scientific career is both a tribute to his memory and a way of getting even.

Anne Hathaway as a space-traveling scientist in “Interstellar.”CreditMelinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures

The Nolans are fond of doubled characters and mirrored plots, and so “Interstellar” is built around twinned father-daughter stories. Among Cooper’s colleagues on board the spaceship is Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway), whose father, also called Dr. Brand (Michael Caine), has developed the theories behind their quest. He and Murph remain on the ground, crunching the numbers and growing older in the usual earthly way, while Cooper and the younger Brand, thanks to relativity, stay pretty much the same age. (Cooper’s son, Tom, played by Timothée Chalamet as a boy, matures into Casey Affleck). The two pairs of daughters and dads perform variations on the theme of paternal and filial love, finding delicate and moving passages of loyalty, rebellion, disillusionment and acceptance.

A lot of other stuff happens, too, as it tends to out in space. A cynical critic might suppose that the last two hours of “Interstellar” were composed in a fit of spoiler hysteria. Nondisclosure pleas from the studio have been unusually specific. Forget about telling you what happens: I’m not even supposed to tell you who’s in the thing, aside from the people you’ve seen on magazine covers. I guess I can disclose that Cooper and Brand are accompanied by two other astronauts, played by a witty, scene-stealing David Gyasi and a deadpan Wes Bentley, and also by a wry robot who speaks in the voice of Bill Irwin.

The touches of humor those characters supply are welcome, if also somewhat stingily rationed. Nobody goes to a Christopher Nolan movie for laughs. But it is hard to imagine that his fans — who represent a fairly large segment of the world’s population — will be disappointed by “Interstellar.” I haven’t always been one of them, but I’ve always thought that his skill and ingenuity were undeniable. He does not so much transcend genre conventions as fulfill them with the zeal of a true believer. It may be enough to say that “Interstellar” is a terrifically entertaining science-fiction movie, giving fresh life to scenes and situations we’ve seen a hundred times before, and occasionally stumbling over pompous dialogue or overly portentous music. (In general, the score, by Hans Zimmer, is exactly as portentous as it needs to be.)

Of course, the film is more than that. It is in the nature of science fiction to aspire to more, to ascend fearlessly toward the sublime. You could think of “Interstellar,” which has a lot to say about gravity, as the anti-“Gravity.”That movie, which would fit inside this one twice, stripped away the usual sci-fi metaphysics, presenting space travel as an occasion for quiet wonder and noisy crisis management. Mr. Nolan takes the universe and eternity itself as his subject and his canvas, brilliantly exploiting cinema’s ability to shift backward and sideways in time (through flashbacks and cross cuts), even as it moves relentlessly forward.

But “Gravity” and “Interstellar” are both ultimately about the longing for home, about voyages into the unknown that become odysseys of return. And “Interstellar” may take its place in the pantheon of space movies because it answers an acute earthly need, a desire not only for adventure and novelty but also, in the end, for comfort.

“Interstellar” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A few expletives, a lot of peril.

[Ghent12]

Re: Privatizing Space

Silly? Really??

What I wrote was: "But mishandled under the right circumstances (such as falling below Vmca)..."

By definition Vmca means there is power only from one engine. And in a twin that does not have counter-rotating props, by definition the manufacturer's Vmca figure is when the critical engine is the one that has failed (there are a number of other criteria that also apply in determining Vmca, including a non-feathered prop, and the aircraft at its gross weight...but I expect you know all of those. )

A Vmca below Vs is not common, but a few aircraft such as the turbo Seminole have that personality trait.

Hey, lighten up. I was just ribbing you for some fun. Technically, I was correct (which is the best kind of correct ) because although V_MCA is defined under specific conditions always to include critical engine failure, it is still a speed value which exists regardless of the operation of the engines, similar to V_LE and other condition-based speeds. V_MCA and V_MCG always exist, but like V_LE, they may not apply given the circumstances. Also while being technical or exacting, one could not easily receive your intended meaning because your parenthetical statement was apparently an example of a right circumstance which is unsafe.

All in all, just sayin'.

[Ghent12]

Re: Privatizing Space

It's an interesting debate Ghent12, and one that I cannot argue with 100% certainty.

However, I strongly believe the private sector should continue to pursue space travel, and quite frankly more countries should be should supporting NASA activities. IIRC - NASA's budget is about $40B. Both the DHS and the NSA have substantially larger budgets, and at the risk of getting smacked, provide far less useful activities for the monies consumed. So on those points - you are mostly correct. The pursuit of space is far more costly than it is dangerous (not to downplay the serious danger).

Perhaps this is a field of expertise for you, and if so, I'm curious why you singled out asteroid capture and mining (mostly for minerals), versus mining Helium-3 on the moon which is at least an energy source. Just curious.

You flatter me, but I have no professional expertise in these subjects. My qualifications on this subject are a willingness to engage in it, an education which touched the periphery of it, and strong interests in economics and all things out of this world. The reason for me singling out asteroid mining is it is a subject I've looked into, whereas procuring resources from the Moon is not. Space is a very high risk endeavor as you point out, so in order for sustained pursuit to ever occur there must be some very substantial rewards to compensate. Fortunately, value is subjective and there are some very wealthy people willing to shell out the money necessary for private space industries to make enormous investments. In order to go beyond tourism, there must be more value to be gained from space such as tangible resources which are broadly considered valuable.

The alternative source of capital investments would probably be necessary to launch us further and faster into the space-faring future, although I cannot claim they would be justified on moral or economic grounds. I am referring to government investment into mega-engineering projects which, if successful, would substantially lower operating costs in space or vastly expand the capabilities available for use in space.

[Rajiv]

Re: Privatizing Space

From: Branson spaceship explosion: The 'missed' warnings

Sir Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic has been accused of ignoring a series of warnings that its $500 million rocket was unsafe for flight.
A number of senior aerospace engineers repeatedly voiced fears over the design of Sir Richard’s SpaceShipTwo and the safety protocols surrounding its testing.
The Telegraph has seen emails and other documents in the public domain — dating back several years, and as recently as last year — in which the engineers warned of the dangers of Virgin Galactic’s rocket engine system.
It also emerged on Saturday that three senior Virgin Galactic executives — the vice-president in charge of propulsion, the vice-president in charge of safety, and the chief aerodynamics engineer — had all quit the company in recent months.
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Virgin Galactic, in an attempt at damage limitation, initially dismissed the explosion as an “anomaly”. However, aerospace experts insisted that it had been a disaster waiting to happen.
Tom Bower, an investigative journalist and Sir Richard’s biographer, described the crash as “predictable and inevitable”. He said: “It’s a very crude rocket.”
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The Telegraph can disclose that Sir Richard’s company, as well as US authorities, were warned about safety issues on numerous occasions, as long ago as 2007 when three engineers died in an explosion during testing of a rocket engine on the ground.
Carolynne Campbell, the lead expert on rocket propulsion at the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), said: “This explosion is not a surprise. None whatsoever, I am sorry to say. It is exactly what I was expecting. It was Russian roulette which test flight blew up.”
She had first warned Virgin Galactic about the danger of its nitrous oxide-propelled engines in the aftermath of the 2007 disaster, and has repeated those warnings since.
In a study published in 2010 on her website and sent to Sir Richard’s company as well as to the US authorities, she wrote: “We are not confident that … we yet know enough about N2O [nitrous oxide] to consider it a safe oxidiser for use in passenger flight.