
The New Space Race - apo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/rockets/
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dkbrk
This article has a bunch of problems and is fairly typical of mass-media
reporting in this area.

Suborbital vehicles such as SpaceShipTwo, New Shepard, and Lynx are lumped
together with orbital launch systems. I do not think the distinction is made
adequately clear in the text either; it would be very easy for a layperson to
be seriously misled.

Falcon 9 isn't described separately, just as a note on the Falcon Heavy.
Though the Falcon Heavy has a great deal of commonality with the Falcon 9
there are substantial differences in capabilities and economics that go far
beyond mere diffrent configurations of a single vehicle. This is very odd
considering the outsize influence the Falcon 9 is having on the launch
industry right now. Even with the Falcon Heavy flying in the near future, the
Falcon 9 is capable of lifting most payloads and will continue to be the core
offering from SpaceX in the near future. It's kind of important.

Dragon and Crew Dragon are lumped together. One has been delivering cargo to
the ISS since 2012, the other is slated for its first launch next year. They
are different vehicles with different capabilities, designed for different
purposes; albeit not without considerable commonalites.

Antares has been flying since 2013, so evidently this article isn't just about
designs which are in development, experimental, or have yet to reach
operation. In which case, it is strange not to compare the listed rockets to
Atlas V, Delta IV, Ariane 5 and Proton.

Ariane 6 certainly deserves a mention in its own right. In most respects it is
comparable to Vulcan, including plans for partial reusability (in response to
SpaceX) and is of enormous political importance to the EU, ESA, and France in
particular.

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snovv_crash
I wonder just how unbiased the Washington Post is now that Bezos owns it. The
article does come off quite New-Shephard heavy.

~~~
jbooth
Any bias in the article is probably about 4 levels of reporting away from
Bezos. More likely that the author found various defense contractors being
extremely available to chat, living in the DC area and all, and trying to get
an article out on a deadline while not being an expert on the subject matter.

~~~
mikeash
Bias can exert itself in subtle ways. Merely the knowledge that the big boss
has a stake in this area is enough to bias reporting on it, the big boss
doesn't have to get involved personally or even have the slightest potential
of doing so.

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arcanus
NASA is listed as one of the competitors, but really, NASA is also driving a
great deal of this innovation through contracting rocket use (for ISS
refueling, etc.) to private companies. They are creating the market.

A real question is: what is a viable business model that will necessitate
these rockets? Aside from space tourism and placing satellites, what
successful business ventures might exist at lower $/orbit capabilities? Even
free access to orbit might not result in ancillary profitable businesses.

~~~
larrydag
Asteroid mining. New startups like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Ventures
will want to send satellites and vehicles into orbit or deep space for
exploratory research.

~~~
aetherson
It is super unclear that even if you had extremely cheap access to orbit, you
could make asteroid mining pay off.

If cost to orbit was cheap enough, people might be interested in orbital solar
power.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
Asteroid mining will pay off better if launch costs stay high. Anything
produced in space has a huge cost advantage over something launched from the
ground at a cost of thousands of dollars per kilogram. A kilogram of water or
iron is literally worth more that its weight in gold once its in space.

~~~
aetherson
Okay, so there's a couple of dynamics that work differently here.

There's asteroid mining _to source materials for other stuff in space_ and
then there's asteroid mining _to source materials for the ground._ If cost to
orbit is low, then it becomes less worthwhile to source stuff in space for
space stuff, because you could just source it from the ground for relatively
cheaper.

But if cost to orbit is low, it's also lower cost to actually set up an
asteroid mining facility and perhaps more plausible that you might
economically take stuff from asteroids down to the ground (though huge
barriers remain, even for quite low costs to orbit).

Also, if cost to orbit is lower, there is more plausibly other stuff actually
happening in orbit that might make sense to consume space materials. Right
now, the value of "a kilogram of iron" in space is essentially zero, because
what you need is not raw iron but some kind of tool, and there's no way to
turn raw iron into a tool in space. Water and other volatiles have some minor
use, but as long as the number of people in space is, like, six, it's not that
big a deal to get them water from Earth. If you had more stuff going on in
space, there'd be more reason to try to get low-cost materials in space.

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partycoder
Nobody here is mentioning ISRO. ISRO might not have the most advanced
technology, true, but their cost effectiveness compensates for that.

They're also catching up very quickly.

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varadg
This. Thank you for pointing this out.

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partycoder
Then upvote

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746F7475
Begging for Internet points... shame....

~~~
alexhawdon
No, partycoder is educating is educating varadg on the correct site etiquette;
the 'upvote' button should be used in place of 'I agree!' or 'This!' type
comments.

~~~
746F7475
Doubtful

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tomp
I had no idea that Blue Origin vertically landed their rocket (New Shepard) on
2015-11-23, before SpaceX did on 2015-12-21. In addition, New Shepard rockets
have already been reused.

On the other hand, New Shepard is suborbital, even though it's reached the
altitude of 100km.

~~~
Lewton
I mean, technically spacex vertically landed a rocket in 2014
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw)

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DavidSJ
If you're willing to count a 40 meter hop, then 2012:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4PEXLODw9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4PEXLODw9c)

~~~
walkingolof
C'mon, this has been done before by both private and government funded
projects

DC-X 1991:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls)

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legulere
Aren't the Ariane rockets produced commercially since the 80s?

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arethuza
Also what about Russian commercial launches?

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11thEarlOfMar
One metric I'd be interested in, if it could be objectively measured, is rate
of technical progress in private vs. government efforts, and, total $ spent by
both enterprises.

Intuitively, I would say it is much faster in private industry, however, it is
also more dispersed and not coordinated.

~~~
TrevorJ
It's a bit more complicated than that. NASA didn't build the moon rocket or
the shuttle, they use a huge number of private contractors so much of the
technical progress is pretty intertwined between public and private sectors.

