Link to USA Today article: SpaceX’s Mission: Pick Up Where NASA Left Off
Robert Heinlein, in his "The Past Through Tomorrow" series of short stories, created an alternate American history of space exploration where advancements were achieved completely through capitalist venture rather than government initiative. In his stories, we conquered space at a much faster rate than we have seen in real life. Profit and market interest drove invention and development, resulting in a more efficient space program owned and operated by private industry.
I hope he was right.
History shows us that certain things are done better by government. We also see that sometimes government has to open the door, then allow private industry to take over. If the exploration of America is an example of what we can expect from our modern space initiatives, then I believe we have hope. Private exploration and exploitation of the Americas resulted in highly successful colonies. It's somewhat arguable, I admit, but it seems the most successful colonies were the ones with the least amount of government involvement.
I believe privatizing space will result in huge advancements in our exploration and exploitation of space. I'm totally psyched.
I believe there's room for both. But in today's myopic business environment, if you can't show next quarter's profits - its a hard to get the funding you need.
ReplyDeleteBut I do believe there is a role for the public, similar to other sciences - but I also believe there is still significant justification for government support via funding. Similar to grants for other sciences.
Finally - and perhaps most controversially - there is a lot of science to be done purely for science's sake - without a business plan or ROI. And that work will not be done willingly by capitalists.
I agree that there is R&D that should be done without a plan for capitalizing on the results. I just think this research should be done by private foundations and universities rather than the government.
ReplyDeletePrivate organizations tend to be more efficient and suffer less bureaucratic red tape. They also (should) receive their funding from volunteer donors. This means that the research is only funded by people who want it to happen, and helps to eliminates some of the controversy associated with certain types of research like working with embryos.