What do you think about the private sector taking over space exploration?

i think that if it means further investigation into the unknown by the greedy, than so be it. it needs to be heavily regulated and mandated though to avoid fuck ups.

it all seems like a pretty private state of affairs to me anyway

Bad development. They will not do a lot of things that a government run agency would do, like exploring space and other planets, basic research, etc. because potential benefits are not immediately apparent, and thus are not profitable. Instead it will slow down development even more in favour of further greedy commercialisation of space. I could not care less about space tourism, spend that money on space based science instead.

I think if they want to do it, they can do it, but I have no interest in giving them tax dollars.

IMHO, there’s long been a secret space program, and corporatization of space is also moving swiftly. Google “Aresenal of Hypocrisy.”

*arsenal *

Private corporations can manage their budgets better than NASA of course so that is an advantage right off the bat. Additionally, they won’t have to endure multitudes of problems like those that are encountered by agencies that are run by and interfered with by the government.

Even though there is a lot of activity that private corporations could do for NASA, I’m not sure they’d be completely comfortable having those same private corporations doing all of it and the federal government probably wouldn’t allow it either.

I have two minds about this. One says, Forget space; we have all we can handle on the ground to keep the planet from imploding with problems or exploding with bombs. But the other, the boy astronomer inside, wants us to keep exploring space no matter how much it costs or who runs the show. Exploration = knowledge.

Well, considering the cost-efficiency of these projects. One bloke (can’t remember his name now) has spent 500M on all of his projects. NASA spends 500M on every single one. I’d say, since these people are spending their own money. They’re being both frugal, and careful.

Sounds like a good combination.

Well, since the government seems to have marginalized it, it’s good to see as a people we haven’t lost our interest and will to explore. At the same time, profiteering and the exploration of worlds beyond our own seem to be drastically at odds if for no other reason than the massive amounts of dollars necessary to fund it. Granted it’s not a whole lot different than funding ships across the ocean to find new lands and faster trade routes but the scale of this compared to the technical difficulty would seem significantly greater. Funding the search for the arctic passage involved using, for the most part, existing technologies and the assumption was, once it was discovered it wouldn’t take much more than what was already known to make use of it. Space exploration in itself is requiring the development completely new technologies and for corporations who’s goals are driven by profit this could be a very long term problem. But in the end, I guess I’m for it, anything that moves us forward into new unexplored frontiers can only serve to excite and inspire.

The biggest problem with this is that exploration will only be performed if profit is involved. No company will sink billions of dollars into a program that does not at least make a profit. Yes, competition will spur space development. Yes, satellites will become much cheaper to put in orbit and service. No, research will not be done for research’s sake. I think that NASA should continue to exist in order to facilitate exploration and experiment.

@Shuttle128 Your answer reminds me of the Sean Connery movie “Outland”.

@Rarebear Awesome, I’m totally going to watch this. I missed a good bit of sci-fi from those years and Sean Connery in it makes it even better.

@Shuttle128 It’s a classic remake of High Noon.

Things are pretty much as they should be: NASA has a small budget (there are more pressing concerns than space exploration) and entrepreneurs are free to move into space as it becomes feasible.

Similarly, Lewis and Clark were funded and sent on their expedition by the government but non-funded ‘civilian’ people were still free to travel as they wished.

I’m delighted to see the private sector involved, but strongly oppose outsourcing all of smace exploration—or perhaps more accurately exploitation—ny the private sector. There is too much at stake that could impact the future survival of mankind to trust that the greater good of all mankind would be served if space exploration were left to private, for-profit busineses.

Popular Science has an article about this that suggested that NASA could still do the exploration part while the private sector would take over such things as satellite launches, shipping people and supplies to and from the ISS, and so on. NASA would blaze the trail, and private industry would pave it.

There is another issue here, similar to what @Shuttle128 said, the profit motive will change the nature of the exploration and research done. That also means that the results of that research may not be readily available. There are many technologies that we use on a regular basis that were incubated in the space program. A for profit space program will be far less willing to share information and technology for free. They are also less likely to take any third grade class’ science experiment (or more serious experiments) up and run it in the shuttle for them. It is likely in general to stifle the dissemination of knowledge and the breadth of research conducted. Plus they’ll own Mars.

It’s a good thing. Space matters. Science matters. Our understanding of the universe and the solar system matters. Space satellites save millions of lives. The best example is evacuations before a major hurricane.

@mattbrowne I agree…but how does that marry up to what @Snarp just said?

@lynneblundell I think it should be about adding to, not taking over, mainly. I would also not entirely oppose public/private partnerships, assuming the proper ground rules are laid, especially regarding intellectual property. But I’m not too happy with most of the public/private partnerships we’ve created in other areas. They usually tend to create new entities that lack accountability and transparency.

@lynneblundell – I forgot to mark my answer as a reply to @Austinlad‘s “forget space” comment.