[HN Gopher] ESA Votes to Suspend Roscosmos Partnerships ___________________________________________________________________ ESA Votes to Suspend Roscosmos Partnerships Author : aml183 Score : 47 points Date : 2022-03-18 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (payloadspace.com) (TXT) w3m dump (payloadspace.com) | bigcat123 wrote: | fsh wrote: | Good. Human spaceflight is mostly symbolic anyway, and there are | plenty other launch vehicles for the satellites that do the | actual science. | s5300 wrote: | I'm wondering if we're going to end up seeing SpaceX bringing | down the ISS cosmonauts into neutral territory by the end of this | debacle. | ThisIsTheWay wrote: | I'm wondering if NASA will change their plans for Mark Vande | Hei to return on Dragon instead of Soyuz. His return is planned | for later this month, so I suppose we'll know pretty soon. | ceejayoz wrote: | Might be the cosmonauts who need a ride home. The crew that | arrived today wore Ukraine's colors on their suits. | https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1504940601334194176 | RobertoG wrote: | It would be a good thing coming from a bad thing if space get | more funding in the EU. | | Now, without the Soyuz, maybe there is a chance of a manned | spaceflight program. Starting from the Space Rider (1) all the | components are there, I think. | | 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rider | bdcravens wrote: | Bodes well for SpaceX. | dmead wrote: | Bodes badly for international peace prospects. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | What peace? The peace before Russia began annexing territory? | largbae wrote: | That one. Yuval Noah Harari in a recent TED talk noted that | we could measure the peace of an era by the percent of | world GDP spent on military. He suggested that the period | between the Berlin Wall coming down and this invasion was a | significant historical low. | 1_player wrote: | Does SpaceX collaborate at all with the European Space Agency? | Still, I do not understand this thirst at seeing a private | company monopolising space travel. It's that old "this is good | for Bitcoin" meme all over again. | | I reckon I'm one of the few on this forum that doesn't hold | SpaceX stock. | brian_herman wrote: | SpaceX isn't a publicly traded company. Tesla is though. | 1_player wrote: | Never said it was. It's a private company as opposed to a | government funded agency. | gliptic wrote: | But that means almost nobody on HN can possibly hold | SpaceX stock. | ThisIsTheWay wrote: | It's likely a very very small group, but I am certain | there are some ultra high net worth members of HN that | are SpaceX investors, either directly through family | offices, or indirectly through private equity funds. | Rebelgecko wrote: | It's also pretty easy to invest in them indirectly. There | are a few Fidelity funds that include SpaceX, and you can | also invest in other companies that invested in SpaceX | (ulterior motives, including my employer) | 1_player wrote: | Fair enough, I stand corrected. Still, I wanted to point | out that it's a company, not a government agency. | Publicly traded or private doesn't change my point. | gameswithgo wrote: | private companies also build esa rockets, and the space | shuttle, and saturn v, in partnership with government | space programs. spacex human flight is also in | partnership with nasa. | [deleted] | xoa wrote: | > _Still, I do not understand this thirst at seeing a private | company monopolising space travel._ | | Probably because it's a dumb strawman you've created to knock | down. Strawmen do indeed tend to be hard to understand since | they aren't actually real. There is no "thirst" to see a | private company _monopolizing_ space travel per se. What | people are thirsty for is serious, cheap, effective, | ambitious space travel in turn leading to serious space | development and humanity (and life in general) moving beyond | the cradle permanently. The irritation with government | agencies is a matter of brutal raw fact: they have failed | miserably at this, and they 're getting WORSE, not better. | Debacles like the SLS or Shuttle. Zero effort to drive down | cost, rather the reverse with space being treated as a very | shitty bit of pork. I don't even want to say "jobs program" | because SpaceX and co will generate WAY more jobs via space | development in the long term, but long term thinking isn't | very fashionable in much of government anymore. Or at least | not in this sphere. | | Everyone interested in space would be delighted at more | competitive players. And there are indeed a number that might | manage it alongside SpaceX, eventually. Smaller players like | Rocket Lab are in fact launching for real cargo to orbit, and | have reasonable plans to scale up. There is certainly room | for another provider or two. But NASA, ESA, Russian, and | other government efforts aren't even trying to go there yet | and show no potential to do so. They are stupendously | wasteful cash blackholes, which is coming directly out of | money that could be doing awesome stuff. Awesome _good | government_ stuff even, the kind of blue sky research and | infrastructure work that governments can do to really blaze | the way and help industry. The billions being sunk | worthlessly into SLS could be funding a true space station | /shipyard/depot [0] designed around the capabilities of | Starship, helping to further accelerate smaller hungry | players with the capital they need to get into the medium- | lift aspect, not to mention a lot of great science. | | You're confusing dislike for the gross waste and failures of | old fat players and excitement with the incredible efforts | and progress of young ambitious new players with some sort of | silly "monopoly" thing. Try to research and think about | things you don't actually know much about or follow yourself | a bit more before forming an opinion perhaps? | | ---- | | 0: Including helping to figure out standards so that fuel | depots can be used by multiple players fairly. | JaimeThompson wrote: | With the highest level person at SpaceX worried about them | going bankrupt it is in Europe's best interest for them to | develop their own launch systems an capability. | xoa wrote: | I want to say upfront that I have no issue with the | latter half of your statement, but not the way intended | by who I responded to. First though what I don't think is | correct: | | > _With the highest level person at SpaceX worried about | them going bankrupt_ | | Um, no. That statement got very, very confused in the | media and retellings. The "bankruptcy" has to do with | SpaceX's ultimate Mars ambitions and the rapid viability | of Starlink _without_ further investment. Very correctly, | Musk and everyone else at SpaceX wants it to be able to | stand on its own two feet as fast as possible, and | further be able to be printing enough money to fund the | enormously long term and capital intensive vision of Mars | development. That is the point of it after all, and | ultimately that must happen for it all to work. However, | that 's not the same thing at all as saying that it won't | actually be getting further funding. Musk has tens of | billions worth of Tesla, a bunch of which he liquidated | last year. He will indeed continue to pour money into it. | The number of private investors who'd be happy to add in | is not exactly tiny either, nor the public for that | matter though both those of course bring some challenges | around control and overhead. | | But that message was a rally-the-troops kind of thing, in | stark contrast to Blue Origin for example. Musk doesn't | want employees to think of SpaceX as a government too- | big-too-fail contractor on safe cost-plus financing | simply because it's backed by someone wealthy and | dedicated. SpaceX's vision is too big even for him by | itself. It needs to be a viable enterprise. It needs to | stay hungry and fast even though it has earned the top | spot in the current launch market, because they want to | obsolete the current launch market entirely while | expanding it by orders of magnitude. Starship (and future | even bigger ships) has to work for all this, and for | Starlink to work economically and help kick off the | planned virtuous circle. And Musk is correct that the | environment may turn hostile in unpredictable ways so who | knows how many years SpaceX actually has to prove itself | and really get bootstrapping. | | But it's still in a stupendously better position than the | ESA, which isn't aiming humanity for the stars in the | first place right now with Ariane. | | So all that said: | | > _their own launch systems an capability_ | | This is certainly fine and yes I think it matters | strategically. While I don't agree with much of what the | EU has done, I also think much of it is wonderful and | that fundamentally it's a great institution as well as | Europe as a whole. Any entity on that scale should have a | route to space in the future, just as the EU has Airbus | for flight. And that will help the US as well. | | But the way to go about that isn't through Arianespace. | The EU, _yesterday_ (a decade or more ago in fact), needs | to get their own commercial sector going. With proven | examples they can go much faster than NASA did if they | want. But they need to supply the vision, big incentives, | cut regulatory obstacles, and provide good government | infra support and so on then let private players work out | the actual implementation servicing those goals. | RealityVoid wrote: | I am willing to bet a lot of money that SpaceX will not | go bankrupt as long as it keeps up the pace of | innovation, and even after that happens, for a very long | time. | | SpaceX can turn to private investment and there are a lot | of people willing to buy what they are selling. And | SpaceX is incredibly innovative and a stratetic asset for | the US so they will not let it sink. Sometimes, the | utility of something is much more than the immediate | economic calculation. | ThisIsTheWay wrote: | > I do not understand this thirst at seeing a private company | monopolising space travel. | | I don't think the poster your replying to is saying that, nor | do I think the market is headed in that direction. Currently, | SpaceX has the only crew certified transport aside from | Russia's Soyuz capsule for transport to ISS. That is likely | to change in the next two years as Blue Origin continue their | certification process and NASA's SLS gets closer to launch | (whether or not SLS is a good decision is a totally separate | conversation). The more options, the better. | | > I reckon I'm one of the few on this forum that doesn't hold | SpaceX stock. | | I reckon there are only a few that do actually hold SpaceX | stock, given the fact they are a private company with limited | investment opportunities for the common person. | gameswithgo wrote: | I don't care if its private or not, we are just excited to | see better spacecraft, and most so called public space | programs are also being built by private companies. The | difference a matter of nuance. Russia may have been the only | one that wasn't largely private. | Rebelgecko wrote: | The impression I got from the statement is that the 4 canceled | Soyuz launches will most likely move over to Ariane 6. Exomars | is probably SOL for at least 2 years ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-18 23:00 UTC)