What people like Llian Rhydderch will never tell you is that this approach works only for things where profit is expected.Rare disease? Pure space exploration (or pure sciences in general)? Free market won't help you in this and many other cases.In fact, free market will come in new area only when someone else (usually that "totally unable to innovate" government) sufficiently develop it and lower risks - like with Internet (and yes, computers). Giving all credit for these things to free market is historical revisionism.
Quote from: AncientU on 11/05/2017 04:10 pmRisk tolerance.If you boiled down the myriad reasons behind one young, private company building a rocket to land 150 tonnes or 100 people per flight on Mars and another prestigious, well-healed organization giving up on even landing on Mars -- though it has been promoting that goal for 40 years -- it would be these two words.They haven't done it yet.
Risk tolerance.If you boiled down the myriad reasons behind one young, private company building a rocket to land 150 tonnes or 100 people per flight on Mars and another prestigious, well-healed organization giving up on even landing on Mars -- though it has been promoting that goal for 40 years -- it would be these two words.
Quote from: Dalhousie on 12/30/2017 01:36 amQuote from: AncientU on 11/05/2017 04:10 pmRisk tolerance.If you boiled down the myriad reasons behind one young, private company building a rocket to land 150 tonnes or 100 people per flight on Mars and another prestigious, well-healed organization giving up on even landing on Mars -- though it has been promoting that goal for 40 years -- it would be these two words.They haven't done it yet.Exactly. After 40 years and uncounted billions wasted, they gave up.
That is, until a new administration comes along and re-directs to Mars (again). Has happened before (and will happen again IMO).Personally I refer to it as Moon-Mars Ping-Pong: roughly every decade the direction of US BLEO HSF changes course to either the Moon or Mars.
(computer and IT technology (ICT) is merely one example. Imagine leaving government bureaus of the US and Russia/Soviet Union in charge of innovating in ICT since 1960 and imagine what our computer platforms would be looking like today.
Quote from: AncientU on 12/30/2017 01:19 pmQuote from: Dalhousie on 12/30/2017 01:36 amQuote from: AncientU on 11/05/2017 04:10 pmRisk tolerance.If you boiled down the myriad reasons behind one young, private company building a rocket to land 150 tonnes or 100 people per flight on Mars and another prestigious, well-healed organization giving up on even landing on Mars -- though it has been promoting that goal for 40 years -- it would be these two words.They haven't done it yet.Exactly. After 40 years and uncounted billions wasted, they gave up.No, the point is that Spacex hasn't done it
neither
Quote from: Jim on 12/30/2017 09:04 pmneitherFor one who is so certain about everything, that's a bit non-committal.Hang it out there, Jim.
Quote from: AncientU on 12/30/2017 09:19 pmQuote from: Jim on 12/30/2017 09:04 pmneitherFor one who is so certain about everything, that's a bit non-committal.Hang it out there, Jim.No, I am certain that neither of them will go to Mars in my lifetime.
Quote from: Llian Rhydderch on 12/29/2017 10:48 pm(computer and IT technology (ICT) is merely one example. Imagine leaving government bureaus of the US and Russia/Soviet Union in charge of innovating in ICT since 1960 and imagine what our computer platforms would be looking like today. It was government spending and needs in 60's that launched the IC chip industry. There would be not consumer electronics of the 70's.
Quote from: Llian Rhydderch on 12/29/2017 10:48 pm(computer and IT technology (ICT) is merely one example. Imagine leaving government bureaus of the US and Russia/Soviet Union in charge of innovating in ICT since 1960 and imagine what our computer platforms would be looking like today. It was government spending and needs in 60's that launched the IC chip industry. There would be not consumer electronics of the 70's
Quote from: Jim on 12/30/2017 09:31 pmQuote from: AncientU on 12/30/2017 09:19 pmQuote from: Jim on 12/30/2017 09:04 pmneitherFor one who is so certain about everything, that's a bit non-committal.Hang it out there, Jim.No, I am certain that neither of them will go to Mars in my lifetime.What would it take to moderate your certainty?If in the next few years SpaceX did build a fully reusable launch vehicle that cost a small fraction of the Shuttle refurbishment costs to reuse it then would you start to have doubts?
The internet is a poor example in several ways.AOL and compuserv and several other online pre-internet services were getting quite large by the time the government sponsored commercial use of the internet overtook them with globally working email.
It is quite possible even with modest delays in this happening, inter-provider email (the killer app of the day), the internetworking of these providers would have produced something very, very different, with all content curated by these massive platforms.
As one example, Minitel in france took off and got a monopoly, which remained for a very long time after the internet.
Standardisation of railway gauges or container sizes might be a better example, but even here it's unclear, as they were often developed by single companies that 'won' in the market in their region before standardisation.