An employee owned space company would not work. Who is going to lead?
Who or what is John Lewis? Never heard of it. Over here, I'm known employee owned companies that went bankrupt, except for farming co-ops to share expensive tractor equipment.
When the general public hears the phrase "commercializing space," most of them are probably thinking about rich people paying to be astronauts.
Quote from: butters on 12/23/2022 01:56 pmWhen the general public hears the phrase "commercializing space," most of them are probably thinking about rich people paying to be astronauts.Yup, when the goal of NewSpace companies (ala SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, XCOR, etc) is the opposite: to finally enable non-elite, non-super-rich to go to space.
The skeptics think technology and economics will never advance and spaceflight will always be too expensive for people other than billionaires (especially when the efforts are being led by billionaires). It's called the Elysium effect (still haven't seen that movie).
This is why capitalism works better than any other system. Privately owned gets things done. Publicly owned only provided jobs that drag out a project like SLS, to get more government money. Again, NASA should just buy launch services, not develop a useless pork barrel expendable booster rocket.
Quote from: spacenut on 12/23/2022 01:23 pmWho or what is John Lewis? Never heard of it. Over here, I'm known employee owned companies that went bankrupt, except for farming co-ops to share expensive tractor equipment.Dynetics was actually employee owned, but they cashed out by selling the company. It made the employees a ton of money, but did mean the end of the employee owned model there.
I agree there’s some problems with an employee owned company being able to scale, raise capital, and execute like SpaceX has. I don’t think SpaceX could’ve been done in really any other way.
That said, a cooperative may be a good model for continuing a company beyond the lifespan of a hard charging and capable founder/leader.
If it is bought by the broader market, it becomes short term and financially focused to the exclusion of the long term vision. Being cooperatively owned and run by true believers could enable it to have the longevity to accomplish a Martian civilization, once the endeavor had scaled up enough that that became possible.
One reason I advocate for a cooperative SpaceX in spite of the unlikeliness of that business model succeeding is that it transitions perfectly to a democratic civilization on Mars, whereas a single charismatic leader model would not be conducive to that.
Quote from: Pipcard on 12/23/2022 02:20 pmThe skeptics think technology and economics will never advance and spaceflight will always be too expensive for people other than billionaires (especially when the efforts are being led by billionaires). It's called the Elysium effect (still haven't seen that movie).People also neglect the way economic growth has increased both the average per capita income and the population. These substantially increase the number of billionaires. If, in 2500, half the population are billionaires "only billionaires can afford it" is not much of a constraint. The effect kicks in well before 2500, since the number of billionaires is increasing exponentially..
Quote from: Barley on 12/23/2022 03:05 pmQuote from: Pipcard on 12/23/2022 02:20 pmThe skeptics think technology and economics will never advance and spaceflight will always be too expensive for people other than billionaires (especially when the efforts are being led by billionaires). It's called the Elysium effect (still haven't seen that movie).People also neglect the way economic growth has increased both the average per capita income and the population. These substantially increase the number of billionaires. If, in 2500, half the population are billionaires "only billionaires can afford it" is not much of a constraint. The effect kicks in well before 2500, since the number of billionaires is increasing exponentially..That sounds more like a Zimbabwe-esque hyperinflation scenario, though.
Quote from: Pipcard on 12/23/2022 04:44 pmQuote from: Barley on 12/23/2022 03:05 pmQuote from: Pipcard on 12/23/2022 02:20 pmThe skeptics think technology and economics will never advance and spaceflight will always be too expensive for people other than billionaires (especially when the efforts are being led by billionaires). It's called the Elysium effect (still haven't seen that movie).People also neglect the way economic growth has increased both the average per capita income and the population. These substantially increase the number of billionaires. If, in 2500, half the population are billionaires "only billionaires can afford it" is not much of a constraint. The effect kicks in well before 2500, since the number of billionaires is increasing exponentially..That sounds more like a Zimbabwe-esque hyperinflation scenario, though.No it's real growth. Because of inflation it's hard to measure, but it would be very hard to argue that there have not been at least an order of magnitude increase in per capita wealth since the industrial revolution. This appears to be ongoing.
Wealth represents stored energy and work. We have access to variously more energy and cheap work from machines than 100 years ago. One example is what one man can achieve today with digger in 8hrs compared to 100 years ago with pick and shovel.
Going nip this one in the bud.