“Those guys would happily cut subsidies, then use the decline in ridership as prices increased and services were reduced as evidence the system was failing.”
The majority of the fanboys commenting here are Ayn-Rand-in-space libertarians and completely disagree with anything being “publicly funded and/or subsidized.”
In fact, what you just described, along with lying, bribery, and cronyism, are all just good business practices in the amoral world of Neoliberalism. The only “good” is profit because money is the god of their world. Deception is a form of prayer to them and any redistribution of wealth is blasphemy. Truth.
They are the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Their toxic ideology has done profound and unrealized damage to the public’s view of space exploration. Anyone that dares to criticize or present a different view is harassed and trolled into oblivion. This is true, but, like the big lie the Trump cult continues to beat democracy over the head with, it is being allowed and so the damage continues to accumulate. You allow trolls like sejones, dugeagle, and snarkyanswer to cyberstalk me to the point that I cannot comment on your forum without being grossly harassed- and this is a microcosm of what has happened on all space forums over the last decade.
The NewSpace Mob has hijacked all of them. You are fine with that Doug?
The Starliner and crew dragon both have poorly designed escape systems. In fact, there are few things that deserve the title “poorly designed” more than an escape system that is more a hazard to the crew than the vehicle itself.
A consequence of the cheaper-is-better NewSpace ideology. Eventually, as with the Shuttle, they will again learn that hard lesson- there is no cheap.
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The NewSpace hustle….strip mining Earth orbit to beam cat videos down to people with no money to pay for them which will pay for shiny starships transporting the rich to their Martian retirement condos in Musktown. And tourists too!
The depot miracle was part of the original hobby-rocket-can-do-everything NewSpace scam.
Unfortunately, maintaining really large quantities of cryogenic propellants in space is not practical and in fact is unnecessary. Super Heavy Lift Vehicles can send payloads direct to the Moon and water lifted from the Moon can be converted into hydrogen and oxygen for position keeping on platforms themselves if required, though that will not likely be needed. Space Stations and Lunar Cyclers can use the taxis that dock with them for maintenance burns. Spaceships on voyages beyond the cislunar sea to destinations Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO) will be nuclear propelled…chemical propulsion is essentially useless for pushing the massive cosmic ray shields required by humans around the solar system. Cryo-cooler hardware capable of recycling boil-off does not yet exist but would be useful for non-nuclear spacecraft and landers carried by true spaceships.
Depots continue to be a fundamental tenet of NewSpace dogma. Essentially useless.
Ice on the Moon 