Neil deGrasse Tyson: Commercial Space Fantasies
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There is a lot of talk lately about what role the privatization of space might play in our future ambitions of space exploration, and Neil deGrasse Tyson tells Big Think "from where I sit there is a lot of delusional thinking there."
Mar 21, 2012 4:20 PM
Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Commercial Space Fantasies
The first known European to the New World wasn't Columbus - it was Lief Ericson. He beat Columbus by about 500 years. Neil deGrasse Tyson is so knowledgeable, how could he make that mistake?!
By: Opetaja
Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Commercial Space Fantasies
I think the point was that those explorers (Columbus, Magellan) pre-dated commercial enterprise, not necessarily that Columbus was "first". Plenty of other people arrived at the new world before Columbus, as I'm guessing Tyson is probably aware.
By: ltgalloway
Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Commercial Space Fantasies
No, Columbus didn't pre-date commercial enterprise at all. Capitalism maybe, depending on the definition of choice.
Anyone who thinks this has any relevance is missing the point. Tyson chose the analogy for a reason. Reaching and exploiting America was hard. Purposefully finding the place (from Portugal) is uncertain and hard enough, but that's just part of the story. Why go through all that trouble? A businessman couldn't just lay claim to a land and its resources, or secure the sea route to and from it. One doesn't expect to be able to subjugate a population with a handful of manned ships. How does an entrepreneur protect his territory from rivals who do get the backing of powerful, moneyed
entities that enjoy international legitimacy? And so on.
The Portuguese investment wasn't huge by today's standards, but it was significant enough to never have happened without some guarantees/certainties. Desperation was a major factor in the America gamble; the desperation of an able entity that didn't consider its own mortality.
How the fuck are businesses going to make money going beyond low earth orbit? Even with all the paving that NASA and countless other publicly-funded institutions have been doing, there's no convincing answer to this question. Whatever happens in the foreseeable future, entities like national governments will turn out to have been intimately involved every step of the way. In a way, it's a little sad, really.
Anyone who thinks this has any relevance is missing the point. Tyson chose the analogy for a reason. Reaching and exploiting America was hard. Purposefully finding the place (from Portugal) is uncertain and hard enough, but that's just part of the story. Why go through all that trouble? A businessman couldn't just lay claim to a land and its resources, or secure the sea route to and from it. One doesn't expect to be able to subjugate a population with a handful of manned ships. How does an entrepreneur protect his territory from rivals who do get the backing of powerful, moneyed
entities that enjoy international legitimacy? And so on.
The Portuguese investment wasn't huge by today's standards, but it was significant enough to never have happened without some guarantees/certainties. Desperation was a major factor in the America gamble; the desperation of an able entity that didn't consider its own mortality.
How the fuck are businesses going to make money going beyond low earth orbit? Even with all the paving that NASA and countless other publicly-funded institutions have been doing, there's no convincing answer to this question. Whatever happens in the foreseeable future, entities like national governments will turn out to have been intimately involved every step of the way. In a way, it's a little sad, really.
By: wadadde
