Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the government paid to develop crew dragon. And they buy launch services which is another source of revenue.

The government paid for Apollo. And once they decided they no longer wanted it, it became impossible to use Apollo parts, technology, or any of the engineers or technicians to put people into orbit. The capability "vanished."

If the government never bought another ticket to space, Crew Dragon could be made available to people who want to go into space and are willing to pay for a ticket. So even if NASA got defunded completely tomorrow, the ability to go into space would still be there. Because the market for space, when served in an economic way, is self sustaining.

This has never been true before, and now it is. That is my definition of sustainable.

View on HN

If Crew Dragon is only making money from the government, how would it still be there tomorrow if the government weren't paying? Do you really imagine that there will be a market for this as it stands today? How much training and medical evaluation have the astronauts gone through to ensure they could survive the trip and know how to operate?

They've already got several private customers who have booked missions.

Do you have more information? (Who, what for)

Tom Cruise and presumably at least one camera person for a movie on the ISS

He just wants to go to space and get a tax deduction by counting it as a business expense.

Of course, his taxes are already earmarked for Scientology.

The story I heard (link below) is that a Japanese fashion businessman wanted to fly his entourage around the moon and back. https://apnews.com/ef359e63b98b4263b4ac0eea28988538/SpaceX's...

That's unrelated (Starship, not Crewed Dragon).

There are 4 unnamed tourists set to fly next year. Tom Cruise is also in negotiations to film in space using Crewed Dragon, which would presumably involve at minimum Mr. Cruise plus a cameraman.

I think your parent poster's point was that previously the IP was owned by NASA. The companies contracted to build Apollo or the Space Shuttle was unable to reuse the IP to sell rides to another company or fly private citizens, nor could they bundle and sell the IP.

SpaceX owns the Crew Dragon IP and tooling, and they can sell flights to private citizens - in fact I believe they said today that they are contracted with Space Ventures to fly 4 people next year. Previously Space Ventures could only buy from the Russians.

You still can't launch a rocket on US soil without a permit from the FAA, and for launches from outside of the US, I'm pretty sure that SpaceX's rocket technology is quite export controlled. But yes, it's now a bit more independent from Congress's financial mood.

You also can't fly a plane out of a commercial airport without FAA approval. So what's your point?

My point is that there's still large government involvement. The permits are just one example. Another one would be the military contracts that require contractor employees to maintain clearance levels and create financial dependence, or the government owned launch pads they lease.

All of this combined means that SpaceX is still highly dependent from the goodwill of the US government.

I can't imagine the thought process that feels that the IP being owned by a private company who answers to no one and has no accountability to anyone is 'more sustainable' than it being owned by the public through a non-military organization (NASA)...

Because NASA isn't just free do things with that knowledge even if somebody could pay. You live in a total fantasyland when you believe that NASA just having some IP does any good for anybody.

You need manufacturing base and a business model to sustain commercial operation. NASA is a government agency that gets its priority sets by a congress that is not very interested in space flight, and putting the budget wherever they want at any given time. So NASA could have lots of IP about 4 different vehicles that gets into LEO but no amount of money could actually get you there.

They can give the IP to a 3rd company of course, but because they way it was designed it would not really have any commercial use, and likely it only works connected together with other government IP/hardware that you also easily get.

Now you have a private company, who has a very clear business intensive, to get the greatest possible use out of that IP, it only uses other commercially available tools and has synergy with other parts of their business that also has other commercial uses. The industrial base and teams are sustained, and not removed when congress lowers budget for a year.

So the Dragon 2 works with Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX always operates Falcon 9 launch pads and they have plenty of rockets to fly and a manufacturing base that makes more of them. So now you have a much easier time to get the whole system together for an actual 3rd party flight, as the rocket, launch pad, infrastructure is already there and commercially operated.

You make a lot of good points, but it's not quite as grim as the picture you have drawn.

NASA had a great deal of knowledge from previous projects which they shared liberally with SpaceX from very early on in their development. Engines such as the Merlin are heavily influenced from NASA IP.

So in essence NASA still is a clearing house of knowledge, and much of the info learned by NASA and SpaceX to date continues to be shared with other providers to the benefit of all.

I do agree however with the sentiment that SpaceX can sell seats or rocket flights in a way that NASA was never set up to do.

The human spaceflight ability of NASA trended sharply to zero in the last 50 years, with space travel getting more expensive, more dangerous and far less capable than before, going from moon transfer to LEO only to no human spaceflight whatsoever. If you prefer to abolish human spaceflight, then you can be happy with NASA, if not, then you have to present rather strong evidence why the status quo will magically yield better outcomes.

> IP was owned by NASA

Isn't the output of the US government in the public domain? I think the issue was more about the manufacturing and launching of rockets being highly regulated for obvious reasons.

SpaceX is selling Crew Dragon to others. There are already bought flights brokered for space tourists, and Tom Cruise is going to be filming a movie in space too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com