Comment by muhfuhkuh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by muhfuhkuh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Government has never, ever been in the business of lowering the cost of anything (except corn and wheat). It's in the business of creating infrastructure, protecting its people, looking out for the "general welfare" (which should include health, but I digress...), and demonstrating the efficacy of things ("hey, now, would ya lookie there. We got a man on the moon. Huh, go figure" or "hey, you hear that University scientist and the NIH just cured Polio? No, really, they did!").

Now, the technology transfer of government output to the private market, that's where the lowered cost and great value will come to the fore. I'm sure I'll rile the free market feathers by saying this, but SpaceX and Virgin Galactic would not exist without NASA. No way, no how.

Just to get you geeked out about NASA, though, here's a fan-made video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXkuo1yihjs

Jersey Shore-style Fist-pumping science.

The government breaks up monopolies to lower prices.

The government builds new roads to lower transportation costs.

NASA spent a less than 1 shuttle mission worth of funding to research scram jets over 7 years. Resulting in the X-43 which hit Mach 9.68 using an air breathing engine. , NASA Dryden engineers said that they expected all of their efforts to culminate in the production of a two-stage-to-orbit crewed Vehicle in about 20 years. However, the program was canceled, so, in the end you could be right

Still, scramjet's are one of the few technology's to be able to reduce the cost to orbit to 1/10th - 1/100th of current costs and instead people want to wast billions trying to build a moon base?

PS: The whole point of infrastructure is to lower prices. People could drive across the country before the interstate system, but it suddenly became cheaper and faster in large part because you could avoid stoplights and pedestrians etc.

>The government breaks up monopolies to lower prices.

That has happened occasionally (AT&T), but the more usual situation (Standard Oil, Alcoa Aluminum) is that prices go up, which isn't surprising since the main beneficiaries of "anti-monopoly" laws are the competitors who cannot compete with the "monopolist".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com