Entrepreneurial Space Age Began In 2009, Says Report (arstechnica.com) 67
"In July 2009, SpaceX launched its first commercial payload -- a 50kg Earth observation satellite for Malaysia -- which flew into space aboard a privately developed rocket," reports Ars Technica. "According to a new space investment report that will be published Tuesday by the Space Angels, an angel fund and a venture capital fund focused on space, which marked a key inflection point between the "governmental" space age and the "entrepreneurial" space age." From the report: "With that launch, SpaceX significantly lowered the barriers to entry in the space industry," the fund's chief executive, Chad Anderson, writes in the new report. "By vertically integrating, the company was able to drastically reduce the cost to get to orbit. But what deserves at least as much credit is their decision to publish their pricing, which fundamentally changed the way we do business in space. This transparency enabled would-be space entrepreneurs to develop a business plan and raise equity financing based on those cost assumptions."
From 2009 through September 2017, the report finds that $12 billion in equity investments have been made in space, with annual amounts increasing significantly in 2015 and beyond to more than $2 billion per year. At $10 billion, launch services, landers, and satellites have accounted for the bulk of this investment since 2009. Aside from the SpaceX launch that year, other data supports the year 2009 as the beginning of an entrepreneurial space age in which the private sector began making investments to return profits from space-based activities. About 250 space ventures have received non-government equity funding, the report states, and, of those, 88 percent have been funded since 2009.
From 2009 through September 2017, the report finds that $12 billion in equity investments have been made in space, with annual amounts increasing significantly in 2015 and beyond to more than $2 billion per year. At $10 billion, launch services, landers, and satellites have accounted for the bulk of this investment since 2009. Aside from the SpaceX launch that year, other data supports the year 2009 as the beginning of an entrepreneurial space age in which the private sector began making investments to return profits from space-based activities. About 250 space ventures have received non-government equity funding, the report states, and, of those, 88 percent have been funded since 2009.
Re: Earth is flat. Accept it. (Score:1)
This comment is no less retarded than the article. I didn't think we could get lower here
Take that Karl Marx (Score:1)
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The deluded who see nothing in this world beyond greed, for them the solution for everything, in a world of 'I'm alright jack, fuck everyone else'. Want to how truly shit psychopathic capitalism is, compare spending for the war industrial complex whose only goal is murdering humanity to the space industrial complex whose goal is the rest of the galaxy. Want to see what psychopathic capitalism really is, just compare those two. Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.
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We have yet to find a system for maximizing usefulness and minimizing suffering that is actually compatible with human psychology.
I'd say The Nordic model [wikipedia.org] does a good job of it.
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[citation needed]
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While I'm sure the Nordic model works quite well for them, it's unlikely to do the same here. This mainly has to do with enormous cultural differences between us and them; namely we have a mentality of abusing welfare benefits to an extreme. (Case in point, look at the percentage of the population on disability 50 years ago vs today...there's no other reason why there are twice as many now than in the past, especially given newer technology has made it even easier for disabilities to be cured or for people
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But what if those problems are actually caused by the economic problems associated with laissez-faire capitalism? Certainly these problems seem to have been growing since the 80s after America moved to a much more unrestrained economic model.
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But what if those problems are actually caused by the economic problems associated with laissez-faire capitalism?
First off, we don't have laissez-faire capitalism. Second off, these problems have little to do with economics, in fact we've already tried throwing lots of money at these kinds of people, and it didn't work. We've even tried building lower income homes in affluent areas where it's considerably easier to find better paying work, and all it does is move the problem from one place to another.
Certainly these problems seem to have been growing since the 80s after America moved to a much more unrestrained economic model.
It's interesting that you say this, because things have only been improving. Pick any metric you want:
- Birth rates are
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First off, we don't have laissez-faire capitalism
But you can't deny it's a lot more laissez-faire than the Nordic model.
Second off, these problems have little to do with economics, in fact we've already tried throwing lots of money at these kinds of people, and it didn't work.
What's that? Just throwing money at a problem without actually changing the underlying socioeconomic model that caused the issue in the first place doesn't fix the problem? Who could have predicted??
It's interesting that you say this, because things have only been improving. Pick any metric you want:
I can pick 5 things straight off the bat that haven't been improving:
1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].
2. Healthcare costs [killingthebreeze.com].
3. Income inequality [forbesimg.com]. The majority of wages have stagnated while only those at the top have seen their wages increase. Stagnant wages
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But you can't deny it's a lot more laissez-faire than the Nordic model.
How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/... [heritage.org]
For a little background, that site favors less regulation when it comes to the economy, and if they didn't like a particular country's state of regulation, you'd see it show up. Having said that, they do a pretty thorough job in their measurements, and you can poke through their data if you'd like. As you can plainly see, it places the Nordic countries as being roughly the same as the US.
You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you thi
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How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/ [heritage.org]...
You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".
That matches exactly what I've been saying, the fact the site averages all those out to the same arbitrary "overall score" is irrelevant.
You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.
Not in the US no
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This is a long post that I typed in somewhat of a rush, so I've probably made a few grammatical and factual errors, and missed a few things that didn't support my argument enough, but the overall message should hold up well. If you read nothing else in this, at least read the last few paragraphs.
You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".
Take another look at those figures. The tax burden in three of those countries is similar to the US, with Finland scoring higher. But that's a moot point. Remember, you're trying to argue that the US is more laissez
Re:Take that Karl Marx (Score:5, Insightful)
>Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.
You need to put down your manifesto, because you're frothing at the mouth as badly as the 'capitalism is not just the best solution, it is the only solution' crowd.
Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race, as it is the only large scale economic system we've developed so far that rewards individual effort.
Having said that, it has no inherent controls against parasitic actors abusing the system to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of the population. That is where a democratic government implementing regulations comes in, and the success of that government and its regulations will determine how well society as a whole benefits from being fundamentally capitalist.
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Put on your scientist hat on and look at history like actual scientists and historians have done. The profession consensus is that the link between capitalism and success outside of the expansion of capitalism, i.e. technological or social progress, is a correlation, not a causation.
Where the fuck are you getting this from? Some communist blog/forum? Newsflash: Capitalism has allowed technology to scale at an exponential rate due to private citizens investing massive amounts of money toward that end; this is not a coincidence. Hell, the Soviet Union, for all of the resources it had at its disposal to improve its military technology, was still using vacuum tubes in its fighter jets when the US had moved to integrated circuits long before. The same integrated circuits that were made prac
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>Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.
Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race,
Nothing but extinction is perhaps inaccurate. It has brought us many things, and it will also bring us extinction.
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Nothing but extinction is perhaps inaccurate. It has brought us many things, and it will also bring us extinction.
And how did you draw that conclusion? We've only seen capitalism do the exact opposite:
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans... [ted.com]
https://www.gapminder.org/tool... [gapminder.org]
Nobody says capitalism is perfect. In fact, it's analogous to democracy: Many problems, but the best system we've ever come up with. Unless you have a better idea (communism and socialism have been soundly proven to be big giant flops) then what the hell are you ranting about? Let's see if you can come up with a better idea than democracy too while you're a
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And how did you draw that conclusion? We've only seen capitalism do the exact opposite:
Uh, no [usatoday.com]. And also no [wikipedia.org].
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While you were coming up with that, did you stop at all to think about how many very non-capitalist countries are the worst offenders here? Iran, whose economy is 60% centrally planned (which is a wet-dream-come-true in your case) holds the #1 most polluted city in the world, with many other either pure socialist or mostly socialist countries not far behind them. For comparison, the US, which is arguably the most capitalist country in the world, doesn't even have a single city that falls within the top 1,00
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while they refuse to acknowledge the many lives lost and money spent on mistakes that had to be made by those that they despise- Governments.
For rockets? Wrong! Those lives lost were deliberate. The first rockets capable of putting objects in space had already existed by 1944, a whole 13 years before Sputnik, and they were built by Nazi Germany as a way to bomb other European cities. The US (via Wernher von Braun and others who deliberately surrendered to the US) and the USSR (via kidnapping many German scientists and capturing a V-2 rocket manufacturing plant) only refined them afterwards.
They are not attempting to go all Jules Verne by shooting Astronauts into Space by Cannon, because that was sorted out long as being, at the least, noisy and uncomfortable. They are not trying to fly Biplanes to the Moon. They are just appropriating all that knowledge for themselves and claiming it as their own, because they are the fittest.
Oh boy...you're in for a history lesson. The father of m
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Oh man, did you ever prove my point! You ignored all of my other examples of "Government Entrepreneurship" to trot out the V2 Rocket... which was developed by a Government, and further developed by two more Governments. Godard's experiments were pretty much ignored by Private Industry until decades after his early work... largely funded by the Smithsonian, which is hardly private.
Yes, they further developed it; I never denied this. But the invention really, truly, started with an entrepreneur.
ICs... bozo, research first, blather away second. Initial research was conducted for the British Government, and was further developed and funded by the US Government, especially the work of Kilby at TI:
Try reading my post again.
No Army and Air Force, no Funding, no IC. At least not at that time. The IC was developed initially for the Governments, something that you can't dispute, because the weight of evidence crushes your delusions.
Perhaps try reading your own link: The government did not fund it, rather they were the first customer. I think your bad reading comprehension is probably why you're uneducated, which explains why you're a commie bastard.
Now as for Cannibalism... do spend some time looking into the history of the Telegraph, and especially the history of the Transatlantic Cables. Every single "Entrepreneur" failed, often in a period of just a year or two, only to be gobbled up by successors, who also failed, only to be gobbled up again.
Hate to break it to you, but this isn't cannibalism. If the management fails at one company, and another company effectively takes over and then succe
In some ways... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another important milestone was the recent name-check on Elon Musk in Star Trek: Discovery. In ep.4, the captain says (paraphrasing): "The Wright brothers, Elon Musk, Zephram Cochran... do you want to be remembered in that group or be forgotten as just another obscure scientist?"
My point is that even pop culture is beginning to realize that we're entering a new paradigm for space flight, and that Musk is the most visible proponent of it. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of Elon's vision will be realized. But if, in 10 or 15 years it's possible to buy a ticket to an orbit for less than $100k, it will certainly be enabled by the "entrepreneurial" space industry, and not by any government effort. And, for better or worse, Elon is the poster-boy for that industry.
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Overstating slightly? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not to dismiss the developments in launch systems; but 'space age' usually includes something to do in space, which hasn't shown up to nearly the same degree, and also existed under the prior launch model; it seems more accurate to limit the claim to launch systems.
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It's a lot dramatic. But it's basically the same sentiment as you express above - trying to draw a false distinction between private launch providers and vehicles.