Commercial space flight. Good idea or bad idea?

Post Reply New Topic

There have been rumors around
that NASA is moving on away from the
shuttle onto commercial space flight.

So, what do you think?

I think that it's a great idea. It's also a great way to get into the 21st Century.

Sounds like fun!

If I had 200 grand right now, I would definitely go to space. That's at the top of my bucket list, along with learning to fly a plane.

Yea, I heard about the 200,000 dollar flights, round trip.

It's no rumor. It's the real deal. NASA is not taking the lead in this, but will be associated with it; link and quote below from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation website.

http://www.commercialspaceflight.org/?p=1559

It's a great thing because because there are billionaires like Richard Branson that have an interest in it and have the resources to fund the investment in it. My understanding is that he and his family may be the next private citizens to venture into space. Thousands of new jobs will be created by this new joint venture.

It's a great idea. More job and wealth creation. NASA has made the greatest exploration achievements to mankind so far, and no one should have a reason to regret the federal program, but it's time to move on IMHO.

I think commercial space flight is an alluring, inevitable achievement... although perhaps not the best use of capital by humans at the moment. It seems to me there are far more pressing issues on this planet that we could work on instead of all those $200k round-trips.

Absolutely one of the best things we could do right now. Free up NASA and other equivalent agencies from being a bus service, letting them engage in real exploration again. And cheapen the cost of getting into space making it easier to access the almost limitless resources out there without the need for huge government spending projects

There is a lot more to the commercial space industry than that. That is just the space tourism industry. Even so altogether space budgets (government and commercial) amount to fractions of the budget of other things- NASA for instance gets about 1-3% of it's government's budget. So the potential benefits (which are great) far outweigh what seem to be exorbitant costs- exorbitant only if one doesn't put them in perspective with other industries not working for the future

I think commercial space flight is a bad idea.

It's never been tested, even after it's been well-developed, and most people can't afford the minimal amount to go into space.

Although it will indeed create more jobs,
capital should be used for more important issues
rather than using it for commercial space flights.

It'll be great! Only a matter of time before we head to Mars and beyond !

Yes, commercial spaceflight is a good idea. A government agency, in general, forms into a bloated bureaucracy that absorbs more money than it is worth. A commercial operation is, however, going to at least be more interested in not wasting money. NASA can set safety standards that the commercial operations must adhere to, but without thousands of bureaucrats to feed the cost of spaceflight is automatically reduced.

You should do a search at least before saying 'its never been tested'. That is not true in the least bit, there are several commercial launch vehicles that have been tested (Falcon 9 rocket being the best example) or are in the process. Plus that is just space tourism you're talking about, which represents a small fraction of the total industry.

It allows private investors access to space resources from different companies or organizations. So for example using SpaceX for launch services and a few other companies for other aspects (private space stations from Bigelow Aerospace and fuel from Shackleton Energy plus others) a consortium could begin mining an asteroid for resources to bring back to Earth or build more infrastructure in LEO or etc. Or a company could create zero-g manufacturing stations. Most importantly its not all in the hands of one agency which would be overburdened asides the evident problems with any bureaucracy as you outlined