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Re:Blue Origin first human flight by boringg on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @11:12AM (#27894743)
The Space Race is still happening, but it's happening on other planets and with government money (see: Mars and further afield exploration). All these initiatives have been possible by the heavy lifting of NASA and other international government agencies over the last 6 decades.

Theses newcomers have drawn in attention and effort and are trying to reframe space as a business being funded by revenue - which has trade offs but in general is a positive development. The really challenging work without the glamor is still being down by the scientists and research agencies with the government. I do tip my hats to the accomplishments of all three of the new comer organizations. I just dispute that the narrative that they are driving the future. I think they are complementary.

To be clear - they don't have enough money to "solve" space exploration - it takes deeper capital than they have - though they are bringing a new business model to potentially stretch their capital deployments.

Re:Blue Origin first human flight by AlexanderTheGr8 on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @11:22AM (#27894860)
In my opinion, they are still doing incredible work. SpaceX and Blue Origin can both bring their rockets down - no government space agency can do this today (and govt space agencies had a 60 year lead)

Privatization helps because NASA cannot afford failures today, but private companies can. And since space is a new and risky frontier, failures will happen. That's why I believe that privatization is a good thing overall

Re:Blue Origin first human flight by nickik on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @02:38PM (#27897490)
NASA could have done this long ago. And had test project that proved as much. Suborbital human flight is just not very interesting for anything other then tourism.
Re:Blue Origin first human flight by boringg on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @12:54PM (#27896187)
I agree privatization is a benefit - i believe that was my final statement in that they are complementary. I think that the bulk work is still done by public agencies, however the privatization part capitalizes from a revenue perspective on the work done by the public agencies.

It's not dissimilar to how most energy technology makes its way to the private companies. DOE research labs do most of the work with college collaboration and then it gets released through private equity into the public domain.