I sprained my foot and had to stay in this weekend, so I got back to TOTK for the first time in like a month. I'm about 25hrs in and had a slightly different start? I did the Water Temple basically first, THEN got sidetracked, wandered around doing shrines and side quests.
But also literally everything around us? Of my friends who went into materials sci/eng, two work in civil/commercial aerospace and one went to semiconductor.
SLS seems like it has 0 benefits of being public or private. NASA doesn't own the full design anymore, so they can't even take it to other manufacturers, but they also aren't insulated from any cost issues, and the manufacturers have no incentive to improve anything. It really feels like the worst of both worlds.
As a side note, I'm still pretty new to the industry (as in, new to working in, but having followed it for a lot longer) and the program management and systems engineering contracting/outsourcing going on was mindboggling to me when I started to hear about it from former coworkers moving into those roles. Of all the things to outsource, those two things seem like the last two that really need to stay in house.
Momentus ... reported $299,000 in revenue for 2022, less than 1% of the $152 million it told investors to expect.
That's dizzyingly bad. And it was predictable, unless you listened to the SPAC subreddit...
Astra and Satellogic are also rough. Virgin Orbit is dead. ASTS is another post-SPAC in this group that isn't listed in the article and has low/no revenue.
These should not be public companies. They were just desperate for money when it was cheap.
Regarding the profitability - spaceflight isn't profitable yet. Some companies are trying to do manufacturing and mining that could be profitable in the future, especially if launch costs keep dropping. Moving heavy industry off planet seems like a good goal to me. That's also ignoring different imaging and communications companies that are doing alright.
Regarding privatization - NASA has contacted out services from their literal beginning in the Mercury program. Contracting out basic/boring launch makes sense to me and lets them focus on bigger ideas. I don't really think SpaceX is "subsidized" vs winning contracts to deliver hardware and provide services, especially when you compare to their competition for programs like ISS commercial crew/cargo and Artemis human landing system, where their direct competitors (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, etc) are more expensive.
My big gripe is that no one else has launch capacity right now, so SpaceX has no pressure to get cheaper and companies don't have a choice. Ariane 5 retired, Atlas V is booked out, and Vulcan, Ariane 6, New Glenn, Neutron, Terran R, etc. are not flying yet.
Operating it with Amtrak on freight rail lines could be a good start (can we just Eminent Domain the ones for Boulder and Longmont already...). I hope that it eventually connects down to Trinidad or La Junta to connect to the Amtrak Southwest Chief. And up to Cheyenne. AND gets new right of way and high speed rail. That commuter corridor could be a lot more efficient than continually crying about I-25.
It would be cool if NASA's budget was raised, but in the meantime we have to deal with the reality that a flagship mission going way over budget takes money away from other programs.
I think a real key will be getting geologists on the ground there. The productivity comparison is something crazy, like, an astronaut could do a few years of rover work in a week.
There will have to be some cost trade-offs for the big GEO sats. What is the extra fuel worth to the satellite owner? Or expedited delivery to the target orbit? Is it worth the cost of sending a separate little deorbit tug up for the 2nd stage? Or a separate refuelling mission somewhere down the line?
I'm really conflicted on this one. Behind schedule and $10 billion will inevitably turn into even more behind schedule and even more money. The opportunity cost of the money is a big part of that.
I'm also still holding out hope that SpaceX will get Starship to Mars and back some time in the 2030s, but maybe that's too naïve or optimistic of me.
It'll be interesting to see which approaches companies take, like whether they opt to take a slight payload/Delta-V hit to keep prop for deorbiting or heading to a graveyard, or if tugs are more popular.
I sprained my foot and had to stay in this weekend, so I got back to TOTK for the first time in like a month. I'm about 25hrs in and had a slightly different start? I did the Water Temple basically first, THEN got sidetracked, wandered around doing shrines and side quests.