Quote:
Originally Posted by PR_Glen
It was fully funded by the people back in those days, and still is despite a whole lot of nothing going on today. I'm curious what your opinion is of the private sector starting their own space programs now? Do you think having an actual business model and being run as a business would be beneficial or a hindrance? I'm sure it would help cut down a lot of waste, but would that in turn put lives in danger because of this?
|
The thing is space exploration is massively expensive, even for a billionaire like Richard Branson, so its one of those things that is best funded by taxpayers but the technology that came out of that funding went into the public domain and had enriched the lives of everyone on earth pretty much but the overall question is was/is it worth the expense. Private space exploration is a good thing no doubt but it does raise some ethical issues particularly if it is in any way subsidized by taxpayers, for example we know there are meteors out there that are very large deposits of gold, should one of those become mineable who get the profits and of course who bears the costs.
In the long run our survival as a species is dependent on us being able to move off of this planet there is probably no such thing as starting too soon
in terms of placing satellites in orbit and other such small picture stuff that private companies are doing now I think that is inevitable and probably a good thing but it does create a cross dependence between government and industry I mean in particular classified things like DOD sats, I dont think its a good thing when a company has something it can hold over the head of our government in exchange for favorable laws, so I dont like the idea of the whole thing falling into corporate hands.