Posted on 08/12/2005 10:23:15 PM PDT by Shuttle Shucker
What's wrong with BIG competitive prizes? NASA's are merely $250,000 in size and we had to fight hard just to get those offered. Meanwhile you've said nothing about tax incentives, or this:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
And yet I've made no valid points at all, according to you, except for the one about private property rights in space? In what way are you a conservative?
Thinking small.
Space development must go big from the beginning. A trunk line from Cleveland to Cincinatti doesn't get it when the Pacific passage to India is needed.
Suggestions: Replace the entire steel industry, the entire aluminum industry, and the entire municipal power industry of the entire earth with space based industry. That is the appropriate scale.
It could be that we agree a lot more than we disagree on these issues, and we seem to want the same thing for humanity in the long run too. But we don't necessarily agree on the ideal approach to getting there.
Wal-Mart began small, reportedly specializing in commerce between Texas and Arkansas. They grew as their business plan allowed. If they hadn't had to pay taxes, though, they could have attracted investment even sooner. Space ventures could be the same.
Empowering entrepreneurs enables new markets better than bureaucrats traditionally have. I'm not sure what concrete proposals you advocate that we embrace, although I don't rule out the possibility that I agree with them. I just don't know what you advocate.
Implementation--the way to get things done--is debateable at least until these things begin to be done.
Moving the entire steel and aluminum industries, and their power requirements off-earth would eliminate much of the basis for the Kyoto arguments. Converting to electric vehicles and moving the power generation for that off earth as well would eliminate the rest of Kyoto and make the whole Kyoto debate seem like an undergrad term paper.
If industry goes into space wholesale rather than on a hobby level, it will succeed. If it goes in by bits and pieces it will take too long to get to break-even and earth will crash in the meantime.
How do you propose that we get there then, given our national debt, aging population and NASA monopoly? I propose pro-entrepreneurial reforms.
Private property rights would do it. Mining, manufacturing, and power are being driven off earth by forces already in operation, but business is being held back artificially by lack of private property rights. The problem of the lack of private property rights has already been laid on the President's desk in the report of the President's Commission report on Moon, Mars and Beyond. Would the CEOs take the big step if they could have private property rights? Those CEOs who have some ambition for their companies would not hesitate, and then the tax environment could be forced to change if necessary. California already has some tax incentive for this, although not much is happening so far. Private property is the trigger.
>>>California already has some tax incentive for this, although not much is happening so far. Private property is the trigger.<<<
Does California have anything even remotely as sweeping as California Congressional rep. Dana Rohrabacher's "Zero Gravity, Zero Tax" bill?
Oklahoma has some sort of tax credit underway but I don't have the details. I just know that Pioneer Rocketplane (or maybe it's just called Rocketplane now) keeps saying it has exciting stuff underway.
I've been told from insiders from the White House that property rights in space will become more of a live political issue once somebody lands on the Moon or an asteroid (etc.) and makes a claim. We need access to them though, and the current tax and govt. procurement climate aren't what they need to be. I don't doubt that you agree. I guess you simply think private property rights' recognition would make more of a difference than I do. Maybe you're right. I certainly agree with you that the topic is very important. Encouragingly enough, very few countries signed the Moon Treaty that prohibits private property rights in space:
http://www.spaceprojects.com/property
Catch-22
Should have happened already. So far I have counted perhaps 13 14 counting you who even see the point of private property rights in outer space.
At least our DC representatives woke up in time to not buy off on the Moon Treaty.
But private funding of sufficient level for significant space development won't be available in the needed quantity without property rights of some kind. That would require US recognition that they do in fact already own the moon and should accept claims from private persons.
In the global marketplace, I think we'd have an easier time claiming that our entrepreneurs simply own 2 square kilometers (or whatever) immediately surrounding where they land or genuinely mine.
Anyhow, time to watch the McLaughlin Report. Hopefully it won't be too nauseating with its liberal participants? Something tells me competitive prizes won't even be brought up.
The McLaughlin Group is about as qualified to pontificate upon the Shuttle program as a petrie dish full of bacteria is qualified to discuss "culture" (groan).
Tony needs to find himself a classier program to be affiliated with.
Property rights of some kind. Any kind, from lease, to crown charter, to fee simple. Funding is a problem without. It's a problem even with, but possible.
Indeed the group's discussion on shelving the shuttle was uninspiring. They didn't pay ANY lip service to pro-entrepreneurial approaches to replacing it, although all agreed it's time for civilians to stop flying in that 40 year old contraption. One debater did comment about how the military industrial complex has a way of keeping such programs alive beyond the time that they should terminate though... Ike Eisenhower (a fellow Republican) couldn't have said it better himself.
Hi Kevin:
Momentum appears to be gathering for the Shuttle-shelving cause in favor of more exploration-oriented projects. Even the statist New York Times is suddenly climbing aboard the mothballing cause (in favor of the Moon & Mars, etc):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/opinion/14sun1.html
Perhaps there will be other opportunities for us to Freep those Shuttles into museums and off of taxpayers' backs after all these decades of helplessness?
McLaughlin is one of the most moronic, narcissist "personalities" currently on the tube.
However, deflating the space balloon should be the goal of everyone. It has been turned into a bureaucratic group of fumblers that throw money at every problem and generally without results.
My thoughts exactly. And with even the statist New York Times at least tacitly agreeing with us...
Given how The McLaughlin Group frequently revisits topics such as the Middle East (Gaza Pullout; the Iraqi War, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if they revisit the Shuttle topic at some later date (especially if they hear back from some of us in sufficiently interesting ways). But this is just one of many different Freep possibilities so it's good not to burn out the troops this early in the conflict (or at all, for that matter). Still, I'm smelling paydirt with the Shuttle shelving endeavor. I just don't yet know how we can get there. Maybe someone else here does?
"On a scale of 1 through 10, with a '1' meaning we witness a flawless shuttle launch in September and a '10' being the near metaphysical certitude of the shuttle program being scrapped..."
Hi Kevin:
The transcript's here:
http://www.mclaughlin.com/library/transcript.asp?id=479
To read merely the relevant part, one simply needs to do a search for the word "shuttle".
Thanks again for having passed the news along to your crew last week. Maybe we can finally redirect the Shuttle funds to exploration-related space endeavors (ideally through competitive prizes).
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