What happens if their revenue optimization software calculates that US can actually pay much more for much less? With the liberalization of infrastructure things like that happen, in Europe trains are infamous for getting shittier with privatizations and nationalization becomes political topic. IIRC Texas grid had become crazy expensive in a cold winters some years ago, people dying or paying crazy prices. Then there's the case of the investors going political, at some point Elon Musk threatened halting projects essential for the US government when he had a public fight with Trump.
What happens if China leaps ahead by not seeking profits of all this? Is there a mechanism to force US private space companies not to seek profits or cap profits? Sure SLS costs vs SpaceX are infamous but private ownership doesn't necessarily guarantee success considering that Boeing failed miserably both with NASA contracts and fully commercial operations.
Brave new world I guess, if it doesn't pan out there are the Chinese and the Russians.
On the other hand, are we replacing public with private infrastructure here or is the private sector filling gaps where we didn't have any public infrastructure before in the first place?
Isn't this essentially where we are right now? In this century China has launched three crewed space stations, the rest of the world has launched zero. (Bigelow launched two demonstrators, but they were never crewed). The US has a lot of stations that should go up this or next year in response to the ISS retiring, meanwhile China is quietly operating their current station since 2021
I am confident that at least one of the US programs will succeed. But right now the US doesn't have the lead
It's surprisingly hard to find good sources. Wikipedia has a good article on it [1] that was deleted in 2020 due to being "not notable"
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MirCorp&oldid=989...
Doubtful. Might seem counter intuitive but in some ways space is an easier problem then under water, at least once you get up there. The pressure differential between ~vacuum and 1 atmosphere obviously is just one atmosphere, and outward instead of inward, whereas you get to 1 atm of pressure (14.6 psi) in water at almost exactly the 10m mark (in salt water). The Titanic wreck (which is what the sub you're referring to was designed to reach) is at 3800m, at which point the pressure is around 380 atm (~5600 psi). Any failures are going to be absolutely catastrophic with no time to react. Whereas a space station can handle small leaks just fine for quite awhile (as ISS has had to [0]) if it has some buffer, it's "just" a supply loss and if it became too much would mean people having to get into a safe area or suits and eventually abandon it in the worst case, but it doesn't go pop like a soap bubble. And such things can definitely be patched. Assuming normal proven safety procedures are followed (most importantly having some margin and constant backup life boats or rooms sufficient for all humans on board until all can get to Earth) an impact or mistake or the like might put the station out of business but should be very survivable.
At any rate nothing like the titan, where IIRC the implosion went supersonic and thus they literally didn't even know what did them in because the collapse front was faster then the speed of human nerve signal propagation (120 m/s at best, usually lower).
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0: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-international...
> "How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"
> "Well, it's a spaceship. So I'd say anywhere between zero and one."
Anonyneko•2w ago
ncrmro•2w ago