Atomic Razor

My snarking about Rand Simberg aside, one of the reasons that I do return to his blog is that he does post interesting space related stuff. He unfortunately intermixes it with utter tosh like this piece on health care.

Currently he has a post on the Crazy Numbers Involved in the NASA Ares program compared to Space X.

The numbers are indeed crazy and, while crazy numbers even for low cost stuff are normal in large engineering projects NASA do seem to be able to take it to a completely new and frankly astonishing level. The problem I have with all this, however, is slightly different. I'm still not convinced that any of the economics of space travel for the masses actually add up.

I certainly don't think the scenario commentator "Brock" outlines is likely:

I would find it hilarious if Ares V launched for the Moon and the astronauts landed to find a welcoming party of Charles Simonyi, Sergey Brin, et. al. who landed in a Dragon capsule the day before (for 1/100th the price, of course).

Yeah.  As a good friend of mine used to say.  Keep eating the cheese.

However, the spiraling costs of the NASA programs are probably, especially in the current economic climate to lead to their cancellation or emasculation to a point where they don't actually get anything done.

Rand probably sees that as a good thing.  As a long term fan of manned space exploration I'm more concerned on several levels.  Firstly, all good will aside, SpaceX hasn't even finished their manned solutions and hasn't, yet, even had an un-manned test flight of their next gen booster.  They took several goes to get their prototype vehicle into orbit and the new one, while well tested, is significantly more complex.

Secondly, even at SpaceX numbers, it's still an expensive proposition to put people into space and get them back again.

Finally, I still just don't see the economic case for private industry being able to bookstrap the development of space.  There is a Henleinian streak in the Alt.Space community but they tend to forget that Delos D Harriman actually did find diamonds to make going worthwhile (ignore the other problems that presents) and that when he returns a few years later as an old man there is already a city and a means to buy a moon rocket essentially off the shelf.

We went to the moon 40 years ago (next month).  There were no diamonds and there are still no second hand moon ships.

I wish it weren't the case.