I had forgotten that Elon Musk said he could reduce launch costs by two orders of magnitude. The problem - the heartbreaking problem, as I see it - is that even when you could launch anything to space for any reason so long as you were stickin' it to the Russkies/Capitalist Dogs, we were only launching about double what we launch now. We've got an entire Iridium constellation up there and it couldn't make enough money to support itself. Musk is planning like six thousand satellites to beam broadband everywhere but that's as much about justifying his rocket company as anything else. People forget that the only reason SpaceX exists is because Roscosmos/Energia told Musk to get stuffed so he set about to reverse engineer Roscosmos/Energia. He's done a fine job. There is now a Soviet design bureau to compete with the bloated capitalists of the United Launch Alliance. But it doesn't mean there's a use case for space. Let's say a Falcon Heavy is $100m to orbit, like SpaceX claims. 'k, great. That's about $1600 bucks per kilo. It'll also launch about 2/3rds of a Skylab. Super awesome! So for $150m we've got a Skylab-sized chunk of space hotel into orbit. That's not bloody bad - Skylab cost the equivalent of about $12b. A Falcon Heavy comes in at ten percent the cost of a Saturn 5 (disregarding development costs). A 90% cost reduction ain't nuthin'. But how much do we really need space stations? How much do we really need space tourism? What's the demand? The first space station went up before I was born and I'm an old man. When we were about to send up the ISS we refused to pay to keep Mir in the sky - apparently the world only needed one space station at any given time. Before it ever flew, Al Gore argued that if we could fill the payload of the shuttle bay with feathers and have them magically turn to gold in orbit, we'd only lose $70m per launch. Space has never been about the money, but Musk and Bezos are all trying to find a business case for it because they read The Man Who Sold The Moon as kids. I want to believe. But I stood on a beach and watched $9b go into orbit with a half-dozen strangers and a couple SF dudes on horseback and it changed me. We wanted bin Laden dead nine billion dollars worth and if that's the ground truth on the economics, reusable boosters aren't enough to change the narrative.
You're right to question the possibility, and you're not the only one. Tell 'bl00 I said hey if you're hangin' out!
Space is fukn' exciting, man. I regularly drive four hours to squint at random satellites going into orbit but couldn't be sussed to bike a mile to see the Space Shuttle wander through Compton because I was mad at it. This shit drives passions. Thing is, "going to the moon" drives a lot more passions than "going back to the moon" and it hasn't gotten any cheaper.
I, too, think space is exciting, and I've read 1% of the science fiction you have. Saw a tweet the other day; what do you think?
I've given this some thought. My answer is mean. I've taken my family camping twice in the past couple of months. Nothing special - you can rent yurts up on the water for not a lot and bloody hell they have futons and electric light. When you've got a six-year-old, though, and a practice where you might get called away at any minute (despite having a whole 'nuther midwife handling first call - we had three births in 36 hours), cooking over a Coleman and roasting marshmallows over bracken is "camping." What I've noticed is that the minute I say "yurt" everyone I'm talking to - no matter what - says "oh you mean 'glamping.'" They're quick to denigrate the fact that we aren't hiking in on moccasins to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. One of them did this in the same conversation she mentioned the 35' fifth wheeler she just bought. Another one, the last time he went camping was with me - in 1992. A third one I asked "when was the last time you stuck your toe in a sleeping bag?" The answer was "I went to a boy scout camp once when I was eleven. It was so comfy!" Can I characterize sci fi fans? I think I can. I wrote a novel, I was a member of LASFS, I helped organize a 'con. I think I can say that they are not adventurers. I think I can say with no quaver in my voice that if you could get to the mutherfucking moon as easily as you can get to Yellowstone, sci fi fans are the ones that would watch the Kardashians go there on the Discovery Channel. Sci fi fans are the ones that can hold erudite arguments about the canon and non-canon colors of lightsabers but have never so much as looked to see if the YMCA has a fencing class. They're the ones that can tell you about which podracer has better stats but are afraid to let their kids on those rolling animals at the mall. They're the ones that absolutely believe in our mission to return to the moon but don't know why we need to spend all this money on climate research. There's a certain class of human that lives most of their lives vicariously and it doesn't matter that they'll never get within a dozen timezones of the frontier, the fact that it hasn't tripled during their lifetime means the downfall of humanity. I'm getting fucking sick of them. They don't want adventure they want to know that adventure can be had and safely avoided but partaken in by buying the commemorative plate from Franklin Mint. Or whatever the fuck those Funko things are. You know what would satisfy that "existential hunger?" Taking a fucking risk. And I don't mean crossdressing cosplay.
I don't think it's related to "pop culture consumption." I know plenty of pop-culture mavens who are great people with a lot going on. I think it's "consumption." If you rely largely on passive entertainment, your worldview and lifestyle reflect that which you consume. If you are more about active entertainment - building things, making things, doing things, participating in things - then you have more input into what makes up your makeup. If your primary hobby is watching television, you get whatever you get out of television. If your primary hobby is blogging television, you are actively attempting to craft a narrative out of your life and inflict it on others.
Dude we're now sending TSA agents to the border and apparently some of the money from Trump's wall is coming out of our AWACS budget. Space Force looks to be good for $270m The Apollo program was about $120b adjusted for inflation. Beresheet was $100m.