back to article Space: The final frontier, or the next venture capital gold rush

First, a disclaimer: Ashlee Vance worked for The Register in the early noughties. But he's also the chap who literally wrote the book on Elon Musk and has a new tome on the private space industry, When the Heavens Went on Sale, that's definitely food for thought. Vance has spent the last five years examining the private space …

  1. Jemma

    Rather him than me...

    Because writing that book would require being around Electrobigot and his Muskkretinwagen/Muskkretingerat far far too long for my sanity and lack of an L117 in 300 Blackout to survive. He really is a cancerous polyp on the anus of humanity (and I have some experience in cancers).

    Incidentally it now appears that the exploding SpaceDildo™ was flying with the three parrot class engines "shut down" as "unnecessary" - to which I ask, what was number four going running up and down faster than an Essex girls undies? And the utter devastation left behind the damn thing on the ground... And I'd not be too confident if it was me boosting off Mars Reich I with all that extremely very fine dust everywhere that gets into everything faster than a caravan in a pile up.. 33 engines *face-palm*

    Hope the books successful, but you know, I have a suspicion it will be.

    Shame we don't have a spare space ark hanging around that we can dump the Elon-ites and their messiah on, telling them "we'll take the next one...".

    PS SpaceX launching two other rockets successfully recently really DOESN'T apply, when both are legacy designs, that have been going for years, were designed by others (sensibly I might add), and are reliable.

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Rather him than me...

      By all means, say whatever you want about Musk - I have probably said worse. When it comes to the rockets you are showing a large amount of ignorance but you could show more if you were a bit more coherent. I really could not make out what you were trying to say about the engines - a legacy design many of which survived being bombarded by the lumps of concrete from the disintegrating pad. A large number of 'small' engines gets you economies of scale and operational experience without the massive delays trying to fix combustion instability. For an example of what happens if you go only a little bigger see Blue Origin.

      I have come across this fine dust comment before but not yet with any supporting evidence. The layer of dust reported shortly after the launch indicates a particle size too large to be a health hazard (finer dust would have taken longer to settle). If you have some actual evidence of dust fine enough to be dangerous please post a link otherwise you make people disparaging Musk sound like a bunch of ignorant fools parroting other fools without doing any fact checking. I would really like to disparage Musk myself without being dismissed out of hand as a rabid clueless idiot.

      PS: Those two 'legacy' designs are wiping the floor with the competition on price, reliability and availability. The alternatives are either discontinued or not ready yet combined with much more expensive and relying on parts made in Russia, or having the payload held hostage and being unavailable because of sanctions.

  2. CatWithChainsaw

    Another on the "to read" list

    Sounds like a fascinating book. Absolutely despise this mindless, feverish desire to commodify everything under the sun, and then the sun itself, though.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like