On 8/9/11 4:47 PM, Gregg Wonderly wrote:
But, if no one who "has the money" wants to fund "space flight", then it won't ever happen privately. I.e. why hasn't the privetization already happened? I think it's because it doesn't "make money". There's nothing "known" to generate value out of space "flight".
Actually, there's one space application that has proved quite commercially viable: communications. Commercial earth resources satellites are a distant second. I can't think of anything else.
Exploration for its own sake is never going to be commercially viable. There has to be some short-term economic payoff. There's a long history of those who have become rich in some other industry funding an earth expedition out of personal interest, but the cost of space flight is still far too high for this to extend to space. It means that the funding of space exploration will have to remain the province of governments for the time being. There's just no payoff for commercial investment, at least not yet.
-Phil