Jeff Bezos Finds Apollo 11 Rockets
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Let that sink in for a moment.
When the CIA wanted to get a peak at a Soviet Era sub that sank to 17,000' they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer [1] to go retrieve it. It was a mammoth undertaking which required the financial assistance of a nation state to make it work.
In 1982 when Forbes first started listing the 400 richest people they had 13 billionaires and 75 million made the list [2], which is about 167 million in inflation adjusted dollars [3], and the current lists #400 is is $1.05B so a bit over 6x larger even after inflation is considered.
The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments. Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)
I talked with some folks at Scaled Composites a bit after their successful X-Prize bid. A common theme was that they could have been successful earlier if it had not been for the red tape put in their way by the government. (some estimated two years earlier but I think that was optimistic).
And you look at the world concerns that arise when North Korea tests 'long range' rockets because building a rocket that can get a meaningful payload into orbit is 98% of the way to being able to drop something out of orbit pretty much anywhere you want.
Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly. Not something the government can generally tolerate but explorers can.
The risk though is that you end up with a corporation that is has the capability of exploiting space and corporations don't generally sign treaties. That makes for interesting times indeed.
[1] https://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_400 (hopefully it is accurate)
[3] http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
[4] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#p_40_s_arank_All%20industr...
Wealth has been concentrating as well. If the rich continually get richer, it makes sense that at some point their capabilities become comparable to nation states.
With barely any oversight, non-existent checks and balances, no social responsibility, an the power to sway the laws that the rest of us must live by, I urge you all to consider where we're headed. To me, at least, it seems that the age of kings is once again upon us.
What could possibly go wrong?
We know what's going wrong - we're living it. The Federal Government has never been so dismissive of the law than it has been since well before 9/11.
Consider that we've gone to war six times [1] since 1945, never have declared war the way God [2] and the Framers said to in the Constitution.
[1] Maybe five. I'm counting really big efforts, involving at least a division of grunts. Libya made the cut because it irks me that there wasn't even a pretense of asking Congressional permission.
[2] Irony.
I'm sure there's a lot of corruption going on at this level but it's just as much "owning the country" as it is "being extorted by the officials". Even in the first world (at least according to professor Lessig):
> “Our current tax system with all its complexities is in part designed to make it easier for candidates, in particular congressmen, to raise money to get back to congress,” Lessig said. “All sorts of special exceptions which expire after a limited period of time are just a reason to pick up the phone and call somebody and say ‘Your exception is about to expire, here’s a good reason for you to help us fight to get it to extend.’ And that gives them the opportunity to practice what is really a type of extortion – shaking the trees of money in the private sector into their campaign coffers so that they can run for congress again.”
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/01/02/lawrence-lessig-on-money-...
Private parties are subject to the law. They can be sued. They can be made to repair damage.
Governments ? They have no responsibilities whatsoever. Once their term is done, everything's forgotten and forgiven. Where is their social responsibility? Ever seen a president appear in court an unlawful attack on another country ?
No ? That's what I thought.
I have seen some presidents in courts of Justice. Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, also in different categories, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. I would say that this is roughly as common as seeing a wealthy CEO charged for crimes that his company made.
Basically, when you give power to an entity, you must keep in mind what it will cost to remove it when it abuses its power. Corporations or public authorities are not that different in this respect : if a fairly elected body cannot keep them in check, or step in in case of abuses, don't give them power, even if they look "nice".
That is a simple principle to avoid violent conflicts. If NASA says it wants to start inject cesium in huge quantity in the atmosphere, vote them out in the next term (yes, voting can work, even in America). If Exxon wants to do the same, make sure that a justice+police environment exists that can forbid them and coercively force them to not do that.
> hen you give power to an entity, you must keep in mind what it will cost to remove it
Agree with you, but why is it that in so many countries, elected officials are beyond the law in so many ways ? In France, for example, elected officials benefit of immunities and they cannot be sued during their mandate. How is that fair ?
> voting can work, even in America
Even in America ? A country when you only have a choice between 2 parties does not really qualify as "it's working" to me. It's like choosing between plague and cholera: you basically wonder every time which one is less harmful than the other.
We don't need more policies to protect the environment. If you gave actual ownership rights on the environment, people who own them would defend their ownership and sue polluters for damages and reparation. It's a well known problem called as "tragedy of the commons". When nobody owns anything, everyone will keep destroying the resource until it's gone. That's what's happening with Tuna fishing in the Mediterranean Sea currently. Ownership is the only answer to ensure there will be balance and retribution for unlawful acts.
EDIT: I'm sorry, but was my request for a source considered rude? I don't understand the knock. I would really like to see some data showing the consolidation of wealth, if it actually exists.
But I'd also love to see a source, the claim alone does not convince me.
I'm actually not even sure what the claim is, actually -- are we talking about the top 5%? The top 1%? And are we talking about distribution within the entire world or within some specific nations?
I believe at least when you get to talking about the single richest person compared to their nation of residence, the richest person for the past few decades has controlled a smaller percentage of the wealth than in the early to mid 1900s or late 1800s -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f... -- but beyond that I have no idea how the distribution has changed either worldwide within nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#US_income_Gini...
The Gini coefficient is the standard measure of income inequality.
Sure, wealth and income are not the same, but they must be pretty correlated. I have read that the Gini is higher for wealth that income, but I haven't seen data for American wealth Gini coefficients over time. If you have that data, then you could be constructive and provide it.
See both: Beating the Midas Curse and The Millionaire Next Door
It does not take away from your point to point out that one of the reasons they paid Hughes - instead of just banging up Glomar Explorer themselves - was to provide a cover story for the salvage.
Sea-bed mining was where it was at, according to 'My Weekly Reader' from then.
Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly.
Work, yes. I don't imagine too many honeymoon flights would be booked unless it was safer than that.
Younger Me would have signed up for working in orbit, given those odds. Probably not now - I'm married, have a mortgage, and kids.
Although the pay would be good and the death benefits would set my heirs up pretty well.
Governments don't have fiduciary responsibility to tax payers.
Fiduciary responsibility has liability, as do all meaningful types of responsibility. Govts are liable for certain types of errors and omissions but other than that....
I think you meant "lose".
Can, but don't. At best, a random staffer loses her job.
Moreover, you wouldn't say that McDonald's is "liable" for serving a hamburger that I don't like because I can refuse to buy their hamburgers and that's a greater consequence, so why would you say that govts are liable because they're subject to even less consequence?
Governments aren't liable. That's a problem. They're both socialized and systemic risk. That's a bigger problem. And, they're usually much larger than any "too big to fail" private company.
You can read about Project Azorian here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
This is a very slippery path for us to be taking, however. Do we really want feudal lords to be the only ones with the power to get big things done? I'm not so sure I'm okay with that. It behooves us all to build, and properly support, better government so that we don't slip back into a world where entitled lords govern us.
The longer term solution maybe showing tax payers scientific/statistical evidence that these sorts of 'stunts' really do yield an impressive ROI. It's a tough thing to do, but might be our way back to places like Mars.
Interesting, I thought Law of Finds stated that abandoned property belongs to the person who salvages it (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6896645.stm), or maybe the engines were not abandoned?
On the other hand, if you consider the law of "Finders Keepers, losers weepers" It is clearly Bezos to do what he wants.
In international waters it seems like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea does "little to impinge on the applicability of the law of finds and the law of salvage," though "commentators have suggested that the law of finds is implied because there is no alternative ownership principle delineated in the provision" [2].
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer
[1] http://www.rms-republic.com/reference/Volume67No1Article6.pd...
My ex-coworkers at the Museum of Flight (in Seattle, mentioned in this article) know the exact location of a WWII-era fighter aircraft that crashed in Lake Washington. They recovered and restored one aircraft from the crash site at least a decade ago, but the Navy will not let them touch the other one.
[0] http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/goodyear-fg-1d-corsai... [1] http://www.dcsfilms.com/Site_4/Corsair_lake_washington.html
Those things are huge, their launch was witnessed by many 10's of thousands, and their flight was tracked by the USSR and anyone else with the technical capability to do so. (Admittedly, the latter is probably only sporadic, but still an effective deterrent.) The second stages -- also huge, also tracked by the USSR and anyone else with the technical capability to do so. The third stages: the same. Even the command module+LEM: freaking conspicuous. And it's not as if you can send them up there, then fake the thing coming back -- you had to actually bring the freaking things back so the USSR and everyone else could track it then too.
So, after going to all that trouble, exactly how much money is going to be saved? How much risk is going to be saved? If you're faking a flight to the moon, and your fake command module misses its burn and flies off into the void, you're going to have to fake the deaths or kill off those astronauts anyways. If anything, one has greatly increased the risks by engaging in a such a huge and technically challenging conspiracy.
Kudos to Bezos for finding the engine!
You'd think with all our technical marvels now, we'd have something that can hold its own against the missions to the moon, but I'm honestly at a loss to suggest anything here.
Until you start looking at evidence you can publicly verify and start analyzing what it would cost to build what people and scientists actually observed, and the downside risks of the same. Really, what would be the worst-case downside for a Saturn 1B or Saturn V first stage? (Answer: a huge, spectacular explosion in front of thousands.) If you're trying to mitigate the costs and risk of failure with a hoax, why would you send up 9 of the former and 13 of the latter? Why would you do more than 1 manned mission?
It's much easier to preach to the choir.
Actually, I just plotted the flight distance records from Wikipedia, starting with the Wright Flyer record of .279km in 1903, to 18000km in 1946, to John Glenn's 3 orbits (~120,000km) in 1962 and Apollo 11 distance (~800,000km) in 1969. While the spacecraft points are clearly above the exponential extrapolation of the flight records between 1910 to 1946, they are much less dramatic than the improvement from 1903 to 1915, where flight distance increased by about 4 orders of magnitude. So while the distance flown obviously was without precedent, the rate of improvement was nothing like that of the first decade of flying.
Well, you could save on the catering - maybe.
And, as it turns out, you can't move historical landmarks. Apparently NASA was furious, but played it cool.
Or so a museum counselor told a band of 7th graders.
More on this particular rocket: http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/butowsky4/sp...
Maybe James can use his new toy to go down there and hook up the tow cables to bring the engines up!
Best quote.
He paid for the effort, so I see nothing wrong with the title. "Jeff Bezos' team" is certainly more accurate.
My theory is that the only (or the majority) people who have the time to post are those too stupid to have anything else better to do. And once the majority is stupid it becomes too toxic for anyone else to bother.
Good forums (like this one) require very careful curating.
I think Bezos is just pulling a publicity stunt here as he makes no mention at all of the artifacts and treasures on display to the public at the inspiring Kennedy Space Center.
How about we kill the F35 and F22 planes entirely and make a Mars mission instead?
We're going to be neck deep in drones in this country and around the world within a few years, expensive fighter jets are now worthless.
Don't underestimate the power of icons. These are the rockets that put us on the moon, and a private citizen is planning on recovering them for posterity, using his own money. Hopefully future generations will be inspired to explore because of this wealthy man's efforts (or 'playtime', as you put it). This should be celebrated.