It’s not clear what exactly the profile of these people is. The article says they’re paying their way but also that they’ll be doing experiments?
The mission is private, but it's sponsored by industry (notably Saab from what I've seen). The astronauts seem to be reasonably professional, and the mission goal oriented. It doesn't seem to be one of these stunts where rich people go to space and pretend to hold a test tube to give a dimension above "I had too much money so I burnt the GDP of a small country and its carbon emissions to spend a vacation in space".
> He was selected in November 2022 from over 22,500 applicants to join a new European astronaut group of 17 lucky recipients.
https://www.rymdstyrelsen.se/upptack-rymden/bloggen/2024/01/...
That page has lots of useful information about the project itself (although in Swedish, may DeepL et al help you), like:
> One of the two Swedish projects involves stem cell research and is led by Elena Kozlova, Professor of Regenerative Neurobiology at Uppsala University. Stem cells have previously been sent into space by sounding rockets and exposed to a few minutes of microgravity, showing that stem cells have a greater capacity to divide and develop into mature cells than they do under normal conditions on Earth. Now Marcus Wandt is taking stem cells into space for two weeks.
> In the project, Orbital Architecture, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology want to investigate how people's physical and mental health is affected by staying in confined spaces for long periods of time. The researchers will analyze Marcus Wandt's stress, cognitive performance, heart activity and movements and compare data collected from different parts of the space station to understand how the design of space environments affects the astronauts' thinking and stress levels.
[1] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...
This sort of thing has happened in the US, too. When NASA began flying payload specialists <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist> on the shuttle, that program included people who had been turned down by the NASA astronaut program, like Charles Walker and Byron Lichtenberg. They got to fly before many who had been selected in the same intakes they themselves had been rejected from! Walker flew three times (!) in fifteen months, and Lichtenberg flew twice. (Walker was selected for his first shuttle flight in May 1983 and the first attempt to launch was in June 1984, so he would have been the record holder had that happened; he went up in August.)
Idea being that this way Axiom has some revenue and is able to gain some operational experience.
Since the ticket is expensive and at least one seat is taken up by someone with spaceflight experience and AFAIK has high demand relative to the number of flights available, the people going up are doing at least something productive.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/all-european-crew-take...
Considering the crew, and who actually pays for the launch, I guess commercial or sub-contracted are bettwr terms to discribe the mission. Private space mission aoinda way to much like rich dudes space tourism. Military astronauts and a selected scientist using a non-government launch and space craft, commanded by a proper, and experienced, mission commander is a different sport all together.
As prices come down for access to space, there is obviously going to be a point between only being affordable by governments and being affordable by everyone, where only governments and particularly rich people can afford it.
I don't think everyone is as excited to have capitalism take over our priorities in space, after seeing what it has done to Terra.
edit:
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/05/The_increa...
Rounding up to 30000 objects in orbit (not even in space), that would mean 0.3 objects weren't made by capitalism. 1 object put up by government invalidates OP.
At the end of 2022, there was only 6,718 active satellites[1] in space - total.
The amount of government objects (from any country, of any kind, station, spy satellite, probe, rover, etc) is dwarfed by commercial interests. This just illustrates the sheer volume of commercial objects in space...
In fact, here's a list of all publicly acknowledged satellites launched by the USAF since 1984[2]. It shows 331 in total, counting inactive satellites.
[1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/syoung/how-many-satellites-are-in-sp...
So it’s kind of unreasonable to be adamant that only because of capitalism we have stuff in space.
The initial Iridium constellation is estimated at around $5 Billion in 1998 money (~$9 Billion today), and it nearly killed the company in the process. That was just initial constellation expenses - monthly subscriptions are still cost prohibitive for majority of the population/general use, and ongoing maintenance is very expensive.
The point is - it's not only cheaper to do land-based communications, but it's more reliable.
There doesn't seem to be any reality where a centrally planned economy would take this sort of project on just for funsies...
All that is needed is motivated labour that gets fed and housed. There is no magical law that you have to pay “market rates” so people can buy themselves gadgets.
Now to be clear I am not advocating for the Soviet Union or central planning, far from it. I am only saying that there is no inherent reason why you’d need capitalism to fill space up with stuff.
It is obviously a very powerful system but it is not the only possible system or necessarily the best. Again I very much like regulated and properly taxed market capitalist economies and want to keep living in one.
Which cements my point... commercialism is the only way these sorts of activities can exist.
Was ancient Egypt capitalist and the pyramids a commercial enterprise?
Again I am not advocating for anything except that we don’t turn economic systems into religious beliefs.
Sure, I agree entirely with this statement.
> Was ancient Egypt capitalist and the pyramids a commercial enterprise?
Slave Labor is difficult to beat, eh? This is a strange way to make a point about government spending vs. commercialism.
The overall point was the incentive for someone to make a profit is what motivates many if not all of the risky endeavors. If governments were solely in charge of launching rockets, then there would be no push by SpaceX to develop cheaper alternatives (and therefore win contracts, therefore make money).
The government being solely in charge of any particular industry has rarely if ever resulted in innovations and ultimately a better service/product. The incentives are just not aligned under those circumstances.
If we’re being brutally honest a lot of today’s economy depends on slave-like conditions for workers. Not necessarily in the “developed” world although people debate that, but definitely in poorer areas of the world.
> The overall point was the incentive for someone to make a profit is what motivates many if not all of the risky endeavors. If governments were solely in charge of launching rockets, then there would be no push by SpaceX to develop cheaper alternatives (and therefore win contracts, therefore make money).
I don’t entirely agree with that statement. Of course the profit motive is powerful and it does matter to people but that is largely because of the capitalist system itself. So if that is changed the profit motive ceases to be as strong.
The case could be made that many of the greatest companies were founded by people motivated by strong vision and the desire to make an impact, much rather than profit motive. However in order to be able to do anything under capitalism they needed to focus on things that could be made profitable.
And certainly taken too far the incentives of the system are not at all aligned with making ordinary people’s lives better, but rather that they keep buying or subscribing to your stuff. See social media motives and incentives for instance.
Pyramids weren't built by slaves.
2. If we do want to be pedantic, they said "in space" and sputnik is not in space anymore.
Totalitarian regimes in space haven't gotten us very far, and frankly sound very depressing for the future of humanity.
That would be the market economy, not capitalism. Since we have state capitalism as well as other varieties that aren't free markets.
I think the criticism upthread was aimed more generally at large undertakings for the sake of profit with barely anyone getting goods/services out of the deal, which does fit space tourism.
By filling this astronaut reserve pool, ESA seems to have created a market for Axiom Space, a move that might raise questions given the agency’s purpose is to promote the European space sector. In fact, the ESA’s founding Convention enshrines the principle of geo-return, which grants member states at least an 80 percent return on their contributions into ESA’s budget in the form of research and development contracts. Although the cost of the Axiom missions is paid through ESA, most of this money goes to the Texas-headquartered Axiom Space and its launch provider, SpaceX.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/axiom-and-spacex-are-d...
When I worked at Apple we "hired" the ISS. Astronauts were trained and scheduled and would work for us. The work was not anything science related. I'm not sure how common this is, though.
Feels pretty win/win. I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress
Maybe that's true of Blue Origin, but you're going to need a lot more evidence to back up that claim in regards to SpaceX.
The best estimate is that they make a >50% gross margin on Falcon 9 launches (at least for external customers). And while they spend a lot on Starlink launches, they're also making quite a lot of Starlink revenue at this point.
It's certainly true that they're dumping a lot of R&D money into Starship. But that strategy is how they earned their current medium/heavy lift launch market dominance, so I can't really fault them for that. And if Starship does work out, it could set them up for a functional monopoly on launch for decades. Not to mention dramatically decreasing their internal Starlink costs.
That's more just a out there goal to motivate people who are motivated by that. Still have had zero launches to Mars.
Plus, other companies are having a hard enough time competing already (even small launch is facing tough competition from the F9 rideshares), if SpaceX dropped their prices too low, it'd quickly run most of the launch market out of business, which is not in the interests of a company that wants to improve accessibility to space.
This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload.
OK. But the comment I responded to call it a passion/prestige project and contracted it with a normal profit driven business.
> This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload.
Yeah. SpaceX hasn't said anything, but I tend to believe that they'll move to a capabilities based pricing model where customers pay by the KG and/or m^3. That way they can compete for small payloads while getting paid appropriately for large ones.
If you want to just make money, there are far easier and less risky industries you can invest your money in than launch services and rockets. You can even just invest your wealth in an index fund and earn a return that is basically risk-free.
The trick is that we need to ban fraud aggressively and then reduce the profits from endeavors we want to discourage (not sure if there are good general mechanisms. I mean we use taxes for this sometimes. Imagine if one wanted to reduce the collection of user data if instead of gdpr you created a data tax!)
I'm also very interested to hear what projects you think might be good candidates to do this with!
For SpaceX it just so hilariously wrong. SpaceX did get seed money from Musk, about 90 million. The rest is venture funded just like every other successful company.
SpaceX is a very normal capitalist company. Musk has not invested more of his own money into it. SpaceX is making money and raising money to fund future projects.
One could maybe make an argument that Musk longer has ambitions to do passion projects, but he has never perused these without building the company in a capitalist way first. Because he knows that if the company isn't successful, non of the long term plans are possible.
> not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck
Every capitalist enterprise has owners, the owners decide what they should do. Often but not always this is 'making a buck'.
Please develop this further, what Italy has to win? other than the scientific breakthrough that is to spend tax payer money to "buy a seat"
> is helping us make really exciting progress
us? you meant the USA?
progress? like?
I don't recall Italy working on any similar projects, how will these seats help italians get a return of investment?
Sounds like an attempt at masking subsidies from the EU, at the expense of ESA
I wonder who's in the lobby
"SpaceX accuses Arianespace of unfair competition" - https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclu...
"Elon Musk's company complains about subsidies from France and Europe, and calls on Washington to act."
> I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress
Oh, the irony!
In the meantime:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
- https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...
- https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-roc...
2) click on the Italian flag
3) read about all the experiments, who funds them, why they will be run/what they hope to learn
4) go to 2 and change flag for the other countries
you will find both public and private experiments/initiatives in there
To be fair to those countries, it's typically ESA that barters with NASA, not the individual member countries. And it seems like astronauts are selected in rough proportion to national contribution (generally in line with the National Return policy).
Paying for a private seat may be a more efficient way for smaller countries to get people into space.
A fun thing is, He is from the secular demographic and his firsts words were to commemorate Ataturk and the islamists and seculars instantly switched place; Now the pro-government people say He is a space tourist and the secular opposition says he is a hero :)
This is an understatement. He was purged from the military and jailed by Islamists/Gülenists/Erdoğan using fabricated evidence and cultist judges, for "attempting a secularist coup".
I don't think it is "essentially" for propaganda. This would happen regardless, propaganda is just a side-benefit. Saying that he's "just a space tourist" would be like calling scientists that go to Antarctica for experiments "polar tourists". It is definitely overblown by the government media though.