Cheap Astronomy - Dear CA Ep. 125: Pragmatism

Oct 22, 2025

14:36

forum

Ask episode

view_agenda

Chapters

auto_awesome

Transcript

info_circle

Episode notes

Those tricky next steps.

Dear Cheap Astronomy – Could war get us into space?

There's been a long-running dialogue here at Cheap Astronomy about what economic drivers

might transform us into a proper spacefaring species with Moon bases, Mars bases and all that.

And well, its been hard to think what economic drivers really might work. Space is hard and it's

also darned expensive. Tourism could be a driver, after all there has been a bit of millionaire

tourism happening, mostly just flights above the atmosphere.

Dear Cheap Astronomy – What is new space?

You may have heard people talk about – old space and new space. Old space is like NASA

pouring billions into the slow plodding development of huge one-off projects like the Space

Launch System and the James Webb Space Telescope where they operate with extreme risk

aversion, absolutely determined that absolutely nothing must go wrong. New space is like

Space X, where they quickly launch prototypes and when those prototypes blow up they have

the data to explain why so the next ones don't have that flaw and if they blow up then they get

rid of those flaws as well, and so on.

We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.

Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can!

Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!

Every bit helps! Thank you!

------------------------------------

Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness!

http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.

Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!)

------------------------------------

The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu