Soy's Negative Effects (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects <comment><USER2> This is why I am always extremely skeptical of any kind of diet extremism. I cringe any time someone labels something a "superfood", as that means they are likely to encourage eating it far beyond the point where it is healthy. I also cringe any time a dietary recommendation to remove a major macronutrient (fat, carbs) from your diet; that tends to lead to extreme compensation with something else, which can also be unhealthy.

And this is also why I cringe about the hype over Soylent. We really don't know all that much about nutrition. We are constantly discovering new things about it; it's an incredibly complex topic, the way our body interacts with different things that we eat. Coming out with a product that you're encouraging people to replace their entire diet with, and saying that it's safe because you have personally tested it for a couple of months, is insane. A lot of these kinds of effects can only be seen after years, or only impact 10% of the population, or the like.

        "In today's supermarkets," he says, his voice weary,
        "you can't hardly get anything without at least some soy
        in it."

It's funny that he says this. I eat very little soy, unless I've chosen to in the form of tofu or soy sauce. How do I manage this? By only buying things that don't need ingredient lists because they are a single ingredient. If you buy fresh produce, meat, flour, eggs, etc. and actually cook yourself, you can easily control what's in your diet. Don't buy prepackaged instant meals that you'll need to inspect the ingredient list of, and you'll be fine.

Anyhow, I'm sure that after articles like this, people will start doing the extreme reaction again, of "soy free" everything, replacing with something else that has some other potential health problem. Soy, in moderation, causes no problems for the vast majority of people. This guy is a special case, due to both his sensitivity and the extreme amount he consumed, replacing much of his protein intake with soy.

<comment><USER3> > This is why I am always extremely skeptical of any kind of diet extremism.

That's my approach as well. Single ingredient things are hard though. Take meat or eggs. It is one ingredient but depending what that animal ate or drugs they've been injected, it is also hard to know what you are getting. At some point I just give up and stop worrying about it. Some people get way too obsessed about it, someone I know "owns" a fraction of a cow get accessed to unpasteurized milk, that is fine by me but not the level I would go to.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, even those can vary, but if you generally try to err on the side of local, organic, humanely raised, non GMO foods, you can be reasonably confident in the food you eat. Obviously you're never going to hit those all at once, and avoiding extremism in those areas can be good too; for example, sometimes people using organic pesticides can do more damage as they have to use much more pesticides than those using IPM with synthetic pesticides.

My approach is generally to err on the side of what's good, healthy, sustainable, and tasty rather than than what's cheap and convenient, but not to be an extremist about anything. I eat a mostly, but not entirely vegetarian diet; I get most of my produce locally when it's in season, but more shelf- friendly foods like flour I don't worry about getting locally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is 4 years old and has been debunked over and over again.

This has a links to a number of studies on the subject

[http://www.livestrong.com/article/548574-soy-protein-male- br...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/548574-soy-protein-male-breasts/)

<comment><USER5> That link has a reference (not a link) to one article that (apparently) provides contrary evidence. The only link provided debunks none of it.

<comment><USER4> You should probably scroll all the way to the bottom

<comment><USER5> Humor me. Reproduce the links here.

Do note that my agenda is a lot more about live strong being a poor resource than it is about soy.

<comment><USER6> There, copied one for you, so you don't have to waste 2 seconds giving a pageview to that pesky website: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18558591/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18558591/)

<comment><USER5> That's the only link there!

And like I said, it doesn't debunk anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This report talks about new introductions to the American diet. However, though soy may be relatively new to the US, my understanding is that Soy and soy-based products like Tofu have been popular in countries like China and Japan for many centuries.

Has any research been done to establish whether soy has been harmful in countries where they've been eating it for generations ?

I'd also be curious to know whether the alleged "harmful" effect observed in soy-based products (like soymilk etc.) has also been observed in plain soybeans.

</comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory Examine.com link:

[http://examine.com/faq/is-soy-good-or-bad-for- me.html](http://examine.com/faq/is-soy-good-or-bad-for-me.html)

<comment><USER9> exactly (T)his. i (k)new you would beat me to posting. even control + f'd (Two) see if y(o)u beat me to postin(G)

I'm allergic to milk and have been taking soy protein, soy milk, etc. for years with no problems. My evidence is anecdotal but silverhydra's is not.

If anyone thinks there is a problem with soy, go read examine.

<comment><USER10> Why even drink soy "milk" why not water or some other liquid, or other animal milk you may not be allergic to?

It seems to me people are compelled to have a milk substitute whether due to allergy or ethical reasons as if we need to have something called milk in our fridges.

It reminds me of the tofurky a soy shaped turkey supposedly tastes like turkey, it would be like a person who eats a lot of meat making a carrot out of meat colouring it orange and making it taste like a carrot, why even bother.

<comment><USER8> For any dietary scheme built on avoiding certain foods (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, keto, paelo etc), there is a thriving cottage industry of substitutes.

Some folk have an ethical objection to milk but want something that vaguely resembles it. For such people, whitened liquid cardboard -- soy juice -- is a popular alternative. Other people drink almond juice or rice juice.

Edit: and some people have allergies or intolerance to things in milk. I'm lactose intolerant, so I'm covered by lactose-free milk. But some people are genuinely intolerant of milk proteins etc.

<comment><USER2>
      whitened liquid cardboard

I object to that characterization. I rather like the taste of plain, unsweetened soymilk. It fills a very different niche than milk, however; milk is thicker and heavier (unless it's skim crap), and I'll have it with dessert, while soymilk is lighter and more refreshing. But I don't drink either on a regular basis.

<comment><USER8> I think it varies from person to person; I know people who love it.

I found it tasted, quite sincerely, like cardboard. I was reminded of the Adams line about "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a pile of first world problems. I suspect a lot fewer guys will quit sugar and lose weight instead of quitting soy after reading this. And diabetes makes soy estrogen mimicking hormones look like kids' play when it comes to erectile dysfunction.

A guy in his 50s or 60s (well past when the boys are pumping out huge amounts of testosterone) drinking _3 quarts_ of soy milk per day is not exactly typical.

<comment><USER4> And don't forget, it was only one guy...

<comment><USER11> The NEJM it ain't. Thanks for the links to the debunking articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I saw Soylent mentioned on the first page, and then this para from the NYT's Well page stood out even more starkly:

>> "Last year, in its nutrition guidelines for cancer survivors, the American Cancer Society noted that eating traditional soy foods — like tofu, miso, tempeh and soy milk — may help lower the risk of breast, prostate and other cancers. _But the guidelines do not recommend soy supplements, which tend to be highly processed and not very rigorously tested._ "

[http://www.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2013/09/27/ask-well-is- it-...](http://www.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2013/09/27/ask-well-is-it-safe-to- eat-soy/)

Here's another piece about Soy's side effects from the Scientific American: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soybean- fer...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soybean-fertility- hormone-isoflavones-genistein)

<comment><USER13> Soy is not used in Soylent. He named it after Make Room! Make Room![1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_\(food_substitute\))

<comment><USER12> You're right, and my bad at that wrong association.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a friend who's son is being raised primarily by his ex-wife. They have a good relationship even divorced, especially where the son is concerned. Recently the boy stayed with his father for a week, during which he took him to the gym to get in shape. He's a little fat and his father wanted to help him work on his self-image. At the gym, the boy would not remove his shirt, and when he finally acquiesced and did his father found out it was because his son had considerable man-tits. Enough that they actually are looking like women's breasts.

The boy's mother had been feeding him soy milk and other soy products as a primary staple of their diet. She eventually caught on what was happening but only after it was too late. He's sworn off of soy. It's going to take considerable effort to undo what has happened to him, his doctor has even discussed the possibility of testosterone treatments to counteract the damage.

<comment><USER3> It is interesting that usually kids don't get a good diet because parents don't care enough about nutrition, just eat whatever is cheaper or faster. In this case it is the opposite, a soy diet is usually associated with being very conscious of what the child eats. Soy is usually associated with "healthy" eating. But it ended up having an opposite effects.

"Healthy" eating is a huge market. There is of course Whole Foods, whole isles devoted to it in regular stores. It is a good of course. But there is a lot of irrationality and guesswork going on. What is interesting is that it is often people who are considered "intelligent" that end up believing various fads and strange ideas about health and nutrition. Like say I know a smart guy, a good programmer, believed in Acai thing and was drinking that. Someone else is into colon cleansing. Another one is eating super-doses of vitamins. These are supposedly educated people, good logic, math and programming skills yet they believe these strange ideas. And because of their intelligence they are harder to convince, as they are a lot better at rationalizing things away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This might be completely hypothetical, but might there be a genetic component?

I'm convinced (based on my heavy soy intake as an Asian male with no ill effects) that some people are less prone to what the guy in the article experienced.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but not the genetics of humans. My guess would be that the genetics of the soybean plants would be a more likely culprit for any strange hormonal reactions in men:

 _HT soybeans went from 17 percent of U.S. soybean acreage in 1997 to 68 percent in 2001 and 93 percent in 2013_

source: [http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of- geneticall...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically- engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx)

The reality is that soybeans aren't genetically modified for nutritional reasons; they are modified for economic reasons, and GE foods haven't been around long enough for us to really know what kind of side-effects come from optimizing for the herbicide-tolerant "economics" side of GE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article treats soy like a poison. What makes a poison is the dose, and the stories cited are talking about enormous doses of soy. Too much water will give you dilutional hyponatremia, does that mean you need to cut it out of your diet? Here's a accessible article: [http://blog.zocdoc.com/does-soy- feminize-men-fact-vs-myth/](http://blog.zocdoc.com/does-soy-feminize-men-fact- vs-myth/). And here's a study: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106). Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think almond milk tastes better anyways.

</comment><comment><USER18> As much as people talk about how this is debunked, there was a period of about 6 months (early 30s) where i was drinking tons of Silk and i could swear it made me soft breasty, and i swear everything hardened up again when i quit.

</comment><comment><USER19> Soy contains phytoestrogens. Rats fed soy products had significantly reduced testosterone levels.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens)

</comment><comment><USER20> Red-blooded American Males: 1 Unwashed Hippies: 0

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for the info! I'm glad I never introduced my son to soy products..

<comment><USER22> Is this going to be your only source of information on the subject?

<comment><USER4> The old adage "If it's on the internet it's true" is still alive and well... unfortunately

<comment><USER23> Soy milk is absolutely not a requirement of any diet. In the scheme of human diet, it is a relatively new invention, so it absolutely cannot be a necessary staple of human diet.

Can the body process it? Sure. But your body can digest almost everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My parents have been telling me this for years. I'm glad I listened.</comment>


US bugged Merkel's phone from 2002 until 2013, report claims - Suraj-Sun http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24690055 <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: Brazilian here

Most comments I've seen about this issue seem very American, going along the lines of "stop the hypocrisy, everybody does it". It is useless to argue against such view, cynicism is usually unpermeable to arguments.

However, regardless if "everybody does it" or not this story will have implications. It is a very strong argument for a new kind of walled garden: the nationally restricted Internet. We should expect a strong growth of the China-style Internet.

This surveillance is now seen in Latin America as a threat from the classic "American Imperialism". In the name of "protection" from real or imaginary dangers politicians, bureaucrats and autocrats will enforce Internet monitoring within a lot of countries. Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, expect a lot of trouble.

<comment><USER2> I fear Tyrannical Governments will create an "American Internet," a "Chinese Internet," a "European Internet," and a "Rest-of-the-world Internet."

It will happen quietly, and no one outside the tech community will know until it's too late.

<comment><USER3> If that's the worst case scenario we're doing pretty OK. The nationalist networks will presumably be like the PSTN in the 90s: ubiquitous, reliable, safe but perceived as safer than it is, overpriced, limited, behind. All the interesting stuff will happen over tunnels to the Internet Internet.

<comment><USER2> Well, it depends how they do it, right? If they just block DNS, yeah, people who care can simply tunnel out. It still hurts, as the average non-caring citizen's knowledge is stunted. But not as badly.

If they block IPs, and closely monitor outgoing tunnels? Then it's a lot harder to get out.

I suspect you're right, they'll probably just block DNS and the worst IPs. It's easier, and DNS gets the 99%. Even The Great Firewall only blocks the 'worst' IPs (like Twitter).

<comment><USER4> The Great Firewall does a lot more than that. It blocks _new_ IPs by default (some are later re-enabled after being 'assessed' in some way).

It does some kind of automated crawling and blocking.

It has manual (as in human) blockers, who read content on Weibo and remove it.

It's still horribly crude, and fairly straight forward to route around but it's more complex than a simple static dns blacklist.

<comment><USER2> Right. It also does DNS poisoning, URL word analysing, deep packet inspection, and VPN identification & blocking. I meant it only directly blocks the worst IPs, as opposed to directly blocking all external IPs.

I do wonder whether a US Firewall will be worse or better than China's. On one hand, the US is presumably less autocratic. On the other, we have 10x the defense resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mrs Merkel - an Americophile who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of > Freedom in 2011 - is said to be shocked that Washington may have engaged in > the sort of spying she had to endure growing up in Communist East Germany.

though she expressed no such outrage when it was revealed that the NSA was conducting similar surveillance on German citizens.

<comment><USER6> Or when the Chinese were caught doing the same thing.

<comment><USER7> I don't know what you are referring to. But for a americanophile who sees the USA as the leader of the free world and protector of human rights that a way more shocking than if a known police state does it. Et tu, Brute?

<comment><USER8> People see America as a protector of human rights? Really? Do these people read anything?

<comment> grey-area _People see America as a protector of human rights? Really?_

Many Americans and the American media certainly do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area It started in 2002, Merkel was elected as Chancellor in 2005, that implies they are watching for up and coming politicians (she was CDU leader in 2002). I did find it interesting that the NSA admitted also collecting information from Washington DC in 2008 (an election year), the assurances that this was an accident are sounding more and more hollow, and the implications are frightening for a functioning democracy.

This, along with the Airbus, Petrobras and Belgacom revelations, makes it clear that surveillance is not targeting terrorists or part of the war on terror - it is engaged in for economic and political advantage, even against allies. That's quite a serious breach of trust.

 _" President Barack Obama promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged phone monitoring"_

I can't decide which is more damning, that he know about it, and didn't stop it, or that he knew nothing about it, and the NSA takes it upon themselves to monitor the communications of allied politicians and interfere in other nations. Either way his reputation and his promises are meaningless now.

Along with being used by the US, raw intercept information is also shared with other allies of the US like Isreal and the UK, potentially damaging its European allies by giving out secret information to third parties, and I find it hard to believe given the lack of security the Snowden and Manning leaks highlighted, that Russia and China also don't have access to much of this intel through the many private contractors with security clearance.

While it is somewhat hypocritical of Merkel to be outraged by this and not by the widespread surveillance of her citizens, I'm pleased that this story has at last triggered such a virulent reaction in European politicians. The best thing she could do now in response is to offer Snowden asylum in Germany, and allow him to speak openly about the US security state - I do believe that would be in the interests of all the citizens of the world, if not of their leaders.

The blowback from this affair is just starting to pick up pace - it's already taken US relations with South America to a new low, and is about to do the same in Europe. Hopefully it will lead to meaningful change.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not just USA had access to the info - remember that it came out that the USA was giving raw feeds to Israel's intelligence service also.... [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa- americans-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans- personal-data-israel-documents)

</comment><comment><USER10> As an American, I'm deeply embarrassed by this. Outrage will not stop the spying program, however. Action will: [https://stopwatching.us](https://stopwatching.us)

</comment><comment><USER11> > President Barack Obama promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged > phone monitoring, the magazine reports. He apologised to the German > chancellor, it said.

Plausible deniability?!?

Wonder what else he "didn't know" and how he is justified in making sweepings statements if he is not sufficiently informed. It can't be "Don't worry, trust me" and "Oops, I didn't know" simultaneously.

<comment><USER12> That is not a bad response from his position. From say a game theoretic point of view.

Imagine is he is not the president but say a mafia boss, maybe a powerful drug lord. And it turns out one of the drug mules for a competing drug gangs gets murdered by Obama's men. Now, war is about to start. And all the drug lords have a meeting. Obama can claim he didn't personally order the murder and he didn't know it was about to happen. He has men working for him who receive general instruction like "keep the product flowing no matter what cost" with specifically no concrete instruction (especially in written form). Now that protects him. If worse comes to worse, he can simply replace a scapegoat low level employee and keep the organization going forward. The same modus operandi is probably at play with regard to a lot of this stuff from the White House.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, the POTUS is at least supposed to look powerful in the eyes of the citizens. By recognizing that he doesn't know (and can't know) what's going on, he is announcing to the world that he is a puppet and that the POTUS is nothing but a servant to higher interests.

Bad move by the puppet masters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, this time, at least grammatically speaking, Obama didn't lie when he said they _were not spying_ on her.

I think we're making real progress here.

On the bright side, it's a good thing she's "on the list" as well, as this seems to be the only way to get her attention regarding the mass surveillance issue.

<comment><USER15> Hypocrites indeed.

Hopefully humanity will come up with a way to replace these parasites called politicians.

I believe not even too many years later we will remember this era of humanity as the darkest of the dark ages.

<comment><USER16> I made this account entirely to remind you of the goddamn holocaust. Try not to lose all perspective, eh?

<comment><USER17> Which holocaust? The one 50 years ago or the one currently happening? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxv4Aff3IA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxv4Aff3IA)

<comment><USER18> I saw this video only the other day - can't actually believe this is happening - still a bit shocked by it :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having accurately assessed the likely effects of the programme's exposure, it seems very dumb to proceed with it. What could the NSA learn that would outweigh having Germany decide that America wasn't actually a friendly, trustworthy country, as it has presumably now done? Don't ignore either that by recognizing the programme as a betrayal while proceeding with it, the NSA admits to being utterly amoral in a way that can't be walked back from. The only saving grace is that the programme started in 2003; you could almost plead collective insanity given what American foreign policy looked like at that time.

</comment><comment><USER20> She's "angry", but not angry enough to grant Snowden asylum.

<comment><USER6> Think the Russians hope no one notices how quiet they are right now about all this?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Soviet_and_Russian_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Soviet_and_Russian_espionage_in_the_United_States#Post- Soviet_period)

According to former GRU Colonel Stanislav Lunev, "SVR and GRU (Russia's external and military intelligence agencies, respectively) are operating against the U.S. in a much more active manner than they were during even the hottest days of the Cold War"

<comment><USER21> Russia doesnt boast about being the "Greatest democracy and the Leader of the free world".

<comment><USER22> Yup. Russia is extremely candid about its realpolitik approach to geopolitics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Merkel got the 'freedom' medal from Obama.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2011/06/07/remark...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2011/06/07/remarks-president-obama-and-chancellor-merkel-exchange- toasts)

<comment><USER24> ... your point?

<comment><USER7> She got a medal for fighting a surveillance state (historically quite questionable, btw) by a Obama. And now she has to learn that Obama is no better.

<comment><USER25> Thanks to you I've read what Obama then said (it's linked above): "Told by the communists that she couldn't pursue her love of languages, she excelled as a physicist. _Asked to spy for the secret police, she refused._ "

Perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If the shoe were on the other foot, there'd be bloody hell to pay.

<comment><USER27> I'm quite sure there are many governments spying (or trying to apy) on Obama's cell phone, including European governments. To expect otherwise is naive and that's why his personal electronic devices are highly secured.

<comment><USER26> I'm not naive, but you did misspell "spy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm shocked - shocked - to find that gambling is going on in here!

<comment><USER29> There was an article that made this same comparison recently, and discussed why it doesn't matter: [http://crookedtimber.org/2013/10/23/the-politics-of- hypocris...](http://crookedtimber.org/2013/10/23/the-politics-of-hypocrisy/)

> What is interesting is not whether France (or Mexico, or Brazil, or Germany) > is being hypocritical in pretending to be shocked at what the US is doing. > It's whether their response (hypocritical as it may be) has real political > consequences. And it surely does

<comment><USER30> The UKUSA intelligence aparatus has been long used as a justification to increase powers of spy agencies in other countries. For allies it's the perceived political returns when they deliver more intelligence and get in exchange get on the good side of USA's foreign policy, and for others it's the perceived need to keep up in the arms race.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sometimes I wish the gov't would just come out and say what everyone is thinking:

Yep we are spying on you, (insert name of foreign leader), just like you are trying to spy on our leaders.

There are good arguments to be made against mass surveillance of the internet at large, but expecting that countries will stop spying on each other anytime soon is plain stupid.

</comment><comment><USER2> As an American, I wish news agencies would stop conflating the US with the CIA. It suggests US citizens generally approve of their actions.

The "US" did not bug Merkel's phone. An agency under the Executive branch, which is above the Rule of Law, which is drunk with power and paranoia, who considers American citizens the enemy as much as foreigners, bugged Merkel's phone.

It would be like saying "Syria uses chemical weapons." The Syrian people had little to do with it, and the American people have little to do with this.

<comment><USER32> Well...

we voted in all the Representatives, Senators and Presidents who, in turn, voted to implement the programs though. We do have some culpability.

<comment><USER2> The US is a two-party system. First Past The Post voting ensures a vote for a third party is wasted. No significant percentage of people will ever vote for a third party (excluding transition periods between party systems).

The current ruling party is widely recognized as less warmongering and less surveillance-state than the other party.

Americans aren't completely inculpable. Our societal inability to work together (see: Prisoner's Dilemma), combined with our unwillingness to risk contentment, contributes.

But I fail to see how American citizens have any real say in the government. We present a "democracy," but the two-party system is a thinly veiled autocracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The pace at which the USA destroys the remainders of its credibility is astonishing.

</comment><comment><USER34> It seems naive not to believe that other countries' intelligence services do the same, or would do so if they had the technology.

This doesn't make it right.

The reason I feel that we're justified in using the "but-everybody-else-does- it" argument to dismiss it from our concern at the moment, is that it attempts to redirect the public outrage from a major problem (NSA spying on basically everyone) to a much more minor problem (NSA spying on head of a foreign state).

Imagine the (hypothetical) case where a particular state's police force is taking fire due to the police breaking up a properly permitted, legal, peaceful rally using excessive force.

It later comes out that the police officers of the department in question regularly disobey the speed limit and sometimes run stop signs.

To be sure, police officers speeding is not something they should be doing; it's wrong and unethical to do that.

But police officers speeding is a much less serious problem than police officers depriving the people of their right to peacefully assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances.

And if the media and the audience's focus immediately goes from the more important story (unlawfully breaking up peaceful rallies and excessive use of force) to the less important story (police officers sometimes exceed the speed limit when they're not supposed to), it's bad because it means the serious problem is no longer getting the attention it deserves.

<comment><USER35> I'm going to go against the grain here and say that it's not just that "everyone does it", it's more about the fact that everyone _will_ do it, regardless of the circumstances.

Consider for a moment what would happen if the U.S. stopped all its foreign & domestic spying. What would happen? Do you think China will stop their spy programs? How about Russia? The UK? The rest of Europe?

No. The U.S. would be at a severe disadvantage when it comes to intelligence. It's like an arms race, except instead of weapons, it's knowledge. Just because one player quits or gets caught, doesn't mean everyone else will stop. In fact, it would be to their advantage if a few players left the table.

That's why I find this whole spying thing nonsense. It's one thing to spy on regular citizens, but it's another to spy on targets (like Angela Merkel) who are political actors and/or heads of state. It should be _expected_.</comment></comment>


Report and Track API Issues in Mashape - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mashape.com/report-and-track-api-issues-in-mashape

<comment><USER2> Community generated issues for APIs is a great idea once it gets mass adoption.</comment>


Shatranj, the predecessor of modern chess - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj <comment><USER2> If you read onward, to according to chess historians Gerhard Josten and Isaak Linder, "the early beginnings" of chess can be traced [still further] back to the Kushan Empire in Ancient Afghanistan, circa 50 BCE–200 CE. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushan_Empire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushan_Empire)

The Kushan were a possibly Iranian or Tocharian, Indo-European nomadic people who had migrated from the Tarim Basin and settled in ancient Bactria. These are the same people as the famous tartan-wearing Tarim Mummies. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies) (text) and [https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=tarim%20mummi...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=tarim%20mummies%20tartan&tbs=imgo:1) (images)

Note the grid layout of the tartan. I wonder if there are any art history papers on hypothesized sacred geometries of early, pre-Islamic Central Asia? (We know that, for example, by 2600 BC, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, major cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (present-day Pakistan), were built with blocks divided by a grid of straight streets.)

(Edit in response to below: Read onward, ie. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Origin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Origin) ... nobody is disputing chaturanga, the above refers to the pre-chaturanga origins of chess-like games.)

<comment><USER3> Chess is widely believed and acknowledged by many to have orignated in India ("Chaturanga").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See The Chess Variants Pages ([http://www.chessvariants.org](http://www.chessvariants.org)) for other historic chess variants, such as chaturanga (the original), Tamerlane chess (like shatranj with extra pieces and a larger board), and Byzantine chess (played on a cicular board!).

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting ... since I'm part Welsh, I was interested in the history of that country and found that a similar game called Gwyddbwyll was adopted from the Viking game of Hnefatafl (Tafl can be used to describe a whole series of "table games"). It's interesting to note that the second link below describes these games as being overtaken by Chess (which the vikings called Skak-Tafl).

[1] [http://celtnet.org.uk/miscellaneous/gwyddbwyll.html](http://celtnet.org.uk/miscellaneous/gwyddbwyll.html)

[2] [http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Hnef.html](http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Hnef.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> modern chess is still called shatranj in arabic & farsi

<comment><USER2> At the risk of stating the obvious, the Persian etymology is far older (ie. Arabic [word] derives from Persian [word]) since Islam and Arabic [as a coherent linguistic and cultural force] didn't exist until many hundreds of years later.

Can any competent Persian readers consult Persian language sources to determine an Iranian take on the etymology of the word? Wiktionary at [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shatranj](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shatranj) states the following etymology for the modern English loan word: "From Arabic شطرنج (šaṭranj), from Persian شترنگ (šatrang), from Middle Persian ctlng (čatrang), from Sanskrit चतुरङ्ग (čaturaṅga)."

(Edit: 1. _Arabic does not derive from Farsi_ .. (Obviously) I was referring to the Arabic word in this case being a loan-word from Persian. 2. _Arabic was written before farsi was_ An interesting tangent... it seems you are correct if limited examples of pre-standardized Arab-region languages written in pre- Arabic scripts are considered, which were allegedly circa 0CE written in Aramaic ... but _{{citation-needed}}_ on relevance to anything at all, really.) ... TLDR; Arabic as a cultural or linguistic force appears to begin with Islam, ie. far later, whereas Persian had weight far earlier, ie. in the period under discussion.)

<comment><USER6> As to this specific word, I do not know where it originated. However, Arabic does not derive from Farsi and Islam did not introduce Arabic. Arabic was written before farsi was(~800 BC vs ~600 BC), but the languages are much older.

Also, Farsi and Arabic have different roots. Farsi did not start using the Arabic alphabet until ~700 AD. Modern Farsi does have a lot of Arabic words used because of Islam.

<comment><USER7> Quick note, Persian is the proper and historical name of "Farsi" in English. Farsi is the local name (and what most Persian speaking people call their language in their own language), much like "French" vs "Français" in English. To be pedantic, it is improper to say "I speak Français", rather one should say "I speak French".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to find the ideal way to start a space business without immediately needing substantial financial resources.<p>Create a space industry giant from scratch with little external funding. <comment><USER3> I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade.

Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general.

Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity.

(SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.)

So if you really want a career in space, go join an existing company or agency.

However, there's a lot of smaller aviation-related projects that are equally challenging, but more affordable.

Examples of recent remarkable aviation advances are:

\- Robinson Helicopter (world's largest-volume mfg)

\- Williams small jet engines (started in cruise missiles, now certified for civil use)

\- uAvionix ADS-B tailBeacon (first affordable ADS-B transponder)

\- Scaled Composites' projects. The whole reason Rutan used composites was to make wings 10x faster. You can do that too.

There's room for anybody (who wants to spend their savings) on:

\- composite mfg. techniques

\- applying the latest in electronics (without competing with Garmin)

\- willing to navigate the FAA TSO process

\- installing ADS-B. It's literally a gold rush until 2021.

\- be like Mike Busch, the world's top aviation entrepreneurial mind:

[https://www.savvyaviation.com/](https://www.savvyaviation.com/)

<comment><USER4> > SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand...

The launch business is tiny compared to what's possible when you can do large volume industrial research and manufacturing in microgravity.

I take the approach that space right now is like the computer industry in the early 1970s. We're about to have our microprocessor moment with fully reusable rockets.

This means ridiculously cheap access to space which could yield entirely new industries in biotech, semiconductors and other areas of research we haven't even imagined.

We're only done the tiniest amount of research so far and have found put that you can grow much larger and purer crystals, antibiotics work in unpredicted ways and a hundred other examples of interesting areas of research.

If launch costs are commodity, then do something with all that capacity. Cisco may have struggled when computer server prices fell, but that made companies like Google and Facebook possible. We're now living in a world that benefits tremendously from one thing becoming a commodity.

<comment><USER5> The thing is even if SpaceX gets actually cost down to ridiculously low prices it's still going to be extremely expensive and very very hard. We have practically speaking no experience manufacturing in space, the only thing that's been made have been small test quantities of ZBLAN fiber and until we get asteroid mining and refining setup the extra cost of lifting all the raw materials is going to make manufacturing in space only viable for a few small things with high margins of return.

<comment><USER6> At least for semiconductors you won't have to haul up all that high vacuum equipment :)

<comment><USER5> You'd still need it LEO at 500km varies between 10-700 nPa and UHV is a max of 100 nPa. It's too variable an environment to really develop chips in due to space weather and the variability in the extreme thin reaches of the atmosphere in Earth orbit.

<comment><AUTHOR> What could we be able to manufacture in space in the next 15/20 years in your opinion?

<comment><USER5> The only think I really know of is ZBLAN fiber because that has a definite benefit to space manufacture and a large profit margin to justify the lift costs of the base material. I think until we get space refining figured out it's going to be hard to manufacture anything because of the high lift costs. Modern manufacturing also depends on a large amount of equipment and chemicals that will have to be redesigned for zero-G [0] and whole supply chains of chemicals either lifted dry and recreated or created from scratch in space.

I think the first things we'll really make in space will be super structures and pressure vessels because those are the simplest things to make and the materials don't require a massive supply chain. We could even gain a lot just by lifting up generic stock from Earth (metal powders, sheet stock that could be formed into tubes, or just a lot of generic tube stock [1]) and learning how to assemble them via machine in space. It would let us build larger stations or telescopes than we could launch from the ground.

For example if we build a super structure in space we could launch a lot of large inflatable modules to fill it in with that would be mechanically simpler and lighter because they don't have to bear and transmit the thrust force just support their own mass under thrust.

[0] Which increases the amount of benefit needed to justify redesigning an entire chip fab for example to function in zero-G.

[1] Though lifting tubes has the problem that there's a lot of wasted space in a stack of tubes which is one of the problems we're trying to avoid by building vehicles in space to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA- level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon.

Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. Be one of those companies. If it's something modest but really useful, you don't have to be a big company at first.

Or, recognize that everybody's building lightweight, expensive, super reliable satellites because launch is expensive. Figure out how to build the cheapest possible satellites instead. Your financial constraints will give you a different mindset than people with serious resources.

<comment><USER8> Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.

<comment><USER7> Radiation on Mars is about the same as background radiation in Ramsar, Iran. Residents there have normal lifespans and cancer rates.

[https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space- is-f...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-full-of- radiation-and-why-im-not-worried/)

<comment><USER8> This is great article, thanks for sharing! It seems we figured out for most of the things how to manage radiation living on Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Look for some NASA/US Gov RFPs and open contracts for some low level manufacturing/sub-contractor work on their space missions(or sub contract work from prime contractors). Get the necessary certifications. When you do win bids, hire the right people, then provide the services, and money starts coming in. I'm sure there is a banker or financial institution out there that'll hand out funding to someone that actually holds a contract to NASA or a big defense contractor.

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of companies that set up shop right next to Boeing, and simply provide services to them. Probably all the other big aerospace companies, too. That sounds like a great way to get your foot in the door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who works for a space company that was effectively bootstrapped, there are 2 ways I've seen to do it.

1\. Government Contracts - this is what my company did. Ground demonstrations to parabola tests to ISS payloads. It's a long hard road and has a lot of NASA bureaucracy, but we just won our first 100MM$ contract and only did one raise 7 years after the company was founded.

2\. Build something a big Aerospace company needs - there's a lot of this these days. Company's like Gomspace are building tools for cubesats with minimal startup costs. This is the more independent route, but comes with the challenges of convincing a risk averse industry to use something that hasn't been tested in the correct environment.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've kicked this about in my head also, because what geek wouldn't love to do it? I've come to the conclusion though that unless one is already a business and engineering genius with the luck of the gods, it's a ridiculous dream. With that said, a chap called (Sir) Martin Sweeting started Surrey Satellites in the 80s which went on to revolutionise the satellite industry and was sold partially to SpaceX, and then fully to ESA, so it is possible, but he was already a PhD-level scientist/engineer working in the field. Anyway here's a few ideas:

1\. You could look at novel launch methods, i.e. centrifugal, rockoon, light- gas space-gun. On the latter Gerald Bull did reach space but needed a truly enormous gun

2\. ...but imagine the know-how and resources required to develop a whole system like above that can get something to orbit. And quite apart from building the thing, how are you going to test it without become a lawyer to get the necessary approvals? So perhaps concentrate on one aspect of an example above that is transferrable to other industries. But even then to investigate materials that perform well at high temperatures, for example, it would help to already be a world-leading materials scientist, wouldn't it?

3\. Fabrics. Looking at the latest NASA space suit I refuse to believe there isn't scope for improvement, and apart from that I suspect there'll be all kinds of novel fabric requirements. Again you might well find what you develop can be sold for earth-bound use

4\. IP. Could you take an ARM-like approach and be merely an IP licenser? You could for example design modular launch systems and let others build them

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd sat that you need to start small if you don't want to take on a bunch of investment money. A lot of magazine articles make it sound like anyone with $25k can get a cubesat launched, but it is clearly not that simple.

Martin Platt and the AmbaSat project have given me some insight on how much work it takes just to design and get approval for really simple satellites. They post regular updates to their Kickstarter page. I think you can see the updates even if you aren't a backer: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an- ed...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-educational- space-satellite-kit/posts).

Perhaps you should get in touch with some space industry insiders that know the regulatory environment and know what rules can be broken and what can't. Then also get in touch with people that have worked on space equipment before, because space is a complicated domain.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Use Deep RL to predict stable 3D protein structures that would not normally occur in Nature

2\. Simulate gravitational dynamics to winnow down candidate crystals that cannot be synthesized in terrestrial conditions because they would collapse under their own weight

3\. Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation

4\. Design a prototype microgravity factory that operates at scale and exploits rapidly falling launch costs

5\. Convince Big Pharma to invest using the rationale that space is the next big profit driver

Best of Luck ;)

<comment><USER15> Each one of those steps is a billion dollar company.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like a 5 billion dollar company in the making then! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some feedback for HN: repeating the story of PayPal/Amazon and saying "you just need lots of money" isn't an answer here. That's exactly what the author put in the question, they know.

Explaining _why_ the question is flawed may be a good answer, but otherwise think about the question and if you don't have a good answer, don't answer.

</comment><comment><USER18> Millionaires play golf. Billionaires play space.

Step 1. Make billions in something (not space) Step 2. Turn billions into millions with space

<comment><USER19> Isn't spacex profitable? Starlink sounds like how someone would go about becoming a multi billionaire.

<comment><USER20> It may be profitable _now_ , but don't forget that SpaceX has been going for 17 years, has raised well over a billion in VC funding to date, and Elon has put more than $100m of his own money in.

SpaceX is _in absolutely no way whatsoever_ a company that Elon bootstrapped.

<comment><USER21> Read this article and tell me this company was not bootstrapped by Elon. [0] Just because they went on to raise huge amounts of VC money doesn't mean anything. He was the one who took all that risk and nearly went bankrupt, not the VC's that now are about to reap the rewards. This is not to knock the VC money, those guys are awesome for believing in the mission.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space- musk](https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk)

<comment><USER22> SpaceX received billions of VC money on top of government contracts while Ariane and Co. got government contracts and government funding. So no, SpaceX is not bootstrapped. We also don't know for sure as SpaceX is privately held and not publishing financial reports. The one leak back up to 2017 wasn't that stellar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1\. Find a way to return cubesats from orbit

2\. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open vacuum not a station.

3\. Find goods that can only be manufactured in micro-g which are profitable at tiny scale, make them with your returnable cube sats. Made in Space, FOMS, etc are trying to do this but you could iterate faster/cheaper on cubes than mucking with ISS bureaucracy.

The window to do this is small and might not exist though. Eventually private stations will likely be the better option.

<comment><USER5> > 2\. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has > to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open > vacuum not a station.

Probably a tiny market there's already the exposed facility on Kibo [0] on the ISS that can take a lot of experiments.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_(ISS_module)#Exposed_faci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_\(ISS_module\)#Exposed_facility)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have thought of this my whole life. Well, since I was 12 years old, so 48 years anyway. I would develop small reaction engines for orbital maneuvering. Make them lightweight and inexpensive and infinitely customizable. Sell them to every rocket company and satellite producer. Make a whole family from hypergolic to plasma to ion thrust. Be really good at it. Establish a 100% reliability record.

But, how to bootstrap that? Perhaps write the software for some other reaction engine company? Or create a simulator for orbital maneuvering?

</comment><comment><USER25> 1\. Find life outside the solar system.

2\. Send message to them via the Sun.

3\. Aliens receive message, determine Earth's location and send invading fleet to conquer the planet.

4\. Discover the fleet via Hubble telescope and warn humanity.

5\. World focuses attention on humanity's survival and diverts funds to spaceship manufacturing and jump starts the next phase of technological innovations.

...

450\. Profit.

<comment><USER26> > World focuses attention on humanity's survival

We can't focus on global warming. Would we actually focus on an impending asteroid collision, or an incoming alien invasion?

<comment><USER25> I think anything that is a danger to Earth that is not human caused would receive more attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could you share why bootstrapping this business is attractive?

I've bootstrapped many companies, but I did so because the situation seemed to warrant it (capital requirements, perceived market size, achievable short-term revenue, etc.).

If you're absolutely dead-set on both space and bootstrapping, I'd start by consulting in that field. Get paid while you spot a problem and build a team to moonlight on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> By "bootstrap" I mean a way of self-financing part of the activities, finding a source of income quickly rather than relying solely on fundraising.

Raising money is not a problem, but I don't see myself getting involved in creating a business that requires billions and billions of dollars in financing before generating a single cent.

<comment><USER28> There are quite a few examples of space companies that meet that definition, have you looked at them?

<comment><USER29> It would be helpful if you named them

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Develop useful tech for cubesats. Build a demo/prototype hardware box and go to a space conference after contacting people in the industry beforehand. Get an "in" with a small startup and work with them to build it on a satellite. Through a partnership with them find others, become a satellite builder. Get experience using the launch market and begin to learn about rockets. At that point, my knowledge runs out - but I think you'll need a few hundred million if you want to have a go at developing a rocket yourself, so that's how big your cubesat / satellite company will have to be.

</comment><comment><USER31> Figure out a way to make LOX cheaper than anyone else on an industrial scale. I bet LOX production is a pretty sleepy business with few competitors. Use the money selling LOX to bootstrap the space business.

<comment><USER32> Now that's an interesting idea. Granted I have no idea how competitive/costly this market it, but I didn't think LOX was that expensive to begin with in comparison to other costs in aerospace.

<comment><USER31> per Musk fuel/oxidizer costs make up the bulk of launch expense. If you could save launch providers 2% on LOX with equal service they'd buy it in a heart beat. It's like going to the next gas station to save $0.10/gallon gas. Granted your competition may just say, "ok now we'll sell at a 5% discount". Of course the devil is in the details, it may take hundreds of thousands of dollars in permits to transport it. Maybe you could invent a popup LOX processor like those popup concrete factories near big construction projects. That would be pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not all companies can be bootstrapped, and even more shouldnt be. How would you bootstrap an oil refinery or a floating casino? I mean, maybe you could, but why not just become a person capable of taking the shortest route to your goal?

Often, the reason you cant bootstrap companies is because opportunities are time-sensitive and your competition isnt bootstrapping. Imagine trying to bootstrap an Uber competitor in Uber's market at the same time as Uber. Even if somehow you could in the absence of Uber, Uber would destroy you.

</comment><comment><USER34> Start a transformative web-commerce company, then transform it into the premier cloud-hosting company. Sell some shares. Pay a lot of good people to help you.

Seriously. Bezos is the only major player to be playing only with his own money. I think everyone else (SpaceX, ULA, Virgin, etc.) all have substantial external investment.

Space is expensive to get to. In general, you're going to need to pool a lot of capital and human effort.

If starting small is a goal, finding great Cubesat applications seems like a good place to start (but you'll need enough money to get to orbit). It looks like there is a lot of competition, though.

</comment><comment><USER35> The "spaceness," of the business needs definition. Maybe you build drones to defend asteroid mining claims and equipment, stealth communications for space prospecting, cryptographically sovereign networks for space supply chains, low gravity weapons and anti-piracy defences, solar sails, a navigation scheme and commercial beacon network, etc.

The nearest term use case for commercial space tech is going to be regulatory arbitrage, so if you can deliver content and secure a physical space jurisdiction for a legal system, it will be the new off shore.

<comment><AUTHOR> In short, infrastructure. Where would you start?

<comment><USER35> Infrastructure doesn't cover it. Without a way to defend it, there will be no investment, so crypto and directed energy defences. Payments, identity, etc. Same as earth.

<comment><USER36> It's space. Kinetic weapons will be just enough; one needs to make the shooting mechanism reliable in space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You... don't? There is a reason that Elon etc are the ones with bootstrapped space companies and very few others.

<comment><USER38> SpaceX has raised $3.2B in funding[0]... they are far from bootstrapped.

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration- te...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration- technologies#section-overview)

<comment><USER21> They're not bootstrapped NOW. Say that in 2007 when they had the falcon 1. Obviously, they've gone on to raise money after showing that they can get into LEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Learn how to use mission planning software, for instance:

[https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission- design...](https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design-tools)

with this you can help people spin tales of space project such as: "to build a sunshade, is it worth mining the moon?" Does it make sense to build the "Lunar Gateway?" Could lunar oxygen be delivered to LEO and HEO in order to retank SpaceX Starships?

Pick up the tools to answer questions like that.

<comment><USER40> Also learn to use formal specification tools like TLA+. Space companies will probably not use software without correctness guarantees. Especially if your software was verified by only a small number of people, it is likely to have bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> No one has suggested this so far, strangely enough: start with content. Aim to become _the place_ for excellent news, interviews, videos, etc. about anything space related. Or, go a fictional route - if George Lucas / Lucas Films wanted to get into actual, real space travel or space products, he's in an excellent position to do so. The brand is related and they've got billions to spend. I would bet that this happens sometime in the next ±100 years - imagine Disney having a Star Wars theme park in space. And you certainly don't need to be as successful as Lucas to build a fictional brand around space - even a smaller company could make space products if it has an audience.

How to start from scratch: build up an audience, relationships with industry members, and an overall familiarity with the marketplace and potential opportunities. Develop a product, sell it to your audience, hire smart people, rinse and repeat. Your starting costs are basically zero, assuming you know how to write/create content.

<comment><USER24> I like this. There are over 100 rocket companies. You could become an industry analyst and publish about them. Or become the Walt Mossberg of space. Eventually host a conference everyone has to exhibit at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's been said "rocket science is not rocket science".

Elon Musk put reportedly 90 millions his own dollars into Falcon-1. So it was enough a decade ago to spend $90 millions for Kwajalein launch pad, 5 units of Falcon-1, design, transportation, operations.

Should we assume that today that ought to be cheaper - especially if we find a cheaper launch pad and be more lucky with at least first launch? Rocket Lab isn't that successful with it, but shouldn't it be possible at all? A recent new Japanese launcher was lighter than 3 tons.

Now there are more modest companies, which don't put payloads to orbit, yet still qualify as "space business". I'd recall Altius Space Machines and Masten Space. You can add parts manufacturers for cubesats - parts like star trackers reaction wheels, RCSes, communications... They usually start with way less than tens of million dollars.

Why a particular approach should cost a lot? Kistler Aerospace found that buying components for orbital launchers on the market is too expensive to survive, but may be there are other ways?

</comment><comment><USER43> NOTE: The below suggestion is assuming Starship pans out and launch costs drop dramatically.

The way I see it, there are 3 (overlapping?) ways of making money in space:

1) put something up there (like a satellite) 2) take something down (asteroid mining, space based manufacturing, etc) 3) do something in space you can only do there

Here's an idea that falls into category 3 that I've been kicking around - space based entertainment. Maybe design a new sport that's only playable in space (or start with a currently popular one and extend it with space-only dynamics).

You would definitely need some significant capital and it'll be several years before you could actually put some athletes in space. But assuming launch costs are cheap enough and human transport is reliable, I don't think it would require speculative new technologies. Possibly the biggest technical gap would be in building large enough structures for the sport. The work of Bigelow Areospace or Nanoracks seems to be going in the right direction.

<comment><USER7> The enemy's gate is down.

<comment><USER43> Exactly. I think Ender's Game is what got me thinking along these lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Governments with space programmes will fund lots of research-type projects as well as purchase goods and services they actually use.

But if you'd best pick something you can do for the million or two they might give you like niche software or analysing EO data or space imagery or lightweight materials rather than hope to launch a cubesat constellation or get to Mars.

</comment><comment><USER45> Realistically you don't, but...

You're definitely not building hardware without much money. Maybe you can build software? Spend a lot of time talking to companies that already operate in the space industry, find some unmet software need that you can somehow build a software solution for (better than the thousands of other software engineers who have already worked in the field for decades) and sell it to them.

For instance, maybe you figure out a better way to write satellite management software. And then you sell that for a while (tricky, you've got very few possible customers and they're all quite capable of copying what you've done if it's so great) and eventually you get to the point where you start launching your own satellites.

I'm not saying there's a reasonable business model in there; but if there's a reasonable business model somewhere it's likely to look something like that.

</comment><comment><USER46> Move to Glasgow (like Spire did). It's got a bunch of companies making cube sats & cube sat software & satellite data analysis.

Clyde Space will sell the bits to make a cubesat or even build it for you. [https://www.aac-clyde.space/](https://www.aac-clyde.space/)

Alba Orbital do the same thing at a smaller (& cheaper form factor): [http://www.albaorbital.com/](http://www.albaorbital.com/)

Add a sensor that you can sell the data from. Make a deal to sell the data. Use the money / guarantee of the deal to raise money to fund the satellite development and launch.

</comment><comment><USER47> Here's some different resources that might help you tap into the entrepreneurial space community as well as help get you bootstrap, seed funding for your space business:

\- The New Space Conference ([https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/](https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/)), which alternates between being based in the Bay Area and Seattle. This conference is a great, accessible way to find out what is going on with startup companies attempting to do interesting things in space.

\- The NASA Ames Space Portal ([https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal](https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal)) - A group based at NASA Ames field center in Mountain View that pursues public/private partnerships between NASA and the private sector.

\- NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) ([https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/](https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/)) - A two month "research sprint" that takes place in the summer time in Mountain View, bridging machine learning and space science & exploration, as well as the public and private sectors.

\- NASA SBIR grants ([https://sbir.nasa.gov/](https://sbir.nasa.gov/)) - <USER2> great program that helps seed small businesses and solo inventors with seed grants for promising entrepreneurial programs that might help NASA and the general space economy

\- NASA NSPIRES ([https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/](https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/)) - NASA portal page to find out calls for contributors, that also have funding, that can help you get plugged into the space community and also get seed funding.

\- NASA Centennial Challenges ([https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial- challenges.html](https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-challenges.html)) - X-Prize like competitions that will pay out if you meet their guidelines and win in a particular area, like the Regolith Excavation Challenge which has been held several times, where the team who can best move simulated lunar soil in an automated way wins. The last winning team got 500k, for example, which is a nice purse to help bootstrap a space venture.

\- NASA Advanced Innovative Concepts (NIAC) ([https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html)) - Award program that funds very far-reaching, innovative space programs. These are always incredibly cool programs; here's the awarded NIAC grants for 2019 for example ([https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests- in-18-potent...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests- in-18-potentially-revolutionary-space-tech-concepts))

\- Luxembourg Space Agency ([https://space- agency.public.lu/en.html](https://space-agency.public.lu/en.html)) - Luxembourg is a leader in private, mining oriented operations in space, and acts as an angel and seed investor in many, small early entrepreneurial space startups

If you have more questions feel free to reach out to me on twitter at @bradneuberg

<comment><USER48> Wow! I've been watching various SBIRs this year with a buddy, but have never heard of some of these programs. Muchas gracias!

<comment><USER47> Yeah, there's alot of niche programs that can provide nice amounts of seed space capital without being a billionaire, it's just they are fairly in the weeds and a bit hidden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Bootstrapping is a marathon, not a sprint. Bootstrapping is kind of like stacking bricks, except you mught be making each brick too.

Sometimes you have to build the first thing to get to the second thing.

Before developing hardware, I'd see if there's a lucrative software based problem in this area that could be bootstrapped to generate revenue to fund the next project.

In a way SpaceX is doing their equivalent of this by building Starlink to generate ongoing monthly revenue that conceivably could be directed elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER50> I have this mental model that I borrowed from the space industry. Just like how SSTO (Single-stage to orbit) is extraordinarily hard, although not impossible, I've always held the opinion that bootstrapping a startup in hard tech is similarly hard but not quite impossible.

An less riskier approach IMO, would be the multi-stage approach, by solving a series of less capital intensive problems and progressively solving harder and harder problems while accumulating capital for the ultimate goal.

</comment><comment><USER51> Build software that improves some clunky or inefficient process common in the space industry, then sell it to the space industry. Voila, you now run a bootstrapped space company :)

</comment><comment><USER52> Unless you're bringing a big industry name with you as cofounder, it's simply not possible.

Just to get certified to do any work as a subcontractor would be in the $XXX,XXX range.

</comment><comment><USER53> Space based solar like CassioPeia is an interesting format. Designed in a way that you can start with a smaller scale model to prove the concept and then work upwards.

</comment><comment><USER54> Find country that need (but does not have yet) ICBM capabilities and pitch them that you can build rocket for them. They will provide all funding you will ever need.

<comment><USER31> that's a great way to end up dead by the countries who do not wish said country to have an ICBM.

<comment><USER55> or, more likely, to end up dead by said country once they realize you have no idea what you're doing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> First, start something massive and unrelated to space, like a paypal. Then ride your dividends straight into your burn rate, securing idealistic investor money to go into the furnace along the way.

Seriously, that's the playbook for what you suggest. The only playbook. Anything else in these threads is going to be baseless presumption; if it were as the commenters said, they'd themselves be doing it and not sharing it online.

</comment><comment><USER57> If you really want to bootstrap it, start with toy/hobby rockets and drones and slowly work up. Alter the services you offer as you go eg: aerial photography, weather monitoring, engines etc etc till eventually you're launching small sattelites and stuff

It's the kind of thing that'd probably take decades before you were realistically even beginning to look at space though

<comment><USER31> the amateur rocketry crowd has had large solid rocket motors for a while now but bi-propellent motors (event the most simple designs) are very very rare. If you could design one in the N impulse range and price it at < $2500 they'd sell like hot cakes. Then you could scale up the design to a bit more powerful and sell it to universities at around 10k a pop. The service contract to keep them running would be worth a lot o f money too. Eventually, you'd be able to sell a Karman line capable kit and that would sell like hotcakes to both the amateur rocketry and university crowd.

There's a group on youtube working on nitrous oxide/methanol engine for hobbyists now. I think they're headed in the right direction although I would have done the combustion chamber differently. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Maybe useful- [http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing- is...](http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-isro- employees-quit-and-start-ventures-narayan-prasad/55187/1)

</comment><comment><USER59> I went to a Elon Musk's talk. He said he wouldn't have started spacex and tesla if he hadn't had the initial capital he gained through paypal.

I want to start a robotics company and I guess I would start by selling robotic toys and kits.

</comment><comment><USER60> Start and then sell a financial services company. Then build the space company.

</comment><comment><USER61> You could look at developing something that would make being in space more habitable for humans. Better spacesuits, better equipment. Maybe something in the cryostasis..eh..space?

</comment><comment><USER62> Why not wait until people are out there already and sell shovels

<comment><USER63> 1\. It may take many years before significant number of people are out there.

2\. What kind of equipment or services would these "shovels" be? Is there any kind of equipment used in space that could be produced by a bootstrapped company that doesn't have billions of dollars in funding? Why would a new company in this business succeed when competing against established companies that already have experience producing such equipment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Start a non-space company, grow wildly successful, and use the substantial financial resources from that to fund your space company. Space is a capital- intensive industry. You cannot compete with those who can leapfrog you with one investment round or bond issue.

Presuming you don't want to do that, or to become a primary launch provider, start by networking with people already in the industry. Move to space hot spots like Cape Canaveral, Huntsville, Houston, or Los Angeles, and start stalking insiders.

</comment><comment><USER65> There's a reason most of these comments are saying this is impossible.

First you need some actual technical knowledge, like PhD level knowledge of some slightly innovative new space tech. I like to think one of the big boys in space money will be asteroid mining. So present a detailed and well researched pitch to some investor about how you would go about using a company to RnD this endeavour. Hopefully, they give you a lot of money.

But you said you want little external funding, so, yeah, not going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER66> Define space company. You want to launch things? Hitch a ride on OP (other people's) rockets?

</comment><comment><USER67> If anyone tries this, drop me an email. I'd love to get involved in any capacity.

<comment><USER68> Me, too! I'd love to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> 1\. Partner with Elon Musk 2\. Use partner's capital and experience 3\. Profit

</comment><comment><USER70> How do you make money with Satellites?

<comment><USER71> All of the data that you sell. E.g. Planet provides complete Earth coverage approx every 24h. Hyperspectral imagery, tracking ships/planes with specialised receivers, monitoring other space assets, running weather services, etc. That data is all worth HUGE amounts of money to the right people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Start an e-commerce company from the scratch, grow it, make it automated, then use revenue to bootstrap your space company.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about a logistics company ?

<comment><USER72> Yeah, any scalable profitable company would do. I just have practical experience with exponential growth from automated e-commerce, but see no reason why that couldn't work for logistics or some other type as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Cubesats?

<comment><AUTHOR> For what purpose?

Telecommunications?

<comment><USER73> Rich hobbyists - like the businesses that specialize in model trains

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Satellites on a chip.

<comment><USER5> It will be hard to get approval for that to launch (at least from the US). In order to be tracked to ensure the safety of future launches objects need to be much larger than a single chip. Smaller than that the tracking techniques used have trouble tracking the vehicles.

<comment><USER74> Huh, that's interesting, can you elaborate?

What are the minimum size requirements? Are they multidimensional?

<comment><USER75> At least 10cm in any dimension (i.e. a 10cm diameter sphere, or a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube).

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> How does anybody bootstrap anything these days? Marketing and kickstarter!

<comment><USER77> Given marketing encompasses 'only building things people want' this actually isn't too far off base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> 1\. Make a PayPal 2\. Space time</comment>