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To forgive this kind of debt, then act as if you’ve done something great, kind, and just, is like ripping off the band-aid on a still hemorrhaging wound and declare your patient healed.The problems with higher education are many-fold and killing the one thing that is actually forcing the necessary changes is probably a bad idea.First, college is becoming the only ticket to the American dream. As recently highlighted in a speech by Senator Hawley, families with a four year degree now control three quarters of American wealth. This is a 50% increase from just 1989.[1][1][1][1] This is unjust. It clearly says that for the small business owner, the type of individual who just sees a problem and solves it in his community for some profit, a class of individuals who have traditionally been the backbone of the American economy, those doors are now closed to prosperity. Now, for you to prosper you must:1) Go to college2) Get the right degree3) Get a good job with a big companyThis path is safe, but unsustainable. It is also antithetical to American history, where the greatest gains were made by people who broke out to solve problems with nothing but the clothes on their backs and an idea, be that a new way to drill for oil or that this town really needs a grocery story.But then, the college loan happened. You see, at the point in your life when you are most likely to take risks, America’s Millennial generation are saddled with tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand dollars or more in student loan debt. They must get a good job to pay off those loans. However, thanks to other forces working against them, the degrees themselves are respected less than ever before by managers who rightly understand they don’t have the skills that business needs.This is a disaster. Traditionally, we’ve always relied upon the creativity of strong entrepreneurs, not mega billionaires mind you, but the kind of millionaires you see at church on Sunday none the wiser of their success, to help solve the problems in our community. Whether they run the local meat packing plant, are the thrifty plumber, or the woman who turned her side hustle of selling art that transformed into a t-shirt printing business that now hires six local employees, these people traditionally kept America alive through the adaptability and seeking small prosperity where needs could be found. Not to fault any of the large companies, but we weren’t built to service oligarchs like the controllers of Coke, Disney, and Amazon. The modern education system we currently have only caters to these companies and other major blue chips like them, but robs America of the true genius of the people who get a college degree.Next, who is actually affected by these college loans? It isn’t who you think.For perspective, in 2008, the crisis for students holding massive debt on their degrees crashed headlong into a collapsed jobs market, suddenly made people realize how worthless their degrees were. While student debt and the increase in tuition had been steadily increasing for decades, it was only then that people started to treat the situation as a crisis. Economists would be quick to point out that much of this would be explained by simple inflation, what happens when tons of free money is pumped into systems where customers have little incentive to check the price before buying. College loans are part of that metric, but so are the grants offered to poorer students as a ticket to their great fortune.Most people imagine a college graduate and think of some poor person who has had to overcome a life of poverty just to be straddled with debt slavery. Yes, the debt crisis is real, but the victims aren’t quite who you think. Thanks to many needs based grant programs, which reward huge amounts of money on the basis of parental income and with no consideration of merit or how prepared the student is for college, ungodly amounts of money have flowed into the American education system from American tax payers. Grants like the Pell Grant are so lucrative that colleges do whatever it takes to get a person who is financially qualified to get the grant, regardless of whether they are equipped for college or not. The grant is paid into their tuition, helping many to not need to take out expensive loans. It helps ensure that they can go to college, sure, but at what cost?In 2008, the point where the student debt crisis became a real subject of concern for many Americans, the amount available for Federal student grants was allocated at $13,989,305,000. By 2011 it had ballooned to $35,772,935,000, leveling off to today where the expenditures are around $28 billion.[2][2][2][2]Note that while millions railed against exploitative rising tuition rates ever since, they have still continued to go up as the money given via federal government programs increased. For perspective on the significance of these grants to the higher education industry, a back of the napkin estimation of total tuition for all colleges to be around $393.5 billion in 2013[3][3][3][3], meaning that this one grant alone made up somewhere in the neighborhood of 8% of all student tuition. Calculating, however, for just public university tuition of $205.4 billion, the amount paid by Federal grant money comes closer to 15% of student tuition paid to those universities.Note, that’s every year that the US Federal government pays to college students from lower-income families.Because of the way the grants are paid out, however, the grants are actually hurting not only the people who receive the grant, but everyone else, as well. I want to be clear, when the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 were passed, Pell Grants seemed like a great idea to allow students who traditionally didn’t have access to college to get it. Since then, however, seeing the lucrative opportunities for wealth generation at taxpayer expense, schools have been steadily redesigning themselves to take advantage of grants such as these. How? For many, it meant lowering the threshold of entry to millions of students not ready for college, or where the academic rigor required was more than their talents would allow. Everyone should be legally allowed to go college, but not everyone should be admitted because not everyone can pass. But then the next phase in this evolution takes place. The bar is lowered for these students in several ways. First, the actual coursework and load is made easier, such as padding degrees with useless courses that the students don’t want and which don’t help them in their careers, but which are hard to fail. Often these courses are saturated in ideological bias, reflecting the culture of the professors. Second, the actual coursework is made easier so that fewer students drop out. When the schools adapted to being an institution whose job was to cash checks from the federal government, rather than relying on the tuition of scholarships and the donations of highly performing graduates, then they lost the value of the degree.There is a reason that the special forces like the SEALs and Delta have the reputation of never losing. Pictured below is part of Navy SEAL swim training, also called “drown-proofing”. Candidates must swim while bound in loose restraints they could easily break free from, even by accident. If they break the restraints during their swim, they fail the event. Only a small percentage of humanity could even attempt this training, so it serves as one of the many filters to gain entry into the SEALs.Simply put, not everyone can be a SEAL. Exclusivity based on excellence ensures the value of understood worth to the individual for being a member of a particular culture. College used to be this same sort of filter — an institution where, if someone had graduated from a four year degree program, it was understood that they were some of the most intellectually capable people in the nation. Colleges and Universities no longer have the reputation of reliably creating scholarly graduates. Instead, college is treated more as a place to make connections than as a challenging rite of passage for America’s educated class.Note, this isn’t all colleges. In the US, we have the strange reputation of having a whole generation holding near worthless degrees, while also having the best colleges in the world. That’s because we have a multitude of colleges, but what I tell young people is that really there are only about a hundred that matter. At any given time, if you go to one of these schools, the degree you earn will be respected anywhere you go. Rather than looking for a job, top firms will have recruiters at the colleges looking for you. They don’t go to just any college, but only the best. For kids with particular careers in mind, I give slightly different advice. I say that then there are only about ten. They need to know those 10 colleges and do whatever it takes to get into all of them. For example, my home-state of Oklahoma has the Oklahoma State University, which has some of the world’s best Agriculture and Petrochemical programs in the world. I tell kids that if they want to work in ag or the oil industry, those schools will have it made. But OSU isn’t one of the greatest Universities in general. They are a long way from competing with a Harvard or Yale. That being the case, a person who wants to be in those industries may actually be better off at OSU than those premiere colleges.This matters because thanks to many of the income seeking behaviors of colleges, most colleges not either the Top 100 or the Top 10 for a particular filed are simply getting worse. While this hurts those seeking grants, those hurt most of all aren’t the people who receive the Pell Grant, but those just wealthy enough not to have it as a right, such as most Middle Class children. They have the hardship of getting a degree, but being forced to pay the whole way for it. When they graduate, however, they discover that, because they went to one of thousands of nameless colleges, the degree they earned isn’t respected by hiring managers.The idea that go to college is a path to security has been shattered through government subsidization of needs based income grants offered by the tens of billions.Next we need to talk about where the money is going.The New York Times made it very clear by detailing how some schools were buying off their students in a never ending fit to fill seats, prioritizing luxuries for students over student education.When Louisiana State University surveyed students in 2009 to find out what they most wanted in their new recreation complex, one feature beat out even massage therapy: a lazy river. [4][4][4][4]And while Louisiana boasts its lazy river, students pictured below watched “Jaws” at a “dive-in movie” at Missouri State’s aquatic center.Party pools and other such extravagant luxuries are becoming the norm across colleges in the United States, primarily among the lesser renown universities. Rather than trying to bring in students on the promise of high earnings after college, the experience of college is what is sold, even though no one in history has had this experience when they went to institutions of higher learning. No, but that isn’t stopping universities like UCF from building a “Recovery Cove” because a lazy river is what is necessary to deal with “anxiety of student life”.While railing against an ever increasing bureaucracy is normally an austerity driven conservative talking point, left leaning news has noted the explosive growth of the “student life” facilitation. For example, the UK’s Guardian reported a 33% increase in the number of managers in higher education from 2005 to 2010[5][5][5][5], Huffington Post noted a “problematic boom” in higher ed administrators [6][6][6][6], and Bloomberg reported that, “For every $1 spent on instruction, $1.82 is spent on non-instructional things such as 'academic support, student services, institutional support, public service' and a catch-all category called 'other,'” according to the National Center for Education Statistics.[7][7][7][7]The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures.In all, from 1987 until 2011-12—the most recent academic year for which comparable figures are available—universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees…— Huffington PostI just have to comment on this for a second and be straight with readers. I paid for college with the GI Bill. I had to literally be shot at to pay for college. After four years in the Marines and two trips to Iraq, where I was leading teams of Marines by the age of 22, starting college was perhaps the easiest exercise I was ever forced to endure. That was hard. That there exists a movement to give students such overwhelming “therapy” options like a lazy river due to the “stress” of college both disgusts me and makes me lose respect for an entire generation.Yet, this movement continues, where students are treated like fragile snowflakes always on the cusp of annihilation, and one more program, facility, or luxury is what they need to survive this cruel, cruel world… that only seems to exist on the campus itself. This is part of how simply filling seats at colleges is bloating the college bureaucracy. To accommodate the “needs” of more students and give them the “best experience” possible, not only are millions being spent on expensive recreational centers like those above, but also in providing services never before offered as a means to entice students who don’t know better. To keep this growing infrastructure in place, colleges have also grown the number of managers and administration over the school, with far less going to actually improving academic facilities than “student life”.This focus on “student life” has caused other problems with education, first by providing so much that students are coddled and feel entitled to be taken care of at any expense, never understanding that college isn’t actually a place to have an amazing time, but to learn and be challenged as preparation for life. It’s like a four year trip to Disney World with sex, booze, and no rules, while also with free private counselling for an ever growing list of disorders and sources of victimization — which never includes the consequences of all sex and booze.This phenomenon reached a peak where students offended by the nature of their classwork could and often did rise up against their professors for saying things that “triggered” the students. “Triggered” by the way, is a term that has been popularized since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It relates to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, where someone who experiences an actual event that placed them in severe trauma (such as nearly being killed in a car accident or surviving a roadside bomb) will experience symptoms of a panic attack around otherwise mundane occurrences which were related to their experience. An example would be a dog barking before a bomb going off, then the brain writes in that dogs barking are related to bombs, so hearing a dog “triggers” someone with PTSD. It’s actually the brain of a trauma patient working too well, being hyper sensitive to perceived threat to try to keep them safe. That actual information about the disease was so miss-communicated in the early days after the wars began, where anything surrounding PTSD and veterans simply looks like men in uniform being sad.Real PTSD is nothing at all like that. It’s just a simple picture to illicit sympathy without understanding. So-called “Social Justice Warriors” on college campuses, however, have stolen the language of the disease to support that their feelings of victimization upon dealing with uncomfortable subjects or people whom they disagree. For them, being “triggered” simply means being forced to deal with ideas and feelings that are unpleasant, conflict with their preconceived notions of the world, or make them feel conflicted or even convicted by their failure to measure up to their own supposed moral standards. That’s exactly what college is meant to do, to give people a better understanding of the world and give them the right mindset to deal with that in a way that benefits everyone. Now, however, we have a spoiled and tyrannical student body, bolstered by an army of ideologically minded administrators that can both be used to attack not just the curriculum, but visiting speakers, and even each other.What I mean by the last part is a phenomenon that is entirely owed to the growing power of the campus administration. As the administrations grew, so did their biases. This I outlined in much greater detail in another answer, but let it serve to say that the overwhelming bias in many of these institutions is enough to dangerously use their power to irreparably hurt their own student’s lives. Such is the power to enact sweeping punishments on students based on pure accusation with no basis in reality, but deeply rooted in political or ideological agendas. Few better examples exist than the “college rape epidemic” which resulted in many students being wrongly “convicted” in kangaroo courts of college tribunals.Perhaps this was because enough people read The Atlantic, which chose last week to run a three-part series by Emily Yoffe on the sexual-assault policies in question. The series demonstrated exhaustively what anyone paying close attention already knew: The legal and administrative response to campus rape over the past five years has been a kind of judicial and bureaucratic madness, a cautionary tale about how swiftly moral outrage and political pressure can lead to kangaroo courts and star chambers, in which bias and bad science create an unshakable presumption of guilt for the accused. [8][8][8][8]Most famous of these was the case of the Duke Lacrosse team scandal beginning in 2006. It was one of the earliest cases where an accusation without proof (and later proved false) smeared the reputation of students with the wrong identity by campus mobs. In spite of the boys’ vindication, the Duke case seemed to inspire copy cat accusations across a campus culture obsessed with “rape-culture”.This ruined the lives of many innocent young men and happened at the behest of mobs of virtue signaling students led by their ideologically minded professors. It was made possible, however, through a bloated campus administration system with the power to kick students based on the “optics” of the case, as deemed by the university’s legal, HR, and marketing teams.So yeah, that’s kind of a problem.Next, we need to talk about the loans themselves. Did you know that college loan debt is one of the only kinds of personal debt that can’t be removed via bankruptcy?That’s insane. I understand why, but it’s still insane.College kids are generally in an age of life where they are not particularly adept at making extremely responsible life decisions. Taking out these kinds of loans is, by nature, a very risky endeavor for a lending institution, traditionally speaking. Frankly, I think that few of us suffer from the delusion that there weren’t many young graduates who abused bankruptcy to get a free education, filing bankruptcy after an expensive education process. One might look to doctors, who would be greatly benefited from such a shystie move. If I was making doctor pay, I would be happy to live in a nice apartment for seven years after graduation, as I save up for an amazing home, free from the burdens of debt the rest of my fellow graduates must endure. Why start life off $200,000 grand in the hole with interest? There is a very good reason that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act extended to education loans — people exist who abuse the system.Lending also isn’t a right you are owed. With government based loans, such as those provided either directly through the Department of Education, or indirectly through companies like Sallie Mae, the idolized notion is that paying back your loan frees up money for the next person. Forgiving that doesn’t just mean the money goes away. It creates a liability for the taxpayers who did pay for the education in the first place, and who may have zero interest in creating another young holder of a Gender Studies degree with no functional utility to the nation. At the very least, ensuring that the student is forced to pay, ensures that the taxpayer isn’t left footing the bill for degrees that frankly, aren’t an investment into our collective future. However, a more honest look is to look at these loans as business. For private lending, giving money must come with interest to pay for the lending institution’s own overhead, as well as grow to service others. People who default on their loans spell disaster for lending institutions, making it so that no one has access to them when the bank itself goes under. This is particularly true, when they default en masse. This is what happened in 2008 beginning with real estate, but these institutions are free to grant these loans to anyone when they know that the person is on the ropes to pay it off.Look, I’ve tried to be fair to both sides. It seems pretty clear that a few people abused the system and ruined it for everyone, but it also seems clear this idea to prevent bankruptcy is simply erecting a dam which is getting ready to burst.Bankruptcy must be an option to escape this debt, at least, for future students. For lending institutions who made deals with the understanding that bankruptcy wasn’t an option, then they should be protected. If you agreed to it, then that debt is yours, but in the future, people who take out student loans should maintain the right to bankruptcy.What does that do for lending institutions?It forces them to treat students who petition for such loans to compete for them again, and more importantly, it forces the banks to really look at who they are saddling with this kind of debt.“Oh, you’re the valedictorian of a class of 350 kids, was active in STEM advanced courses, competed and won in local robot races, and want to study Robotics and Engineering at a reputable university? You bet we’ll loan you the money, Miss Surething.”vs.“Oh, you graduated 400th in a class of 350? Well golly, that’s impressive in its own way. And you’re interested in studying Performing Arts degree because learning to dance has always been one of your life goals. Neat. And a minor in Communist Theory? Well, good for you, Comrade, but have you heard of GoFundMe?”When you place the risk on banks and other lenders, you ensure that only those loans which have a high likelihood of being repaid are awarded. This opens many doors, but just as important, closes the door to many paths of suffering. Will this reduce the amount of funds currently being given out to pay for expensive degrees? Yes, it absolutely will, but like any good economist will tell you, that will also reverse the trend in increasing student tuition everywhere. At the same time, colleges will again have the reputation of only churning quality students pulling quality degrees and really question the need of a lazy river for therapy purposes. We’re seeing the paths of suffering taking place right now, where people who took on expensive loans to pay for degrees that are worthless from colleges no one respects are overcome by debt they can’t pay. Most of those kids should have never received their loans in the first place.But what do we need to solve this problem? It isn’t to forgive the debt. That’s the opposite of what we need.The explosive rise in student tuition is explained very simply by the runaway effects of cheap money at the onset being funneled into schools where people stopped questioning how much it was going to cost. Whether it was owed to Pell Grants or to student loans, inflation in education has created a system where the costs of admittance are higher than the reward for many, if not most degrees. But at least they can contemplate this unpleasant reality as they float down the lazy river at the rec center.Forgiving this debt, and the many bad decisions that went into it, will only ensure that the same bad decisions continue. Not just that, but seeing others get bailed out is the first step on believing that you have a right to something, and when you believe that a luxury college student life experience is your right and that the consequences will certainly be forgiven, you really don’t make wise decisions. Forgiving the debt will only contribute to the growth of tuition more as people take on wilder loans and campuses respond by increasing tuition to match.Lastly, forgiving this debt is repulsively unjust.If literally everyone who went to college had this same shared experience with these loans, then it would make sense that something would need to be done about it. But everyone doesn’t have this experience. For example, me. I paid for college with the Montgomery Post 9/11 GI Bill. It paid my whole way through. To earn that degree, I had to first give four years of my life in service to the country, with the understanding that I may get shot at (which I was) and may even die having never felt a shred of that benefit. When people talk about forgiving their debts, I ask why? Why is it justice for millions such as myself to earn their education, and to take that seriously, when others get to expect it be given to them as a right after they picked degrees they would never be able to use?Where’s the justice in that?Others, such as my wife, worked their way through college. We worked together to pay her debt so that we wouldn’t be saddled with expensive loans as our marriage kicked off. What about the millions of people who both work and go to school, just so that they don’t sell off their future for decades? Where is the justice for them when kids floating down the lazy river get a bail out?Or how about that family that, whether they like it or not, are going to be paying the taxes one way or another for this “forgiveness”? Now they, no matter their income level, are going to be splitting the bill to cover some $1.3 trillion in bad student loan debt? That money could have gone to providing infrastructure, better schooling, or could have simply not been taken away from them. That way, they could do what they wanted to, or needed to, with it. Instead, the taxpayer must give from their family to pay for the lifestyle of people who aren’t their kids. It’s only a little bit when you split it across all Americans. Yes, but it’s something that the people who ultimately paid for it don’t get anything back from. There is a word for people who are forced to give money and receive nothing in return for it — robbery. Forgiving this debt, at least as it has been done in the past, is robbing from American tax payers.No, the cold hard honest truth is that there needs to be pain. This is what is needed, what wise cultures do… they allow themselves to feel pain that they deserve — the kind of pain that echoes.The students who took on bad debt to pay for bad degrees need to feel pain. throughout generations. I don’t want them to suffer more than anyone else out of spite, but they need to be a lesson to their younger siblings and to their children of the extreme importance of picking the right college, the right degree, and in only the most extreme of situations… the right student loan, or maybe even question going to college at all and exploring other options.The colleges also need to feel pain. The policies that caused this inflationary wave of energy need to be cut off. Those colleges that built their campuses around providing luxuries unnecessary for student learning and achievement need to suffer for exploiting their students. Future students need to see the presence of a lazy river as a sure sign that this college is only out to milk them for decades of labor and avoid that institution like the plague. Colleges need to stop with the nonsense bloating of their administration and the unnecessary and expensive luxuries being doled out to ensnare kids into joining — particularly the poorest among them paying for college via tax payer funded grants.There also needs to be pain on the lending institutions who, for years, have been handing out loans irresponsibly to people who couldn’t afford them because their degrees didn’t match the current needs of the nation… or anyone. Sometimes this is the government, sometimes the colleges themselves, and sometimes private lending institutions. Perhaps all three need to hurt. Because lenders were backed by laws built with reasonable intentions in mind, it was presumed that the lenders didn’t need to do the necessary thing for their customers of not providing a loan they know can’t be paid off. Instead, they didn’t even ask this question, just fulfilling the wishes of anyone who filled out the necessary paperwork. Now tens of thousands of kids are suffering because people who had all the tools to predict this outcome had no incentive to simply say, “no.”Pain. That’s what’s needed for the future. To reform the practices that led to colleges getting out of control, there needs to be real pain that people feel in such a way that changes to the systemic processes are demanded. A quick fix won’t do it. It will just transfer the pain to people who are the last to deserve it, while signalling to everyone else that they are now free to engage in even more financially devastating behavior because literally no one is being held accountable.But pain, and fear of pain, will lead to better decisions. Fear of pain will be what forces future students to make better choices. Fear of pain will be what forces lenders to lend to more reliable students. Fear of pain is what will force colleges to lower tuition rates.Pain — pain and fear. That’s what we as a nation need to suffer because of the failure we’ve dug ourselves into it, and dealing with that pain and suffering like adults is our one and only opportunity to learn from the experience and not pass on more suffering to future generations.Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. - War ElephantFootnotes[1] Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech at the 6th Annual American Principles Project Gala[1] Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech at the 6th Annual American Principles Project Gala[1] Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech at the 6th Annual American Principles Project Gala[1] Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech at the 6th Annual American Principles Project Gala[2] Funding Status -- Federal Pell Grant Program[2] Funding Status -- Federal Pell Grant Program[2] Funding Status -- Federal Pell Grant Program[2] Funding Status -- Federal Pell Grant Program[3] Richardson Kilis's answer to What is the total amount spent per year on university tuition in the United States?[3] Richardson Kilis's answer to What is the total amount spent per year on university tuition in the United States?[3] Richardson Kilis's answer to What is the total amount spent per year on university tuition in the United States?[3] Richardson Kilis's answer to What is the total amount spent per year on university tuition in the United States?[4] Making a Splash on Campus [4] Making a Splash on Campus [4] Making a Splash on Campus [4] Making a Splash on Campus [5] The irresistible rise of academic bureaucracy[5] The irresistible rise of academic bureaucracy[5] The irresistible rise of academic bureaucracy[5] The irresistible rise of academic bureaucracy[6] 'It's A Lie. It's A Lie. It's A Lie'[6] 'It's A Lie. It's A Lie. It's A Lie'[6] 'It's A Lie. It's A Lie. It's A Lie'[6] 'It's A Lie. It's A Lie. It's A Lie'[7] As Tuition Increases, So Do College Bureaucracies[7] As Tuition Increases, So Do College Bureaucracies[7] As Tuition Increases, So Do College Bureaucracies[7] As Tuition Increases, So Do College Bureaucracies[8] Opinion | Liberalism and the Campus Rape Tribunals[8] Opinion | Liberalism and the Campus Rape Tribunals[8] Opinion | Liberalism and the Campus Rape Tribunals[8] Opinion | Liberalism and the Campus Rape Tribunals

As soon as someone with the resources and knowledge decides to put the resources into building them and make them pay.A detailed study to do just that was done by Stanford University as part of a Summer Study funded by NASA forty five years ago.Stanford Torus Space SettlementPrinceton Professor Gerard ONeill who designed big pressure vessels for producing vacuum chambers that are miles across for CERN and FermiLab, realised at the time of the moon landing that big pressure vessels could be built in space. Stanford Torus was smaller than CERN. We know how to build these things. O’Neill went larger…The Colonization of Space - Gerard K. O’Neill, Physics Today, 1974It starts with a large highly reusable two stage to orbit launcher that is refueled in space and is capable of landing on the Moon with a large payload and returning to Earth with all the parts and pieces in tact.Below is a photo of the 1974 CAD drawing of the ships to be used - using the best available technology of that era.The payload of the larger vehicle was 420 tons and the smaller ‘test’ vehicle 120 tons payload, with 11,000 ton take off weight for the larger vehicle and 4,000 ton take off weight for the smaller. All built with Saturn V running gear.Contrast this with the ITS with an 11,000 ton take off weight and a 450 ton payload and the BFR Spaceship/Heavy with a 4,400 ton take off weight and a 150 ton payload. These are the same vehicles with retropropulsion instead of wings, and using LOX/LNG instead of LOX/LH2.So, this is the first step! A rocket that carries between 120 tons and 450 tons into space and is refuelled on orbit to carry that load to the Moon and Mars.SpaceX is working on the smaller version of the two systems described using its own running gear burning Jet fuel and Liquid Oxygen.Now SpaceX has previously built the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.With this capability SpaceX can put 15 tons and 60 tons into Earth orbit reusing the ship, recovering it with retropropulsion.This is an improvement over wings and wheels and parachutes - because the fuel needed to recover the vehicle using the same rockets that lifted it into space in the first place has less added weight than the wings or wheels needed to land it using that hardware.I had this insight when I saw tomahawk cruise missiles fly down elevator shafts during the first gulf war. GreenSpace was born - which eventually became SpaceX.In this way SpaceX cuts out 85% of the cost of space launch, and reduces the prices it charges by 15% and picks up 50% of everything that’s spent on space launch AS PROFIT.I have developed a business plan called GreenSpace back in the 1990s. At that time I looked at acquiring TRW from Northrup for $5 billion. I had just sold my cash register company Rapi-Serv Cash Systems, Inc., and had evolved this plan. I spoke with Simon Ramo. He built the TR-106 a 650,000 lb hydrogen oxygen pintle fed rocket. This rocket was important - the pintle fed variety - because it is easily started and re-started and easily throttled through a broad range of thrusts. That’s why TRW built the LMDE using it, and its why Grumman bought TRW back in the day. Northrup was moving on to different services and wasn’t really making use of the pintle fed engine and I wanted it because I wanted to implement retropropulsion.I would done things differently. I would have paid Northrup $5 billion in a structured buy out. I would have used hydrogen and oxygen propellant. I would not have mentioned any of the far out things publicly that I put in my plan. Because holding back and building relationships to leverage skill across the industry builds value for shareholders - instead of building my ego! lol. I know what I know, and I don’t have to brag about it anyone else! lol. Though I do spend more time on Quora than some think I should.However, I am an analytical sort and I am pretty straightforward. I figured TRW was worth $5 billion and Northrup’s revenue from the company was such that they would do a structured buy out and I could afford it. I would need Northrup down the track anyway, so no worries there. I had a plan to get it all back anyway.Musk looked at the deal and saw the personnel were disgruntled and Northrup was in a legally sketchy situation if they tried to assert their rights over the IP given the nature of the advice they were giving the USAF at the time. Northrup themselves were also treating their treasured talent badly.So,Musk just talked up the core team, paid them handsomely and stole the IP from Northrup! lol. He won too! So, he picked up the IP for basically the cost of a court case and spent about $150 million to build a baby launcher. With profits there he built the RLV test articles called for in my original plan.Northrop Settles Rocket Dispute With SpaceXThose test articles the 15 ton and 60 ton vehicle now called the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy were the beginning of a ten year campaign to take over the aerospace industry and reshape it fundamentally. It doesn’t involve giving lectures and press releases about grandiose visions to inflate my ego. It involves building relationships and trust going forward and to coin a phrase - Make Aerospace Great Again!Here’s how.Instead of spouting grandiose plans, work hard to recover the vehicle, and work with other aerospace suppliers to build orbital hardware. In this way you build upon and benefit everyone in the industry, while maximising profit for SpaceX. Recall, you’re cutting costs by 15% for space launch, this increases volume by double given the Logistic Function for participation in space launch, and so, the companies your partner with double their revenue - as you capture 50% of all launches as profit. It benefits SpaceX shareholders greatly forCompetitors not to know what the hell your long term game plan isFor better capitalised competitors to see you as a niche player that takes all the risk and leaves them with all the easy money.In this way JV and relationships are built. It also makes best use and most profit from your employees - and you don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul to keep everything afloat needed to compete with better capitalised competitors. Rather, you work with others in the aerospace business in a way where you add value to all - and maximise shareholder return for all.SpaceX is laying off 10 percent of its workforceSpaceX can then use that profit to build StarLink with its JV partners, and launch them with their space vehicle partners, and capture the world’s wireless telecom services.There was no reason for SpaceX to build Dragon. Boeing had CST. They could have joint ventured with Boeing focused on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy - pick up the lion’s share of the profits of space launch. Convince NASA to abandon SLS and go with the heavy - there was just so much money wasted at SpaceX pursuing too much too soon too openly and not working with others when it built value for SpaceX shareholders.Now build a global wireless hotspot was making the rounds back in the day so I know Boeing would be open to JV along these lines. It was 1990s when I spoke with NASA and DOT.After that Gates and McCaw got Motorola and Boeing involved in Iridium at that time, which was an attempt to do this plan without a low-cost launcher. Though Gaubatz claimed Gates was going to buy DC-X from McDonnell but I never confirmed that.I told Gates at the time, commercial space launch is subsidised and you won’t be able to launch Iridium quickly enough because your prices will go up as you increase volume.Besides, the DoD folks who take National Security seriously, haven’t been brought up to speed yet - so there’s a lot of work to do on that end, as you build the rockets.Bill Gaubatz got the itch to do something as well and built the DC-X for about $55 million. As a failed SSTO - but he did some good work with retropropulsion - and making RL-10 deeply throttle -able - but it was never as good as the LDME and TRWs hardware. TRW wouldn’t deal with McDonnell for some reason and they worked instead with Pratt & Whitney. One of my professors at OSU, Garvin von Eschen, taught me propulsion physics and he built the RL-10 back in the day so through him I had connections there as well.Bottom line though, done rightly, something like StarLink, built with partners like Boeing Northrup and Lockheed, for the satellites, gives SpaceX the ability to capture $1.45 TRILLION PER YEAR IN PROFIT.This is the what’s on the table, and to succeed you need good partners who are well connected.Now, since you capture most of the revenue because you’re in a strategic position as the low cost launch provider on the planet, you turn your JV and relationships into a mergers and acquisition campaign with the help of Wall Street. Building trust among your JV partners helps you build trust on Wall Street.AFTER you are successful with StarLink you QUIETLY approach your JV partners who are also flush with cash - and negotiate the future of aviation.After you all come to an agreement you work closely with Boeing and Airbus to announce the BFR Spaceship on the conference circuit and get people excited about the future of sustainable aviation - as a single stage vehicle - capable of flying anywhere in 5 to 27 minutes airplanes today now fly in 2 to 20 hours.This was the vision of Philip Bono back in 1961 after hearing President Kennedy dedicate this nation to a moon landing.This was grabbed by the military through McDonnell Douglas lobbyists and turned into a weapons system -which killed any ability to commercialise it.Bono told JFK at the time this was the answer to the French SST. Militarising it killed it and kept it largely secret and alienated JFK.Today people only see it as a weapons system. It didn’t start out that way. It started out as an airline killer. That’s why you need powerful friends at Airbus and Boeing to make it happen. You don’t go out because you are an egomaniac and blab about it until you have the details worked out and powerful interests on your side to march in and make money changing the industry.This makes more sense because it makes use of EXISTING INVESTMENTS and it builds value for ALL SHAREHOLDERS both in SpaceX by not having to reinvent the wheel. At Boeing and Airbus by turning their production facilities over from build 3 airplanes a day to building 6 rockets a day - and for people to cut their airline costs in half, while doubling airline profits and tripling the number of people flying while reducing congestion. That’s all of what Earth to Earth does - Phil Bono saw it, I saw it, Simon Ramo saw it. We were not able to convince others though. Perhaps I can convince you reading this.Today there are 25,000 airplanes that carry 50 tons long distances at reasonable prices. These airplanes carry 10.6 million people each day to 106,000 locations in flights that last between 1 hour and 18 hours.These airplanes can be replaced by 3600 rockets capable of carrying 150 tons to a speed of 6.5 km/sec - which allows the rocket to fly wherever the airplane flies in minutes - burning less fuel - at less cost in flights that carry three times as many people three times as much cargo and do so in from 3 to 27 minutes.Today materials are such that airplanes can only be relied upon to work safely over 35,000 pressurisation cycles. 35,000 take offs and landings. This means that airplanes last about 27 years and travel between 135,000 to 165,000 km/yr. This means that 5 airplanes are discarded every two days - and are stored in airplane boneyards for spare parts and eventually recycling into new airplanes.The rockets to be competitive must be as good as the airplanes. They must last 35,000 flight cycles. There is no reason they cannot be. Give the engineering teams the goal the budget the resources - it will be done.With 35,000 flight cycles passenger rockets whose flights are only 5 minutes to 27 minutes NOT 1 hour to 18 hours - will take 24 months NOT 27 years to arrive at the bone yard. This means that 10 rockets per day will be retired and to support increased growth 12 rockets per day will replace them.Now, the spare parts business is an important profit centre for maintaining a safe and reliable fleet. 24 months life cycle largely eliminates this - and this is a problem. If you don’t make enough spare parts long enough - your economies of scale change.One way to address this is to retire the rockets after 83 weeks instead of 104 weeks and fly them into space - instead of flying them into the bone yard. This leave 5,000 flight cycles on the ships, and flying into space these take days for orbital operations, weeks for lunar operations, months for planetary operations, and years for outer planet operations. In short, we can extend the life of a rocket to 27 years by stretching out the last 5,000 flight cycles - and solve our spare parts problem. We also carry6/day * 5,000 trips * 150 people * 27 years = 44.35 billion passenger flightsNow, over this period population will grow to 11.6 billion people. This is four flights into space for every man woman and child alive today and all those who will be born over the next 30 years.So, the way this works is after you have transformed aviation to rocketry, within the 24 month period before the first rocket enters the first bone yard, you announce a buy back program of all vehicles that reach 6,000 flights. You give credit toward the purchase of a new rocket basically, and you outfit the old rocket to fly not 850 people for a few minutes but 150 people for monthsIn short, we have the capacity to send everyone across the solar system with discarded rockets from our passenger rocket fleet.With this lift capacity, and $1.45 trillion per year in wireless telecom revenue and the strength of Wall Street, we have the capacity to create a fund that supplies $33.39 trillion in infrastructure at the outset.That infrastructure of course earns a return as well, and as those returns come in, the ability expands along with the revenue.The first step is development of a city on the moon and the construction of a mass driver that launches raw material into space and launches raw materials back to Earth.Next, that material launched into space is caught at the Lagrange Points and solar power is used to process that material into useful stuff that first builds the station then builds solar power satellites so that the StarPower network can join the StarLink network even as you expand StarLink to incorporate the Interplanetary Internet - which Vint Cerf introduced a few decades ago during Iridium heyday. In this way your $1.45 trillion per year earned from telecom and the $0.82 trillion per year earned from air travel is added to with another $6.4 trillion earned from energy sales.Since the 1970 many advances in manufacturing have taken place. Eric Drexler created the field of nanotechnology. John Hall developed utility fog. Vik Olliver and Adrian Bowyer invented rep rap - the world’s first self replicating machine. Researchers are developing swarm robot operating systems and with AI and architronics these will transform manufacturing.The ability to send an intelligent self replicating utility fog to the moon and to Lagrange Points as well as Venus and Mars and the Asteroids greatly simplifies the operations outlined in the 1970s. A single BFR flight to the moon and to Lagrange Point five replaces hundreds of other flights and reduces the personnel from tens of thousands to hundreds. Reduces the time scale from decades to years.