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Publicly Funded Competition For NASA?
Wigs writes: "There's a nice article on spaceprojects.com about NASA's current competition, or rather the lack of it. From the article: 'The Microsoft antitrust litigation, as well as the consumer benifits resulting from AT&T's break-up, have substantially raised public awareness about the negative impact that monopolies can have on society. Many people who know much about NASA distrust it as well ... It seems NASA would benefit from having publicly funded competition, resembling what Japan's two competing civilian space agencies have.' I've heard that companies like United Space Alliance have looked into the possiblity of purchasing a shuttle, but have been shot down by NASA officials. Other companies looking to get into the single stage to orbit competition are Rotary Rocket, Kelly Space, and Pegasus (actually 3-stage). However, these are all private companies. This article discussing public funding, namely the National Science Foundation."
If the competitive model of the Japanese space program has so much to offer NASA, why haven't the Japanese landed on the moon?
U.S.A. RULES!!!
Space is the future. I know that sounds rather corny in this day and age but it is the truth. I have NO problem with my tax dollars being spent exploring space and paving the way for our eventual migration to places such as the moon or Mars. The international space station is only the very smallest of baby steps into space.
If NASA has become bogged down with beauracracy and a monopolistic mindset, then it is time that we shake it up a bit and put it back on its toes. A two-tiered space exploration policy would go a long ways towards doing that and keeping America out front in the quest to explore and yes conquer other worlds.
I'd hate to wake up one day and find that Japan or the EU has laid claim to the moon as soverign territory before we could. I'm not sure such a claim would hold water anymore no matter who made it, but still.
I'd like to see human colonies on the moon or Mars before I depart this earth. I believe that if the human race stays put here on earth, we will stagnate. As Frank Herbert said, the question of ecology is not how many individuals can survive in an environment, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do. With the world population growing at an exponential rate I don't think a good existence is going to be possible much longer.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I agree!
The russians have done amazing things considering the lack of funding (and technology) that some projects have gotten. And considering that it mir is the only long term space research lab at the moment (The shuttle can only go up for 14 days iirc) I say that trying to keep it going until the ISS comes fully online is a good thing (tm)
I also would have loved to see skylab put to better use. As far as I know, there was nothing wrong with it when they dumped it into the atmosphere. But I guess back in the '80s the economy was compleatly different (cold war etc.)
How would you know there is none? If there are blackholes in the universe, life form in one of the moon of Jupiter, then there will be a chance of the existen of alien.
Do you know anything about Set Theory? Do you know that Universal Set is not that really universal? Do you know that there is no largest prim number?
How can you elminate the chances of having another life form somewhere out there in the universe?
It's not about TV, it's about possibility and the probability!!!
Do you see who is the morn, ah? You should go read some articles and books about relativity. Also some of the Steven Hawkins' book too!!!
Yeah they know a lot about *living* in space. Its getting a ride home that they have problems with... Face it they are broke and no amount of money is going help the situation(unless of course Ross Perot decides to dump a load of cash for this mis-adventure).
Mojo
thats the most sarcastic statement i've heard in awhile. or is it not. Fed needs to stay the way it is :) to keep America and other parts of the world that rely on the American economy moving.
And of course, every volcano eruption puts out more pollutants and hydrocarbons than man has ever produced in all the years combined since the beginning of the industrial revolution. What's your point? The earth is big.. in fact.. some would call it enormous. Man couldn't destroy this planet if he wanted to. Sure, you could probably create some bacteria to wipe out the population but the planet will still be here laughing at us. It's been here for billions of years and it will be here for billions more. The age of man has come and it will go. Another form of life with rise on it and the cycle will continue. Haven't you ever seen Planet of the Apes dude?
You're right. Maybe the military should stop advertising. I mean, if they don't get enough recruits, they can always just implement the draft again. Nobody would mind, right?
Also, despite the link in the comment above about the USPS, from what I understand, the USPS never has to use taxpayers money. They are supposedly self-sufficient, operating off money only from their own revenue. I guess it's deciding what source you will believe after checking something like that out. Besides, I think the USPS does have competition. I know if I have to ship something important, I'm sending it FedEx or UPS. If I want to send a letter, I send email.
Spooon!
-N
Information wants to be a book
Yes, I find it funny. He he.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Basically, the idea of the omnibus legislative reform was this:
While NSF is one of the more obvious agencies that should have its own space program, just about any agency you can think of has some justification for engaging in some activity in space. Indeed, it makes more sense to move the Office of Commercial Space Transportation into it's own agency and disperse NASA's existing funding and programs to a wide variety of and Federal agencies for their own space activities than it does have a "space program" or even two "space programs".
Space isn't a program. It's a frontier.
Not only did we fail in this more ambitious legislative reform, we discovered that NASA was flagrantly violating our "successful" legislative reform, PL101-611 -- the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (requiring NASA to procure launch services only from the private sector) -- and no one in either the executive branch nor in Congress cared enough to take effective disciplinary action against NASA when the NASA inspector general's office failed to do so. This despite the fact that the intent of PL101-611 was both executive policy, initiated under Reagan (carried on under Bush), and public law. Similar flagrant violation of law greeted the grassroots Launch Voucher Experimental Program when it was passed.
In retrospect, the basic problem has been that people believed political action was the way to affect change in the US government's monopoly on frontiers.
It isn't.
The problem is the US government.
The US government prevented Russia from offering their launch services at the most competative prices it could afford because the US government wanted to protect its pet "big 3" launch companies, McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics and Martin Marrietta -- this at a time when the US government was decrying the potential abuse of underemployed Russian rocket technologists by "terrorist states" with money, and was trying to create make work programs for them to keep them employed under US funding.
This situation is now changing, which is a very healthy sign -- finally Russia may be able to make some hard cash by putting the US government and the EU in their respective places when it comes to orbital launch systems.
But if you, a nerd, really want to contribute to affecting change yourself, I have one thing to say to you:
Change the tools and you change the rules.
Seastead this.
NASA has been going downhill ever since they installed NT.
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
You're incorrect. Shareholders have a direct (no matter how weak) influence over the company they own shares in. The US public has no direct influence over NASA whatsoever. We also have almost no indirect influence, unless you happen to be one of the rich and powerful with connecctions in DC.
Take NASAs current Big Project, the ISS. It's a politcal show-piece, meant to garner home-district votes for some guys who can throw out high-dollar contracts, and as a nice "see how we can play together" boost for the rest.
--"I can't see what's stopping anyone setting up private competition to NASA"
The US government is. There's all sorts of rules and regulations about this sort of thing (including limiting all government contracts to NASA) that effectively block all private competition in the US. Up until a year or so ago, it was illegal for _any_ private company to bring things back from space, which set a rather obvious obstacle in the way of anyone trying to send up private manned missions. But don't worry, there's plenty more such left.
AC
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart
The US government is a breading ground for monopolies and questionable practices... In my state gambling is illegal and yet the state runs a billion dollar lottery business. Often people refer to the lottery as a "poor mans tax" because the average income of people who participate is lower than the state average.
Booze is sold by the state here..
The US military ADVERTISES on national television!
The US postal service, which could/should have competition ADVERTISES!
There is a laundry list of things like these... I think competition in space is just another example..
government makes more than the companies I want to support off my smoking habit...
it just plain sucks... </bitch>
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
I don't know about the cost of fuel alone, but a good estimate of the cost is ~$10000(US) per pound.
I am aware though, that politics will still play a role in what contracts go to who. There is very much an old boys network running in the US, especially were large amounts of money are involved. A possible solution could be to separate some of their people. A couple of key personel - who have contacts, could be taken to start up this new competition and have some sortcahnce at getting the new contracts. But not enough to seriously affect NASAs operation. This might also have the added advantage that NASA will have to study how the loses will affect them and get to know their operation a little more.
There are other considerations but I can't be bothered going over them. I think the main ones are here.
dnnrly
In science, the competition is doing a lot of damage. Scientists compete to publish their articles, if somebody hears about what others are doing, some will rush to publish it before others do, and the consequence is that scientists keep their ideas and working plans secret as long as they can, with a huge loss for scientific progress as a result.
What we need is rather cooperation. People need to give up their egos in the name of scientific progress, something that should be encouraged by funding agencies (those are the mechanism that drives the unhealthy competition).
As for the space race, it wasn't the competition that made it so successful, it was that they threw so enormous amounts of money at it. If that kind of funding was provided for science today, it would have been a different story alltogether.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I am constantly amazed by the great lengths that government bureaucrats will go to to avoid the hated specter of free enterprise capitalism in Space. It must be the terror that haunts their nightmares. Rich Robins proposal is just one more in a long series of ideas to "fix" NASA, none of which fix the basic problem of socialism in space. I will admit that I do support transferring all unmanned deep space science missions to the National Science Foundation, I also propose transferring Earth observation satellites to NOAA and USGS, but I do so as part of a much larger scheme to dismantle NASA, reducing it to the status of a manned space flight institute. Further, I propose that NASA or any other government agency not own or operate any space asset, but rely totally on a private commercial space industry. The Idea is to spread space knowledge and operational ability throughout industry and society. The original concept of "one NASA" was to concentrate all knowledge, expertise, and assets into one organization to beat the Soviets into Space, avoiding competition and duplication of effort. I think we won that race, the Russian space program is now almost totally dependent on NASA support. Having won the war however, we need to go back to our normal operational method of free enterprise capitalism, with government agencies restricted to non operational basic research, which is the right way to do things. NASA bureaucrats, take a deep breath, trust in the American Free Enterprise System, and take that bold step OUT of the space transportation business.
NASA's competition should be well-practiced in standard procedure. It's bad enough having those Russian "Jacks-of-all-trades" up there nearly giving the Earth a new asteroid belt of space junk.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The way I see it, NASA is a public company - it is owned by the American population via their taxes. Whereas Microsoft is owned by their shareholders. There's a big difference.
I can't see what's stopping anyone setting up private competition to NASA, but why should the American people have to pay to fund 2 space associations?
Disclaimer: BTW I'm British so it doesn't matter that much to me anyway...
Richy C.
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There's a problem with your logic... Basically with every space program, as opposed to military programs such as the JSV fighters and miscellaneous other systems, there's a 10-20 year lag for R&D... In other words, what's built around state of the art technology takes about 10 years to test and make sure it doesn't blow up (at least often)... The space shuttle was first penned around 1972, during the Nixon administration... NASA, which was still in the red with the Apollo missions, needed a low cost launch vehicle, and the shuttle was the closest thing, due to it's reusable nature...
So it went through 10 years of development and testing, WITH 1970's technology, until it's first launch in 1980, which at the time meant that it's hardware was 10 years out of date... Continuing on to 1990, when the first glass cockpit upgrades were researched, and 1998 when the first ones were being installed... YET AGAIN, 10 year old technology being implemented... The fact of the matter is, when ANYTHING goes into space research, it has to be proven to be reliable, to survive extremes of temperature and vibration, to a factor of hundreds of times more strenuous than the average aircraft hardware... Furthermore, chances are, thanks to the neanderthals in power, they had to prove a valid need for an upgrade to the shuttle system...
On a similar note, does anyone recall WHY NASA upgraded their 30 year old computer systems? Because a computer student was researching telemetry monitoring software on his li'l 386, at mission control (while they were using "tried and true" computer systems), and at that particular point, the ancient computers failed, RIGHT in the middle of a shuttle launch... So basically every technician was huddled around one desktop system, displaying every bit of telemetry previously displayed on dozens of terminals, and NASA finally admitted they needed to update that as well... And several hundreds of thousands to completely retrofit mission control sure as hell beat the cost of building the old mainframe...
The trick, you see, isn't to completely scrap any particular system... Take the Russians for example, they've been using Soyuz capsules for HOW long now? And that's a 30-40 y.o. tech right there... When they tried to scrap it to bring out their shuttle (Buran), guess what killed the Russian economy?
Even the X-33 project is built around 10-15 y.o. technology (even though it isn't even officially built yet), so lets scrap it now, it isn't even flying, it's costing us billions, and it's just as antiquated...
Lets implement restrictions that if anything uses technology more than one year old, that we throw it away and replace it with a new version built on new technology (like we do already with our computers)!!! Yeah!!! THAT'LL bolster the economy, WOW!!!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
"livre", which in the context looks like an unintentional typo for the expected adjective "libre" (free as in freedom of speach).
That's the joke. It's intended. I know that "libre" is "free". But I understand that "livre" is very similar and still it makes sense. It's funny, laugh. "Un livre" is not funny, it is too far from the original slogan. You have ruined my life.
I have even marked it out of the {EM} block. Are you reading it in Lynx?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Note (and I get to say this) this isn't flamebait..
:) I go through keyboards and I am extreamly lax about spelling...
:)
A little of both..
Hack it's the Internet...
I gotta learn to relax a bit more when people point out the obveous..
A better idea BTW is to e-mail me not post on Slashdot.. lot's and lots of people can't spell becouse english is a second language to them..
It's my primary language so I have no such excuse.. but then read my preveous comment about the education system and then look at my spelling.. Isn't it intresting the US education system says my spelling is good?
I don't actually exist.
So Mir is a piece of junk eh?
Tell me. How long has Mir been up there?
Now tell me for how long Skylab was up there?
Mir wins, by a long, long way.
Skylab refused to deploy one of its main solar panels on launch, and a rescue mission had to be sent to salvage it by putting up a kind of tarpaulin because there was a bloody great hole in the insulation!...
Skylab, the best the Americans had to offer, was a pile of short-term junk that didn't work from day one.
Mir, however, is solid technology that keeps on working even when you crash a spacecraft into it! Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.
I'm afraid, my American friends, that when it comes to long-term space travel, the Russians have more knowledge in their little fingers than in the whole of NASA.
Lift your glass of vodka and drink a health to the cosmonauts.
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
There are no fucking aliens you fucking moronic piece of slime.
There's no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy either.
Just grow up and stop watching crap TV shows before you lose your grip on reality even more...
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
...the best thing to do would be to make investments in space exploration/development tax deductable, as well as making all capital gains on such investments tax-free. That's far better than having to go thru a politically messy grant project, and much more likely to get funding to projects that will actually work. The justification for these tax breaks would be that this is extremely high-risk work in America's (heck, world's) long-term national interest.
OK Private competition is good in most areas, but NASA is a GOVERNMENT agency. What is next are we going to ask for privately held and funded competition in the military. I know I personally would not want a joint Sun Microsystems, AOL-Time Warner, Lockheed Martin airforce around. There is a point at which we as the citizenry must allow our government (or any government) to do it's job. While space exploration is an important scientific venture it should be regulated closely to prevent abuse. I am all for public-private cooperation on missions and goals. But, to have a full on competing seperate agency could lead to very dire ends. Imagine the ficticious SATLM-SA (Sun, AOL, Time-Warner, Lockheed-Martin Space Agency) putting up it's own LEO satellites with the expressed purpose of interfering with government held communications satellites, to become sole controllers of media and information distribution. With only a mission statement instead of a constitution there would be little to no philosophical or legally enforcable road block to this end if the power of the uber-company rivalled that of the government. This is only one orwellian end but with the track record of corporate abuse of power in the past (Kodak, U.S. Steel, Microsoft) I feel it is better to have a more directly regulatable entity in charge of something of such importance. At lease there are checks and balance to an extent in our government.
The reason is it's a bitch to make space projects profitable. Sure you can sell rides for 10 grand but you aren't going to get enough takers to make it worth your while. Its expensive to get people in space... If it was't then everyone would be doing it. anyone want to figur out how much fuel would cost to get 1 250 pound person in orbit?
I don't think the math for your proposal works out quite like that. There are indeed rail gun efforts under way, but none of them aim to eliminate rocket boosters altogether. The best you can hope for is a good push that reduces the size of the booster, but I doubt you can completely eliminate it. It's a long way through thick atmosphere into space, and once the vehicle leaves the rail, it is no longer accelerating. So it has to reach its maximum speed at the end of the rail, after which it will only (strongly) decelerate. I'd love to be proved wrong on that, really, but I don't think it'll quite work out that way.
I agree 100%. Maybe NASA itself could be structured in such a way as to have competing projects or something (though I'm not sure that's a really good idea either).
:(
I think that the real problem with NASA is that its mandate seems really fuzzy, and in a way that competition will probably only make worse. Already there are huge commercial pressures on NASA. It seems that the way that they keep their funding is by up-playing the commercial benefits of the space program to such an extent (we invented velcro!) in order to get funding from congress that any science somehow has to fit into that framework.
What I would like to see (as a tax paying American!) is guaranteed funding for NASA for an extended period of time, with a congressional mandate to pursue pure science.
Of course we know how congress feels about science
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Privatized police?
Omni Consumer Products has a killer app for that. Half human, half machine, a whole policeman!
Robocop!
(Imagine Microsoft Police division.)
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
"Homer Simpson for President! It'd be nice to have the intelligence finally!"
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Vote Homer Simpson for President!
Challenger was NOT a charade, it was an example of how normal government programs run: SNAFU.
The Space Shuttle design was chosen because it was the _least_ expensive of the options offered when originally bid. That it was among the highest per-launch costs didn't factor into the equation, nor did the fact that it was one of the technically weakest plans. The O-Ring problem was real, and was known... by the engineers involved (see Feynmain's comments during the later investigation). Administrators involved "re-adjusted" various technical information so as not to have to delay a high-publicity launch.
This sort of thing is exactly why we shouldn't be letting government have a monopoly here. Some twenty plus years after the Shuttle program was started, it hasn't lived up to more than one or two of the promises originally made.
Gee, where have we seen that before?
AC
If space is warped, time is all that's weft
Despite what we might like to think, that space travel will come tomorrow, that the pace will quicken, but it'll be several hundred years BEFORE the space program really gets going.
Now before you all scream, let me explain why I think the way I do. (ignoring historical exception cases like the Greenland Colonies and St. Bernard), large scale European Colonization/Travel to/of the the Americas took nearly 400 years to get going. Columbus sailed into town in 1492, but a hundred years later other than a few outposts like Vieux-Quebec, St Augustine, and Roanoke, not much else had been done. Large colonization didn't happen till the advent of the steamship, in the 1870s, when technology caught up.
At this point we are still at the crown jewels stage... Isabella, err I mean Hillary hauks her crown jewels and a new expedition heads off to the new world. Before large scale travel and colonization (no point in travelling if there is no where to travel *to*) happens there has to be a technological jump. The cost of getting there, and the time to get there needs to come down to reasonable levels. Dumping a billion bucks out the tail pipe to visit an airless rock may get astronomy nuts like me excited but it's something that only the richest governments and corporations can even begin to ponder.
The first change that needs to happen is that we need to find a cheap and efficient way to get large quantities of manufacutered goods into LEO that doesn't require sticking them atop a candle made of LOX and lighting it off.
Flip over to another industry, the one that rights my pay check, and likely yours, the computer industry. EINAIC fired up in 1942? Altair put out the first "personal machine" in 1976? The PC followed when? We didn't see "revolution" though till the mid 1990s, 50 years afterwards?
So be paitent while the industry gets going... but if it follows the standard development track, the age of government funded dinosaurs will have to come to an end and then it'll go into large "contractors" doing it, and eventually the technology will become so prevelant and everyday that everyone'll do it.
Creating another government agency to compeet with nasa isn't going to do anyone or anything any good. Get it out of the public sector into the private sector... get technological innovation going. Robert Zubrin's Mar's group has a great idea on how to get that going. Rather than having NASA pay for hardware, have NASA award prizes. NASA wants a manned Mars mission. Award 2 billion to the organization that meets the correct set of criteria. AND I'm quite sure you won't have satellites crashing into Mars because of English/Metric conversion errors.
The military industrial complex that had come to prominence in the space and aeronautical industries during the cold war and in the process giving them enormous political leverage should be allowed to come to dominate the direction of humanity's exploration in space. That direction should be made with a scientific mentality.
Though far-fetched in light of humanity's current position, but do we really want the interests of a profit-driven corporation be placed before the scientific and diplomatic interests of a government agency if humanity encounters alien life in future?
MashPotato - Mobile Array of Support Helpers for Potato
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
And how do you suppose to compare the perfomance of one police with another?
How many people they arrest?
How many people are convicted?
How do you think a profit orientated police with emphasis on the above goals would act?
IRC, Belgium has several concurrent police agencies.
The concurrency between them lead(s?) to serious problems.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Also... Orbital. The company, not the seminal and insanely great techno group.
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I'm surprised though, that noone has pointed out that the NSF already funds space research. So does the NIH. So do a number of private foundations. They just all go through NASA because you can't pick up a space shuttle at CarMax
Removing the A from NASA, I get NAS - Network Attached Storage... hmmmm, now if I could only get a NASA, I'd have room for all those extra mp3s...
either that or NS (National Semiconductor, Network Support, or Nova Scotia...)...
Last time I checked, Nova Scotia wasn'y spying on me, but... you never know...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
about This guy. Seriously, anyone have an update on the soon-to-be-late Mr. Walker? Has he blown himself up yet?
Bart: "So this means I'm going to be a failure, Dad?"
Homer: "Yes son, a spectacular one."
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
I have seen several space exploration documentaries detailing how poorly funded the Russian space prgram is. That is why their program is inferior; their scientists are intelligent, but they don't have the $ todo things correctly. For example, on one space staion (not the Mir I believe) they had to supply it every so often, so they did this with a docking satellite. They just put it in orbit, and computer controlled it from the ground to docking, then dumped it into deep space. Howver, someone in charge decided they didn't need to spend the (considerable) amount of $ installing the remote-computer controlled system (which allowed precision docking from the ground) on a disposable satellite, and instead to use the people on the space station to dock it manually (using remote hand controls and looking out the porthole!). Unfortunately, it's really hard to judge speed in space, and when they tried this it hit the station at about 70 mph, causing serious damage and almost killing everyone on board.
Anyway, the point of this rambling is that you can't privately fund a space effort; it just takes way too much $, and the only profitablity (at this point) is orbiting private satellites. There is NO $ to be made in exploring Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc.
That's the whole reason for government, isn't it? To pay for things which are good for us all, but which nobody will do privately 'cause they just wouldn't make any $ doing it? Or to say it another way, to take more of our money than we would ever choose to pay, to fund something that will (presumably) benefit everyone but no-one is willing to pay for?
> Not something I'd put a person in at first, ...
Oh.. I could think of a few persons I'd like to put in there...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
How long ago was that?
Nasa right now relys on results for it's budget. Some other agentcys (education) rely on a LACK of results (We need more money... we are doing soo bad.. we need more money) when poor results can equal more funding quallity drops through the floor.
Nasa has to worry about producing results to justify it's existence.. It is not a self justifying entity. And it is a private entity..
If two space agentcys were to compeate on budget they budget would likely go to the one who is worst off.. the successful agentcy dosn't need more money.. the failure dose...
I don't know how to aproch the rewarding falure issue (if I did this isn't the right topic) but I'm pritty sure sence Nasa is allready fighting for a budget it is quite posable the alternitive could be the groundwork for turnning Nasa into a self justifying agentcy and use failure to prove it's need for more money.
As long as Nasa itself is lone and continues to be reguarded as "helpful" as long as it produces worthy results.. it will not need to compeate on failure.
In any case I doupt the budget exists for TWO space agentcys in the United States...
I don't actually exist.
MashPotato - Mobile Array of Support Helpers for Potato
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
a private company would actually have to be concerned that the money it spent wasn't just bundled up and shot into space never to be seen again.
Nasa is long past it's usefulness. Privatize the space industry.
________
Precisely, that's why the maglev rail guns are under investigation. But eliminating the boosters altogether would be quite hard.
As a practicing engineer in the aerospace business working for a private company, I'm personally and professionally insulted that you would suggest that we would not build a safe and reliable vehicle.
Aparently you lack the basic understanding of how to run a business. Yes, you have to make money. But you don't do it by killing people. If you've got four man rated spacecraft, and you loose one to an accident you face numerous problems. First, you kissed goodbye a large capital investment that can never be recovered. Second, you've brought upon yourself the hell known as the legal system, which may dog you until you're bankrupt. Third, if people believe the system is unreliable there is no way in hell they are going to fly on it, thus destroying that revenue stream. If your business is built on puting people in space, congratulations you've put yourself out of business, you're a failure and have no money. There is no incentive whatsoever to design and build an unsafe or unreliable vehicle. NONE.
The flipside is this. What if it were completely left to the government? Would it be safe? Probably. Would it be behind schedule? YES. Would it be too expensive for all but the government to be able to afford to operate it? YES. What if the gov't looses one of four vehicles to an accident? You've still lost the large capital investment. Will legal troubles dog the program? Maybe, but they won't put the gov't out of business. Will the gov't shutdown if they loose a spacecraft and crew? Nah, build another and put more people in it (baring minor modifications, that is exactly what we did after challenger). The revenue stream is not dependant on paying customers, but on people's tax dollars.
Noone forces you to smoke cigarettes. Noone forces you to drive an unsafe vehicle. Noone is going to force you to go into space. Oh, but if the gov't were left to selling cigarettes, they would be safe to smoke. Gov't cars would be high quality, safe, and affordable. Yeah. Right. Driven a Russian car lately? As bad as GM is, there are many more that are worse.
If the US gov't depended on paying customers to fly the space shuttle, they would have suspended operations back in the early 80's.
BTW, please tell me. What incentive does the government have in building a safe, reliable and affordable launch vehicle?
WE DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS HERE.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have every BIT as much right to veto a bill as our President does
Except for the fact that millions of people have expressed their desire to give this person the ability to veto a bill, saying that they trust his opinion and that they will allow him to have a say on the future of their lives for next few years. The same cannot be said about you.
I'm not american, but I also live in an elected dictatorship, err, democracy, So I understand the idea behind it. Yes, I agree there is too little granularity. You may want to have the president share some of your opinions, but no one shares all of them, you have to choose the lesser evil. Still, It is a fairly good system, and until something better comes along, I like it as it is.
AC (wondering if your post should've been moderated up as funny instead)
You got a link on that? I'd be quite interested in reading up on that...
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I think NASA's glory days are over. For the last three decades they've pretty much been coasting on the Apollo program success, the shuttles notwithstanding (which were conceived at the height of their success anyway). They've done little remotely innovative since then.
The ESA operates on very different principles. From day one they were more of a commercial venture rather than a prestige program. Of course, part of the reason for that was that they knew it was futile to try to outspend the Americans. Europeans are notoriously reluctant to spend money on big technology without the prospect of ROI. I'm sure exceptions exist, but as a rule that's pretty true. So the ESA has slowly chipped away at the commercial satellite market, and unbeknownst to most, they're now the largest satellite launcher in the world. The fact is, until we start mining asteroids or what have you, satellites are the only lucrative space business.
My feeling is that--like Airbus--the ESA will fairly quietly work away at it, until one day they'll just happen to be the number one player (ok, so Airbus hasn't been that quiet really, but the ESA certainly has). I think one key element of that success will be the development of SSTO technology. I've been reading the ESA web pages (in particular DASA), and more than NASA almost they seem to be under the impression that SSTO will be the only way to REALLY make money in the long run. They view the Ariane launchers as strictly a short-term money making technology, but nothing to base the future on.
Basically, until we can literally take off into space from a runway and return with the exact same vehicle, space travel will still be in its infancy and considered brute force technology. The longer we fool around with concepts like the Venture Star, which fights the atmosphere every step of the way into orbit, instead of taking advantage of it, the longer it will take to REALLY get into space.
Whoever modded this crap to inssightful is a fucking stupid prick. Insightful. Go blow up a McDonald's to stop the "world corporate hegemony" Dickless moron. Both whoever wrote this and the treehugging jackal that modded it. Morons.
Cool conspiracy theory! But isn't it a little circumscribed? What about the Trilateral Commission? And the Pope? Aren't they involved too? What about the Russian mafioso?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Oh gosh that's fucking brilliant. "I honestly hope you die very soon." What did you have to put down your Statbuck's to type that? Why didn't you register, prick? Or did I distract you from masturbating all over your bondage photos of Pat Buchanan's she-male sister flogging Hillary in the shower? Fuck yourself. And try to drag your flabby 45 year old ass to the gym once in a while. You can at least spend some of that stock option money on a health club membership.
If you weren't as ignorant as the rest of the sheep, you would know that Mir is in bad shape because it's been up there for more than double it's intended lifespan.
It was launched in February of '86, and was designed for six years of use. Considering it's been hanging there for 14 years, I'd say it's in pretty damn GOOD shape.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
This just won't work. It may help somewhat. But the reason that competition works in the marketplace is that customers choose which product to buy and which company to buy from based on which best meets their needs. Those needs may be the lowest price, the best quality, the most conveniently located store, or any of a number of other factors.
Now, lets examine publically funded space programs. That's a good phrase, "publically funded". It tells us where the money is coming from. All of the tax payers foot the bill. Now, who decides where to make the purchase? Government officials. Note, I did not say "the government". I meant that this decision is made by specific people. Their motives may be laudable, but they cannot know the full and various motivations of the people whose money they are spending.
David Friedman gives a good explanation of Public Choice Theory in the second half of Chapter 19: The Political Marketplace of his book Price Theory: An Intermediate Text.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
The Pegasus is just one of the launch vehicles used by Orbital Sciences Corporation (http://www.orbital.com). Competition DOES exist in this field already. Go look up the Commercial Space Act. True, there are no private companies using reusable or manned vehicles, but that's simply a matter of economics; there's no money in it right now. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, OSC, and Sea Launch are all conducting commercial launch operations in the US (or at least FROM the US, in the case of Sea Launch.)
What would be gained by competition in the manned space arena? And how can competition possibly work when it's simply not profitable for ANYONE? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more manned space flight (and it still pisses me off that they cancelled the west coast Shuttle program), but I don't see competition as being realistic right now.
There has been a continuous cycle in NASA between efforts to reduce costs, and demands to increase safety. The shuttle is designed with triple redundant systems (fail-operate, fail-operate, fail-safe I believe it's called) and in a competitive, cost-concious commercial environment there may be more of a tendency to rely on redundant systems to reduce operating costs, at the expense of safety.
More manned space launch operators means more potential for accidents. Can you imagine what another Challenger would do to the future of America's manned space program in today's political climate?
Amen! I can't believe the original poster neglected Orbital Sciences Corporation.
OSC produces and launches the Taurus and Pegasus rockets for all sorts of customers.
The Pegasus is the air-launched vehicle mentioned in the article. The Taurus is the Pegasus upper stage with a larger lower stage for ground launching. Pegasus launches started in 1991, and Taurus launches in 1995 (both dates are IIRC from my days doing safety design review at Vandenberg).
The Pegasus link in the post is flawed, as only test launches were done from B-52's. Now OSC has it's very own Lockheed Tri-Star from which to launch.
Anyway, this really should have been in the original post. : )
--Ben
--Ben
also
kistler
and
beal
and they actually have funding (although I'm sure they could use more )
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
But,
If we split the 'funds' between two large organizations I think we could start getting less results for the amount of money the Gov spends.
Secondly, if it's a private company, we would have to worry about safety, I mean will human lives be put at risk at the 'Cost of doing business?' And what new organization will have to be created to 'police' the startups? Because, you better believe the gov. is going to want to watch who is touching that high tech low drag equipment!
LFS. Have you built your system today?
This has got to be the absolute worst idea I have heard today.
Maybe if we didn't make it nearly impossible for private companies to compete with NASA, this wouldn't be a problem.
Seriously folks, anyone who even remotely cares about the size of government should be very troubled by this absurd proposal.
Moreover the assertion that subcontracting costs more than doing it inhouse is unsupported (unless you talking about subcontracting to Lockheed or McD, then I can believe it).
Having said that, there are some very good people at NASA, but mostly engineers and scientists. If I had my druthers, I'd prefer far fewer middle-management administrators, more engineers and scientists, a fair and open competition to replace the aging shuttles (by private companies), get NASA out of the launch business, and most resources going to research and development (both scientific and engineering) instead of operations.
Competition is what drove the space program. Now that there aren't as many "firsts" to achieve, NASA could use a good swift kick to go after those that are left (Mars, Pluto and the ISS).
Goat - the other, other white meat.
The United States was founded on the principle that everyone should be able to do whatever they want, and that the government shouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it. I have every BIT as much right to veto a bill as our President does, I don't have a SPECK less justification than the Atomic Energy Commission does for building breeder reactors, and I have every DROP as much privilege to assassinate foreign leaders as the CIA does. I should be able to shut down restaurants for health violations, decide who is mentally competent to stand trial, and set environmental regulations, and so should you!
One mayor per city, one congressman per district, one governor per state, one president per nation: it's an absolute, monopolizing terror. So when the time comes to vote this November, don't let the instructions fool you into marking only one box. Competition's the name of the game: mark them all!
Thank you.
Bruce
Bruce
You are the real Bruce Perens.
In addition to the private ventures mentioned, here are some others:
CFFC
JP Aerospace
Microcosm
Pioneer Rocketplane
Jerry Pournelle has suggested making it a prize competition. You want a space station? The US government puts up a prize (I forget Jerry's number) of say $7.5 Billion to the first outfit that can put it in orbit, service it for some number of months and reach an operational cost at some fixed value, depreciation, etc. Do the same for a moon base, just juggle the numbers. No pre-payment! Outcome: competition, cooperation, risk taking, all kinds of good stuff. No more cost plus fiascos or bloated bureaucracies
"To be creative, it's not necessary that you're seeing a new thing, but that you're looking at the same things in a new way" - Dieter Gruen
Many people think that money is wasted on NASA, and that it would be better spent solving problems on Earth. These people are blind to the terrestrial solutions NASA has provided, and to the fact that Earth's resources will be used up one day.
My point is that we currently have one agency with one set of agenda, and the least amount of duplication of effort. If you have more than one agency, they will have to share the same pie as one, will duplicate effort, and may well have conflicting agenda.
As someone pointed out earlier, competition does not work for everything. The United States is a representive democracy. It has people representing us throught various spheres of influence. We elect them on the basis that we don't have the time or experiance to make certain decisions. While we should keep an eye on what they are doing, we have decided to live in this representitive government, and as such give some trust to those who have the time and the expertise.
Competition looks like the right direction. While ideally it would be purely commercial an intermediate step of government-supported commercial ventures might be the practical way to move in that direction. But why the NSF? I'm not saying I'm against it, I just wonder what agenda might be behind the writer's insistence that the NSF is the right vehicle.
Amen equality elimination of class distinction and removal of closed mindedness. It didn't work on earth maybe it will in "the stars"
Rotary Rocket
Money spent to date: $32 million
Progress to date: A flying atmopsheric test vehicle, and a working cooled combustion chamber design.
Estimated development budget: $200 Million
NASA's X-33 program
Money spent to date: $1 BILLION
Progress to date: A failed fuel tank, and a design that calls for 5000 lbs of lead ballast in the nose. No working hardware.
Estimated development budget: $5 Billion, but realistically, ghod only knows.
I think the numbers speak for themselves. Of course, Rotary is out of business because they couldn't raise any more money. And even if the X-33 program is successful, we won't get an orbital vehicle out of it -- just a suborbital "proof of concept" ship.
Government space programs suck.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
I wholeheartedly hope that NASA's private sector competition (in this country, at least) remains as minimal as possible.
NASA has to fight for funding for its projects at every turn. They often can't win those fights.
If another US organization starts duplicating many of NASA's efforts, but is privately funded, how obligated do you think Congress will feel to continue NASA's funding? Best case scenario, it will never see another raise, and will likely be cut with ever reevaluation.
And what happens if/when the funding for the private sector dries up? Sure, the satellite business has proven profitable. What about the low down R&D, though, what about the frontier exploring? Will they take that up? I highly doubt it. Opportunity for profit there likely won't exist for a *very* long time.
Manned spaceflight for 40 years.
More daunting technological challenges than other forms of transport...certainly.
Periods of governmental neglect...no question.
And yet...
40 years of manned flight.
No interplanetary manned exploration (lunar doesn't count).
No lunar exploration...in thirty years.
No permanent lunar base.
No permanent orbital facility. This halfassed little publicity stunt they're building now...a publicity stunt.
Halfassed deep probes. Better, faster, cheaper....failure. The last time a truly successful deep space mission was pulled off I was 11 years old and had an Atari 2600.
No orbital manufacturing.
No work...not even concepts...on asteroid recovery and mining.
End product since Voyager....dick.
That's right....DICK.
Hubble is very cute. Brilliant for pure science. How many years did it take to get fixed?
Oh no wait...
Advances in materials sciences?
Stimulation and creation of semiconductor industry?
Proof of concept for human exploration and exploitation of space?
Oh no...wait...all that work was done by 1975.
25 years...AND NOTHING.
25 years of pissing away the hopes and dreams of an entire generation of young people who could have been challenged by a true "new frontier."
Instead we spent the quarter century watching Nixon lie, Reagan vegetate, and micromanaging Clinton's dick.
Fucking pathetic.
Fuck NASA. They're done. People will have to do it for themselves. The pioneers always do. My generation is lost. They're too busy chucking bricks at McDonald's in Prague to do anything useful.
And the boomers made them that way. Fuck it.
Screw public funding. Its a waste.
Until some crazed billionaire rigs his own vehicle and drags a nickel-iron rock back from the Belt all this bullshit is pissing in the wind.
40 years ago my parents got "we choose to do these things not because they are easy...but because they are hard."
I got: "...I did not have sexual relations...with that woman..."
What a fucking waste.
Maybe my grandchildren will cross the new frontier.
The boomers never let me.
How about competition in government departments? Let's split IRS, DOJ, FBI and so on... Let's have at least two active presidents.
Hear hear. If we Americans could build things to last longer than their intended use, we'd have internet startups that would last more than 3 years. :)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Competition works well in a free market because the metric by which competitors are measured is both well-defined and easily agreed upon by all. Whoever makes the most money is the best competitor.
I understand what you're saying, but private-sector does not necessarily mean for-profit. Competition is quite present among not-for-profit private organizations.
Example A: Private, voluntary charities like United Way, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, free clinics, etc.
Example B: Private preschool and K-12 schools, and the growing national networks of charter schools, private schools and school management companies like Edison Schools, Success For All, Hirsch Core Knowledge schools, Thomas Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, and Replications, Inc. Many if not most of these are not-for-profit.
These organizations and not-for-profit corporations have to compete with each other for funding, a.k.a. voluntary contributions. They have to earn the trust and financial support of donors by showing integrity, effectiveness and fiscal responsibility.
In contrast, government agencies are generally... how do you say in America? Wasteful and ineffective? NASA seems to be *slightly* better run than the average federal agency, but it would seem there is room for a lot of improvement.
My point with this long-ass, sleep-deprived, love-the-free-market rant is:
Why couldn't we have a space exploration effort run by a private, not-for-profit organization? Or even several competing ones? Set up a secure credit card form, get linked on Slashdot - boom! There's startup capital. I'm sure some heads here would also be into poring over some (non-critical :) code, and donating CPU cycles. We could do it up all international-like, get everyone involved open-source stylee, and do away with the silly 'national space program' penis-size contests.
Is someone already working on this? Or am I just ahead of my time again? :)
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- researched faster
- more innovative
- no burden on taxpayers
- able to get results
I can't imagine anything else being true. Of course, this may be my knee-jerk reaction to only ever seeing publically funded space exploration, but...Think of it this way - in a monopoly the shareholders are the ones who really can benefit. We are all shareholders in NASA (Americans) so we can all benefit. All a second Gov't agency would do is reduce exploration and increase bourocrocy.
Figure fuel at $.50/pound, liquid oxygen at $.10/pound, and a mass-ratio of about 3 pounds oxygen to 1 pound fuel; your total cost runs to (.10 * .75 + .50 * .25) = $.20/pound. The total fuel cost would be between $3800 and $9500 to get that one person to orbit. Ultralight re-entry vehicles could cut this a bit, less efficient (but cheaper) launch vehicles would boost it, trading cheaper hardware for more fuel.
I've heard that companies like United Space Alliance have looked into the possiblity of purchasing a shuttle, but have been shot down by NASA officials.
Pun intended?
There is a very capable space agency desperately looking for funding. For science and peace's sake, if you really want to fund space projects outside NASA, support the Russian sapce agency.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Space programs, on the other hand, are not entirely profit-motivated enterprises. While a lot of NASA is commercially motivated in some way, there's a significant chunk that is better classified as a science organization. Private companies will do science to the extent that they can make money on it, but typically this leaves a lot of work undone. Here's a hypothetical: Would a private company have built and deployed the Hubble telescope? I think not. Hubble was (and is) very expensive, but fundamentally unprofitable, in an accounting sense. Yet I'd argue it's worth every penny and more for the scientific work that it's done.
I think it's a great idea to privatise as much of the space agency as is commercially viable, but there's still a huge role for NASA to do work that is in the nation's interest, but may not be entirely profitable.
Removing the A from NASA you would get ...
... It seems NSA would benefit from having publicly funded competition,
Many people who know much about NSA distrust it as well
So hey, lets set up a rival to the NSA, publicly funded of course! That'll make us feel sooo much safer!
Err, no. Lets not. 2 sets of spooks would be so much worse.
--- imh
Why stay within one country? Nationality should be open to competition as well.
The states, no, the cities, no, everybody should be able to decide which country they live in.
Have you forgot when the CEO of USA, Lincoln, used monopolistic techniques to crush the competition of the CSA?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
For starters, competition could result in lower quality to affect the prices to get the assignment. Of course this does not mean it always does but you can guess that with sums of money as large as they are now to get something into orbit the choice for a cheaper competitor looks very appealing.
Second, what would the competition do? Bringing satelites into orbit ? Or manned spacemissions as well? In the latter case the technologie needed should be aquired at what cost? Could we get patentwars in space propulsion techniques or heat resistant shield usage? There are too many angles to this than meets the eye. Far more than what i point out here.. If money rules space aviation than things could get worse then ever.
Besides. Who will pay for all the different projects and "space agencies" out there? The tax payer? Wealthy industries / persons? And if the wealthy industries / persons pay for the ride who would control what they do with the satelites up there? No-one to check if things are done correctly..
I would like to see government enacted space agencies for the moment. They probably abuse the system as well but at least it is for a common goal and not for something else. Maybe a coordination effort like the ISS is needed to propel space exploration to unknown hights (pun not intended) and not comercialising the playing field...
Aliens.... cool
I should point out that there is a good deal of internal competition between NASA's various labs and centers. In hypothetical example, if there's a planetary survey mission going into Earth orbit, both Goddard and JPL might try to land the project. Decisions are made not only on the basis of cost, but also expertise and experience.
I agree that having more than one space agency would create huge costs of redundancy. NASA does not now have carte blanche to spend money; they fight to justify their budget every year in front of Congress, who I know *I* elect at least partly based on their support for scientific endeavors such as these. And the agency is chronically underfunded, and this squeeze may have contributed to recent management/engineering failures (think Mars Probe).
NASA does things not because they are profitable, but to create knowledge and to explore the solar system. There's something to be said for allowing them some amount of independence, to investigate interesting problems without interference from politics or the whims of public opinion. We do this not because we support the particular projects NASA is involved in (though we might find them exciting and be willing to pay for them on that basis) or because there are specific social benefits we want to get out of them (though often there are, especially for earth-based investigation). The primary motive for *independence* is that historically, some of the greatest innovations and discoveries have been made in areas that most people thought were economically and socially worthless lines of investigation.
Off the top of my head,
Beland
The popularity of the TV show 'Survivor' gave me an idea on how to fund the space program:
Put a bunch of astronauts into a big space station filled with lots of TV cameras. Every week, they vote on one astronaut to kick off the station, and blow him/her out the airlock. I guarantee that the TV ratings would be so insanely great that the advertising revenue could fund the space program for years!
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We should get the DOJ's antitrust division to sue NASA for being a monopoly and split it into two pieces.
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Hate to tell you, but you unknowingly stumbled upon some truth.
The Challenger actually was originally something of a mock-up. From the beginning, it was STA-099- thats Structural Test Article 099. It was built to the same specs the Enterprise (OVO-101) was built to. Subsequently, the Enterprise (which was originally going to be called the Constitution- the trekkies got the name changed) was found to be too weak for actual operations (specifically the wings), and was grounded- it's now more of a display piece than anything. They then replaced the wings of the Challenger with up-to-new-spec wings and used it as an orbiter, changing the designator to OVO-099. Didn't have anything at all to do with the distruction, but just kinda interesting.
Not that I'm under the dilusion that anyone will read this, except perhaps the author (nice troll, sx). Just a little bit of interesting stuff.
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
Punching holes in the ozone??? huh am I missing somthing?
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
Having grown up watching the space program grow and fall (yes, I'm _that_ old), I'm constantly amazed at the stupuidity that NASA now displays. I truly think the Fed should disband NASA and disperse the people that belong to it to various smaller projects. These smaller projects (research, military, whatever) would then be required to use private launch vehicles. This would then allow for grant based or some other means of funding to go to private, competing companies. Why the hell wouldn't NASA sell a shuttle to that one private company? They know that a private concern would be able to get the thing off the ground more efficiently and cheaper to boot. One of this country's foundations is capitolism and NASA just can't play nice in that arena.
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
>It seems NASA would benefit from having publicly funded competition, resembling what Japan's two competing civilian space agencies have.
Perhaps a look at Japan's space agencies is in order. Their home-grown rocket program has been a disaster, and the blame is often placed on lack of a single agency.
Basically they want the National Science Foundation to compete with NASA. Part of the reasoning is that the NSF would outsource almost all of its projects. Well, NASA already subcontracts almost everything - and there are only so many aerospace companies out there. So now instead of bidding against each other for a NASA contract, they get to bid against each other for an NSF contract. And now you might have NSF and NASA bidding against each other for a contractor's work, which if anything would drive prices up.
I think NASA itself needs reform, but I don't think that bringing free-market philosophy to the space program is the solution.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!