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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."
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.)
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.
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
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
...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.
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
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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
Also... Orbital. The company, not the seminal and insanely great techno group.
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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?
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.
Precisely, that's why the maglev rail guns are under investigation. But eliminating the boosters altogether would be quite hard.
WE DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS HERE.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
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
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.
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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?
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.
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
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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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...
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.
>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.