Slashdot Mirror
NASA Considers Privatizing Space Shuttles
panopticon was among the many who submitted a BBC story talking about NASA considering privatizing the space shuttles as a cost saving measure since those pesky shuttles cost $400M every time we throw one up into orbit. The article really doesn't say much beyond that.
...Not this guy. Personally Im holding my wallet until the firesale on public buildings. The Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument and GoldenGate bridge... now thats a good investment. With the right re-naming, cross-marketing, and brand management strategy these are sure fire money makers!
"The SubtleNuance Statue Of Plutocracy"... A Monument to Capitalism and Entrepreneurial Spirit.®© Now thats a sure winner. God Bless America(TM)!
Next you know we'll be seeing :
Kellog's US Navy
MSArmy
Verizon Air Force
Kotex US Marines
(And, no, I have nothing against any armed forces. Kotex Marines just sounded funnier than any other.)
If I remember correctly, NASA tried to find a buyer for the Shuttles in the 1980s....
The reason no one bought them then, and the reason no one will buy them now, is the horrid expense of launching & reusing them - for example, on return to Earth, the Space Shuttle Main Engines are pulled, shipped to California, rebuilt to spec, and tested for ~75% of their design lifetime - any deviation during this test period results in the engine being scrapped. The Shuttle is an old design, and it wasn't efficient when it was new. Or consider the Solid Rocket Boosters, which actually cost more to retrieve and reuse than disposable boosters would.
The BBC quotes a figure of US$400 million, but the total development cost of the Shuttle program is *much* higher - some figures I've seen give a total cost per launch of over US$1.5 billion.
I think the solution to bringing down launch costs is to "open" the space program - let private companies build new launch vehicles, and have NASA test and certify them. This would allow NASA to perform more basic research, much like its predecessor the National Advisory Commitee for Aeronautics did from 1915 to 1958. This research, in turn, would lead to a new generation of launch vehicles.
I'm not a rabid NASA-hater like some out there, but I do think the agency has too much to do, with too many people, and too small of a budget.
---------------
Vpered na Mars!
Take a look at the 50+ generation. They had the moon in their grasp and they turned their back.
How many experimental craft have been 'scrapped' for 'budget cuts'- the government is a big, slow, uninteresting beast that plows over ideas. Whatever happeend to the dream of SSTO (single stage to orbit)?
Throw 'market share' and a chance for profit in, then you have some businesses interested. Contractors don't deliver on time? Dock them. Don't coddle them.
The moon was ours once... now every time I step outside at night and look up I see another example of failure.
Venimus, vidimus, fugimus
This is not really new. United Space Alliance, the LLC bastard child
of Boeing and Lockheed Martin has approached NASA before about buying
or leasing a shuttle. I believe USA was particularly interested in
Columbia because it has the lightest schedule during certain phases of
Space Station construction. Outgoing NASA agency head Dan Goldin was
reported to be all in favor of going forward, but the center director
at JSC, one George Abbey Sr., was opposed and blocked the deal.
The new emphasis on privatizing the program is a push by the new Bush
administration, and was a bit of a surprise to many at USA. "Out of
the blue" is how it was described to me. However, USA does not expect
much to come of the new push anytime soon because three key positions
at NASA are now vacant: Abbey has retired at JSC, Goldin is on his way
out, and NASA Office of Space Flight assistant administrator Joe
Rothenberg has announced his retirement. USA execs are NOT actively
pursuing privatization discussions with NASA, and cannot realistically
do so until these positions are filled.
In other words, don't look for a privately owned or operated shuttle
any time soon.
Anyone who read Richard Feynman's report on the Challenger explosion knows the Shuttle design process was flawed from the beginning. Exhaustive testing of material tolerances and other bottom-up procedures used in modern aircraft design were ignored in the Shuttle design process.
It costs so much for every flight because they basically have to rebuild the engine after every run. Parts that were not designed to wear fall apart or develop stress fractures in a single run.
I would support privatization 100% if they would give Boeing or Lockheed a contract to redesign the shuttle based on what we have learned from the current design and its flaws. NASA bureaucratic BS was responsible for allowing many of those flaws to exist. Feynman asked, "Do NASA managers even TALK to the engineers they're managing?" Privatization of maintaining the existing fleet wouldn't save nearly as much money as a new design would.
include $sig;
1;
The more important step is to keep NASA from screwing up the next generation of space launch vehicles. Remember, the Space Shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than conventional rockets, but thanks largely to NASA it wound up being more like an order of magnitude more expensive.
I believe it is crucial for the US to move our space launch development from a beaurocratic process to a market-based process. I feel it will lower the cost of launch, and provide impetus to try alternative approaches that have been ignored by NASA.
I'd treat space launch capability like a utility. Just as the government must buy the electricity that people generate back into the power grid, I'd mandate that the government must buy a certain number of flights from all qualified vendors within a certain time frame after they come on line.
Specifically:
Yes, if enough companies came forward and built working launch systems it might cost more than, for instance, the two billion NASA has spent on X-33. But we'd have many times more working launch systems! As X-33 so amply proved, we cannot expect a beaurocratic approach to give us even one working next-gen system for the same amount of cash.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
How did it ever get to the point where one of our greatest and proudest institutions needs to privitize one of their greatest resources in order to keep going?
...everyone would rather let them get on with and have removed the intolerable burden of decision making.
We no longer have the same urgent need for a space program that we had when we first developed it. NASA was never *just* about idle scientific curiosity. It was about developing the technologies needed for national defense and showing that technical superiority off to the rest of the world, for the sake of national prestige and it's accompanying international influence. When the Russians sent up Sputnik we were not shocked and dismayed because we thought that they might find out interesting facts about quasars before us but because they demonstrated the technical ability required to make *other* things like ICBM's, spy & communications satellites etc. We went to the moon to prove to ourselves and the world that we were capable of even more than the Russians - scientific exploration was a nice justification and byproduct. Today we have proven our technological, economic and military superiority, NASA no longer has those other more urgent (and more fundamentally related to the actual purpose of government) tasks and is left with the scientific exploration pretext and beaurocratic inertia.
No other country in the world comes close to the US in terms of economic might, and yet it is near-third-world nations like China that are now expanding their space programs as we are selling off ours
China is expanding their space program for the same reasons we no longer have. They are developing the technology to build ICBM's. Prior to the leaks of technology from western firms for the sake of the Chinese space program they did not have missles capable of hitting the continental USA - now they do. They are also concerned with proving their national greatness to placate their own populace and to increase their international influence. And finally as a very nice side bonus (and their pretext) they are acting as a private company would and seeking to make a profit. India wants to do the same things - particularly because of their rivalry with China.
No, this is just another symptom of the long, slow decline of the US into a narcissistic corporate paradise as the rest of the world forges on ahead of us into the future.
If the corporations can find a way to make a buck off of space we will far surpass the rest of the world in forging ahead into the future.
It seems the only people here with any kind of enthusiasm are the ones that want to control your lives...
In general it is government that *controls* your life - just think about what the word "government" means. In this example I as an individual may not WANT to support the space program but I am forced to by the government under the threat of fines, imprisonment and if I resist the ultimate force of government is the policemans gun. If I don't want to buy a Wintel computer I may forgoe using some computer programs and have occasional compatibility problems transfering files to other computers but Bill Gates can't put me in jail.
Again, you have it 180 degrees backwards. The private sector is generally a realm of many choices and lots of decisions. Government usually does not give you much choice. In the private sector I have a decision whether or not to support a non-profit scientific organization seeking to land on the moon. There may be many such non-profits to choose from or there may be any number of similar commercial projects whose products (space tours, astroid mined minerals, whatever) I have the decision to buy or not. If government decides to support such I project my only decision is whether I'm willing to go to jail to NOT support the project.
There are good arguments for government involvement in just about anything, but increased individual decision making and decreased control of the individuals life are most emphatically NOT among them.