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NASA Hoping To Create Super X-Prizes
Rei writes "NASA is attempting to use a strategy of handing out contracts as prizes, akin to the Ansari X-Prize, instead of the contractor-preferred method of bidding and having payment before work is completed. They are hoping to have prizes worth as much as one billion dollars. The only hitch? Congress won't let them."
Special Interests.
Monstar L
$$$ is expensive, and I don't know if you've noticed, but the federal government isn't exactly bathing in money, what with the largest federal deficit and all.
The Political Programmer
Nasa should set standards for the work they want completed, and have it done in a safe manner
They are trying to cut corners by shifting the RISK of death off their own astronaughts and test pilots to those of outside contractors many of whom in the case of the original X- Prise were working on the super cheap and therefore were much more dangerous than should be tolerated..
Even the winner who HAD decent backing had a few moments without complete control in EACH of their flights -
I think folks would have reacted very differently to the winning vehicle had it tumbled back into the atmosphere and burned up killing the pilot.. which was a not unlikely outcome
Worker saftey and standards are somthing that shouldnt be shoved aside in the quest for scientific advancement on the cheap...
2 cents
well, of course not, because it's "One Million Dollars" --Dr. Evil.
Congress doesn't care if a contractor gets actual results. All they care about is milking the various contractors for re-election contributions. Those who give the most get the contracts. That is so obvious that even a rocket-scientist should be able to figure it out.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It could scare off the big companies, but that would allow smaller companies to get a foothold in the industry. Sounds like a good thing to me.
The article states the problem NASA is facing: "Under the agency's old way of doing business, officials decided what they wanted built, asked private companies to bid on building it, then awarded a contract to the lower acceptable bidder - who often was located in an important Congressional district." I hope that there is still an honest man in Congress that would push for them to pass a bill to allow NASA to do this.
It turns out that big rewards to solve real problems does seem to work and I think the US Gov't should go way out with the rewards for the hard problems.
For example give a billion dollars to the person(s) and not the company the comes up with a cure for aids. If someone does win the prize, then look at the cost savings over the long run. In the case of aids, a billion dollar one off payment is cheap.
So you are objecting to the principle of NASA paying for actually getting results instead of drawing up attractive proposals? Yes people will need backing to be able to produce results to claim the prize, but there is a big payoff if it works: the prize money. The benefit for NASA is they get to pay for proven results. Considering the amount of money they've spent on the past on "proposals" (for instance they spent over a hundred million on reusable suborbital craft that never made it off the drawing board) paying for results instead seems like a pretty good idea.
The real reason Congress is objecting is because there's no control over to whom the money gets awarded, so they can't trade pork for getting it done in their congressional district.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Easy they wouldn't be able to control which team "wins" since the best product would win rather than the winner being picked by the current "political process" of lowest bidder/cost overruns.
Big Corporation won't like it, because it'll take money out of their pocket, and the congressmen have to look out for corporations. For the people, my ass. It's all about who's putting food on the other's table, and if you think congressmen aren't in Lockheed and others' pocketbooks, well, have I got a tin foil hat with your name on it.
NASA should not do anyhting of the sort here. For one, who is to say they won't overpay for something? I mean even if they offered a prize somewere more reasonable like around 10 million dollars, what if the first company to "make it work" could do it for 3 million. That means nasa has just waisted 7 million dollars that could have went to another project.
Also, if the prize isn't large enough, some of the major players capable of making things happen might stay away form competing because of not having enough money to compete or because the return on investment is too low.
Now ask yourself, If you was the CEO of a large publicaly traded company, how many times would your investor/board of directors let you compete in good faith When after spending X amount of money to acomplish goals X and Z, your bigest competitor beats you to the punch and your out X amount of dollars and little hope of recycleing the research that went into it.
The X-prize worked for what it was intended for because that was the sum of money to make it attractive for other buisinesses to get into the market and that money wasn't competing with any other projects. (IE.. There wasn't any other projects needing the money like an international space station of a space shuttle overhaul to make it safer.) Also the money for the Xprize was colected by donation were people gladly risked thier money with little chance of return outside a market being developed. With NASA the moneys are colected from taxes and sometimes comercial missions, you need to justify what is being spent if you expect to get it and you have to qualify/spend the budget in order to get it again the next year.
Eventualy this will echo with claims of a $200 toilet seat or a $1200 step ladder and every new congressman trying to get re-elected will jump on the waist in an attemp to "clean up washington" so they can get re-elected. I don't think we want NASA to become a political venture so congressmen make a name for themselves. NOBODY really likes paying taxes and would soon see this as a reason to cut NASA's funding. They would have a fit when some bitter company that was competing started telling the newspapers they could build a simular product for millions less in an effort to get congress to award them a contract.
If NASA way of doing buisiness nedds reform, this is definatly not the way to do it. And anyone that thinks this is a way for the little guy to get thier foot into the door should reconsider the situation. IT favors the large guy with tons of money and a research base alrwady in existance form ealier contracts.
So rewarding open ended contracts, often leading to billions of dollars wasted on dead end projects is being more careful with your money than making companies produce results *BEFORE* they're paid?
That's an interesting take on this, IMO.
Precisely. Congress won't vote to dramatically increase NASA's ability to award prizes, because they lose control over the ability to grab pork for their constituencies. Even if prizes are restricted to Americans (likely, since they don't want to be awarding multi-million dollar prizes to foreign economies), the chances are essentially n/300 million, where n is the number of people in any particular Congressman's district, that a prize will be awarded where that Congressman wants it to be. Now, for a state like Texas, with about 8 percent of the nation's population, a one-in-twelve roll of the dice might be okay, but it probably still doesn't compete with their average take on contracts, which I (without any evidence) seem to think is higher.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Not quite. NASA is trying desperately to remain relevant, as well as retain control over space exploration. The whole space exploration thing has been a wonderful bit of PR for NASA's military research.
Let's face it- for forty years NASA has told everyone that space flight is risky, only perfect, super-smart people can travel into space, and that there's only one way to do it- the Orbiter. During those forty years they've putzed around space, done lots of experiments, lots of simulations and calculations, quietly helped develop a lot of military technology...and come up with various designs for alternatives to the Orbiter and dismissed all of them, probably because they like the status quo, but also because they've been obsessed with making one vehicle do everything, instead of just accepting that you use cargo rockets for cargo, and people ships for people; NASA is like a Soccer Mom, convinced they need a giant hulking vehicle just to toodle to the supermarket and pick up the dry cleaning.
NASA is, as far as technical knowledge is concerned, one of the best equipped organizations to develop something like a new space vehicle. But they were not the ones who ultimately succeeded. Scaled Composites showed up with a nice, small, sexy craft that looks very much this-decade. It uses a pair of jet engines and a single main rocket, and the whole thing could probably fit inside the Orbiter bay several times over, but still carries the same # of people, roughly. NASA is embarassed out of their minds.
Yes, NASA's efforts over the last 40 years have made it possible, but the agency that should have been in the best position, it turns out, was in the worst- and distracted with military projects (do you really think a mach 10+ mini-plane is for peace, love, and understanding? Phbt. It's for delivering tactical nukes very, very quickly from across the globe to better project US military strength).
It's a very typical power move you see in corporations and the public sector all the time. If the other guy's ideas start to endanger you, suddenly embrace his ideas and position yourself as the ideal candidate to manage that guy.
Please help metamoderate.
Damn that congress for getting in the way of awarding an X-Prize!
--Later---
Damn that congress! NASA gave another technology contact to Microsoft!
So what would people say if NASA asked for a new technology and the best entry was from a company with ties to the sitting president? Or a company with a bad reputation, such as SCO?
A NASA X-Prize could become a magnet very for political charges of contract favoritism. NASA has managed to remain a government agency without the stigma of being partisan to one party. That changes the moment people think NASA is offering sweetheart contracts to companies with friends in high places.
what costs, NASA is one of the least funded us agencies. Every time more money is needed for something else their budget is slashed becuase they are the least politically valuable to congress. This is just another example of such a move. Just goes to show, politics and science dont mix well together
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Because it's not reality that gets congressmen elected. It's the perceptions.
Also the special interest don't CARE about the overal picture in a congressional distict or state, the only care about thier specific picture. Why would they back a congressman that would make them actually compete, rather than just hand out contracts to the highest bidders (donations to political campain, not contract bids).
I'm not saying what you said makes no sense, I'm saying it makes to much sense.
Mycroft
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