Slashdot Mirror
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."
$$$ 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
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.
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.
Worker saftey and standards are somthing that shouldnt be shoved aside in the quest for scientific advancement on the cheap...
If people are willing to take the risk, why not let them. Certainly when worker safety is being compromised through exploitation it might be worth worrying about, but I fail to believe that the test pilots for SpaceShipOne didn't have every option to decline to fly. They were being paid plenty of money to voluntarily take a risk. If they choose to take the risk let them.
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.
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
So let's say the idea is 10 mil to get a man into orbit. OK, so they do it for 3 million. So they find a more cost effective way of doing things, which can be used in future spaceflight technology, and leads to greater savings in the long run.
But far more important that that, there's no way for the project like this to go overbuget. Look at the history of the shuttle, and you'll see a project that far exceeded it's initial cost estimate. Once you've sunk a few billion, though, it's a hard to back out and lose everything to save a billion or two. Especially when you've made promises to everyone and their mother to get the funding in the first place. This is what really saves you money.
As for the idea that companies wouldn't take the financial risks if uncertain of a reward, it's demonstrably untrue. This happens in the world of defense contracts all the time. Most large defense contractors, especially in areospace, have lost large sums of money developing prototypes, in failed bids to secure larger contracts.
As a final note, there are already congressmen who have made careers out of attacking NASA's budget. They point to the billions invested in space flight, and the lack of any visible progress. I can't imagine a program that guarantees results would make that any easier.
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.
You're probably a troll. Congratulations. Why does Congress, or you, have the right to determine the risks that others will take for science? Living is dangerous. Even though thousands of humans are killed every year in car accidents, people still drive. Taking on that "ordinary" risk is acceptable, and yet taking on greater risk for the possibility of greater rewards isn't? Are legislators better at determining at determining what risks individuals should take than the individuals themselves? We're not talking about sweatshops where children are locked into virtual slavery: the engineers, pilots, and entrepreneurs who create and run small aerospace corporations are educated, experienced, and capable both of finding less risky positions and making informed decisions about their own safety. Who gave Congress, or you, the authority to make decisions for them?
Should it be legal for people to climb mountains, to paraglide, to skate aggressively, to drink alcohol, etc? Should it be legal for them to tinker with high-power engines, dangerous chemicals and sharp knifes in their garages, as long as they don't violate local regulations and don't endanger their neighbours? And if yes, why it should be illegal to start a company that would send a human to Moon in a risky way, as long as they don't violate existing labour safety and other laws and everyone working there understands and accepts the risk?
There is nothing wrong with people risking their lives as long as they know what they are doing and do it voluntarily.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.