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NASA Seeks Help Carrying Cargo Into Space
Dotnaught writes "NASA wants to outsource space missions to the private sector. The government space agency on Tuesday announced the establishment of the Commercial Crew/Cargo Project Office at the Johnson Space Center as part of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The objective is to "create a market environment in which commercial space transportation services are available to Government and private sector customers." Proposals are due February 10, 2006."
If this happens, what purpose would Nasa serve?
The funding Nasa gets for scientific works could be diverted to researching at universities directly who could then use the funding pay private space companies to run the experiments.
NASA has outlived its usefulness as an astronaut ferry operator. It's shown in the past few years that it is unable to reliably send astronauts into orbit or to even provide aid to the international space station.
This is good.
There are several large problems with having NASA in charge of space flight, and one of those is that it's the government tightly controlling who flies and who doesn't. If you aren't selected as an astronaut, you aren't going. Period. That means that it's just not feasible for the private sector to come up with NEO vehicles because NASA just won't allow it. No NEOVs, no rapid intercontinental travel, no business case.
So government here ought to do what only it can do, finance good ideas. Get out of the business of trying to do this space travel stuff on their own and turn over that money to the private sector who will find ways of doing the same more cheaply and more economically and more safely than any government boondoggle could hope to imagine.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
This will help provide some much needed incentive for companies to invest in space beyond satellites and the dreams of a few nutty billionairs. We need more SpaceShip1 s and genuenly American pioneers like this guy...http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/e 08989c49db84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
Demented But Determined.
In fact, many of the problems on NASA missions are due to outsourced companies providing sub-par work, cutting corners, and over-billing NASA. In other words, they've grown fat and dependent on NASA's pork. For a current example, there are companies outsourced to build parts for one of the replacement cameras on Hubble that will hopefully get launched. I've heard 'horror' stories about the outsourced work. One company made filters that used an epoxy not rated for space's thermal or vacuum conditions, and the filters are basically non-functional. They want to charge NASA double the price to make another round of proper filters. Another company made some electronic parts that should have been built in a cleanroom but they used a sweatshop in Puerto Rico. There are pictures showing pictures of shirtless guys covered in sweat assembling these electronics when they hould be wearing bunnysuits in a cleanroom. Of course, working yield was less than 25%, and they refuse to produce more or give NASA a discount. And these stories are only within the past 5 years, it's probably been worse throughout history.
The problem isn't with NASA, the problem is with NASA's bureaucracy demanding that certain tasks be outsourced when it could be far more efficient to produce in-house. NASA has amazing fabrication resources, but for various political reasons they give pork projects to industry. Now if NASA had to spend $100,000 to develop an op-amp that could be bought for $5, obviously that's a waste. But if they spend $10 Million to pay a company to develop new filters, when they could develop themselves in proper cleanrooms and with proper thermal-vac testing for only $5 Million, then it makes sense to keep it in-house.
The other problem is that certain companies are greedy with these NASA 'pork' projects, and they will charge NASA more money for a project than they'd charge another business. Unfortunately NASA's bureaucracy makes them outsource such projects at ripoff prices, in order to add pork for the various Congressmen in an area.
make world, not war
Other start-up firms that have expressed interest in NASA's space station business include t/Space, SpaceDev, Constellation Services International, AirLaunch LLC, SpaceHab, Andrews Space, Rocketplane Ltd., TACO BELL, Universal Space Lines and Bigelow Aerospace, according to an Excel spreadsheet on NASA's procurement Web site. Did anyone miss this ? Taco Bell wants to start sending stuff into orbit? I guess they plan on storing the Gas from there customers to propel there rockets into low and high orbit?
Customers didn't have a choice. The zero crashes a year thing only started happening since after 2001. Until then, while flying was safer than driving, you had no idea which plane was poorly maintained.
Such safe quality of service is expensive, and this is one of the reasons airlines are going out of business now.
Go do a google on GM - their CEOs actually found it was cheaper to eat a bunch of lawsuits over defective and dangerous cars than to recall them, or make them safer. You can betcha the same rule will apply to private space transport.
And big business would love to get rid of the FAA. Failing that they'll look for ways around it. Like flying cargo out of another country...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Considering that the EM railgun is far closer to production than any space elevator, perhaps the DoD could release their research data on the railgun to private enterprise. I can see it now - a 10 MegaWatt nuclear reactor used to power railguns capable of delivering SST-sized (shuttle) payloads into LEO. Of course, this approach is unworkable for delivering living beings into space, due to initial G forces.