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."

Comments

Re:This Is Something That SHOULD Be Outsourced

[wass]

What are you talking about, NASA has been outsourcing projects and components to private industry since its inception. Eg, Grumman Aircraft and Boeing, along with many other companies, contributed to the Apollo programs. Perkin Elmer produced the infamously flawed Hubble Telescope mirror, etc.

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.