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

Of course....

[cmowire]

...here's the big question...

NASA has a way of bowing to pressure where they will say, "Oh, sure, we'll open it up to ____" and then making sure it won't happen behind the scenes.

For example, neither the Soyuz nor the Shuttle comply with the standards they've set for spacecraft-that-may-operate-near-the-ISS. They were grandfathered in.

Re:Of course....

[FleaPlus]

NASA has a way of bowing to pressure where they will say, "Oh, sure, we'll open it up to ____" and then making sure it won't happen behind the scenes.

Indeed. For some recent examples of this, just check out this posting from NASA Watch.

One example: NASA Selects ATK to be Prime Contractor for First Stage of Next Generation Crew Launch Vehicle. Reader note from the page: "What is even more interesting is this was released during Thanksgiving week, with a due date of Dec. 2. How is anyone supposed to do the research required for even a minimal response in 7 working days? Somehow this doesn't seem fair or realistic." (It should also be mentioned that the solicitation was pretty much tailored so that only ATK could qualify.)

This Is Something That SHOULD Be Outsourced

[Anonymous Coward]

It was great we had NASA to jumpstart the space exploration field, and make the the USA the space superpower it is today, but now it's time that we turn it over the private sector. Private for-profit businesses can break the space doldrums we're in now.

Right now, NASA has become too distracted with political and budget battles to really take space technology to the next level. We need to see what the USA's brilliant minds in the private industries can do to keep the USA the best space power there is.

Re:This Is Something That SHOULD Be Outsourced

[R3d M3rcury]

While I agree with your sentiment, I can't say I agree with your take on private industries.

One of the arguments for the Shuttle and Space Station is that somewhat circular argument where we need a Space Shuttle to build the space station and we need a space station so the shuttle has somewhere to go. If you accept that there is a reason for men to be in space, I would argue, we don't need a spacecraft for two week missions and a spacecraft for six-month missions and it's better to keep the space station and ditch the shuttle.

The problem is that a big chunk of NASA's budget goes to supplying the space station and this is something that NASA needs to work on.

To me, what NASA is doing is essentially punting here--and I'm not convinced it's a bad idea. The space shuttle is a great, awesome, wonderful vehicle. But it's kind of an expensive way to send people back-and-forth to the space station. Some senator used the SUV analogy which I think is apropos here--you don't need an SUV to pick up the groceries.

Alot of the research and development of getting people back and forth to orbit has already been done. It's not a bad idea for NASA to get out of that business. After 40-some-odd years, I think the USA has proven that we can get people back and forth to orbit. There's still lots of things for people to do in orbit--which is what the space station is for. So if NASA can save money getting supplies and people up there by contracting it out to a third-party, I'm all for it.

If some researcher needs to be in orbit for some research, they pay NASA x dollars for room and board on the station (appropriately subsidized by the American taxpayer--x may be zero). They then pay somebody else y dollars to get them up there and back.

If anything, this gives NASA more money to devote to research and development of the next generation of space technology. I'm not as convinced as you that private industry would be the one to do this. At best, I could see private industry developing better rockets, etc. to get us up to orbit. But I'd count on NASA to come up with ways for me to actually live on the Moon, Mars, in orbit, etc.

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.

carrying cargo into space...

[penguin-collective]

Well, they can easily outsource--I mean it isn't rocket science. Oh, wait.

Re:Will this make NASA obsolete?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

If this happens, what purpose would Nasa serve?

NASA was created to yank aeronautics and space research out of the hands of the military. It is (or rather, should be) an agency dedicated to research, not hauling cargo in orbit. Things like that are done better by the Russians, the ESA and just about any country with spare headless transcontinental missiles.

Good, as long as...

[code65536]

I think this is good... as long as...

1/ I think that the core NASA missions should be kept at NASA for the sake of maintaining scientific integrity and also because it allows for riskier and more substantial undertakings. The grunt work of hauling cargo (which is what this is all about) is a good candidate for outsourcing, though. So as long as this doesn't turn into a slippery slope of a total NASA privatization...

2/ I am reserved about how effective this can be. Can the private sector really do it for a lower cost? Will they be able to do a good job? NASA is not very efficient, so hopefully this won't be that hard to achieve, but until they can show that private companies really can be as effective, I'll take this as wait-and-see.

And to comment on the article's constant mention of space start-ups: perhaps I shouldn't judge so much on just one incident, but the whole X-Prize thing did not serve as a good first impression for me personally for the private-sector start-up space industry. The kind of hoopula that went into what was essentially a glorified rocket plane that momentarily touched space and won by a design that was geared specifically towards meeting the winning requirements was really discouraging (like studying for a test by studying the test instead of the real material), and I fear that, at the moment, much of the talk about space start-ups in the US is just hype.

I am volunteering

[morcheeba]

I think if everyone works together, launching payload into space will be easy. If you got everyone in a medium-sized town (54,000 people) to cooperate and have each person lift just 6 feet, you could get the payload into space without expensive rockets. I am stepping up to the plate and personally offering to lift the payload from 5400 feet to 5406 feet. Any takers for "5394 to 5400" or "5406 to 5412"?

Re:Will this make NASA obsolete?

[vought]

If this happens, what purpose would Nasa serve?


How about rulemaking and safety standards?

The Department of Agriculture doesn't farm, and the FAA doesn't fly airplanes.

Businessweek article on SpaceX

[FleaPlus]

SpaceX is one of the private launch firms mentioned in the article and considered by many alt.spacers as the foremost contender for the ISS commercial crew & cargo contracts. Businessweek just published a pretty informative article on them, The Final Frontier At Costco Prices. Here's some relevant quotes from the article:

If SpaceX succeeds in lofting its rocket and an Air Force Academy research satellite into orbit, Musk will vindicate his vision and his investment. Financed almost entirely out of his own pocket, the company is the South Africa native's attempt to carve out a lucrative niche in the wildly expensive launch business. Musk believes that he can blast military and commercial satellites into space at Costco prices -- $6.7 million for a small payload and $38 million to $78 million for a heavyweight launch. By comparison, the Air Force's total cost for a Boeing or Lockheed Martin launch of a big payload comes to about $230 million, up from an inflation-adjusted $95 million in 1998. ...

So far, satellite customers have rewarded Musk's optimism with $200 million in advance launch contracts. The company faces just two problems. While SpaceX, based in El Segundo, Calif., has fired off plenty of press releases, it has yet to get a rocket off the ground. Its first launch, already two years behind schedule, was scrubbed on Nov. 26 because of a balky computer and a liquid-oxygen leak from a valve inadvertently left open. The company expects to try again in mid-December. ...

  Such rock-bottom fees -- and a belief in the reliability of SpaceX's gear -- have attracted a range of clients, from an unidentified U.S. intelligence agency to the Malaysian government to Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace. The startup is betting that companies will want to do research on the inflatable space stations it plans to put into orbit. ...

  Musk says he has overcome many technical hurdles by simplifying launch hardware. For example, SpaceX uses the same engine on all its stages instead of different units. Its electronics are on chips instead of circuit boards, which reduces wiring glitches. To slice costs, most SpaceX rocket stages are reusable instead of expendable. And SpaceX intends to save money by recovering sections from the ocean instead of rebuilding an entire rocket. Musk also brought a Silicon Valley business model to Southern California, forming a small, innovative, 150-employee company, a sharp contrast to the bureaucratic legions who toil on launches for Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. In an age of outsourcing, SpaceX makes its engines and boosters in-house to avoid high-priced suppliers such as Pratt & Whitney (UTX ), General Electric (GE ), and Rolls-Royce. If he used those manufacturers' components, Musk says, he would be trapped in "the high-cost culture of the space industry." ...

  For Musk, beating the big guys out of a share of the launch market is just the start. His ultimate goal is to turn everyone into a highflier by making launches so cheap, easy, and common that humans will become, in his words, "a space-faring, multiplanet species." Musk wants to colonize Mars as a backup planet because Earth is vulnerable to manmade and natural disasters. Beachfront property on the Red Planet? Maybe someday. But first, Musk has to get off the beach at Kwajalein and show the doubters that his rockets can soar as high as his rhetoric.

Go private.

[WindBourne]

Look, after Apollo 1, we were flying again within 9 months. After challenger, it took less than a year. Now, we are up to several years and will retire the equipment shortly thereafter. In addition, Nixon worked to kill NASA, Reagan scattered it in a million directions (without funding). Carter, Poppa Bush and clinton just went with the flow. The current bush now tasks them with going to the moon, but it appears that he will fund it less than what he did "no child left behind". About the only real leaders that we have had for the last 50 years, has been Eisenhower (road systems) and Kennedy (NASA amongst others). Plain and Simple, America's space systems can not be left to idiots.

Yes, private companies will crash and burn; literally. And people will die. Make no mistake about it. Private companies will lose ships and ppl. But these ppl will have died doing something that they believed in and was useful to not only America but the world as whole. Well worth the price.

NASA does not own and control space

[foolish_to_be_here]

Though we in the USA like to think that we control space and call all of the "shots", the reality is that China is well on it's way to puting us in second place in the next 10 years. Let's see, Russia and the European Space Agency routinely put rockets into space as does China. Japan, India, and even North Korea have rockets. Point is that if you want to hitch a ride into space, NASA is not the only show in town. NASA does not decide all who fly.