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NASA to Privatize ISS Missions?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the farming-out-the-grunt-work dept.

Brian Young writes "Nasa is looking for private companies to take over the business of transporting astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. "'Certainly this is an opportunity for the new space companies,' said Jim Banke, head of Florida operations for The Space Foundation industry trade association. 'They've been lobbying NASA hard for something like this for years.' NASA hopes to supplement, and eventually replace, crew and cargo flights to the space station that had been planned for the shuttle fleet." One has to wonder how much money can be saved by NASA that can be put to use elsewhere, such as trying to figure out how to put together a manned mission to Mars, if they no longer have to dish out the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires."

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Duplicate! by Firethorn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dupe. See NASA Seeks Help Carrying Cargo Into Space

    I still think it's a good thing that might end up saving money if it's done right.

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    I don't read AC A human right
    1. Re:Duplicate! by georgewilliamherbert · · Score: 2, Informative

      The $500 million is hoped to fund several demonstrations, not one.

      It would be appalling if nobody was able to, at the end of this, also fly cheaper resupply missions than Shuttle's loaded mission cost (which is over $1 billion a flight now, with the lower flight rates post-Columbia).

  2. Money still comes from NASA... by blueeyedmick · · Score: 2, Informative

    I believe the money to pay for the payloads to the ISS will still come out of the NASA budget (for instance, the article mentions a $500 million price tag just to fund this privatization effort). NASA just hopes that the price tag will be less once competition takes over. And, I suspect they're correct, given the remarkably low cost of the recent X-prize contestants.

  3. Re:Yet another step.... by Cherita+Chen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Don't count on NASA going anywhere anytime soon. Shifting strategy, and scientific objectives, yes - but "an eventual demise", no. Though it is not widely advertised, NASA is embedded deeply in the defense research industry. This is a vital conduit for government contracts and congressional funding - all of this is outside the media-spun "Manned Missions" hype. Remeber, the DOD relies heavily on NASA for direction, new technology, etc...

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    I'm not fat, just big boned...
  4. Re:How much cheaper? by FleaPlus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Really, how much cheaper can we expect a private company to do this?

    Much, much more cheaply. The private space startup SpaceX is targeting the ISS contracts with their Falcon 9, which has a price of $35-$78 million. In contrast, a launch on an equivalent Boeing or Lockheed rocket costs up to $230 million, and a space shuttle launch costs somewhere between $500 million and a billion.

    The key thing to remember is that a truly private company has a direct incentive to make things cost-effectively. For a government agency the incentive is quite indirect, and in the case of a typical cost-plus contractor (i.e. Boeing or Lockheed), they actually make more money if a project costs more.

    And, seeing as how all "NASA" hardware is built by private contactors, how much of a difference are we really going to see?

    Again, the big difference here is that they'll be using fixed-price contracts for deliveries, rather than using cost-plus contracts.