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NASA to Privatize ISS Missions?
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."
the recent X-prize contestants weren't exactly low cost,
For what it did, I think it was very low cost. Could you imagine NASA developing anything with the same capabilities as Space Ship One for 20 million dollars? The closest thing I can think of recently was the DC-X project back in the 90's, and that cost 58 million dollars.
They got nowhere close to what it takes to send crew / cargo to the ISS.
True, but the X-prize's goal wasn't orbit, just up to space and back down. It was eminently do-able, but nobody was doing it.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
It's a very clever move on NASA's part. For the cost of the reward, $20 million, they managed to get all the contestants to invest their money to do the research. Even if each contestant invested less than the $20 million, the sum of their research investment will add up to be more than $20 million, even if you discount for some redundancy in their research efforts. I think it's a very good example of using public money to promote private investment in something that will eventually benefit the public.
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