NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space

MattSparkes writes "Budget cuts could leave NASA without a Space Shuttle replacement, and leave it reliant on private firms to get payloads into space. A similar scenario happened between 1975 and 1981 when NASA made the transition from Apollo to the Space Shuttle. It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."

Comments

Cost Effective?

[Anonymous Coward]

If its cheaper than the shuttle, and works just as well, why not?

Re:Cost Effective?

[b0s0z0ku]

I think I'd rather just give the government less money and make them pick the lowest cost supplier that can meet the business requirements and take less of our money so we can choose to spend it where we want.

Except that the tax money is coming back to Americans -- in the form of wages, stock dividends, purchases from other US companies, local property taxes -- and even some obscure stuff like corporate university research grants. If you're dealing with tax money that was TAKEN from Americans, I'd rather have it stay within the US.

-b.

Sorry, but I had to

[matr0x_x]

Not to stir the pot, but think of how many space missions the war in Iraq could have paid for...

Re:Sorry, but I had to

[b4stard]

... a government has a right to maintain a military and defend a nation as it sees fit ...

That's creepy. "as it sees fit".

If there is value in space exploration, let that be done by the private sector, who has a fiduciary incentive to not waste money.

That's probably valid for stuff that pays off quickly. Long term stuff, like the survival of our species, is not gonna attract many for-profit organizations AFAICS. And yes, I do believe the colonization of space is essential for humanity's long term survival.

Also, FWIW, NASA makes you yanks look good world wide, which you might benefit from someday. In these times of dubya and "war on terror", I'm certain stuff like NASA helps alot of us non-americans to keep a nuanced view of your nation.

This isn't so strange

[MobyDisk]

The US government doesn't design and build trucks. If they need something shipped, they use a shipping company. If the president needs to make a speech, they buy microphones and pay TV stations. Space should be no different.

This is just a small step toward the commercialization of space, and the use of off-the-shelf parts to get a job done. Perhaps one day, the Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, and Scaled Composites will be bidding to deliver the next satellite into orbit around Mars.

Magazine vs NASA

[jonnythan]

I'm no rocket scientist, but I think there's a big difference between:

1) Sending someone on a sub-orbital flight at 62 miles altitude and;

2) Bringing several working payloads into space, docking with a space station at 236 miles altitude, and performing orbital repairs on satellites at 355 miles altitude.

It's not like NASA is so incompetent that some private firm is beating them at this whole space thing.

Re:A tragic and pathetic end for NASA

[east coast]

NASA is just a wasteful old baby-boomer pipe dream.

On the plus side you must recognize that NASA is putting out a lot of research that is free to the public. This is going to be a keystone in the future of private space flight ventures. So while I agree that NASA is riding the edge of usefulness they have contributed a lot and still have room to contribute more in the areas where the private sector would not see enough ROI on some projects. This pure research could still offer a lot in the overall understanding of what it's going to take to get people into space, what it's going to take to keep them there on a functional basis and a reason to go that offers a profit motive to corporations.

Without profit motive the private sector is going to be just as slow, if not slower, than NASA. We'd have to ride the coat tails of philanthropy into the final frontier. That's not exactly a glowing prospect.

Re:Star Wars

[Bastian]

Right now, the Space Shuttle is only infrequently used to launch satellites. The vast majority of them (military and otherwise) are launched with standard rockets. It's much cheaper to just launch the satellite, rather than launching the satellite plus a bunch of squishy bodies plus all the thousands and thousands of pounds of equipment it takes to keep those squishy bodies from going squish.

And we don't even need those squishy bodies there to successfully deploy a satellite; sending them up for such a mundane task is just wasting money and putting lives in danger for no good reason.

You mean NASA is going to follow the law?

[Baldrson]

Ever since the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (PL101-611) NASA has been required by LAW to purchase all launch services from the private sector that could be reasonably provided by the private sector. As the person who testified before Congress about the passage of that grass-roots law I was fairly galled by the invitation I received a few years later from NASA to sit in the VIP stand and watch them launch the Advanced Communication Technology Satellite upon a shuttle. Well, actually, by that time I had somewhat come to expect that it was hopeless for a grass-roots legislative effort to actually have an impact on a governmental behavior but to actually receive an invitation to see them blatantly violate the clear intent of the law was still annoying.