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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."
If its cheaper than the shuttle, and works just as well, why not?
Not to stir the pot, but think of how many space missions the war in Iraq could have paid for...
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A sub-orbital 90 second flight is not the same thing as what NASA usually does. These comparisons where NASA is ridiculed do not make sense.
Just swallow the pride and buy a few Soyuz .... too bad its built in the wrong congressional district .... :-(
This is despicable. We need to ensure that our astronauts are up in space. Down here, they try to kill each other.
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And a whole lot of other useful things like teachers, public housing, additional health care and other benefits to our country if we weren't spending our money somewhere else at the moment.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...considering that as of this morning, the Shuttle crew has turned into its very own episode of the Jerry Springer Show.
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I'd expect this issue to be brought up during the 2008 presidential campaign. It'd be highly unlikely for the US to abandon the shuttle program until a suitable replacement is found, given the current Chinese space program's ambitions. Remember - it doesn't matter how much it costs, as long as it makes the US #1.
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.
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.
NASA is a government agency, the purpose of which is to advance science in the fields of astrophysics, spaceflight and aeronautics. It does not exist to offer a commercial service to members of the public who wish to travel into space for recreation. To do so would be to give unfair privilege to the wealthy, and would take up time and payload capacity which could be better used for other purposes. If NASA is having trouble funding its operations, that would suggest that its budget is insufficent, and needs increasing. Were the Bush administration not to have gone tax-cut-happy the moment it came to power, NASA might have slightly more resources at its disposal.
However, the problem here seems to be partly developmental as well as funding based. If I recall correctly, a gap between the shuttle's retirement and the CEV's first launch was expected, just not of this duration.
Yeah, it's a "good thing" to funnel more tax money into the pockets of corporations. Oh how we love our corporate welfare state.
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Calling a sub-orbital jaunt a "trip into space" is like calling wading in the Pacific "deep sea diving". Rocket science is difficult and expensive. Only an few private firms can actually get a payload into orbit and if you give a quick google you can get video of quite a few of these guys blowing up on the pad, or failing to get orbit and other mission failing scenarios. So before you pile on NASA make note that it is still the pre-eminent spaceflight operation in the world. No other organization has done what NASA has done. None have even come close. (Full disclosure: I am an SA at NASA).
IMO, NASA should mothball the Shuttle immediately and put all its effort into developing the Ares system. They would have to re-manifest some crews and hardware aboard Soyuz and Proton rockets for the next few years, but that would allow their current engineering talent to focus exclusively on the new system, avoid the brain drain that Administrator Griffin fears, and save a bunch of money in the process. I bet with focus they could have flight-worthy hardware by 2010.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman
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.
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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.
All these Republicans and Libertarians do is weaken America.
Actually, I think they're generally indifferent to whether their policies strengthen America, weaken it, or whatever. To the Republicans, a policy or program is considered desirable if and only if it opens the federal treasury to their corporate patrons, who are subsequently expected to return a portion of the loot in the form of campaign contributions and other favors. Thus, privatization is a convenient and reliable way of converting taxpayers' money into campaign funds and continued power. It is the "marriage of State and corporate power" of which Mussolini spoke.
The privatization of the Iraq War is especially alarming, and not just because a lot of people close to the Bush admin are getting very, very rich. These contractors probably have more influence over events on the ground in Iraq than the military does, and they're largely unregulated. Might they have their own agenda? Is it in their collective interest for the war to come to an end, even in victory, if it stops the gravy train? Would it be unprecedented for greed and private financial interest to trump patriotism and our national interest?
The American people will still have a vibrant space agency, that can focus on exploration, rather than on space launch, which is rapidly becoming a normal, commercial business.
NASA's COTS contract also includes Rocketplane, which also includes demonstrations for ISS support.
The COTS contract was a polite way for Congress to buy some insurance in case Lockheed's Space Shuttle Replacement spins out of cost control in terms of either dollars or time.
Which I think is a great move as a taxpayer, having watched ISS cost much more than planned and delivering much less than expected.
We just need the safest, soonest, and cheapest way to get people and stuff into space. I don't care who does it, so Lockheed and those people at NASA in bed with Lockheed, watch out, you've got competition.
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There sure is a lot of misinformation in this thread. Here are some ideas I noticed that seem blatantly wrong.
1) There are private companies out there who can do what NASA is doing: If you RTFA, you'll notice that currently only the Shuttle and the Russian Progress and Soyuz ships can make it to the ISS. There may be a possibility of a JAXA craft or an ESA craft in the future. Both government built craft.
2) NASA is afraid/against private industry building space craft: Actually, NASA is highly in favor of a private company building a space ship to go to the ISS. They are actively funding two companies to help them build such a craft. In their current architecture, the CEV/CLV is not really going to be used for ISS. They would rather use a COTS solution for that.
3) We should leave all of space exploration up to private industry: Private industry will only do something if they know they can get money for it. Can you show me the business plan to make money off of trips to the moon? Trips to the ISS? Remember, you have to have a net profit on these endeavors. Until the cost and risk are reduced to manageable levels, the private industry will not do this on their own. The Russians did not get a net profit from their space tourists. They got a little extra money from a mission that had to happen anyway. Virgin Galactic may actually be able to make money by sending people into space, but that is sub-orbital. A huge difference between that and going to the ISS. The reason for government funding into areas like this is to promote activity in areas that are too costly or too risky for a company to do.
4) A magazine can take people to space: No, a Russian Soyuz capsule can take people to space.
That will do for now.
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.
Seastead this.
It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."
Yeah, sure, because the magazine will use its own launchers and launching pad and won't turn to a third party to organize the trip...
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As long as your party loyalty is more important to getting on the ballot than the content of your character, America is going to continue its slide into corruption.