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NASA Does a U-Turn, Opens To Private Industry
mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics is reporting that NASA — faced with the looming retirement of the space shuttle, and planning for longer missions like the one to Mars we've been discussing — is looking to free up its budget and depend a lot more on private space startups to carry key payloads into orbit in the next few years. For an agency so steeped in bureaucracy, it seems like everyone from NASA chief Mike Griffin to contracted officials to the key players in this in-depth podcast roundtable is finally acknowledging that commercial rocketeering (space tourists aside) is a more efficient means of getting back into space for NASA. Quoting: 'Because of a new focus for NASA's strategic investments — not to mention incentives like the Ansari X Prize, which spurred the space-tourism business, and the Google Lunar X Prize, which could do the same for payloads — private-sector spaceships could be ready for government service soon, says Sam Scimemi, who heads NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. "The industry has grown up," he tells PM. "It used to be that only NASA or the Air Force could do such things."'"
That very few people actually work for NASA as opposed to "NASA contractors", as such, saying that NASA is "opening to private industry" is just ignorant.
When NASA stops offering "cost plus" contracts to the usual suspects (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc) then you can have a big celebration, but until then its just business as usual.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Only 2 years late on this story. *sigh* I remember when I could read Popular Mechanics and learn new things.
The most recent detail in that article dates back to three months ago when NASA re-awarded to Orbital Sciences the funds that Rocketplane Kistler forfeited when they failed to meet their milestones.
Also, it's not like NASA has been closed to private industry before. The true story of the Fisher space pen is a small, but great example. NASA just doesn't typically provide open-ended opportunities like this, much less with discretionary development funding.
Lets not be too negative. At least it's turning in the right direction. They might not really be walking down that path yet as we all hope they do, but getting them to look to the right direction is something better than nothing.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
It was bound to happen, it had been brewing since the draw down of the Clinton years, and they are finally admitting it, NASA is mainly a non-government organization. Just like the military, which has yet to truly admit it (but they have in a way), things are mostly done by outside contractors or civilian employees making more than they could if they worked for the military doing the same job. Or tax dollars at work!!
This isn't an about-face. The fact of the matter is that NASA has been required by law to contract out nearly all of its launch production, facilities and maintenance for a long time now. All of its probe launches are done with Boeing and Lockheed rockets. NASA has also gone out of its way to offer contracts to the smaller private companies from the vary beginning of the new launcher plans. If you look at the contracts they almost appear to be intentionally catered to the strengths of these specific start-ups.
This isn't about public vs private - it is about NASA's desire to stop being dependant on a small number of large aerospace corporations. It is about their desire for space exploration grow in anyway possible. Everybody who works there wants to see SpaceX, t-Space, and the others succeed, as much as the folks here do.
NASA's primary role is to stimulate aerospace R&D by setting challenging goals and offering to underwrite the costs of risky R&D programs outlined the most competitive bids from private contractors.
The contractors benefit by getting outside sources of funding for research projects that may not swiftly transform into mature, commercial aerospace opportunities.
The public benefits from the scientific gains, and the long-term economic benefits resulting from the original R&D stimulation.
But once an aerospace technology begins to mature, and profitable business models become apparent, the need for government-subsizied R&D passes away, and private industry willingly takes the next steps themselves, with their own funding. Witness, for example, Boeing's booming aerospace engineering and service business, founded on Apollo-era technology acquired from companies whose R&D was originally funded by NASA.
I, for one, wholeheartedly approve of NASA turning to the private sector for robust, proven, mature aerospace solutions. Once the technology has reached that stsge, NASA's work is done, and it should move on to other, more advanced goals.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Secondly, why is the private sector "efficient"? Instead of paying just labor costs and capital costs, you now have add the expenses for the profit that will be taken as well, so the only thing new about this is the majority shareholders, whom Federal Reserve studies show are multimillionaires and billionaires, will be getting a check as well. Plus the company will be lobbying the government regarding how this money is doled out. Look at the agricultural industry in the US for starters.
Despite having had to swallow a lifetime of propaganda about how much more efficient it is to have something handled when a billionaire is getting a profit paycheck as opposed to a government project, I don't swallow it. Maybe in the US or UK, where government attempts to do so are sabotaged, but I have seen Scandinavian government "bureaucracies" that make the "efficiency" of the typical pointy headed bosses company in the US look laughable.
Secondly, why is the private sector "efficient"?
Because it allows you to utilise the ideas, labour and capital of the entire population and not just the part supposed to be involved with government.
The Shuttle was a huge program when it was first considered. Congress mandated it's use to justify the expenditure. The Air Force levied horrible constraints against development, turning it into the mediocre performer it is today. The Congressional mandate effectively stopped any substantial commercial spaceflight development until pretty recently.
I've flown a payload on the Shuttle (STS-116.) Lemme say that the oversight for flying on a manned launch vehicle was enormous. That's a completely unnecessary burden for most launches. The single-use unmanned boosters are a much more effective method for putting everything but people into orbit.
The US space program is 20-30 years behind where it should be. I can't stand when folks think it's a wonderful thing that the bureaucrats are finally getting a clue. We should be completely furious that it's taken this long.
Because it allows you to utilise the ideas, labour and capital of the entire population and not just the part supposed to be involved with government.
No it doesn't. You hand your contract out to a company and you're locked into what that company can do. Hand it to a government department and you're locked in to what they can do. Sure you get to pick from a wider set of limitations but neither allows you to use the "ideas, labour and capital of the entire population". You can't hand a contract to Boeing and get input from rival engineers.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Tragically there was an obvious direction in place subsequent to the space race (remember the Apollo program?) that would have been followed through to space industrialization had the launch service industry enjoyed the same protection from government competition that the satellite industry enjoyed:
It wasn't until 1990, when a coalition of grassroots groups across the country lobbied hard for 3 years, that similar legislation got passed for launch services.
The fact that the global economic paradigm didn't follow the Club of Rome model exactly doesn't change the reality of the Malthusian paradigm given a fundamentally limited biosphere undergoing its largest extinction event in 60 million years. The Club of Rome merely added academic fashion to the very real urgency of the Malthusian situation still facing the biosphere. The 1970s was the right time to start the drive for space industrialization based on a private launch service industry. It didn't happen, the pioneering culture that founded the US is being replaced by government policy with less pioneering cultures and now we're all facing some increasingly obvious difficulties -- not just pioneer American stock -- and not just humans.
Seastead this.
One big reason private companies are better than government is budgets. A government agency runs on budgets, they aren't motivated to save money if they don't spend all of it they don't get it back the next year, use it or loose it. Simple as that.
In an attempt to get this even vaguely back on topic: who put the first satellite into LEO? Who put the first man into LEO?
And while I'm at it: How many people did the Russian government put into LEO total? How many people did the US government put into LEO total? And how many people has the oh-so-efficient private industry put into LEO so far? Big zero, eh? Wonder how that is...
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
There's one very good reason why private industry hasn't put people in orbit yet.
There's no profit in it.
Oh, there's profit in commercial satellites. We have thousands of them orbiting. But to actually put people in orbit is still a money-losing proposition. Although that might change in the medium term.
Ever heard of Bigelow Aerospace?
Governments may lead the way, but it's private citizens who really make changes. It's been like that for centuries, from Columbus, to Lewis and Clark, to Alan Shepherd. It was often a century or more before settlers followed explorers into the New World, and space may follow that example. But in order to get any real movement, there has to be something else: Profit.
Wasn't Columbus funded by the Queen? Isn't that equivalent to today's government? Also, Columbus didn't make "great" changes...he began exploiting and enslaving the native Indian population. (Read his own journals)
Your notion that profit is the motivation needed for "real movement" is laughable...and patently incorrect if history is at all relevant.
To name a few examples, the state has been responsible for the "big ideas" behind electronics (and hence computers), the Internet, biotechnology, space travel/exploration, etc... The list is very long and quite impressive. The fact that a number of private individuals and companies have been able to piggy back off of this collective work and enrich themselves is actually quite disgraceful.