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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.
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.
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.