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NASA May Outsource
The Wall Street Journal is running a piece about the growing momentum behind the idea of NASA outsourcing to private companies everything from transporting astronauts to ferrying cargo into orbit. Quoting: "Proposals gaining momentum in Washington call for contractors to build and run competing systems under commercial contracts, according to federal officials, aerospace-industry officials and others familiar with the discussions. While the Obama administration is still mulling options and hasn't made any final decisions, such a move would represent a major policy shift away from decades of government-run rocket and astronaut-transportation programs such as the current space-shuttle fleet. ... In the face of severe federal budget constraints and a burgeoning commercial-space industry eager to play a larger role in exploring the solar system and perhaps beyond, ...a consensus for the new approach seems to be building inside the White House as well as [NASA]. ... Under this scenario, a new breed of contractors would take over many of NASA's current responsibilities, freeing the agency to pursue longer-term, more ambitious goals such as new rocket-propulsion technology and manned missions to Mars. ...[T]hese contractors would take the lead in servicing the International Space Station from the shuttle's planned retirement around 2011 through at least the end of that decade."
They took our jobs!
On my country, outsourcing is the same as disaster. You pay the same for a poor service.
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NASA already hires contractors for doing a lot of the technical work right now. If I am not mistaken, large portions of the Space Shuttle and the ISS were manufactured by Boeing, just to give one example...
SpaceX is moving forward, without asking the government for money. http://www.spacex.com/
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Would it still save money if the companies rose prices to make a profit?
With NASA, its science oriented. With business, its profit oriented.
I think the current status quo is best, only outsource if something better already exists.
If there's one thing worse than the government doing something, it's the government giving someone a de-facto monopoly to do it in the form of a government contract.
Contracting is the new graft. Witnessing this from the DoD side of the house, the same thing happens over and over. High level military officer retires, joins or starts a contracting company, and convinces everyone the contractor can do what the government is already doing for much cheaper. Politicians decide to use contractors, costs escalate, and there is no alternative because the formerly home-grown expertise is gone, since all the government experts are now working for the contractor making double for the same job.
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Go NASA go. Once the infrastructure is in place for LEO/GEO/Lunar, then it should be possible to focus on NASA's true purpose; pushing the tech and science of space.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Most contractors merely charge the govt $150 - 250 an hour for the same people the govt uses already, while at the same time, carrying little risk. Compare this to a GS-14 at less than a $100 an hour, inclusive of all costs.
You'll see a move to contract types* ** like cost plus, or cost plus fixed fee, where the government pays out the nose for cost overruns on the part of contractors. Fixed price contracts will only be made with massively inflated rates in order to protect contracting firms from risk.
This leads to massive poaching of govt personnel to the private sector, and vastly inflated rates to the govt.
The privatization of the US government is an abject failure. A-76*** is an abomination, because it does not consider the long term efficiency by private vs public sector.
* http://www.dtc.dla.mil/dsbusiness/Info/contracts1.htm
** http://www.dau.mil/pubs/misc/toolkit.asp
*** http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/Circulars_a076_a76_incl_tech_correction/
If I was an astronaut I would prefer not to have it outsourced, purely from a logical perspective. Being in space is all about perfection and control, and NASA can build from that vision. Private companies always come from the profit aspect above all else, which at some point may end up causing a part to be less perfect than it could be. In space that just isn't a question mark you really want to have.
NASA yearly spending, according to Wikipedia is in the 15-18 billion range currently. US Military budget is 515-651 billion, in comparison. So NASA is 2.7% of the military budget size, which kind of makes you wonder why we're worrying about cutting spending on NASA and not other far bigger numbers.
"Best of breed", no doubt.
Private industry has done so well in the US: telcos, airlines, utilities, "contractors" in Iraq, not to mention the entire financial sector. Deregulation and privatization in the US has shown that private industry has difficulty regulating itself or indeed acting in a responsible manner. Oversight with accountability is absolutely essential to success.
Hate to be so negative but I don't see anything good in this whatsoever. There are some things that are too important to be left to private industry. Building is one thing, running a program is quite another.
I'm about as free-market and capitalist as you can get, but there is a time and a place for government regulation.
NASA is not a business. Therefore, absolutely none of the buzzword bingo applies here.
Actually, the current state of the US economy indicates that buzzword bingo doesn't apply in any useful way to running a business, either, but that's a whole 'nother argument.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Look, when you are doing the SAME REPETITIVE ITEM, then a free fair competitive marketplace makes sense to handle it. The problem comes when it is NOT fair, nor competitive. For example, the feds outsourcing a number of items to private workers in America was not the problem. The problems came when companies shifted the work to places like China and India who have only one-way trade, have no real requirements about pollution, and most of all, have their money fixed against ours. OTH, if trade barriers are dropped and money allowed to float freely, then economies adjust. If NASA does this right, they will focus on advanced tech rather than doing the mundane. They will also work with our local companies to get them thinking of different solutions to the same problem.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You should know better. Much of America's space hardware is built in various locations. For example, MGS was from l-mart in Denver. Likewise, there are plenty of companies that are fully capable of building the rover. With that said, NASA's new missions will be to continue building rovers for mars and other planets UNTIL it becomes methodical. Then it would be handed off to private to do. Though think about this. If USA can fire up multiple companies here that are space and lunar bound, we will get an infrastructure that can move to other worlds. That is what we need. NASA will take us there. They will be at the leading edge on all of it. BUT, to allow companies to take over what should be mundane only makes sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
From the US taxpayer, to Lockheed, Northrop or Boeing.
Look at these inflated labor rates!
Do tell what NASA's core competencies are then.
Public relations, of course. NASA has a huge PR operation, with visitor centers, educational outreach, and other image-enhancement activities.
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Huh? How do you get the privatization of NASA out of this? And why would that serve as a basis to find them stupid or insane?
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Are you saying that NASA's core competency is not space operations, or space systems development?
I'd say their core competencies are scientific research, technology development, beyond-LEO exploration (mostly unmanned, so far) and in-space construction. Well, and delivering jobs to key congressional districts.
It certainly isn't launch vehicle development, considering that NASA (well, mostly NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, which has particularly incompetent management) has had many launch vehicle projects go massively overbudget/fail (e.g. X-33, X-34, SLI, OSP) without a single success in the past 30 years or so.
Yeah, but of those brands, which one are you driving? (hint: you most likely aren't) :-)
Ok, they find the asteroid... and then what? I hate to break this to you, but Armageddeon was a work of fiction. (Shocking, I know.) We don't have anything that can land on an asteroid and do anything about it-- and we probably wouldn't have time to build one after we detected the sucker.
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He wants to nationalize heathcare and privatize NASA
Doesn't it seem to be a contradictory statement to both accuse the president of nationalization and privatization in the same breath?
To say nothing of the fact that single-payer health care has been dead (in terms of the current legislative session) for over a month now.
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