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."

Comments

Re:Is really a bad, bad idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That's only because your country isn't as good at outsourcing as America, land of the free, is.

Here, we pay more for a poorer service!

How is this different than now?

[cowtamer]

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...

Re:How is this different than now?

[0123456]

How is this different? It eliminates 10,000+ government-funded jobs in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, etc.

Ares was always more about keeping people employed than building a useful spacecraft; commercial launch companies won't employ 10,000 people just to stack a rocket and roll it out to the launch pad.

Re:How is this different than now?

[Nyeerrmm]

The difference is the method of procurement. Under current methods of operations, the goverenment comes up with a design, says "Here's what we want, who wants to build it for us?". Then the big guys (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, USA, etc.) make arguments about who can do it the cheapest and fastest, and the one that makes the best argument gets the contract (and all the others get to be subcontractors and get a piece of the pie). These are termed 'cost-plus' contracts because NASA is actually funding the development directly, and taking on the responsibility to pay however much it ends up costing, even if its more than the original bid.

When they're talking about "outsourcing" and "using commercial options," what they mean is that they want to use whatever is commercially available, if it exists. The COTS and CCDev programs are designed to encourage this kind of market for the big HSF programs (JPL/Ames-style probes have been using straightforward EELV contracts for quite a while). The market is still not mature for human-capable launch vehicles (Atlas and Delta aren't man-rated), so its still in NASA's interest to actively foster the development of vehicles - but they're doing it with fixed amounts of money and relying on fixed milestones, resembling the way the eventual market would work.

I doubt we'll ever get away from cost-plus contracts completely. They make sense for single-use items and specialized development: things like probes and rovers and moon landers. However, just about everything needs to get to orbit, and there aren't that many different kinds of requirements for it: whether or not its pressurized, man-rated, and how much mass it can carry. For this reason many people believe that NASA should no longer be designing launch vehicles to do rather routine things like getting to LEO, and instead focus on truly expanding the frontier, doing new things.

The reason this faces resistance is that NASA has a habit of sacrificing the good for the sake of the perfect (along with the concerns about risk in doing new things and losing jobs in congressmen's districts). The space-pen/pencil story may be apocryphal, but it is emblematic of the problem*. In this case, you could argue that an EELV-based solution wouldn't be as good as a working Ares I, but EELVs are going to be cheaper and faster to man-rate, and with the limited budget they shouldn't waste money re-inventing the wheel.

*Interestingly, its actually a great example of the COTS contract type, where a private company saw a problem, came up with a solution, and sold it to NASA (and the Russians) after developing it. They made money off of it and NASA got it much cheaper than it could have developing it on its own, probably.

Re:How is this different than now?

[Kenneth Stephen]

I think that would be a valid argument for any well developed business area. I don't think space falls into that category yet, even though the future looks promising. Yes, it would be a problem if, say for example, a TV manufacturer charges the government 10 times more for its product than business would pay for comparable products. But in the rarefield area of space technology, there isn't a good competitive landscape. In certain cases there isn't any candidate who can even bid, because what the government wants, may be pushing the bounds of current technology (military technology for example). In such situations, tightening the screws on your contractor may not be the right approach: if you want a super-kill-bill-gizmo #3, and nobody today can build it because the science or the technology hasn't been developed yet, cost plus is the right kind of contract.

The kind of outsourcing being proposed is in the more mundane (is there anything mundane about space?) areas of space technology, where there are more businesses participating. I don't think that the contractor cost overruns should be tolerated there, because there are more choices of vendors for the government.

and if these companies made profit?

[societyofrobots]

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.

Re:and if these companies made profit?

[FleaPlus]

This almost sounds like science fiction in which the evil doctrine of capitalism is let lose to contaminate the universe.

If the "evil doctrine of capitalism" is what's needed for human civilization to "contaminate the universe," then please, bring it on. Faster.

Ugggh

[Bluesman]

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.

Re:Ugggh

[Bluesman]

I'm as pro-competition and free market as anybody, but contracts just don't work that way. Much of the work is so specialized that only one company is able to fulfill the contract. For example, Northrop Grumman is the ONLY company that is able to overhaul aircraft carriers, so they get every contract. The barrier to entry is impossibly high for potential competitors. The contract is so large that it essentially grants a monopoly to the winner. The losers can't stay in business long enough to compete.

The contracts are also massive. The contractors aren't competing to supply welding materials, they're competing for things like, "overhaul this aircraft carrier and replace the reactors," that are pretty much written so that one company is guaranteed to be awarded the contract. It's a happy coincidence that those companies have high-level officers who have plenty of buddies in D.C. and factories in as many key congressional districts as possible.

This is a best-case scenario, assuming there are no back-room deals and shady hook-ups going on, which would be a miracle.

Good, BUT

[WindBourne]

1. Keep it competitive. That means that we need at least 2 companies the provide a service. Ideally, it will be at least 3.
2. National Security MUST come first. That means that at least 1 of each categories MUST be American. That does not mean that ALL of the win must go to Americans. There is a lot to like about the idea of having our partners provide part of the system.
3. Keep it fair. If the nation has trade barriers and/or has their fixed against ours and/or has the gov subsidizing the bid, then it should not be allowed in. That would mean that China and India are absolutely out of any part of this. OTH, Brazil might be (not sure of their status).
4. Anything developed for NASA and making use of NASA/US proprietary tech needs to STILL be limited to friendly countries.

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.

Re:What have they been doing until now?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

I hope that you are kidding

[WindBourne]

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.

Contracting is basically wealth transfer

[brennz]

From the US taxpayer, to Lockheed, Northrop or Boeing.

Look at these inflated labor rates!

Re:Is really a bad, bad idea...

[vlm]

Well, for example: Forget hardware like the Spirit Mars Rover (build to last few months, but still working after two years) if you outsorce the manufacture.

Too late, spirit was an outsourced project. Oddly enough, the wikipedia page for Spirit/MER-A has no manufacturing details. But the main MER project page is believed accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover

Nasa outsourced the whole project to JPL to manage and generally run. The Wikipedia page details whom JPL subcontracted to for various parts... for example, the aeroshell exterior capsule thingy was outsourced to Lockheed. IBM-Federal made the radiation hardened CPU chip, but their division got sold around and was part of Lockheed at one point.

Anyway, the whole point is that no spacecraft that I'm aware of, at least for the past 40 years, have any components made by NASA... NASA does not "do" anything, other than distribute budget to various contractors.

Those are the facts. As for opinion, I believe there are no personnel accepting paychecks from nasa that have ever touched a soldering iron, screwdriver, welding torch, or milling machine...

Re:horrible idea

[El Torico]

One important difference - the contractors actually work while the GS-14s (and other grades) spend their time arguing with each other, taking breaks and long lunches, and changing their minds every five minutes.

I'd rather work directly for a military officer in some godforsaken FOB in Durkadurkastan than a civilian GS in a safe, comfortable office in CONUS.

Actually, the big move right now is to fixed price contracts. The Government found out that most of their COTR's are incapable of managing contracts.

Re:Is really a bad, bad idea...

[UncleTogie]

Care to link to a reliable source for that quote?

Sure, how about a video where he said just that during a townhall meeting concerning healthcare? Link here.

Re:Is really a bad, bad idea...

[Cassius Corodes]

This is what happens when you outsource posting!