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Reported Obama Plan Would Privatize Manned Launches
couchslug writes with this excerpt from the not-yet-paywalled New York Times: "President Obama will end NASA's return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday. The shift would 'put NASA on a more sustainable and ambitious path to the future' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But the changes have angered some members of Congress, particularly from Texas, the location of the Johnson Space Center, and Florida, the location of the Kennedy Space Center. 'My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human space flight program,' Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a statement." If true, this won't please the federal panel that recommended against just such privatization.
Before anyone jumps up and shouts make sure that you're not being taken in by lobbyists who are trying to either support specific companies or jobs in specific states. They are apt to shout out about the sky falling before the real information is known.
Sit back, relax and wait until the report is actually published, read it and make up your own mind. Don't believe what has been filtered through potentially biased news media companies.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
That Obama is practically a COMMUNIST, I tell you!
Plan : increase the budget to NASA, and ask for them to purchase rides to space from newly formed private companies.
The article says that NASA has "50 years of institutional experience" in doing spaceflight, and that this would be a bad idea.
The "institutional" part of that statement is the problem. NASA stinks for spaceflight. The problem isn't in their engineering, it's in the fact that they have many, many masters all trying to stir the pot. Their budget depends upon the whim of Congressmen, not performing to a contract.
Privatization has many failures. There's a lot of goods and services that it doesn't make sense to privatize. But I think the high tech industry of space travel is one that will benefit enormously from privatization.
The only downside? Private firms can probably get a LOT more manned launches done per year for the same cost, but they'll be a little riskier. More astronauts will be killed. I don't see this as a problem : there's 6 billion people on the planet, and I for one if faced between possibly dying during a trip to space or dying from old age would choose the former.
I do not find your ideas intriguing and would like to unsubscribe from your newsletter.
Does anyone else see the irony in two Republican congressmen complaining about the privatization of space flight?
Who gives a flying fuck about privatized LEO launches of some tycoon (apart of the tycoons themselves)? Private companies will not undertake the large-scale, visionary projects like sending people to Mars, building permanent bases on Mars and Moon, reaching Europa and exploring her oceans. Private companies only produce as little science as they possibly can get away with, putting much more emphasis on patenting the crap out of the little they do produce, and then keep it for themselves.
In other words: FAIL!
When Obama said he'll cancel Constellation, he crushed the dreams and hopes of MY generation. Those who grew up in the 50s and 60s in the US and Europe had the ride of their lives, if they had even the slightest affinity for science. That was science that inspired millions, and from the sci-fi movies of the 70's, I'd say people were probably less dumb on average than they are today ("Andromeda Strain", for one example. Compare that to the blockbuster space-operas some call "Sci-fi"). Nowadays scientists are only prodded to make cheaper electronic components and larger plasma screens.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Exactly right. This is one of the main reasons the space program went down the toilet in the early 1970s and has stayed there. As Martin Luther King, Jr said: "If our nation can spend twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth." http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04b.html
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Every damn article posted on Slashdot about privatization of space has been packed with complaints that this is the end of the world. It's really not. God willing, it may be the start of a new one.
NASA was pursuing a completely impossible architecture. Ares was underfunded and unable to be effectively used until 2017 at the latest. By forcing NASA to buy services from private corporations we can develop our domestic launch infrastructure as opposed to keeping it under government control.
And yes, I said BUY! This is not cost-plus contracting, which defense contractors famously use to rip us off every chance they get. This is a straight purchase of services, cash for deliveries and milestones met. In other words, actual free-market capitalism.
As for those claiming that we should have blown our cash on another Apollo-like shot: what cash? Obama is not a dictator, he's a President. His budget requests have to be approved by Congress which would have balked at any substantial increase in spending on space exploration. Not to mention that we tried Apollo and it was nowhere near substainable. Development of regular deliveries to orbital space by private companies - that's sustainable. That's what will provide us with the groundwork to move beyond earth orbit and lower the cost to orbit to the point where we can actually do something.
I value politeness. If you extend it to me, I'll extend it to you.
No check-in. You have to schlep all your moonwalk gear yourself to the launch vehicle: "All you can carry." This cuts down on excess weight, saving fuel costs. Do you really need that extra oxygen tank?
A glass of Tang? "That will be 10€, sir."
Online Gambling! Your now have no incentive to return safely to the Earth . . . you are now bankrupt.
. . . and when you do get back, they lost your luggage filled with priceless moon rocks . . .
"I'm sorry, sir, your baggage was inadvertently placed on one of our flights to Mars. We should have it back for you in a couple of years time.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Income Redistribution
Man! You went there!
Bend over!
Do mean all that money (bank bailouts) that was taken from the middle class in the form of taxes to bail out the filthy rich bankers so that they can get their BILLIONS of dollars in bonuses paid for by the US taxpayer?! THAT INCOME REDISTRIBUTION?!? ($$ Poor => Rich and well connected)
Yep, that's REAL leftist alright.
Nowadays everything is about branding, even politics. In order to differentiate their brand from brand of the Democrat Party (as they like to call it), the Republic Party (as I like to call them) has to avoid showing any support for anything Obama does. Their marketing division (or, to use an old-fashioned term, their political strategists) understand that any show of bipartisanship confuse the consumers (I guess most people still call them "voters") and dilute the brand. So the party has to maintain a uniform anti-Democrat (not to be confused with anti-Democratic) message, even when the Democrats propose a product (officially a "policy") that the Republics invented in the first place.
Obama's attempts to achieve a consensus show his utter contempt for the way business (isn't government a business? if not it should be) is done in the 21st century. If that doesn't convince you he's a communist, nothing will!
On one side I know that (in this economy) there are many more ways to spend money than space.
But few things united the US as much as the space program.
When the political climate was different, the reasons for going to space were different.
Now that the Cold War is over, space has become a primarily scientific endeavor. I'm happy that science (instead of politics) is the motivator, but now it seems that politics is choking one of the greatest achievements of our species.
The idea behind this "private taxi service" to space could go either way. We all know how recent new aircraft have suffered delay after delay. But what if a more competitive environment brings innovation that otherwise would have been unattainable? After-all it was a competitive environment that pushed us to be the first on the moon.
What I am really sad about though is the lack of interest in the moon. I believe that a permanent, self sufficient (however difficult that might be) settlement on the moon should be a priority. And if we don't start soon, India or China might beat us to it.
While I believe that any mission to the moon is an international event, other countries/cultures might not share that view. I would prefer for us to set the bar in both - returning to the moon, and sharing that experience with the rest of the world.
Privatisation isn't privatisation when your primary customers and sources of funding come from the government. There is in fact no difference, just an illusion of competition. What is needed is for them to remove the regulations that exist against private space travel. Remove the monopolistic government funded NASA entirely, leaving the playing field completely open for private firms to build a true spot in the marketplace. That is the only way space exploration, tourism and travel will be able to survive.
If necessity is the mother of invention, its time we get to inventing. Nasa has subsidized extremely expensive shuttle launches that cost us $500 million a pop. Ares I wont put a man into space until 2017 at the EARLIEST if at all. Ares V is a bad joke thats already on the verge of being scrapped. The current plan would not get men back to the moon before 2028 at the earliest, project constellation was an epic fail. Lets give private companies like spacex (which will test launch a man ready falcon 9 THIS YEAR) a chance
Privatization may seem like a good idea, and I hope it will turn out to be. But I doubt it. Right now, the US has one - count them - one man-rated orbital vehicle. That's the shuttle, and it will be ending soon. Without a replacement, the US will be forced to hitch rides in the short term with Russia, maybe even China. In fact, since we've outsourced much of our manufacturing base to China anyway, why not our space program? Well here's why: other countries, maybe even private companies in the future will fly in space. Maybe they'll let the US hitch rides. Maybe not. Either way they won't be building their launchers and space vehicles with US program goals in mind. They'll be building whatever makes sense for them. It may or may not be what makes sense for US goals. So in the end, we'll have an ISS that we continue to pay for - funding for that is in the budget, and no way to get there from the US. Excellent. The Mercury astronauts had it right... No Bucks, No Buck Rogers. We'll continue to send neat probes to other planets. And we'll continue to get amazing pictures. But in the end, people will tire of that too. That'll leave us with No Bucks. When you look back 200 years from now, this will be the moment that people say the US "jumped the shark"...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Aren't all government programs poorly run and ineffective? Isn't that what we keep hearing about health care? "If you want to have your health care be like the post office...blah blah blah". Why is this different? Can't private industry do a better job?
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
(Just a note before we start: I'm a black American. Don't misconstrue my hard truths as "racism" or some bullshit like that.)
We have, as a nation, given huge amounts of aid to all sorts of "disadvantaged" groups. It's not the giving that has been the problem; it is that many of these groups have outright refused to take advantage of the generosity provided to them.
That's why we have thugs in L.A. who bitch and moan about living in the ghetto, but then they never even try to get an education or even any sort of remedial training that will allow them to get a legitimate job. We provide all of that to them, basically free of charge, too! They just don't want a "white education," even when the curriculum has been designed by blacks, and is taught by blacks.
So let's stop wasting our time and resources on them. If they want to marginalize themselves, so be it. Let's spend the money on spaceflight. Let's spend the money on science. Let's spend the money on funding research.
We've tried to help these people, but they just don't want the help. So let's cut our losses and say to hell with them. Those of them who have the yearning to succeed will, and the rest should be ignored.
During the election, about 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
And 95% of McCain voters voted for McCain due solely to the color of his neck.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
most nations recognize the value of capitalism, but they yoke it with socially-conscious goals, to effective and ineffective results
but the usa is a cult of capitalism. they think it answers every question (it doesn't). they invoke market principles where market principles make no sense, such as in healthcare. they remove financial regulations and then act surprised when the markets bubble and burst (and then some of them, in their denial, even blame the government, magically somehow, for the market's failure, confusing cause and effect)
that space exploration should be privatized is yet another absurdity of the monomaniacal american obsession with elevating market principles as the driving force behind everything in the world. americans: of course capitalism is important. of course capitalism works. but capitalism is a beast of burden, it needs to be tamed and controlled. it needs to be fenced and given limits, or it will run roughshod and destroy your society with its extremes and stampedes of panic or greed. you need social safety nets, and you need to tame the excesses. understand this or understand nothing and be just a market fundamentalist, as foolish and blind to reality as any religious fundamentalist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I see this as a way to siphon off funds to be redirected to more social programs
TFA: "Mr. Obama’s request, which will be announced on Monday, would add $6 billion over five years to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget."
How is increasing NASA's budget and enabling it to buy space launches from private companies "siphoning off funds to be redirected to more social programs"? Your political bias is leading to illogical reasoning.
Finally the Administration is doing something to end corporate welfare and make the US aerospace industry competitive once again. If it forces Republican congressmen to stand up and trumpet there support for pork barrel projects while crying for fiscal conservatism I'm sure the Irony will not be lost on the general population.
Give such corporations as Space Exploration Technologies a chance, there founder, Elon Musk, his comparison of other aerospace companies to "Dilbert in real life" is spot on.
I say this as an aerospace employee.
For those of you who are wondering about this and not just using it to blast Obama/dems with ever breath,
then read the last 10 pages of the Direct forum.
In a nut shell, Boeing, et. al. will be building Direct and offering it for commercial space. Yes, SpaceX, Orbital, and even the EELVs will have their role in space. HOWEVER, direct will now be allowed to be developed by Boeing and offered for commercial launches. Once that happens AND they have 2 launches per year via commercial, it will drop the price per launch. And what commercial space will be interested in this? Well Bigelow figures VERY prominently in this. That is why we are seeing them suddenly get active. That is also why they shifted their schedule to have station in 2015. Basically, we are about to see a MASSIVE expansion into space, but via the commercial world. Think of the railroads for USA in the mid 1800's.
This is not the end of America's human flights. It is the FINALLY the beginning of it. Most importantly, it will remove Space from politicians hands like W's who said that we were going to the moon and the provided next to ZERO funding for it. Heck, only in 2007 and 2008 did NASA budget increase. Prior to that it was being cut.
NASA will instead do what it does best; high tech RD as well as getting all parties to connect well (ignoring a mars probe).
Windbourne.
I think I agree with something the President said. Now, if we can guarantee property rights for those companies in space, too, this'd be amazing! Maybe Mr. Obama read Robert Heinlein when he was a kid and hasn't told anyone yet.
Obama has never liked the space program, at least not since running for president. His campaign website actually had a proposal to create a nationalized pre-school/daycare program and fund it by cutting NASA's budget. Someone must have informed him that the space program is important for the United States, because this proposal was removed before the election. Some educators also called into question the need for such a pre-school program.
NASA has always had its ups and downs, perhaps more downs than ups lately. It helps to have a sympathetic President in office. Kennedy wanted a moon landing, and his successors honored his memory by following through. Nixon was lukewarm to the space program, and he used NASA as a diplomacy tool--during his time they had Skylab (somewhat useful) and the Apollo-Soyuz space linkup (pure entertainment).
Reagan was a space nut and an enlarged NASA fit into his SDI/Star Wars vision. Bush I spoke of a Mars mission, but left before he could really push it through. Clinton was lukewarm to space but lucked out with a temporary stock boom that filled the tax coffers, so NASA could keep rolling while he partied. Bush II liked space and authorized new missions. That brings us down to Obama who is the first president in my memory to shut down a manned space project.
NASA is a victim of politics and of poor leadership in the 1970s and 80s, leading up to the avoidable Challenger tragedy. To spread the wealth (and pain of cuts), NASA in the 1970s embarked on a decentralization project to spread out its facilities all over the country, thus maximizing Congressional support for its various missions. The unfortunate side effect as pointed out by many observers over the years was to dissipate engineering teams. Perhaps today in the new century, with our modern communications abilities, virtual teams can work almost identically to localized teams, but this was not so in the 1970s. Thus, the rugged and long lasting space ships of the 1960s such as the Pioneer which survived decades beyond anyone's expectations gave way to buggy, incomplete efforts such as the Shuttle and some of the planetary probes.
NASA's never been a perfect space agency but it has contributed hugely to improving the human condition through science and technology. It keeps hundreds of thousands of aerospace engineers and scientists employed, who would otherwise have gone to law school or some other less productive field. It keeps the U.S. at the forefront in aerospace technology which it needs in order to maintain its military edge. It promises great riches should we ever get self-sustaining stations online in near-Earth orbit or beyond--moon mining, asteroid mining, solar power, zero grav manufacturing, and all the scientific and engineering developments which will be a part of these efforts.
We simply can't afford to not go into space. The Constellation program has been harshly criticized by some dissident engineers--fine, that's what engineering is all about. You design something, find the flaws, fix them, and move on. It's an iterative process.
Simply walking away from billions of dollars of effort is not only a waste of time and money, it displays a distressing lack of vision by the current leadership. Obama obviously feels we can't afford a national space program, so he's sloughing it off on the private sector. Privatize it, he says. Indeed? Then the U.S. will no longer have a manned space exploration program at all, but only a very cautious and profit-oriented space tourism program. Others will pick up the slack and take over space exploration--the Chinese, the Japanese perhaps, the Russians, and the Europeans. Some day, we will sit in our yards and watch them through our Chinese-made telescopes. Look, Dad, there's the China Station! There's the European Station! There goes another Russian moon shot! And we can look back on this pivotal time in our history when we turned our back on the future and technological leadership.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Coach passengers may opt to purchase oxygen.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
It's the same percentage of the Afrian-Americans that voted for Clinton.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
As someone who has personal (and close) contacts and friendships with people in the various X-Prize contests (including the latest winner), I'm a bit biased here.
However, what Obama is talking about is really changing the ways that NASA procures it's systems. Right now, they get practically everything from one of about 3 or 4 big contractors, and essentially run like a massive Defense Contractor, complete with problems around innovation and cost-inflation.
The proposals are to quit funneling every significant contract just to these Big Space corps. Rather, the "hobbyist" rocket industry is now sufficiently mature to begin competing for real space equipment. What it needs to continue to grow and innovate are a steady, reliable supply of work. NASA is the only place this can happen right now (though, likely once the market is more mature, private space use/trips will fund more and more of industry). Breaking the grip of Big Space means that NASA can continue to use it's hard-won knowledge of manned missions as a information resource for these "space entrepreneurs", and at the same time, open up the infrastructure for better efficiencies.
Of course, Big Space sees the end of the NASA-funded (and guarantied) gravy train, so they squeal about safety and other issues that Little Space couldn't possibly (no, never!) do, forgetting (conveniently) that they themselves were once Little, and only became Big by sucking on NASA's teat. What we're talking about here is NASA enabling a new, vibrant market for space systems from a wide variety of suppliers.
To use the tired car analogy: NASA current designs the car, but farms out the manufacturing and design of the parts to SuperMegaCorp1 and GiganticConglomerate2, all of which use the notorious "cost-plus" method of development. Instead, Obama wants NASA to be deciding the PURPOSE of the car, and the desired CAPABILITIES of it, but then put out for bid all the different parts to anyone capable of making that part to the desired specs. So, perhaps we get a Volt, an Accord, and a Caravan all offered from various suppliers, rather than a Greyhound bus with all but 5 seats removed, as we would under the old system.
I hate to break it to everyone, but LEO Rocket Science is no longer, well, Rocket Science. Masten won the latest X-prize with a staff of 10, working out of a small machine shop, using only about $2 million. Putting people into orbit is not that difficult anymore (though, it's still dangerous), and it's entirely reasonable to start moving away from the single-entity agency and into a more competitive, cost-effective marketplace.
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
While I think the future of space travel will be in the hands of the private sector, NASA are currently the only ones really equipped to do this stuff.
fair warning: this may get a little "everybody just get along"-like, so I apologize in advance for any hippy attitude you take from this
It's hard nowadays to sell a space program to the public, but it can be a unifying thing. Countries are still working seperately (except for the ISS, which is quite an achievement). What really needs to happen is the space programs of the world need to come together and work together. If all the nations with major or developing space programs pooled their knowledge and resources, we could have a moonbase going in the next 10 years and be on Mars shortly thereafter. The problem is that each country has a few super brilliant people. Space travel requires a LOT of brilliant people.
Living With a Nerd
He gave up space.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If we used aeroplanes to get to a decent altitude, then fired the rockets, the cost to launch would go way down.
No, actually it wouldn't.
First, you may be able to get above some of the atmosphere, but not all (because an "aeroplane" needs to be in atmosphere to fly.) But, mainly, you can't get any significant percentage of the orbital energy while you're in atmosphere-- you need to get to the equivalent of Mach 25 to make orbit.
Second, though, is that rockets are simply heavy. You can lift a Pegasus up in an airplane, but it takes a 747 to do it, and it's a tiny rocket. Even there, the airplane doesn't give you much of a boost toward orbit (the real advantage the air launch gives you is the ability to chose your launch point.) If you try to ask, how big would the airplane be if you were to launch something much bigger than a Pegasus with the capability to make orbit, the answer is that it would be unrealistically huge, andairplanes stop being practical when they start getting that big, because they are structurally inefficient.
(And, before you shout "Space Ship One" at me, let me remind you that SS-1 achieved the edge of space in altitude, but only got a whopping five percent of orbital energy),
But this isn't economical when there are huge public subsidies for a hugely flawed system.
This sentence would be correct if you simply put the period after "this isn't economical".
The politics of NASA killed the plans of NASA.
At one time, they had a plan that would have put a base on the Moon by the end of the 70's and missions to Mars in the 80's. Some of the Apollo astronauts saw themselves as part of that.
After we went to the Moon, Nixon killed the hope. Under his 'leadership' we scrapped the last three planned Moon missions, stopped building anything new outside of an under-funded (and possibly ill-advised) Space Shuttle, and those that led us to space, from Astronauts to Engineers to Machinists and Janitors, left NASA with the cuts. We never regained the drive, or the ability we had since then. NASA had become a tool of politics, which it hadn't really been before.
Sure, we went to the Moon to beat the Russians. Along the way, we learned things, and we even maybe pulled the nation and the world a BIT more together. Is that so bad?
Whether you like Obama or not, whether the realities of our current crises are the end, are we not losing sight of the grand picture given us by those who came before?
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
Don't forget, dear lefty , that the red on the neck is an indicator of working in the sun to grow the food you eat, build the house you live in and load the truck that brings the britches on your butt. Now quit smokin' pot, pull up your pants and put a belt on and get back to class.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
There are efficiency advantages to launching rockets into space from aircraft.
A: Rocket motors work best when there is little or no air pressure for them to burn into, increasing the jet speed and the Isp figure. Solid boosters benefit more than liquid fuelled rockets as the exhaust pressure is less. At 35-40,000 feet the air pressure is about 30% of that on the ground, making rockets a few percent more efficient at that altitude compared to sea-level.
B: Existing land-based launchers have to spend a significant chunk of their fuel and oxidiser getting to the velocity and altitude an aircraft launcher has already reached using conventional Jet-A fuel and atmospheric oxygen. This is why there are no single-stage-to-orbit launchers, they all have to lift off heavy and throw away sections of their airframe on the way up so the remaining parts can make it to orbit.
C: The addition of 1000km/hr horizontal velocity from the launcher is, as you say very much less than the orbital velocity of 25,000 km/hr required for LEO, but it's 4% which is worth having.
A rough BOTE calculation suggests an air launch to LEO can be done for about 10-12% less fuel load than a similar launch from the ground. That parlays into less parasitic airframe, tankerage etc. that has to be flightworthy and capable of withstanding extended multiple-G accelerations and which requires fuel and oxidiser to get it off the pad.
As for size limitations on air launches that's due to a lack of really big off-the-shelf aircraft capable of being modded for use as launchers. If there was a determination to build an air-launch system for getting, say, 20 tonnes of payload into LEO per launch then designing and building a couple of dedicated carrier aircraft to do the job would be easy. They don't have to be efficient fuel-misers the way modern airliners or even military aircraft are, they can use multiple off-the-shelf aero engines to make up for the lack of efficient design and excess weight as their fuel costs are going to be a minor part of the operating TCO. My own thoughts on what they would look like tend towards a land-launched catamaran high-wing seaplane with the orbital vehicle suspended between the hulls (a bit like the Virgin Eve carrier aircraft).
From reading a few of the posts, it already proves what Im about to say.
Does anyone find it funny that the Republicans want to privatize _everything_, and the Democrats want to government-ize everything.. and yet, here's a Democrat wanting to privatize a govt sector, and the Republicans are screaming the end of the world?
It also continues to strengthen my belief that the Democrats and Republicans are brothers who fight over everything because they're too immature to talk about things rationally, and are taking us all down with them.
Need more Libertarians, damnit. Stop thinking you're throwing your vote away if you dont vote for a Republicrat.
GWB to President of Brazil - "You have blacks, too?"
Exceptional individuals do emerge despite their disadvantageous environment, but the majority will fail, and ignoring them won't work. Money will either be spent on assistance or on prison, and the latter is a lot more expensive. I don't think we need to choose between welfare programs and space though. The "huge amounts" given to the black poor are negligible compared to the trillions spent on coddling the wealthy and wasted on war and other insane endeavors.
That's why we have thugs in L.A. who bitch and moan about living in the ghetto, but then they never even try to get an education or even any sort of remedial training that will allow them to get a legitimate job.
I have no idea why slashdot would choose to mark this as interesting. It is a gross over-simplification of the socio-economic problems in inner cities.
Google "inner city gang cycle poverty cycle" and start reading. There are literally hundreds of factors at play, and simply saying "if they don't take advantage of (the tiny) aid we give, then F'em" is at best ignorant and at worse sociopathic.