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Companies Skeptical of Commercial Space Market
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Boeing and Lockheed Martin will happily sell rockets to carry astronauts into space, but are leery about taking a leading role in President Obama's vision for a revamped NASA that relies on commercial companies to provide taxi transportation to the ISS. 'I don't think there is a business case for us,' says Lockheed Martin's John Karas about space taxis. Both Boeing and Lockheed were stung during the last burst of optimism for the commercial space business about a decade ago. They invested several billion dollars — Lockheed to develop its Atlas V, Boeing for the Delta IV — in the hopes that the huge market for commercial satellites would supplement their traditional business of launching American military spy satellites. The market did not materialize, and what business there was went to European and Russian rockets that were cheaper. The hoped-for commercial market for space taxis hinges on one small company, Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing inflatable space habitats that it hopes to market as research facilities to companies and foreign nations looking to establish a space program."
Wait a second. They're saying there's no market and then they're saying cheaper competitors are snapping up all the business? Fellas, I think the invisible hand of the market is flipping you off.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
For those who don't RTFA: ULA said the cost to upgrade the basic Atlas V to meet manned spaceflight would be $400M. They also said that if you want to build a heavy lift Atlas or Delta to manned spaceflight spec it would cost between $1B and $2B. And they want NASA to pay all the cost, up front.
What, the giant government contractor doesn't want to compete? What a surprise. I guess without making things overly expensive, budget overruns and miles of red tape they just can't get enough money from the public trough.
I see this as a complete vindication of this plan. IMHO, Lockheed Martin and companies like them are some of the worst crooks our government (and by extension, all of us) does business with. There's no crook like the one that does it legally.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Cash up front is the only way to get corporations to commit to this. The government is too likely to pull a "that costs to much" about turn and leave the company holding the debt.
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I don't see private companies betting big on long term government contracts. The commitment is just to large and the sleazy government turnarounds just to likely.
Imagine being a company and investing $20B and 10 years of real effort into something expecting a big payout of years of ferrying astronauts into space. Then someone else gets elected and NASA changes it plans. Kiss your $20B good bye.
See Northrop F20/F5G. It even had a politically correct name.
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Much of the F-20's development was carried out as part of a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) project called "FX", which intended to sell less-advanced fighter designs to U.S. allies to limit the possibility of front-line U.S. technology falling into Soviet hands. FX developed out of a general re-working of U.S. military export policy started under the Carter administration in 1977. Although Northrop had high hopes for the F-20 in the international market, changes in policy following Ronald Reagan's election left the F-20 competing for sales with front line fighters like the F-16. The development program was eventually abandoned in 1986 after three prototypes had been built and a fourth partially completed.[1]
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(congressional hearing!!)
Thomas V. Jones, Northrop's CEO, stated that there was little point in having companies develop aircraft on their own if they were utterly reliant on the government to sell them. He suggested that the entire FX concept be dropped, and Northrop be allowed to sell the F-20 on the market like any other vendor.[41]
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This has nothing to do with that. It is just Lockheed belly-aching that they do not want to give up their sweet cost plus deals. The solution to this is to buy this service from Spac-X or another competitor.
Working with the Feds I can honestly agree, the mentality is vastly different. From perspectives of a federal agency, they submit a request for more funding if they need it, usually they get it (meaning, usually, a tax hike). What kills me is the way the whole funding is setup, if you don't spend all your funding you have to send it back, and next year you get reduced funding. So... all the agencies are motivated to spend all the cash on unneeded equipment at the end of the fiscal year just so they can get the same amount of money next fiscal year. So this tells us that basically Government is structured to waste money.
From experience in the Navy, I can verify the fiscal thing. Each quarter, we would "purchase" things out of our own storerooms, so that the books balanced within a couple of dollars. Across the board, we did this. The galley (or kitchen, for you landlubbers), office supplies, paint, you name it. The money had to be spent, or lost. At the end of the fiscal year, same thing. Spend right down to the very last dollar, never turn money in, or the next year your budget would shrink.
Damn shame that things work that way. It's an incentive to waste.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I read that article this morning and was baffled to hear SpaceX mentioned nowhere in it, considering they have a Progress/ATV-type unmanned cargo vessel on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral and plans to build a man-rated capsule in the next 2-3 years. Have they imploded recently or something?
They're modern hippies... purely an opposition party with no realistic plan of their own, hoping to fix everything simply by tearing down solutions that have been developed (with good reason) over hundreds of years. It's a style of wishful thinking where flawed solutions to problems (such as social programs) are conveniently seen as the source of the problems themselves, giving the false impression of easy solutions.
The end of the Tea Party is when/if they actually get somebody elected and have to start making hard, divisive decisions.
Ever watch old kung-fu movies? I find it fascinating the way mortal enemies still have a genuine respect for one another. Each sees that his opponent is skillful and formidable and honors this.
I find it really, really hard to respect the movement when I see town hall meetings stuffed full of elderly people on Medicare screaming about how they'd rather die than have the government provide their healthcare. When the representatives who are actually on their side of the issue end up having to try to correct the audience's misbegotten notions, and fail. Does that count as a good reason not to like them, that their arguments are so bad that even their allies that have a clue end up basically arguing against them?
I'm not saying it's right. Certainly they deserve basic human dignity and I don't wish any ill on anyone. But respect is just hard for me to come by, I'm sorry. The kung-fu fighters respect each other because they see true skill. Deep and enduring respect for a mule's hard-headedness just doesn't fit that mold to me.
Some armed conflicts in real life have been this way; I believe WWI was the last. There used to be the notion that if you lose your honor by engaging in those low-road practices, then the conflict has cost you quite a bit more than even the casualties sustained.
Yeah, that's because they discovered that razor wire, artillery, and machine guns were more effective at stopping the enemy than disrespect. Assuming of course you don't think it's disrespectful to bomb the enemy's trenches with mustard gas. The only time "honor" like you're describing was important in warfare was when a Lord's honor was literally more important than the lives of the conscripts they sacrificed, but then again so was the Lord's trousers.
Oh and on a more comparable level, the propaganda from back then was ridiculously insulting to the enemy. This idea of mutual respect is one I think mostly exists in nostalgia-land.
The enemies of Democracy are
Honestly, insightful?
From a quick google search on NASA inventions:
Ten NASA inventions you use every day
Top 15 NASA inventions
Polimide Foam
NASA Inventions benefiting our daily lives
Highlights from those links include kidney dialysis, CAT scans, various types of insulation, efficient water purification tech, cordless tools, modern designs of microchips, satellite tech (you know, it deleives a great deal of your communications....), scratch resistant lenses... And there's a *lot* more, a great deal of modern tech comes from NASA is one way or another.
Even if you have a problem with exploration and a search for knowledge and understanding of the universe, you have to admit the space program and its SCIENCE have yielded *massive* results on earth in technology. I'm also pretty sure there were luddites like you when the first ships were being built, the first submarines, the first plans, hell, the first time someone said "I'm going to wander 50 miles that way and see what's there".
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series