NASA Splits $1.1B For Three Commercial Spacecraft

coondoggie writes "NASA today continued its development of commercial space systems by splitting a little over $1.1 billion with Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies (Space X) and Sierra Nevada to develop and build advanced spaceships. 'Today's awards give a huge advantage to the three companies that got them, because competitors will need to fund their own development in its entirety. On the other hand, by partnering with the competitors, NASA has managed to seed the development of five different manned space vehicles for under $1B so far, a leap forward for the evolving space passenger market. They've paid for it on a reward-for-progress basis, handing out pre-agreed amounts of money for each specified milestone. SpaceX was well ahead of the other two competitors because of the unmanned Dragon, which has already berthed with the International Space Station. The company has borne the brunt of the development costs itself, putting in about $300 million of its own money in addition to about $75 million from NASA.'"

Comments

Splitting this post

[MeNotU]

1, 2, 3

Bittersweet

[MyLongNickName]

On one hand, I am glad to see how much private sector interest there is in space exploration and tourism. Ultimately, it will be commericialization and profit opportunity that propels mankind to the stars.

OTOH, the reason we are seeing so much of it now is that the US has given up its leadership position in science. I'm not saying we aren't still on the top of the heap, but while Republicans and Democrats argue about whether we should drive ourselves into debt funding the military or social programs, science funding has suffered. When 50% of GDP growth since WW2 has come directly from science, this short-sighted non-funding view will cripple us.

Ultimately, there are projects where profits cannot be privatized. In these instances, government funding is the only way to go. But this doesn't get votes, so we are stuck.

Cynically Yours,
MyLongNickName

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[Anonymous Coward]

The Republicans and Democrats aren't really caring about anything they say. They put on a good show to keep you suckers buying into their scams. It's like professional wrestling in a different costume to make you think it's really real.

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[medcalf]

While space travel capability may be a public good, both space ships and actual travel are not, being both rivalrous and excludable. So COTS seems like an ideal answer to your objection: the capability/technology are subsidized, while the vehicles and transportation using them are at the whim of the market.

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[taiwanjohn]

I like Jess Ventura's idea to have politicians wear "sponsor" patches on the suits, like NASCAR drivers.

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[taiwanjohn]

I mean Jesse, not Jess.

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[boaworm]

When 50% of GDP growth since WW2 has come directly from science, this short-sighted non-funding view will cripple us.

What are the other 50% that does not come directly from science?

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[nedlohs]

Population growth.

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[EdgePenguin]

No. This is not commercial spaceflight, because the only customer is the government. The idea that profit motives will make everything work is largely discredited in real life these days.

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[MyLongNickName]

I can't answer that. The info I got came from a radio program (NPR?), that gave the 50% number.

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[khallow]

OTOH, the reason we are seeing so much of it now is that the US has given up its leadership position in science. I'm not saying we aren't still on the top of the heap, but while Republicans and Democrats argue about whether we should drive ourselves into debt funding the military or social programs, science funding has suffered. When 50% of GDP growth since WW2 has come directly from science, this short-sighted non-funding view will cripple us.

I have no idea why people think this. The problem is that government funded science hasn't really done that much for us. Most of US science is and always was privately funded.

What has happened is that government funding has crowded out private for basic science, the longer view stuff. IMHO researchers now focus on maintaining funding rather than doing science or delivering value. This results in a substantial decline in both quality and quantity of the science they do. Socialize the losses, privatize the gain works in science funding just like it does elsewhere in public funding. What you are complaining about above is just (again IMHO) a natural consequence of public funding of science.

Ultimately, there are projects where profits cannot be privatized.

That's generally because there's no gain to be had either because it never existed and never will, or because society has created obstacles which render the project valueless to anyone who tries to pursue it.

For example, someone was claiming research into new vaccines and antibiotics were solely the domain of public funded research, ignoring that the rules on new drug testing throughout the developed world created an expensive testing situation where developing a valuable drug isn't sufficiently profitable even though it can save many lives.

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[jimbolauski]

When 50% of GDP growth since WW2 has come directly from science, this short-sighted non-funding view will cripple us.

Ultimately, there are projects where profits cannot be privatized. In these instances, government funding is the only way to go. But this doesn't get votes, so we are stuck.

Cynically Yours, MyLongNickName

There is a ton of government funding going into science, composites got a huge boost from the R&D of building lighter planes. Darpa spends defense money and much of that research goes on to commercial applications, many colleges and universities receive federal grants to conduct research. The notion that the US does not spend money on research is foolish there are billions of dollars spend on just that, the only reason you think the amount of money spent on research is small is because the research facilities are scattered, the US doesn't have a ministry of Science to control all research. The US government spends about $140 billion per year, 75 Billion on defense R&D and 65 Billion is classified as non-defense. This does not include and private companies R&D which would easily put the number over 200 billion which is more then any other country.

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[benjfowler]

Is _is_ private.

If you give them enough money for a private launch, I'm sure they'll be quite happy to fly your and your stuff.

Money buys anything these days -- look at those ridiculous $30m junkets rich people were buying to the ISS recently (facilities bought and paid for with taxpayer funds, no less), for instance.

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[boaworm]

It wouldn't be too hard to argue that the population growth is a direct consequence of scientific progress. Medicine, food production, transportation etc.

But I could agree that without the growth in population, a lot of the GDB growth would have been missing. Good point :-)

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[Anonymous Coward]

"Ultimately, it will be commericialization and profit opportunity that propels mankind to the stars."

What justifies that position? Do you have any idea of the distances involved? The energy required? And what, precisely, do you think it out there in a gigantic vacuum that will run a profit? Real, practical technology and materials limit this "private space tourism" to a few minutes in the upper atmosphere as a thrill ride.

Technology and energy sources propel things, not idealistic rhetoric and delusional fantasies.

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[benjfowler]

That's bullshit, what's being "crowded out"?

I GUARANTEE you, moron, that most researchers will happily take private funding if it's on offer. Researchers on everything from nanotechnology, to psychology, to fusion energy, are screaming for resources. It just so happens that your fat cat banker and farmer friends have the ears of the politicians.

The only "crowding out" I see, is the scar tissue from all those idiotic Republican talking points crowding out the brain cells inside your head.

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[Baloroth]

No. This is not commercial spaceflight, because the only customer is the government.

No true. SpaceX already has several private-sector contracts, to launch various communications satellites (for Iridium and SES, most notably).

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[medcalf]

You are missing something important. The reason NASA is able to fund only part of the development costs (unlike the many billions they flushed on Constellation) is that these vehicles are designed to also meet the needs of non-NASA customers. In effect, NASA is paying part of the development costs to get a vehicle that they can use, and the companies involved are paying the rest to be able to serve both NASA and non-NASA customers. While profit motives don't make everything work, they make most things work, far better than top-down control does. I'm not sure how, after the disaster of 20th century communism, fascism and social democracy, somehow it is markets who are seen as having failed. It's takes phenomenal ignorance of history and economics to make that argument.

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[medcalf]

Why are technology and energy sources incompatible with commercialization and profit opportunity? Do large distances or time frames suddenly change human nature?

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[ShanghaiBill]

For the past quarter century NASA's manned space program has been just one squandered opportunity after another. Very little science has been done that wasn't just a repeat of what was done on Skylab or Mir decades earlier. But the unmanned programs have been a huge success. I have heard it said that the manned program is needed to keep the public interested while the "real" science done in the unmanned program is just along for the ride. But my experience is the opposite. When I talk to kids, they are very interested in the Mars rovers or the New Horizons mission to Pluto, etc., but not so much interested in the ISS making pointless loops in the sky.

I am encouraged that NASA finally seems to be a path for sustainable progress. My grandpa used to say that if you have two hours to chop down a tree, you should spend the first hour sharpening your ax. So, instead of pounding away with a dull ax, I am glad to see NASA doing some ax sharpening. We need better launch platforms, we also need more reaseach into better materials (super alloys, composites, syntactic metal foams, nanotube fibers, etc), better propulsion systems, and more versatile and autonomous robotics. We could make significant progress on any of these for the cost of one shuttle launch.

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[khallow]

I GUARANTEE you, moron,

How much is that "guarantee" worth? Nothing.

that most researchers will happily take private funding if it's on offer. Researchers on everything from nanotechnology, to psychology, to fusion energy, are screaming for resources. It just so happens that your fat cat banker and farmer friends have the ears of the politicians.

Why should it be "on offer"? The people "screaming" for resources are already well funded or they're too incompetent to bother with. It's so hard to find scientists, in the basic sciences, who actually look for private funding. Also, please keep in mind that the sciences are way overstaffed. A lot of people looking for funding doesn't imply that there's not enough funding.

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[Nyeerrmm]

You're correct, 'commercial' is a bit of an a awkward term here. However, there are two reasons this is a big change from past contracting methods for developing spacecraft that the government uses:

1. There is competition. The reason (well regulated) markets are efficient is not profit motive, but competition. This is why Sen. Wolfe's proposal to select only one winner was so antithetical to the purpose of the program.

2. The government is buying rides, not buying vehicles. The companies that produce Dragon, CST-100, and DreamChaser are free to sell rides to anyone arms control treaties allow. There is some mile-stone based development money right now, but thats only because it is in NASA's interest to stimulate and accelerate this market rather than build competitive vehicles.

While this won't be truly commercial until a company can do well without a government customer, this is a step in the right direction, and nothing to sneeze at.

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[cpu6502]

I would say that 50% of the GDP growth came not from science, but from the Federal Reserve's money printing. It distorts the real value of the GDP.

When you adjust today's GDP into 1920 dollars, the ramp is near flat. $13.5 trillion becomes a mere 0.4 trillion in 1920 dollars. So the actual Real GDP was from 0.1 to 0.4 trillion.

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[khallow]

No. This is not commercial spaceflight, because the only customer is the government.

That's not how it works. If the service is for profit, and here they all are for profit, then they are "commercial" whether or not the only customer is publicly funded.

The idea that profit motives will make everything work is largely discredited in real life these days.

Not in real life. It's really tiresome to have to deal with these delusions over and over again. Profit works both as a motivation to do the thing in question and as a lever to insure good behavior (do something wrong, lose your profit).

If you don't like bad behavior, then don't incentivize it.

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[EdgePenguin]

The 'failure' of social democracy? Notice how people in the UK live as long, and have similar health outcomes, as people in the US - despite spending 3 times less on their (state provided) healthcare?

Libertarians are hilariously ignorant, and hence why you have an absurd view of the 'new' space industry.

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[EdgePenguin]

None of those are manned flights, which is what NASAs 'commercial' contracts are for. Try to keep up.

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[khallow]

"Ultimately, it will be commericialization and profit opportunity that propels mankind to the stars."

Well, what does "profit opportunity" mean? It means an activity that has the potential to return more than is put in. Do you think that mankind will be propelled "to the stars", if every relevant activity costs more than you get out of it? Not a chance.

This is just a basic economic truism, something like saying the sky is blue.

Technology and energy sources propel things, not idealistic rhetoric and delusional fantasies.

Indeed. But it is fortunate for our idealistic rhetoric that we do have technology and energy sources to realize that rhetoric.

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[EdgePenguin]

You've forgotten 2008 already then, or perhaps for ideological reasons, taken the wrong lesson from it. If the private sector couldn't manage banks, what makes you think it can manage a mission to Mars?

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[Altanar]

Those launches are using SpaceX's rockets. NASA didn't fund any of that development.

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[EdgePenguin]

They cost $20m last time I checked, and there have only been 7 customers over 11 years of operation. The size of that market, year on year, is about 1000 times smaller than the current NASA budget. So no, the profit motive is not going to expand us into the universe.

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[NalosLayor]

The problem isn't that the manned program is not valuable, but that it's not funded or organized well enough to actually provide a return on investment. If you refused to give the planetary scientists anything bigger than a sounding rocket, the unmanned programs would look pretty worthless too. Understand that all the progress we've made since the 70's with mars probes could be done in one week with a manned mission -- and if it was done spacex style, it could be done on something close to the current budget. Hell, look at some of the alternative proposals that private industry came up with in the 70's for the shuttle, which were discarded in favor of the reference design shuttle.

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[Anonymous Coward]

DARPA only has a budget of ~3.2 Billion dollars, in other words, less than NASA.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Rich people were buying flights to the Russian segment of the station. Which belongs to Russian taxpayers, and they're getting a pretty good return on the otherwise wasted seat. Just because America can't run their side efficiently doesn't mean tourists on the ISS isn't profitable for taxpayers.

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[khallow]

We need better launch platforms, we also need more reaseach into better materials (super alloys, composites, syntactic metal foams, nanotube fibers, etc), better propulsion systems, and more versatile and autonomous robotics.

The key obstacle is economic. Simply put, any orbital launch system ever made would benefit significantly from even a slightly higher launch frequency. We are finally developing launch systems that will try to create and take advantage of this economy of scale. With a cheap launch vehicle and a burgeoning launch market, then one has both the resources and the motivation to develop better technologies without requiring NASA guidance or funding.

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[NalosLayor]

I'm sorry that I don't have mod points, but you should be ashamed of this post. You've totally ruined whatever argument you were trying to make by calling khallow "a big stupid poopy head".

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[CrimsonAvenger]

It wouldn't be too hard to argue that the population growth is a direct consequence of scientific progress. Medicine, food production, transportation etc.

Considering that population density in the USA is lower today than it was in, say, France in 1740, it's pretty hard to argue that population growth is a direct consequence of scientific progress.

Likewise, China had a population density by 1900 that was about 30% higher than the current US population density.

Certainly our standard of living has much to do with science (or, rather, technology, since while the two are related, they're not identical), but our population has much less bearing on science (or technology).

On the other hand, the size of our country is pretty much predicated on technology - without the telegraph and railroads, it's likely we would have split into two (or three countries) in the 19th century.

And for those about to bring up the Civil War, note that the telegraph and railroad were crucial to actually winning that war for the North.

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[I_am_Jack]

Libertarians are hilariously ignorant...

Not so much ignorant as ignoring. They ignore the 90% of history which doesn't support their world view, and every other economic theory which contradicts the one they choose to believe.

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[Darth Snowshoe]

You're the same guy from the other NASA thread. Don't you ever get tired of crabbing about the government?

What you're saying is beginning to sound more and more like some kind of objectivist viewpoint. That doesn't immediately discredit it, but I'd suggest (especially if you're going to talk about science, here, and make assertions as if you know something about it) you need to back up what you're saying with some (any) kind of citation or evidence.

"government funding has crowded out private for basic science" - what? Is there any evidence you can point to for this?

"researchers now focus on maintaining funding rather than doing science or delivering value" - again, what? Researchers get paid, and get better positions and more credibilty, by publishing in peer-reviewed journals, novel and substantial research. You can't tread water as a researcher. There's not enough money around for that to work for very long. But if you have some evidence or even anecdotal data to show, please do so.

"vaccines and antibiotics[...] an expensive testing situation where developing a valuable drug isn't sufficiently profitable even though it can save many lives" that's at least a swag at a particular example. It's a particularly bad one however, because people nearly universally demand and expect that new human vaccines and medicines to be thoroughly tested. The government is pretty clearly reflecting the will of the majority on this. And yes, it's expensive, but the work itself is big, and rigorous, and the liabilities for screwing it up are enormous. None of that has to do with commercial spaceflight however.

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[progician]

I'm not sure how, after the disaster of 20th century communism, fascism and social democracy, somehow it is markets who are seen as having failed. It's takes phenomenal ignorance of history and economics to make that argument.

Errr... Fail. All of those you mention was directly or indirectly a response to the growing capitalist fears of the organized working class, the real sufferer of that beloved free market ideology. The "markets" somehow piss themselves and run immediately to the authoritarian solutions, when communism (which has nothing to do with the Eastern European radical social democratic political structures. I'm coming from one of these countries, so I have some ideas about the topic.) appears.

This whole free market bullshit is just an other dream, an other idealistic cry of the small capital owners. The big ones have already rigged the game for themselves around 100-150 years ago, so it is time for these libertarians to wake up really, and realize that what they want is a simple anachronism, or even just a misplaced nostalgia. With corporations, with an income of entire government budgets, there's no free market, there is an overlapping corporate and government interest, with ever bitter struggles, within the corporate and government structures. Funny thing is, that what this free market crowd wants, only a strong government organization can provide, enforcing the dismantling these large capital concentrations. Free market and its individualistic utopia brought us here, in to the middle of individualistic but highly accumulated power structures.

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[Lifyre]

So you're saying the Real GDP quadrupled? Seems pretty good to me...

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[I_am_Jack]

The problem is that government funded science hasn't really done that much for us. Most of US science is and always was privately funded.

Yeah, that big, stupid government-funded Apollo program really set privatized science back decades, didn't it?

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[Baloroth]

First of all, not sure how that is relevant since most space exploration is and has always been unmanned (largely of necessity), and second, NASA's commercial contracts are for both unmanned and manned missions. The CCP contracts mentioned in TFA are specifically for manned (being the Commercial Crew Program), but the CRS includes unmanned supply missions such as that recently carried out by the Dragon capsule, developed partially by funding from the COTS program.

Realistically, there never was much demand for manned missions, scientific or otherwise, and frankly given the extreme cost I think we would have been better to simply invest it in more advanced robotic "telepresence" systems.

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[gdy]

How much a trip to ISS cost in 1920?

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[MyLongNickName]

I verified numbers and found the following

In 1920, our GDP was 88 billion not 100 billion as your post indicates. Rounding isn't appropriate when it would lead to a 14% difference in numbers
In 2010, our GDP was 14,527 billion. In terms of 1920 dollars, we must divide by 10.9 to get 1,332.66 billion not 400 billion as your post indicates.

In real terms, our economy has grown by a factor of 15, or almost four doublings in 90 years. That is incredible, and to my knowledge unprecedented in the istory of the world to have that type of growth.

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[MyLongNickName]

See my corrected numbers -- it is more like a 15x growth in the economy over that time period.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1920_2010USb_13s1li011mcn__US_Gross_Domestic_Product_GDP_History

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[MyLongNickName]

And you bring up another good point that I didn't want to touch on. First, the economy has grown by a factor of 15 but this only tells part of the story. While some goods are more expensive than they were 90 years ago, we have goods and services that could only be imagined of 90 years ago. A university education? out of the reach of all but the elites in the 20s. Internet access? Air conditioning? Transplants? Even electricity wasn't near universal in 1920.

So you are correct in pointing out that a single number doesn't paint the picture of how much our economy has grown.

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[ColdWetDog]

Do large distances or time frames suddenly change human nature?

Most certainly. Much of how humans have organized their societies is directly reflected in our typical lifespans and commercial return-on-investment considerations. If humans lived for 1000 years it would dramatically change how societies have been structured.

If we ever get faster than light travel, this too will change 'human nature' (ie, base assumptions of human behavior).

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[drinkypoo]

It's not like it's his idea, but I'll get behind anyone who has a chance to make it happen. Which of course ain't him. Or probably anyone.

On the other hand, it seems like it would be relatively easy to come up with a website (or something) that does this semi-automatically. You could have a few generic models to represent the politicians, it's not like their faces are significant, and then you could put them in a racing suit with the colors of their biggest sponsor, and slap the logos of their other major sponsors onto it.

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[ColdWetDog]

Understand that all the progress we've made since the 70's with mars probes could be done in one week with a manned mission.

If you can get the meat Popsicles to Mars alive. Yes, with a huge increase in funding, we may be able to work through the technology to do that. However, what your argument misses is the concept that both manned and unmanned space flight have been woefully underfunded. If you gave Mars researchers the kind of budget needed to get a manned expedition to Mars but instead used it for unmanned flight, we could have thousands of rovers wandering about the planet, doing more than some random astronaut kicking pebbles.

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[khallow]

You're the same guy from the other NASA thread. Don't you ever get tired of crabbing about the government?

Yes, I do. But it's a necessary task.

What you're saying is beginning to sound more and more like some kind of objectivist viewpoint. That doesn't immediately discredit it, but I'd suggest (especially if you're going to talk about science, here, and make assertions as if you know something about it) you need to back up what you're saying with some (any) kind of citation or evidence.

Ok, consider the fact that prior to the Second World War, most scientific effort even in areas that are traditionally considered the domain of public funding today were privately funded. Astronomy, the space efforts of that time in particular received a variety of grants from the wealthy of the time for telescopes and other facilities. While Robert Goddard's work on rocketry was largely ignored, it is worth noting that he received private funding off and on over the years, including notable support from Charles Lindbergh and the Guggenheim family.

A final note is that during the Gilded Age, the US went from a backwards former colony to a world class scientific power. While some of that was due to public efforts (particularly large land grants to the states to create universities), most was due to private efforts.

"researchers now focus on maintaining funding rather than doing science or delivering value" - again, what? Researchers get paid, and get better positions and more credibilty, by publishing in peer-reviewed journals, novel and substantial research.

No offense, but publishing, even in peer-reviewed journals, is not the same as novel and substantial research. A classic example of ignored novel and substantial research is verification research. Confirming previous work simply isn't considered valuable, even though it is.

You can't tread water as a researcher. There's not enough money around for that to work for very long. But if you have some evidence or even anecdotal data to show, please do so.

Sure you can. You tread water by publishing. There are a variety of games to stretch out research over a bunch of papers and then trickle those papers out over the expected frequency of the funding source.

For example, if you are expected to publish four papers a year, instead of publishing one very comprehensive and thorough paper on a subject, publish ten lighter works. That way you can stretch the work out over two and a half years instead of having to come up with new research that very year. The methodology of the experiment might go in a couple of papers. You can post a letter to some journals announcing your work. Your graduate students or subordinates can publish their own takes on the research with your name attached. Publishing papers with lots of authors is a notorious means for getting your paper count up.

Getting citations is another scheme. A common approach is to become a reviewer and force those whom you review to include your more relevant work. "This research is highly dependent on khallow[1998], khallow [2003], and khallow [2009]. I can't approve it for publication without these essential references."

It's a particularly bad one however, because people nearly universally demand and expect that new human vaccines and medicines to be thoroughly tested. The government is pretty clearly reflecting the will of the majority on this. And yes, it's expensive, but the work itself is big, and rigorous, and the liabilities for screwing it up are enormous. None of that has to do with commercial spaceflight however.

So what? That expectation means more people die. People also expect their government to not be perpetually bankrupt. But that would be a bit contrary to demands in this thread for funding of science. One can't have everything.

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[NalosLayor]

I think you're both overestimating the costs of a manned mission and underestimating the costs of rovers. If we did a manned mission *right*, I would guess that the total cost would pay for something on the order of 50 rovers.

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[taiwanjohn]

Uh, well... $3.2B dollars that we know about anyway.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"Why are technology and energy sources incompatible with commercialization and profit opportunity? "

That can't be a serious question, can it? You don't see how if something's NOT POSSIBLE, you CAN'T MAKE MONEY FROM IT???

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[rbrausse]

The 'failure' of social democracy?

your points are valid, but take also a look at the drifting semantics. The evil empire of yesteryear was communism, yesterday socialism and today social democracy? Extrapolated this should lead to "the failures of European-style traditional conservatism" in about 2 days...

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[RicktheBrick]

I can not conceive on why the private sector would do a better job at it. I have seen so much waste in the private sector. For instance there is K-Mart. I live in a small town of about 10,000 people. K-Mart's first building was abandoned by them and they had another built for them. They later went bankrupt and abandoned that building. It was later demolished and replaced by a Lowes hardware store. I do not think they made enough money in the 20 or so years of business to pay for that building. The only thing they managed to accomplish is the closing of most of the business in town and the shifting of those jobs to them. Of course a lot of them lost money they had invested in the corporation and had to start over after 20 years of labor. We have already seen the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs so why do we have to start over with the private sector. I can just see 10 years or so from now. There will be several programs that will be cancelled and we will see unused buildings and equipment. All of which could have been avoided if we had decided on a winner much earlier. I see this with electronic equipment. Many of which are being abandoned not because they do not work but because they need a new battery or a small part. One finds that buying new cost just a little bit more than repair so it does not pay to repair. I just hope that they demand a standard launch vehicle so one does not have to abandon it because of a loss of the launch site or the loss of some other hard to repair or replace part.

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[dpilot]

His guarantee and his opinion is worth just as much as yours. They're both opinions.

Look at the historical side of it. Through most of history, science has been a matter of hobby or patronage on the part of rich people - either they dabbled in it themselves, or they sponsored scientists. (Though in the patronage days they weren't so much scientists as natural artists, since that's what evolved to become what we call scientists today.)

Modern science is more recent, only a few centuries old. While "practical science" has been funded privately, I strongly suspect that the "pure science' has always been dominated by government and universities. Things like Bell Labs and Watson Research are very new - less than a century old.

Finally, reflexive "Government can't do squat right," is about as thinking, insightful, and accurate as "A government program can solve about any problem."

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[khallow]

"government funding has crowded out private for basic science" - what? Is there any evidence you can point to for this?

Another example of this is the fate of the famous business research centers such as Bell Labs, Skunkworks, Du Pont, and General Electric. They still exist, but are shadows of what they used to be. As I see it, the primary reason is that the US federal government insisted on doing for free what took these companies considerable resources to do. That's why almost no businesses do basic research any more. It's hard to compete with free.

It's worth noting that Google, which has perhaps the most famous current instance of the business research center, has no competition to speak of from the federal government. Almost the same goes for other R&D heavy high tech firms like Intel, Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Microsoft, though those firms do see a bit of publicly funded competition on the hardware and semiconductor sides.

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[m.ducharme]

So when he was governor, did he wear sponsorship patches on his suits?

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[jhoegl]

He actually did an amicable job as governor.
4 year term (because he believes in the Greek method of governance), and the rest you can read here

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[khallow]

Looks like the private sector managed those banks just fine. Picking up a few trillion dollars here and there in bailouts indicates they were quite successful at managing those banks. One can't understand this financial crisis (or why they keep happening over and over again), if one doesn't look at the incentives and motivations.

what makes you think it can manage a mission to Mars?

Fundamentally, a mission to Mars is a transportation problem. Private industry has demonstrated that it is really good at getting from point A to point B.

And one doesn't see a lot of unintended consequences like what routinely happens in banking because it's a lot easier to match incentive with intended goal. If the contract is that you deliver something at point B and time T, and you don't, then that's a straightforward breach of contract. No fancy bailout required.

Re:Bittersweet

[ZombieBraintrust]

No actual birth rates in the US hasn't changed much. Population growth is the US is based on our imagration laws.

Immigration has become the determinate factor in population growth. The 11.2 million immigrants who indicated they arrived between 1990 and 2000 plus the 6.4 million children born to immigrants in the United States during the 1990s are equal to almost 70 percent of U.S. population growth over the last 10 years.

Re:Bittersweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I take a shot in the dark here? You've spent a significant amount of time in the government sector, you are about 50 years old and have spent very little time in the private sector if any at all. Can you let me know how close to the target I am?

Re:Bittersweet

[Hatta]

Preference voting, publicly financed campaigns, paid lobbying bans, strict term limits, and mandatory retirement for congressmen paid at the median income (to stop the revolving door between Congress and industry). Do all of these things, and we might get a functioning government back. But we'd need a functioning government to even get started, so we're screwed.

Re:Bittersweet

[Anonymous Coward]

" it is fortunate for our idealistic rhetoric that we do have technology and energy sources to realize that rhetoric."

To the stars? You can NOT be serious? You're clinically insane.

Re:Bittersweet

[Truth is life]

DARPA is by no means the only defense-related scientific funding agency. Off the top of my head, there's the Naval Research Laboratory and the Air Force Research Laboratory, and I'm pretty sure there's an Army lab too. That's leaving aside funding agencies which aren't in defense but are funding defense-related research, like the Department of Energy, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and so on and so forth. DARPA is a small piece of a much larger puzzle.

Re:Bittersweet

[Hatta]

The problem is that government funded science hasn't really done that much for us.

That's a flat out lie.

Most of US science is and always was privately funded.

And most science in the US isn't basic science. It's product development.

IMHO researchers now focus on maintaining funding rather than doing science or delivering value.

Doing science is how one maintains funding. And "delivering value" is exactly what we don't want our researchers doing. We want them asking interesting questions, not questions that immediately lead to a salable product. The greatest discoveries always come from "hm, that's funny", not "I wonder if I could sell this".

Socialize the losses, privatize the gain works in science funding just like it does elsewhere in public funding.

The gains due to basic research are socialized throughout society. When research is published publically, everyone in the world gets the benefit of that knowledge.

That's generally because there's no gain to be had either because it never existed and never will, or because society has created obstacles which render the project valueless to anyone who tries to pursue it.

This is an absolutely baseless assertion.

For example, someone was claiming research into new vaccines and antibiotics were solely the domain of public funded research, ignoring that the rules on new drug testing throughout the developed world created an expensive testing situation where developing a valuable drug isn't sufficiently profitable even though it can save many lives.

And? Are you going to take a drug that hasn't been thoroughly tested for safety? I guess as long as the eeeevil government doesn't have anything to do with it, it's perfectly ok, right?

Re:Bittersweet

[khallow]

His guarantee and his opinion is worth just as much as yours.

I didn't provide a worthless "guarantee" and never have (google it!). If I make a guarantee, it'll be with money attached. Sure, our opinions may be equally worthless, but look at who puts an artificial and worthless gloss of certainty on their claims.

Modern science is more recent, only a few centuries old. While "practical science" has been funded privately, I strongly suspect that the "pure science' has always been dominated by government and universities. Things like Bell Labs and Watson Research are very new - less than a century old.

In other words, a totally new system for funding and doing science was created in the past century. And we killed it.

Finally, reflexive "Government can't do squat right," is about as thinking, insightful, and accurate as "A government program can solve about any problem."

It does have the virtue of more supporting evidence. But one doesn't to support such an extreme position to note that government research funding just isn't all that effective.

All I can say from personal experience is that the few times I've done research, it's been for one to two orders of magnitude less than the government contractor. For example, last year I worked with a group to put up a high altitude airship (and made a world record no less). It wasn't sexy, large, or very maneuverable, but it did have the virtue of costing only $30,000 plus volunteer labor. In comparison, the airship with the second highest altitude was part of a DoD program which burned several hundred million dollars including many tens of millions on that particular vehicle, which was the primary outcome. It looked a little sexier and it had a little more gear. But it wasn't worth three orders of magnitude cost difference.

We have a similar example in this story. NASA did a study on the development of the Falcon 9 and concluded that NASA would cost the contract at a factor of ten more than SpaceX actually spent (and the study authors apparently audited SpaceX's books as part of the study!). And that's before the typical contract cost inflation.

After experiences like that, I now divide the costs of large government contracts by ten to get a better idea of how much that research actually costs.

Re:Bittersweet

[khallow]

Yeah, that big, stupid government-funded Apollo program really set privatized science back decades, didn't it?

Funny you should mention that. The US didn't allow commercial launch providers till 1984. There was no reason there couldn't have been commercial launch providers back in the mid 60s with the Saturn 1B and Atlas and Titan series of rockets. I wonder what could have set privatization of space access by two whole decades?

I'd have to guess here. But I think the Apollo program and the subsequent Shuttle programs set back privatized space launch by two decades. Add in the International Space Station, which as long as it is up pretty much defeats the market case for a private research station, and yes, I can see Apollo and a bunch of follow on boondoggles setting back private space research by half a century or more.

Re:Bittersweet

[Anonymous Coward]

But I would guess 90% of that 140 billion per year is mainly for technology exploitation and profit to private companies and endowments for tech universities. As well as the duplication of experiments to train our future workforce [of scientists/engineers]. It's the the science, "we want" [that's politically correct].

Only 10% is used for the real science "we need".

Re:Bittersweet

[khallow]

" it is fortunate for our idealistic rhetoric that we do have technology and energy sources to realize that rhetoric."

To the stars? You can NOT be serious? You're clinically insane.

Over what time frame? It's obviously not happening this week. The key constraint keeping me from planning such a thing is lifespan. A lifespan of around a century at this time means one simply can't achieve it. But if I expected to live over 10,000 years, I would be planning this very thing. A number of star systems are in range at that time frame, even if one has to spend a few centuries building up space-side infrastructure first.

Re:Bittersweet

[ceoyoyo]

Population density might not be such a great comparison. Science certainly allows more food to be grown. It's possible that the US hasn't reached it's non-science ability to feed itself yet, but I don't think that's a given.

Getting back to the original point though, I very much doubt that GDP per capita in eighteenth century France (or China in 1900, or eighteenth century USA) was 50% of GDP per capita in the US today.

Re:Bittersweet

[edremy]

You're using the Skunkworks as an example? Seriously?

Hint: The Skunkworks built airplanes for the US government, under US government contracts. Here's the list of planes they built- see anything civilian on that list? A number of your other examples are dubious at best- a huge amount of GE's R&D is government funded through the military. Bell Labs existed only because Bell had a monopoly on phone service- it's no accident that as soon as that monopoly was gone and they had to compete in a free market Bell Labs was gone as well.

As for your thesis that government research crowds out civilian, I'd counter that long term R&D simply isn't something most companies these days can budget for. That's not because the government is competing with them, it's because the stock market demands that they produce higher quarterly profits every single period. Pure R&D is expensive and almost always results in nothing more than a bunch of research papers without any revenue. It's the first thing to go when the CEO needs to trim costs.

Re:Bittersweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for their anonymous downers. Damn cowards!

Re:Bittersweet

[khallow]

I'd counter that long term R&D simply isn't something most companies these days can budget for. That's not because the government is competing with them, it's because the stock market demands that they produce higher quarterly profits every single period.

Well, ever wonder why the stock market demands that? If one looks at older times, before the Second World War and the Great Depression, there was the same greed and same short sightedness. But somehow companies figured out how to invest for the future. Well, not everyone obviously, but enough. What changed?

My view is that it is a systemic set of incentives from implicit bailout guarantees for large scale failure, regulation that rewards caution over risk taking, and of course, vast amounts of uncritical government funding for research without the messy details of actually needing to produce anything of value. It is these things which results in a business environment that has little need to think past the next quarter.

If you want businesses to engage in long term thing, then you need to change the incentives. I don't know, maybe you like businesses that can't do long term. But that doesn't sound like what you really want.

And thus, that leads us to this moderately counterintuitive point. If you want to increase the research done by your country, then you need to delegate that research to the private sector rather than publicly fund it directly. And if one wants a constructive way for public funds to spur research, consider prizes. For example, the Clay Millennial Prize Problems in mathematics show a way one can encourage productive research even in abstract fields.

But to just do more of the same thing that is causing the problem in the first place? That needs a rethinking.

You're using the Skunkworks as an example? Seriously? Hint: The Skunkworks built airplanes for the US government, under US government contracts. Here's the list of planes they built- see anything civilian on that list? A number of your other examples are dubious at best- a huge amount of GE's R&D is government funded through the military. Bell Labs existed only because Bell had a monopoly on phone service- it's no accident that as soon as that monopoly was gone and they had to compete in a free market Bell Labs was gone as well.

I see no dubiousness in any of those examples. The part about funded through government (military or whatever) indicates another avenue by which public funding corrupts scientific progress. These companies are paid to do research. They aren't paid by result. I believe that little fact adds a zero or two to the cost of everything they do for the government.

Re:Bittersweet

[thrich81]

I don't think Bell Labs is a good example of private industry research. When Bell Labs existed, AT&T had a monopoly on telephone communications and could milk the market for whatever it would bear. Thus they were not subject to competitive pressures to cut costs to the bone and the corporate officers felt they could afford a research arm like Bell Labs without a short term payoff in every effort. They could trade short term profit for long term gains, kind of like the government can do with its sponsored research. Thus Bell Labs operated more like government lab. Those days are gone.

Re:Bittersweet

[cpu6502]

>>> In terms of 1920 dollars, we must divide by 10.9

(1) I used the best number I could find. (2) Not even close to accurate. It's a common mistake for people to underestimate how much value our paper currency has lost over the last century.

According to the inflation calculator I found on google, today's 1 dollar bill has the same purchasing power as 4 cents in 1920 thanks to the Fed running the printing press like mad & devaluing the dollar. (I had estimated 3 cents.) So: take 14,527 billion and multiply by 0.04 == 581 billion. That's only 6 times the growth in real GDP, not 15.

Re:Bittersweet

[MyLongNickName]

My 10.9 is absolutely accurate. Source: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm/

If our economy grew by a factor of 6 only with a population growth of 3x, then we'd be only about twice as rich as our great grand fathers. You cannot possibly believe that without being horribly ignorant of history. House sizes are mammoth compared to that generation. We have electricity in every home. Even the poorest in this country have access to food, running water, electricity, a public school system and library system. And please tell me what the i7 equipped PC in your sig would cost in 1920. Cars were relatively the same cost in terms of median salary, but you gor something that looked like this http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/20scars/1924-chevy-utility-coupe.jpg

The fact is we are more wealthy than those from 90 years ago and dramatically so. To not see this requires an absolute ignorance of history.

Re:Bittersweet

[MyLongNickName]

More citations for the inflation from the top hits on Google.

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm/
http://www.coinnews.net/tools/cpi-inflation-calculator/
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp

So, please cite your source.

Re:Bittersweet

[cpu6502]

You must be doing something wrong then because when I type 0.043 into the calculator I got $1.00. In other words 1 dollar today only has the buying power of approximately 4 cents in 1920 thanks to the Fed's devaluation of our currency.

Re:Bittersweet

[cpu6502]

Same with these. 1 dollar today equals about 4 cents back in 1920. (For calculators that only go to 2010, I backed it off to 1918 so the span of years is the same.)

This value is only going to get worse with the Fed doing QE1, 2, and 3. By 2020 today's dollar will likely have the purchasing power of just 3 cents one century earlier. Contrast that with the 1800s when the dollar was tied to gold and therefore lost almost no value.

Re:Bittersweet

[MyLongNickName]

No, it is you. Type 1 for 1920, you will get 10.90 in 2010 dollars. This isn't difficult. I've tries to figure out how you get your numbers but I cannot back into it.

As an FYI, I have two undergrads in finance and a grad degree, and outside of the calculators I can do the math myself based on CPI numbers.. It isn't exactly hard math.

Re:Bittersweet

[nedlohs]

But even if population growth is a direct consequence of scientific progress, that GDP growth is a direct consequence of population growth just shows an indirect link from scientific progress to GDP growth. So that doesn't count as "directly from science".

Re:Bittersweet

[medcalf]

That can't be a serious answer (though of course, posting as AC gives that away from the start). I never said that one could make money from impossible things. I asked why the original AC assumed that "commercialization and profit motive" were incompatible with "technology and energy sources." The most charitable interpretation of your comment that I can come up with is that you misunderstood. More likely, you believe that the two are incompatible, and that commercialization and profit motive cannot in fact overcome large distances or the need for a large amount of energy, a view which is at odds with history and human nature. Certainly, the OP seemed to think that, which is why I asked the question in the first place.

Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, China is fully committed to manned space exploration missions that are soon likely to surpass those of the United States and NASA.

Way to keep that edge guys!

Re:Meanwhile...

[taiwanjohn]

Not sure how much of an "edge" we've had for the last 30 years anyway, unless you think spending $1bil per shuttle flight with only 20-ton payload capacity was a good idea.

Re:Meanwhile...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Meanwhile, China is fully committed to manned space exploration missions that are soon likely to surpass those of the United States and NASA.

Given that China has taken 12 years to do what we did back in the '60s in five years, it would be pretty hard to argue that they're going to surpass the US "soon"....

Re:Meanwhile...

[Jeng]

Good for them.

The US found going to the moon was a great PR stunt, but not anything worth continuing.

If there was a worthwhile reason to be on the moon we would be on the moon with the Chinese.

Granted there are many reasons to be on the moon, but the technology isn't there yet and there is not much reason to have a manned mission to the moon until the technology is ready.

Re:Meanwhile...

[ColdWetDog]

Careful with that line of argument. Yes, the Chinese have gone very slow. Yes, the Chinese have used Russian components for much of their current hardware.

But spaceflight isn't just building rockets and lighting them off. It's a complex human endevour that takes many, many people and many years to get everything in line. Just as Elon Musk has managed to pull off much the same feats and now has a crew of people that can start making real progress, the Chinese have slowly, carefully built up their infrastructure. They now have engineers that have seen space launches from start to finish. They now have material sciences people that know what they really need to know to build spacecraft. They apparently have built up real political support for the program by not turning people into funeral pyres.

It will take another 10 years or so for the Chinese program to really spread it's wings but they will get there....

Re:Meanwhile...

[FatLittleMonkey]

Meanwhile, China is fully committed to manned space exploration missions that are soon likely to surpass those of the United States and NASA.

So? China might also beat your country in the Olympic medal tally this year. And a month later, the significance will be about the same as them beating NASA.

Re:Meanwhile...

[edremy]

They apparently have built up real political support for the program by not turning people into funeral pyres

Umm, yeah, about that. They've killed a whole pile more people than either the US or Russian programs, but most folks in China don't know about it since the Chinese government suppresses the news.

Re:WTF?

[medcalf]

You are correct: you do not understand. Try fixing that.

Re:WTF?

[Altanar]

Yep, you've completely misunderstood what this is. Feel free to RTFA. At least this one: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/ccicap-announcement.html

"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"It's seeding!"

"It's the well-connected using government to pick economic winners and losers."

Don't laugh. We are not so far from the era where government deciding, "This country isn't big enough to support several, therefore company A may operate and company B is hereby put out of business." was viewed as a legitimate principle. Socialists cheered while money exchanged hands behind the scenes just like it had for thousands of years with kings.

Only the memetic wrapper changed.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[MickyTheIdiot]

Anyone that thinks we are living in a socialist era isn't worthy of paying attention to... and they need to be bought a dictionary and a history book.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who describes the Obama Administration as 'socialist' is a Republican looking to push hyperbole instead of having a honest discussion of policy. It's not an opinion that would be formed from a proper history book, or from a dictionary, but likely from the cesspool of yellow journalism known a 'talk radio'.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[medcalf]

I wonder what your definition of socialist is, then. If socialism fundamentally means that the government regulates and controls all aspects of economic behavior, and owns those economic assets deemed "essential", we're pretty close to that, and getting closer all the time. (As opposed to communism, where government directly controls all economic behavior, or fascism, where government indirectly controls economic behavior via regulation and control, but now ownership.) Granted, we are really a fascist economy rather than a socialist economy, but with GM and so forth, that line's getting mighty thin.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[medcalf]

Define your terms, then. What is "socialist" to you? In what ways does the Obama administration not follow the pattern of what you deem socialist?

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Jeng]

In what ways does the Obama administration not follow the pattern of what you deem socialist?

How about you explain why you think he is a socialist, please provide examples and citations.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I do believe that was largely the point of my post.

In any case those modding it -1 Troll need to go watch the Howard Huges movie starring Leo DiCaprio.

In there his TWA has to fight a battle against Pan Am, not to be an internal domestic carrier but to be the international one for the US. Pan Am was god and had convinced the Congress, for its own benefit, that "This market ain't big enough for he two of us."

Hughes launched a public campaign about freedom of choice and Congress backed down.

This socialist nonsense is indeed within living memory, sir.

If you wish to chastize me that times have changed, then good. Freedom has won and shifted the debate.

Allow me the conceit of continuing to plunge a dagger into the dead vampire's heart once in awhile. After all, it does no harm to something dead, right?

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The time will come, young ones, when commercial space will take off. Some of the large companies in it will start up with the "Space is crowded and launch windows and launch spaces are limited and therefore Congress should restrict it to just us" BS.

Fuck that bullshit.

WWRAHD?

What would Robert A. Heinlein do?

"Fuck that bullshit!" and he'd fake up a video of the lead senator jerking off to child porn.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Hatta]

If you wish to chastize me that times have changed, then good. Freedom has won and shifted the debate.

Freedom has won, if you're uber rich. The average person is much, much less free today than they were a generation ago. Forgive me if I'd rather live in a world where the bottom 99.9% are free, and the top 1% are not, than the other way around.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Hillgiant]

For years (decades?), it has been my contention that all of Heinlein's books boil down to masturbation. Sometimes it's just mental masturbation, but masturbation nonetheless.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[Hillgiant]

Allow me the conceit of continuing to plunge a dagger into the dead vampire's heart once in awhile. After all, it does no harm to something dead, right?

Yup. Sounds like hyperbole to me.

Re:"Lemme seed you, c'mere!"

[medcalf]

There's no ability to have an argument or discussion if you can't even agree on terms. The AC was saying that Obama is not a socialist and that the only way to define Obama as a socialist was to ignore history, dictionaries and the like. OK, so then if he's going to ignore the definitions anyone else provides, he has to provide his own definitions, and we can then argue or discuss on those terms.

sierra nevada?

[Anonymous Coward]

are they as good at making spacecraft as they are at making beer?

Re:sierra nevada?

[aaarrrgggh]

Well, they did start selling the Pale Ale in cans. Small scale manufacturing ramp?

dawning of a new space era

[schlachter]

this is exciting...the dawning of a new space era where private industry is leading the space race, spurred onward by government prize money and contracts. With the proper oversight, this could be more productive than having NASA build inhouse.

Re:dawning of a new space era

[Anonymous Coward]

The exciting race to low earth orbit ... wow.... A new era of minutes-long hops in tin cans...

I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

Competition for first product without considerable concern for safety and backup leads to...... I've said enough.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[MickyTheIdiot]

There might still be dead pilots in space because of accidents in the Soviet space program. It didn't get them to the moon first.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[medcalf]

Why do you conclude that there is not considerable concern for safety and backup?

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

Why do you conclude that there is not considerable concern for safety and backup?

Rush... to see who completes first and wins... You know, childhood behavior that repeats itself throughout life.... "I'm the coolest and best and I want to be recognized FIRST, no matter what it takes"?

That's why I concluded as I did.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[Anonymous Coward]

1st object in space - 1942, Germany
1st Earth satellite - 1957, Soviet Union
1st photograph of far side of the Moon - 1959, Soviet Union
1st landing on the Moon (unmanned) - 1959, Soviet Union
1st human in orbit - 1961, Soviet Union
1st large biological specimens outside LEO (around the Moon, turtles) - 1968, Soviet Union
1st landing on the Moon (manned) - 1969, United States of America
1st rover on another body - 1970, Soviet Union
1st landing on Venus - 1970, Soviet Union
1st landing on Mars - 1971, Soviet Union
1st space station - 1971, Soviet Union

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[Gravatron]

So basically, you have no evidence besides what you think stereotypically happens?

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[khallow]

You know, childhood behavior that repeats itself throughout life.... "I'm the coolest and best and I want to be recognized FIRST, no matter what it takes"?

So... competition is bad because you saw it on the playground? I take it you don't learn things too gud. A lot of childhood behavior repeats itself throughout your life because the childhood is where you learn about the world. One would be foolish to expect or even desire a childhood completely detached from reality.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did GP say competition is bad?

He's just pointing out an economic truism: if you focus on doing one thing (getting first to implement/market/recognized), you have less resources to devote to other things (safety, cost, etc)

If anything, if you are the first out of the gate and it turns out to be a HUGE DISASTER, it'll certainly get you recognition (see: Titanic, Hindenburg, etc.). So cutting back on safety is actually not a bad idea (it'll certainly safe on costs, which is a plus!)

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

So basically, you have no evidence besides what you think stereotypically happens?

Thanks for verifying it for me. There is a driver behind all stereotypes.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

You know, childhood behavior that repeats itself throughout life.... "I'm the coolest and best and I want to be recognized FIRST, no matter what it takes"?

So... competition is bad because you saw it on the playground? I take it you don't learn things too gud. A lot of childhood behavior repeats itself throughout your life because the childhood is where you learn about the world. One would be foolish to expect or even desire a childhood completely detached from reality.

Really... was my comment THAT narrow? Think outside the box, please. I can't type everything in detail as it relates to the topic at hand; that would take years. :)

It was a statement to emphasize the repetition of unsafe competitive behavior, in this case, the manufacturing industry of an item that can kill people and damage property.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[WindBourne]

LOL. All of the companies that won money have nothing but safety being put first. Heck, SpaceX even outdoes the specs that NASA requires and that NASA has not met with any of their old systems. Atlas is being upgraded with many sensors. CST-100? Same way. Then you have DreamChaser which is undergoing similar things.

These are going to be as safe, or more likely even safer, than anything developed to date.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

LOL. All of the companies that won money have nothing but safety being put first. Heck, SpaceX even outdoes the specs that NASA requires and that NASA has not met with any of their old systems. Atlas is being upgraded with many sensors. CST-100? Same way. Then you have DreamChaser which is undergoing similar things.

These are going to be as safe, or more likely even safer, than anything developed to date.

Sweet! Where did you find this information? Does it specify that it is actual inside information from the companies mentioned and detail exactly what they are doing, or is it just publicly released information? :)

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[WindBourne]

Lets see, the F9 will have flown 7-9 times by the first dragonrider. The dragon itself will have gone up at least 5x. Even the specs on the entire launch system is at more than 140% of what NASA wants which is 125%.
Atlas, which is the core of SNC and CST-100 has flown MANY times. It is currently being outfitted with sensors, but it remains the same launch system.
Boeing has a LONG history of building space systems.
SNC will probably have the least experience and testing, and yet, NASA looks over every aspect of what they are up to.

So, explain to me what is unsafe with these companies and their products.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[WindBourne]

You can read about it on the web. Here let me help you. Or are you looking for proprietary information that China and their competitors would dearly love to get ahold of?

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

You can read about it on the web. Here let me help you. Or are you looking for proprietary information that China and their competitors would dearly love to get ahold of?

Option B would be nice. :)

Anyhow, I'm not referring to people talking about things that they've heard or that have been press-released. I'm talking about inside information that no one but the insiders know about - more specifically, information related to cost cutting and/or time saving with increased safety risk. There isn't information about that out there on the web or, you know, there wouldn't be any safety issues. My point stands.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[khallow]

Where did GP say competition is bad?

Why speak of the "rush" as if it were fact? You write the above truism as a conditional, the GP did not. He claims that these firms are rushing to market without proper safety precautions. No, "if they focus too much". And the only supporting argument? Something about childhood behavior on the playground.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[khallow]

It was a statement to emphasize the repetition of unsafe competitive behavior, in this case, the manufacturing industry of an item that can kill people and damage property.

Well, if you were really thinking outside the box, rather than just lowering the signal to noise ratio, you'd have put it as a conditional rather than a merely wrong statement of fact:

He's just pointing out an economic truism: if you focus on doing one thing (getting first to implement/market/recognized), you have less resources to devote to other things (safety, cost, etc)

Maybe you ought to let this AC to have your opinions for you. (S)he is pretty good at it. And that happens to be a statement I agree with too. Imagine that.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

Actually, that was an AC, not mine. Sweet!

Give it up. Your attempt to pick a fight is going to end with you having the last word one way or another. So go ahead. Have it. :)

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[khallow]

So are you going to change your ways? You are after all the driver behind this particular stereotype.

Re:I can already see a crash coming...

[poofmeisterp]

So are you going to change your ways? You are after all the driver behind this particular stereotype.

...and you have the statistics to prove it. Go ahead. Have the last word.

Only $375 Million?

[Piata]

If Space X has only spent $375 million to get where it is today, imagine what NASA could do if it wasn't plagued by pork and had actual funding. Movies have bugets of $300 million: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php

As a human race, we have some pretty mixed priorities.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[taiwanjohn]

I saw this on reddit today. Sorta takes your thought to its logical conclusion.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[GodfatherofSoul]

$300 Million dollar movies also return you $1 Billion in a year or two.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[Sperbels]

Movies have bugets of $300 million

If any industry is paying $500 for a toilet seat, it's Hollywood.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[kwakmunkee]

And $154 billion modern-day dollars ($25 billion in 1969) returned sensors that detect hazardous gases, haz-mat worker suits, cordless power tools, better insulated clothing, reflective blankets, CAT scans, magnetic resonance imaging, athletic shoes, freeze-dried food, new water purification technology that reduces lead poisoning, kidney dialysis, physical therapy now used by football teams and rehabilitation centers, advances in avionics, telecommunications, and computers...

All pretty much useless to $700 million of today's dollars, wouldn't you agree?

http://space.about.com/od/toolsequipment/ss/apollospinoffs.htm

Re:Only $375 Million?

[EdgePenguin]

This is not insightful, its simplistic and idiotic. NASA was doing everything for the first time. SpaceX is just rehashing a well established technology - hence their very low development costs. This may cause problems down the road; in order to have these very low development costs, SpaceX takes from the common pool of knowledge (all the help/free R&D they got from NASA) but do not give back, because of course everything they do develop is a commercial secret. This may be a sign that technological development in the space industry is slowing down, if all people are interested in is the lowest possible costs - because they can only be achieved by being a technological free rider.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[WindBourne]

NASA has less pork than you can image. They 3 main issues.
The first is that they do true cutting edge work. Nothing cheap about that. True R&D involves a LOT of money.
The second is that they are forced to farm out much of the work. That used to be a good thing until congress pushed them into cost+. Once it became cost+, then the gravy train rolled for the contractors.
CONgress controlls the money and the projects. The REAL problem is not NASA, but CONgress. Look at the damage that the republicans have done over the last 17 years to NASA. The republicans killed the original COTS in mid 90's. Transhab and vasimr (as well as other projects) were likewise killed by the republicans back in late 90's. Clinton had to beg and then stand up to the neo-cons to get all of this transferred to private companies. Then again, the republicans gutted the ISS removing perhaps the most important modules of the centrifuge. Constellation was severely underfunded by the republicans. The list continues on and on.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[WindBourne]

Neither Cat scans nor MRI came from NASA. Lots of spin-offs and improvements, but not what you said.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[WindBourne]

Actually, SpaceX does a lot of their own R&D. In addition, exactly what R&D has been done by the old space companies that they paid for.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[DerekLyons]

The conclusion is only logical if you accept the illogical assumptions of the religious beliefs that the conclusion is based on.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[pavon]

That would be a good argument, until you look at NASA today instead of 40 years ago. NASA has not only the common pool of knowledge to work from, but concrete working designs to build off of, and still managed to spend way more on Ares and has far less to show for it than SpaceX.

Re:Only $375 Million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absurd. Evolution is still happening, there wasn't a human species a million years ago, and there won't be one in another million, space or no. So please engage the two brain cells that aren't infected with your space religion and think.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

He might be right you know.

It's not a loan or a free ride, but it's a lot of money and expertise under the guise of a partnership. My question, and probably GP's as well, is what happens with the results?
I'm sure, they'll do great things. But I find it hard to believe Boeing will just let NASA patent any technology in it's own name. No, considering the patent trolling that began since their creation, it will be Boeing getting them and NASA will get some hardware and a few bus rides into space for it's astronauts. The same will be for the others as well.

Don't lie to yourselves, NASA kept going for so long, because the science it needed to get to the moon could be put to good use back here on Earth. Without that incentive, nobody, and I mean NOBODY would have spent the billions needed to bring back rocks from space.

NASA, and those that believe in it, consider space to be the future, while the others see it as a possible untapped market.

So ... who gets to keep the booty?

Hardly surprising...

[taiwanjohn]

The three lucky "winners" were widely expected to make the cut, so this isn't such big news. I wish they could have continued supporting some of the other contenders a while longer, but if they have to pick three, these are the obvious ones. Even so, I'd rather they had let Boeing pull its own weight on developing the CST-100/Orion. They've got deep pockets, after all, and don't really need the help from Uncle Sam. I'd have preferred they give a boost to Blue Origin or Orbital Sciences instead, but hey, this is better than nothing.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[WindBourne]

Actually, there is some surprise. The republicans were putting a full court press on NASA to NOT award to SpaceX or SNC. They wanted only old space, mainly ATK. And OSC never really had a chance. They really have nothing. OTOH SNC is much further ahead then OSC when it comes to developing something. Therefore, it makes zero sense to award OSC. Yet, again, a number of republican were busy pushing OSC.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[taiwanjohn]

You've got a point there, it was a nice surprise that ATK missed out while SNC stayed in, despite ATK's lobbying throw-weight on Capitol Hill. Then again, like OSC they didn't really have much to go on, just a plan for stacking an Ares top stage on a modified SRB. I guess they went with Boeing because their vehicle is still sorta connected with SLS development. (I have my doubts whether SLS will ever actually fly, but that's another matter.) All in all, I'm happy with the way this turned out.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[WindBourne]

I agree with most of what you said. To be honest, Boeing makes good sense. They are a capsule on the same rocket as SNC. In addition, the atlas is WELL tested. It is expensive, but a well tested rocket really is needed. I believe that F9 is awesome esp. due to its costs and construction, but it will have 7 or so trips when humans start flying.

Yeah, I absolutely was not a fan of ATK getting the bid. I hate the fact that the neo-cons were putting a full court press. I hate the fact that the tea party kept quiet about that. Heck, I think that even some dems supported ATK's bid, even though it make ZERO sense.

I believe (hope?) that SpaceX can get FH off the ground safely in 2013. I think that if they can do that, it will remove money from SLS. I would very much like to see SLS killed and a new COTS-SHLV started. Offer up 5 billion for 5 years to develop a rocket that can take ~150 tonnes to LEO for TWO different systems. The launch costs MUST be below .5B. Then after 5 years, open up a bid for 2 launch systems (and it can be any American companies with at least 85-90% American systems) of ~150 tonnes to LEO. They will bid for 3 years for 2 launches a year. Of the 2 winners, the lower bid / tonne to leo will get a 3rd launch / year. IOW, reward the winners of the winner with a bit more.

"Picking winners"

[benjfowler]

Right-wing stupidity is strong today. Must be something in the water supply.

There are lots of people whingeing and whining and complaining about governments "picking winners".

You just can't win with these stupid, vindictive pricks. If you have it contracted out, it's socialism and pork-barrelling. If you then turn around and try to appease the right-wing neoliberal extremists by designing a good, functioning market for US government rides to orbit, then you're "picking winners".

The stupidity and hyprocrisy with the nutjob Nazi Right is breathtaking.

Re:"Picking winners"

[taiwanjohn]

Godspeed, Godwin!

Re:"Picking winners"

[medcalf]

And in your next post, you are to decry "haters" and such?

Re:"Picking winners"

[Anonymous Coward]

Right-wing stupidity is strong today. Must be something in the water supply.

There are lots of people whingeing and whining and complaining about governments "picking winners".

You just can't win with these stupid, vindictive pricks. If you have it contracted out, it's socialism and pork-barrelling. If you then turn around and try to appease the right-wing neoliberal extremists by designing a good, functioning market for US government rides to orbit, then you're "picking winners".

The stupidity and hyprocrisy with the nutjob Nazi Right is breathtaking.

Did you build that?

Glad Obama's "plan" worked. How's that now-endemic loss of jobs going? Or is the private sector "doing fine"?

Closed Gitmo yet?

What's your take on going from "warrantless wiretaps" to "extrajudicial execution of US citizens"? (Imagine the fucking COW you'd be having if BOOOOSH! did that....)

Remember, deficit spending is unpatriotic.

What was that you were saying about "stupidity and hypocrisy"?

Re:"Picking winners"

[khallow]

There are lots of people whingeing and whining and complaining about governments "picking winners"

Well, that is what actually happened. So don't be surprised to hear complaining about what actually happened. Let us keep in mind to that Congress, including a number of Republican members, mandated that NASA narrow the field to two or three with the usual bullshit justification of being unable to fund more than that.

You just can't win with these stupid, vindictive pricks.

It does require a certain, very minimal competence which you apparently lack.

If you have it contracted out, it's socialism and pork-barrelling. If you then turn around and try to appease the right-wing neoliberal extremists by designing a good, functioning market for US government rides to orbit, then you're "picking winners".

Maybe we ought to move to your planet. On Earth, that latter part didn't happen. NASA awarded three contracts instead of four because Congress mandated that they drop someone. In other words, NASA had to "pick winners".

The stupidity and hyprocrisy with the nutjob Nazi Right is breathtaking.

I get the impression you haven't a clue what stupidity and hypocrisy is, or at least how it manifests in the real world.

Re:"Picking winners"

[WindBourne]

The republicans were pushing NASA to fund Liberty with 1, CST-100 with 1, and ULA to get .5. IOW, the republicans only wanted their older expensive companies that are working on the senate launch system to have the money.

Re:"Picking winners"

[WindBourne]

Because somebody objects to the republicans, it means that you must support O/dems?

Re:"Picking winners"

[khallow]

The republicans were pushing NASA to fund Liberty with 1, CST-100 with 1, and ULA to get .5. IOW, the republicans only wanted their older expensive companies that are working on the senate launch system to have the money.

I don't doubt it. Such a scheme would conveniently weaken the greatest competitive threat to these companies, SpaceX.

Re:"Picking winners"

[FleaPlus]

Right-wing stupidity is strong today. Must be something in the water supply.

Just to be clear, you do realize that it's predominantly the right-wingers in Congress who've been most opposed to NASA's commercial crew program, and the left-wingers who've been in favor of it?

Re:"Picking winners"

[WindBourne]

It is sad fact. You would think that the republicans would be major backers of it, but they hate private space.

Re:"Picking winners"

[WindBourne]

I know. Oddly, the best thing that can happen for all of these companies is not to own 100% of a small market, but to be a major player in a very large and expanding market. SpaceX AND NASA are making that happen. And make no mistake, that if NASA had not been involved with SpaceX, we would be NOWHERE near where we are today. I have to say that it kills me inside every time that I see somebody screaming that they want to kill off NASA.

Now, if we can get Bigelow (and perhaps IDC Dover) up there with one or two stations, then I have no doubt that even Liberty will have plenty of work on the commercial side. Even Skylon will be needed for a major advancement to the moon and mars.

Re:"Picking winners"

[khallow]

I have to say that it kills me inside every time that I see somebody screaming that they want to kill off NASA.

You have to admit, they get a budget of nearly $20 billion and they probably spend $1-$2 billion of that at most on things that concretely progress towards a (specifically, US) presence in space. A few of the other things they do can be considered to help so depending on your preferences, there's a few billion elsewhere that might count. Their priorities just aren't in line with what people want, I think.

From the article : lobbyists much?

[ShooterNeo]

Boeing 460 milllion....SpaceX 440 million...

Boeing has performed how many launches? Historically, when have they ever made ANYTHING for a low cost? As far as I know, Boeing has been charging top dollar (and, admittedly, provided top tier quality) for aircraft for over 70 years.

SpaceX, on the other hand, has shown cost efficiencies that have never been seen before in space travel. They've already done 2 dragon launches that would have been completely survivable if a stow-away passenger had been riding aboard (assuming they brought a small life support system)

Re:From the article : lobbyists much?

[Bigsquid.1776]

Yeah I like how these days "commercial" means "the government gave money to a private company so they could build it". Capitalism is dead; literally and linguistically.

Re:From the article : lobbyists much?

[dlgeek]

Boeing's one half of this little venture called "United Space Alliance" which was responsible for every shuttle launch. They're also half of the "United Launch Alliance" which runs all the Delta II, Delta IV and Atlas launches.

How many launches has Boeing performed? Most of them.

Re:From the article : lobbyists much?

[Altanar]

Boeing has privately done 0 launches. They developed hardware for NASA. NASA used the hardware.

Re:From the article : lobbyists much?

[WindBourne]

How many launches has Boeing performed? All of the shuttle, and deltas come quickly to mind. I would say that it is quite a few launches.

Now, you are correct about Boeing being expensive, but, I think that you will find SpaceX is going to be ecstatic with this amount of money. That is more true considering that SpaceX has a fully functioning, human rated, and soon, tested rocket with the F9. Likewise, they have a fully functional and soon tested capsule. Then, they have a fully functional and tested engine ( super dracos). What remains is for them to add the dracos into the capsule, modify the capsule to support LIDs, then do multiple launch tests. I would not be surprised to see that dragonrider is undergoing test launches by end of next year or early 2014. Keep in mind that they will be doing FH at the same time, so, final tests might be mid 2014.

Re:From the article : lobbyists much?

[ColdWetDog]

p>Boeing has performed how many launches? Historically, when have they ever made ANYTHING for a low cost?

This little gizmo comes to mind. Further, Boeing is part of the United Launch Alliance which launches most of the commercial satellites in the US. Low cost isn't one of Boeing's strengths but the difference between 460 and 440 million is really not that significant.

Make no mistake, tossing Boeing into this mix is pure politics. But of all the companies involved, they have the most depth and breadth of space operations. By far.

This is huge

[WindBourne]

We now have the top runners earning this. These companies make the most sense. These were certainly the ones that I was hoping for, but I think that most wanted/expected this. With this approach, it gives us 3 human launchers.

Now, the real issue is that the neo-cons oppose this. They have put all sorts of pressure on NASA to NOT do this. They wanted cst-100 from Boeing to get 1, Liberty (atk/europe/boeing) to get 1, and then ULA/L-Mart to get .5. Basically, they wanted to cut out ANY of the new space. No doubt we will be hearing cries from the house that his was not suppose to have happened and that they will attempt to punish NASA in many ways on this one.

Now, what is IMPORTANT is to back Bigelow and get their closet added to the ISS in the next year or two. That will allow them to put up their private space stations quickly. In addition, private space, esp. SpaceX, needs to get human launch in 2014. By doing that, it will enable us to run 7 at the ISS, and will allow BA to finally get ready for their private space station. Finally, SpaceX's FH really needs to fly. Once it does, then BA will have no issues with putting up their BA-330 cheaply, but could also put up a much larger station built just for the FH.

So much growth possibilities and yet, I am betting that before the end of this year, the neo-cons will be attacking NASA hard core for not doing their will and sending all the jobs to their districts.

Re:This is huge

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Orbital? They had a "dragon" style vehicle concept 15 years ago or more. SpaceX is a hopeful upstart. Boeing is the big fat incumbent. SNC, I have no comment. I think you (and seemingly everybody) reacts to popular hype instead of information.

Re:This is huge

[pavon]

None of Orbital's rockets come close to the capacity of the Falcon 9, which is why their CCDev entry was to be launched from an Atlas V, rather than one of their own. On top of that 3 out of the last 4 Taurus launches have failed. I've worked with Orbital before, and they are a great company (the polar opposite of Lockheed). I'll happily work them any time in the future, and wish them the best luck with Antares. But the fact is that SpaceX is getting more attention than Orbital now because they earned it by delivering better results.

Re:This is huge

[taiwanjohn]

Posting here more for visibility than relevance... Here's NASA-TV's video of the announcement. There's actually a bit of interesting Q&A at the end. (Total run-time ~20min.)

Re:This is huge

[taiwanjohn]

Um, didn't NASA have a "'dragon' style vehicle concept" about 45 years ago? I mean SpaceX is hardly shy about their gratitude for "standing on the shoulders" of NASA's previous achievements. And the basic "teardrop" form-factor is hardly original or unique among re-entry vehicles. But now that I think about it... what are you talking about? What "dragon-style" vehicle have they got? Are you talking about Cygnus? That's not like Dragon, it's just for cargo.

I look forward to Orbital's successful launch to ISS this fall, but to claim they're ahead of SpaceX in manned spaceflight is just wrong.

That is just the capsule.

[pavon]

That number is just for the dragon capsule. Falcon 1 was fully privately funded and I haven't been able to find info on how much it cost to develop. The Falcon 9 has received $396 millon in funding from NASA as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, and from what I have heard that is close to it's full development costs.

Still, dirt cheap compared to previous rockets.

Re:WTF?

[khallow]

and NASA will get some hardware and a few bus rides into space for it's astronauts.

Well, that's what NASA needs. And if they can get it for cheaper than the alternatives (such as continuing to pay Russia for access or building another Shuttle/Ares/SLS boondoggle), then that's a good trade for them.

Re:WTF?

[khallow]

which is almost another Solindra

[...]

If someone is going to make a profit, get a fucking loan or something

I take it you haven't a clue what the problem with Solyndra was. They got a fucking loan backed by the full faith and credit, such as it is, of the US government. At least getting paid fixed rate for services rendered is a better contract model.

Re:Attention unemployed geeks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he's a raving success

Considering who he replaced and who he was running against yes, he is a raving success.

Now please, quietly, go fuck yourself.

And another thing

[Darth Snowshoe]

"The problem is that government funded science hasn't really done that much for us." This is just utter BS. Its hard for me to imagine a more fallacous statement. If you include that science that was done under the aegis of fighting wars, its hard to think of a facet of life or a field of endeavor that hasn't been affected by public investment.

Just for starters, a lot of the early development of computers was done by governments during and after the war, and private actors that participated (for instance the IAS - read TURING'S CATHEDRAL) accepted public money for their work.

Lots of the work at sequencing the human (and other) genome was funded by NIH, and the private actors that later contributed all received money and their training through NIH.

Most medicines, vaccines, new treatments in the medical world are to some degree the result of public investment.

I'm just going to type a little list - you are welcome to look these up and check for accuracy
Radar
GPS
the internet
drones
supercomputers
satellites
vitamin-fortified foods
sonar
velcro and tang

Ditch the buddy system

[shaitand]

Stop giving special treatment to your friends NASA and set a list of milestones with bounties attached and reward the company that reaches that milestone first period. There is no reason to limit the competitors to three companies.

NASA did all the heavy lifting.

[Shivetya]

Sorry for the pun, but Space X only had to spend $375 million or so because much of the science has been worked out by all those billions NASA poured into rocketry.

Space X went into the game with a wealth of knowledge available to it that NASA and similar agencies had to develop. I am not trying to diminish what Space X has done but far too many people fail to assign the proper value of what NASA has done.

Putting rockets up into the air is almost an exercise in "duh" but doing it safely and routinely took an immense accumulation of knowledge and experience.

Movie budgets are immaterial, they produce their own value. For many spending 375 million on space flight is as big of a waste as you imply a movie is.

"partnering" "seeding" - great! in the end ...

[gatesstillborg]

...they'll be lucky to have as much as a balsa wood airplane to show for it all!

SNC?

[psydeshow]

SpaceX I've heard of, and Boeing of course, but Sierra Nevada Corporation?

I see that they're an extremely successful Federal contractor for electronic systems, and that they're developing parts for Scaled Composites. But their website is a bit short on company history. Where did the Ozmens come from? What was SNC doing before they took over in 1994? It seems to be a real success story, but is it really? Or are they just very, very good at getting government contracts?

This shed a little light on it: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2007/apr/08/fatih-ozmen-mystery-man-behind-sierra-nevada/

Re:Attention unemployed geeks!

[Calavar]

Don't know why I'm taking the bait, but let's do this:

Iran marching toward a nuclear weapon

And what do you propose Obama should have done? Invade Iran?

Egypt and Libya handed over to the Islamists on a silver platter

The new Libyan government is not Islamist. I have no idea where you got that. Besides, Gaddafi was rabidly anti-American. Any new regime is bound to be more pro-US. As for Egypt, Morsi's cabinet has many secular officials from Mubarak's party

45% increase in debt.

Because of the Bush tax cuts.

Regulatory policies strangling business

Name one.

That perfect health care for all, casuing businesses to not hire and drop coverage to put more people on the dole.

Give evidence: a scientific study.

Unemployment above 8%

GDP Growth below 2%

Changed his mind four times on that OBL kill, which was set up by the hardwork of Bush, Bush worked 8 strong, Obama got the save.

It was under the Bush administration that the army screwed up royally at Tora Bora. We had OBL surrounded at let him get away. Bush had nearly eight years to get OBL, and yet you want to give Bush credit for something that happens three years after his term is up? I certainly don't blame Obama for being hesitant to call in the raid. Operation Eagle Claw was a massive failure and embarassment and he was worried about a similar thing happening. (Combined with lots of anger from Pakistanis.) Don't foget that it was Defense Secretary Gates, originally appointed by Bush, who was most against the raid.

Domestic energy production hamstrung, while billions of tax dollars wasted on masturbatory green energy companies, run by his cronies.

Because of the moratorium on oil drilling? Gas prices barely changed: http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2011/01/gno_inc_study_says_economic_im.html

A racist running the Justice Department.

Ah, the classic "black man is racist against white people."

Hundreds of Mexican citizens and a US law enforcement officer dead because of Obama/Holder's agenda on guns.

I'm surprised that you care about Mexicans considering the xenophobic vibe that comes from the rest of this post. Or maybe you are implying that one US life is equal to hundreds of Mexican lives?

Photo ID laws being challenged because they interfered with typical Democrat voters, the Dead and Illegal Aliens.

We don't live in a third world country. Voter fraud is extremely rare in the US: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/16/opinion/la-ed-voter-id-laws-20120716

Re:WTF?

[FatLittleMonkey]

NASA is buying services that it already pays for, such as supplying and re-crewing the International Space Station.

COTS-Cargo and Commercial-Crew funding are ways of developing lower cost alternatives to supply those services to NASA. (NASA currently pays the Russians around $60m per seat to fly each US astronaut to the ISS. SpaceX wants to fly 7 astronauts in their Dragon capsule for around $150m, or less than half the price.)

Frankly it's a bargain compared to the way departments (including NASA and the DoD) typically handle purchasing and development.

[And the people who are lobbying hardest against Commercial Crew, spending millions to buy Congressmen, are not doing it to save you money; they are doing it to protect the existing way of doing "business".]