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SpaceX Executive Calls For $22-25 Billion NASA Budget
MarkWhittington (1084047) writes "While participating in a panel called "The US Space Enterprise Partnership" at the NewSpace Conference that was held by the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell opined that NASA's budget should be raised to $22-25 billion, according to a tweet by Space Policy Online's Marcia Smith. The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency's limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
The statement represents something of a departure of the usual mutual antagonism that exists between some in the commercial space community and some at NASA. Indeed Space Politics' Jeff Foust added a tweet, "Thought: a panel at a Space Frontier Foundation conf is talking about how to increase NASA budget. Imagine that in late 90s." The Space Frontier Foundation has been a leading voice for commercializing space, sometimes at the expense of NASA programs."
The statement represents something of a departure of the usual mutual antagonism that exists between some in the commercial space community and some at NASA. Indeed Space Politics' Jeff Foust added a tweet, "Thought: a panel at a Space Frontier Foundation conf is talking about how to increase NASA budget. Imagine that in late 90s." The Space Frontier Foundation has been a leading voice for commercializing space, sometimes at the expense of NASA programs."
we're still paying down the 4 to 6 trillion our wars of choice have cost, we can't spare a half of a percent of that for space
This is to fund the Crossbow project
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
rly!
everyone knows that NASA is the red headed step child of the government. they are the face of the government that kids love, and encourages science and technology research, there is no better government agency that I can think of that has more good will with the kids
but for some reason, they dont get funded, everyone acts as if NASA wastes money left and right and they get nothing done. I blame congress and the president for always interjecting. They are politicians, not scientists. We should give nasa a blank check and let them do their thing.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
> The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency's limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
That will definitely work. Government agencies can never find more ways to spend money.
I bet if we handed 43% of everything we produce to the federal government, they'd stop having budget problems.
Why not just cut out the middle man and make SpaceX NASA and just give you the money. Thank you for your concern for the public, SpaceX!
with ALL the other stuff our government funds, we should be able to kill some other programs to keep NASA alive. We should not be in this situation where we are dependent on russia to bring our men and women to space and back home.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Since we're talking about SpaceX, what is the business case of the first "private" space company? Do they plan on being a space tourism company? Or do they intend to make all their money being a government contractor? I fail to see any other possible customers for their services, unless space mining is something more than a pipe dream.
If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
I'm not sure that throwing around space money will make him stop...
This is just more SLS type pork.
Another example of corporates telling the taxpayer what he should pay. Fuck that. Spacex should fund the 25billion itself.
Apparently, it turns out that Hank Reardon and John Galt are finding space to be a little harder than it first appeared. Perhaps with some _more_ help from the statist parasites they might make it there yet.
In the same way that plunging 2bn on... I think it was Ohio's public education system resulted in more admin buildings but worse sat scores, just more money to NASA won't help. The problem isn't the money, it's the failure to have a goal, as was already argued elsewhere. This is easy to see: After the apollo program the budget didn't change that much (adjusted for inflation), but without structure NASA has done nothing but pursue unconnected tidbits and flounder in its poor management structure.
Besides, SpaceX' raison d'être would be to do better on less money, so it complaining NASA has not enough budget is disingenious and indicative of complete failure of that experiment. Best get rid of both, and be done with it. Neither is going anywhere.
If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
That won't be enough. You need to drop a heavy door on it's neck.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Here's Heritage's numbers.
Federal entitlements are driving this spending growth, having increased from less than half of total federal outlays just 20 years ago to nearly 62 percent in 2012. Three major programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—dominate in size and growth, soaking up about 44 percent of the budget.
BUT interest on the current debt is also increasing the debt and along with entitlements, it is crowding out other spending.
The thing with entitlements though, is that most of that spending is on old people and is increasing due to our changing demographics.
But we also need to keep in mind that Medicare was expanded greatly under Bush in 2003, greatly increasing the costs. So lets not put all the blame on Obama.
We should also realize that the old people have considerable political clout - hence why you NEVER hear ANYTHING about Medicare or Social Security when the Tea Partiers are demanding budget cuts. That is why you can keep going back and every President of both parties has tapped into taxpayer money to buy the old people's vote.
Poor people on the other hand, have virtually no political clout and are looked upon as lacking moral fiber and deserve to have their programs cut. And why the attacks are continuing on "Obamacare". As a side note, my wife's clinic has actually started doing MORE business (and actually getting paid) because of Obamacare. See, when a medical provider doesnt get paid, they just pass the costs on to the rest of us in the form of higher fees. But that another post .....
Never the less, I see many many criticisms about government spending and vague references to entitlement programs and no mention of the true burdens on our government.
OH! War spending. Here is an interesting article about that and to make it short: nobody knows how much or how it is afftecing the economy.
50 years.
As of 2014 the United States of America, NASA and NASA's contractors are not capable to mount a valid effort toward a human space flight mission to the Moon or Mars or an astroid.
Why ?
USA does not have the people, education, engineering, industry, science and technology that would be capable of accomplish such a mission, and furthermore, will not have for another 50 years at least.
The people for the mission in education, in engineering, in science, in technology and those at NASA and its contractors have not been born.
Therefore, NASA's budget can be flat-lined, i.e. zero, until 2064 and likely a few decades after that until a valid, educated and trained workforce and the industrial infrastructure and national economy exist.
Brown University isn't named for what you think it is. Go back to your German niche porn.
"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money."
- Everett McKinley Dirksen
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Like they say: "The first rule of economics is that everything depends on scarcity. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It should also be noted that excessive use of a single phrase repetitively can be quite annoying. Ever heard of bullet points?
It should also be noted that we're making absolutely no attempt to "pay down" our debts.
And using cuts in temporary wartime spending to "pay for" new permanent spending, and calling the new spending "deficit neutral" since its "paid for". Political math is amazing.
By the time I was five, we had been there, done that and decided to never go back again.
If aliens do exist, they are sitting back saying "What the f?ck man, you want to meet us but don't have the energy to get off the couch and answer the door?"
Mankind does not deserve space travel. We had our chance and refused to take it.
We spend less than 5% of our national budget on space travel. Whoops, sorry make that less than 0.5%. It is a joke.
Science and technology have funded our industry for hundreds of years - yet we refuse to spend more on space industry than we do on our aircraft carrier program (old Nimitz class cost about 4.5 billion - and we have 11 of them).
25 billion? Double that and make it a real scientific program. 50 Billion is a reasonable price to pay. Not the paltry less than 20 we currently pay
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
why should we fund NASA at all?
For exploration, for technology development. Some things are too big, too risky or the return on investment too long for commercial space companies.
Contrary to some of its critics beliefs, some NASA spending does have a return on investment, a benefit to the U.S. economy and U.S. society. Much like some investments in basic scientific research. The problem is that some politicians are just like wall street, they want to see the payback in a fiscal quarter or two -- well unless their district provides something to NASA. Sometimes budget cuts are a politician's way of saying "I didn't get my piece of the pie".
Reality check: space travel with chemical fuels just barely works. It takes huge rockets to launch dinky payloads, and that hasn't improved in 45 years. Satellites and probes are useful. Man in space has just been a boondoggle.
If fusion ever works, this may change, but with chemical rockets, it's not getting much better.
Nothing else we've done in recent memory is as important.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It has been said by many close to these matters that part of the drain on NASA is SLS. Just throwing more money at it could continue to enable the boondoggle. Maybe the money should be contingent on funding launch platforms that can and will compete with other commercial systems to lower cost, to actually compete with Soyuz on cost. The criticisms are that it is a very poor value, and not well designed for reducing cost and efficiency. The result is a launch platform that is far too expensive. One of the core problems is developing a launch platform that is SOLELY for use by the government, this pretty much prevents the market from driving down costs, unlike other launch platforms such as the Ariane and Soyuz which service private companies and thus are incentivized as a requirement to develop better, cheaper technologies.
Maybe someone else can comment on this, but it looks like SLS will be more expensive and costly than anything else, giving us less for more money. Why even waste time developing this when we can use SpaceX, the Deltas, Atlas and so on, perhaps human rated versions of these.
SLS could not compete on price with Soyuz, which is a good sign it should be scrapped. The Soyuz so far has us beat on reliability, cost, performance. If we continue to fund white elephants which are more driven by beauracracy and pork rather than driven by technical innovations to lower cost and improve reliability, we will continue down the road of stagnation and falling behind.
It has often been said that if someone wanted to kill the US space program, the Shuttle and Space Launch System is exactly what they would do, to basically suck all of the resources dry on a far too expensive launch platform that is superior to everything else on the market, thus pulling resources away from the science and exploration missions.
It is true that SLS is a drop in the bucket compared to the F-35 and welfare programs, yet if its still more expensive than everything else for less than what you can get from other launch platforms, why waste the money? Why not go with a human rated SpaceX?
Give NASA the $14 billion spent in fiscal 2013 training foreign armies and providing them with weapons. That'll make up the difference nicely. Not enough? Move on to the $24 billion spent on the "National Drug Control Strategy." Two things we don't need more of are dead bodies and prison inmates.
Mothball or scrap at least two aircraft carriers, leaving ten, still far too many.
Draft all neocon nuts under 40 for five year terms into the infantry, Marines, or similar; give them fancy uniforms and good rifles and plety of ammo for practice, in between tough language lessons in Russian, Ukranian, and Mandarin.
Probably one of the best things NASA could do at this point is abandon ISS, stop paying for it, and tell the Russians its all theirs. There is a fair chance they would fly Americans to it for free rather than get saddled with that boat anchor.
If the Russians don't want it either its time to deorbit it. It would free up a LOT of money for more useful endeavors. Its never been good for much of anything, certainly nothing to justify the staggering price tag
SpaceX will have the ability to put astronauts in to LEO in a few years. Its not like its a crisis, there is very little for people to do in LEO at the moment other than to be lab rats for zero G physiology studies. You would think they would have done most of that work by now.
About the only point in putting people in space at all is as colonists, persumably on Mars. You can do just about everything else way better and cheaper with robots.
So until you are ready to fly people to Mars to stay, stop getting your panties in a bunch about getting them to LEO.
@de_machina
I thought that Iraq cost $1 trillion, and Afghanistan cost $1/2 trillion. That is with Obama pulling out, thanks to the stupid Iraqis not agreeing to conditions for stationing troops. We should have pulled out of Iraq sooner, so Iraq could have fallen to ISIS sooner. Where did this 4 to 6 trillion number come from?
Yeah, just like if we allow Hitler to take Czechoslovakia, the result will be peace for our time.
As this article indicates, United Launch Alliance, the principle competitor to SpaceX has hired Shockey Scofield Solutions to initiate a propaganda campaign against SpaceX. You can see ULA listed as a client in the website listed above. The campaign is indirectly mentioned in the following very informative article, just past the halfway point in the article. You will also notice another client to Shockey Scofield Solutions as Koch Industries, which is a company notorious for its deceptive propaganda campaigns against action on global warming.
Given this fact, I would tend to suspect many of the anti SpaceX comments as being part of an astroturfing campaign. To be honest, I really don't understand why an actual thinking person would have any problem with SpaceX. They build reliable rockets quickly and cheaply. What on Earth is the problem with that?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The more space tech developed with government funding the R&D,
the more SpaceX can take that tech for free and use it for making Phatt L00t profits.
All the gain, none of the expense.
Increasing private profits through public funding,
oldest trick in the book, just ask the big bailout bankers,
loan begging auto makers, power and telecom companies.
Shifting costs to the public...sweet deal for them!
How much of that $25 Billion should go towards NASA reseach for renewable energy and resources on planet EARTH that it seems to have no problem using up in space?
Isn't Space X a government contractor? A bit self serving don't you think?
Usual trick: have taxpayers subsiding the support stuff you need, and make profit with activities on top of it. If you can afford a law preventing public service from competing with your business, it is even better.
Probably one of the best things NASA could do at this point is abandon ISS, stop paying for it, and tell the Russians its all theirs.
The ISS isn't the sole property of NASA.
How about diverting all the money used by the NRO, CIA, and DOD space programs back to the civilian side, NASA? Their budgets are an order of magnitude larger than NASA's. If NASA had that kind of money they could actually come up with a propulsion system that isn't based on 16th century technology.
Necessity and Incentives Opening the Space Frontier
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space
by James Bowery, Chairman
Coalition for Science and Commerce
July 31, 1991
Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:
I am James Bowery, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee on the critical and historic topic of commercial incentives to open the space frontier.
The Coalition for Science and Commerce is a grassroots network of citizen activists supporting greater public funding for diversified scientific research and greater private funding for proprietary technology and services. We believe these are mutually reinforcing policies which have been violated to the detriment of civilization. We believe in the constitutional provision of patents of invention and that the principles of free enterprise pertain to intellectual property. We therefore see technology development as a private sector responsibility. We also recognize that scientific knowledge is our common heritage and is therefore a proper function of government. We oppose government programs that remove procurement authority from scientists, supposedly in service of them. Rather we support the inclusion, on a per-grant basis, of all funding needed to purchase the use of needed goods and services, thereby creating a scientist-driven market for commercial high technology and services. We also oppose government subsidy of technology development. Rather we support legislation and policies that motivate the intelligent investment of private risk capital in the creation of commercially viable intellectual property.
In 1990, after a 3 year effort with Congressman Ron Packard (CA) and a bipartisan team of Congressional leaders, we succeeded in passing the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, a law which requires NASA to procure launch services in a commercially reasonable manner from the private sector. The lobbying effort for this legislation came totally from taxpaying citizens acting in their home districts without a direct financial stake -- the kind of political intended by our country's founders, but now rarely seen in America.
We ask citizens who work with us for the most valuable thing they can contribute: The voluntary and targeted investment of time, energy and resources in specific issues and positions which they support as taxpaying citizens of the United States. There is no collective action, no slush-fund and no bureaucracy within the Coalition: Only citizens encouraging each other to make the necessary sacrifices to participate in the political process, which is their birthright and duty as Americans. We are working to give interested taxpayers a voice that can be heard above the din of lobbyists who seek ever increasing government funding for their clients.
Introduction
Americans need a frontier, not a program.
Incentives open frontiers, not plans.
If this Subcommittee hears no other message through the barrage of studies, projections and policy recommendations, it must hear this message. A reformed space policy focused on opening the space frontier through commercial incentives will make all the difference to our future as a world, a nation and as individuals.
Americans Need a Frontier
When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, we won the "space race" against the Soviets and entered two decades of diminished expectations.
The Apollo program elicited something deep within Americans. Something almost primal. Apollo was President Kennedy's "New Frontier." But when Americans found it was terminated as nothing more than a Cold War contest, we felt betrayed in ways we are still unable to articulate -- betrayed right down to our pioneering souls. The result is that Americans will never again truly believe in government space programs and plans.
Without a frontier, for the past two decades, Americans have operated under the inevitable conclusion that land, raw
Seastead this.
Didn't say it was. I just said NASA should abandon it to whomever wants to pay to keep it operating. Prettty sure its past its original end of life anyway which I think was 2010.
If Russia doesn't want to play nice, or pay to run it themselves, I doubt ESA, Canada or Japan will be able to keep it going if the U.S. pulls out.
@de_machina
Why would russia need to stay saddled with that boat anchor?
Bring everyone back down, and just leave it. It's constantly aerobraking anyway, without recurring thruster maneuvers it will meet it's end.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...