Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SpaceX Rocket Failure Cost NASA $110 Million

Posted by Soulskill on from the switch-to-Crazy-Eddie's-Discount-Rockets dept.

An anonymous reader writes: On June 28th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded just over two minutes into its attempt to reach the International Space Station. It was a contracted mission from NASA to resupply the astronauts living there. Today, NASA associate administrator William Gerstenmaier said the price tag to taxpayers for that failed launch is $110 million. SpaceX is leading the investigation into the cause of the failure, and NASA officials faced tough questions about whether private companies should be allowed to direct investigations into their own failed launches. A similar inquiry is underway at Orbital ATK. NASA inspector general Paul Martin said his office is looking into the matter. Gerstenmaier added that NASA is thinking about making these companies take out insurance policies that would cover the cost to taxpayers in the event of another failure.

7 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. as always.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Privatize the profits, socialize the risks."

    That's how big business works in the USA.

    1. Re:as always.... by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Nonsense. Utter bullshit. Blaming "big government: we need to cut it back" is exactly what got us into this mess. Ronald Reagan is the FATHER of the disaster that confronts us

      Big businesses have no way of socializing risk by themselves.

      Go tell that to the belching smokestacks, the carcinogen-laced groundwater, the deteriorating climate, the poisoned oceans. Tell it to the minimum wage workers who have to go on food stamps, the students with crushing loans and no job prospects, the retirees who've lost their savings to yet another bankster stock swindle. Tell it to the vanishing middle class, whose wages have been flat for forty years while productivity and the wealth of the 0.01% has soared.

      Big businesses can socialize risk only in collusion with big government.

      If you mean by corrupting government to avoid regulation of evil behavior, then I agree with you completely.

      "Privatize the profits, socialize the risks."
      That's how big government works in the USA and elsewhere.
      (emphasis mine)

      I would be FASCINATED to hear your logic as to why government would seek to privatize (i.e. lose money) profits in order to socialize (i.e. lose money) the risks.

      And the solution to this problem isn't to regulate big businesses more (that only makes the problem worse) but to cut back the culprit, big and powerful government.

      So you're saying the solution to this problem is to allow MORE of this kind of behavior.

      My god, you are so utterly delusional, there are no words to describe it. You would have more intellectual integrity if you posted in rabid favor of aroma therapy and woodland elves.

    2. Re:as always.... by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How would insurance save money? Another middle man to pay. The only justification for insurance is when you need to smooth out the bumps in your spending - an individual may not have $30,000 sitting around to replace their crashed car. NASA can almost always slip a schedule; self insurance makes a lot of sense for them.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  2. Re:Blew up one of our instruments, too by thrich81 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Saturn I -- 10 launches from 1961 to 1965, 10 operational successes. And that was using clustered engines and liquid hydrogen engines in the EARLY 60s.

  3. Also for the Pad. by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Orbital failure took out the pad, which was owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had neither insurance nor reserve cash to pay for a new one. That caused a scramble to find the bucks to repair the pad.

  4. Re:SpaceX too good to be true? by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, maybe more expensive Russian rockets cost what they do for a reason?

    Well, that reason is certainly not reliability-- Russian rockets have been pretty failure prone lately.
    http://spacenews.com/proton-fa...
    http://spacenews.com/progress-...
    http://spacenews.com/russian-s...

    Atlas-V and Delta-IV been doing pretty good, though: so far both have had a 100% record for reaching orbit, although each one has had one launch with an underperforming upper stage that put it into lower-than-planned orbits.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  5. Re:Insurance? by DickBreath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This will cost the taxpayers no matter how you slice it. Either the taxpayer eats it, like now. Or NASA gets insurance, which costs the taxpayer. The insurer WILL make a profit and will pass the cost of failure to the policy holder through increased premiums. So NASA could make SpaceX get the insurance. All that does is mean that SpaceX will increase its prices to NASA to account for the cost of insurance (eg, the cost of inevitable failures).

    By making either NASA or SpaceX get insurance, you add in another greedy industry (insurance) that get their fingers in the pie and make a profit. Great way to save the taxpayer money.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.