Slashdot Mirror
NASA Spends 72 Cents of Every SLS Dollar On Overhead Costs, Says Report (arstechnica.com)
A new report published by the nonpartisan think tank Center for a New American Security shows us where a lot of NASA's money is being spent. The space agency has reportedly spent $19 billion on rockets -- first on Ares I and V, and now on the Space Launch System rocket -- and $13.9 billion on the Orion spacecraft. If all goes according to plan and NASA is able to fly its first crewed mission with the new vehicles in 2021, "the report estimates the agency will have spent $43 billion before that first flight, essentially a reprise of the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon," reports Ars Technica. "Just the development effort for SLS and Orion, which includes none of the expenses related to in-space activities or landing anywhere, are already nearly half that of the Apollo program." From the report: The new report argues that, given these high costs, NASA should turn over the construction of rockets and spacecraft to the private sector. It buttresses this argument with a remarkable claim about the "overhead" costs associated with the NASA-led programs. These costs entail the administration, management, and development costs paid directly to the space agency -- rather than funds spend on contractors actually building the space hardware. For Orion, according to the report, approximately 56 percent of the program's cost, has gone to NASA instead of the main contractor, Lockheed Martin, and others. For the SLS rocket and its predecessors, the estimated fraction of NASA-related costs is higher -- 72 percent. This means that only about $7 billion of the rocket's $19 billion has gone to the private sector companies, Boeing, Orbital ATK, Aeroject Rocketdyne, and others cutting metal. By comparison the report also estimates NASA's overhead costs for the commercial cargo and crew programs, in which SpaceX, Boeing, and Orbital ATK are developing and providing cargo and astronaut delivery systems for the International Space Station. With these programs, NASA has ceded some control to the private companies, allowing them to retain ownership of the vehicles and design them with other customers in mind as well. With such fixed-price contracts, the NASA overhead costs for these programs is just 14 percent, the report finds.
NASA is the easiest go to for pork barrel politics.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Going into space is an incredibly front loaded type enterprise. They aren't opening a a dollar store, they are sending people in to one of the most hostile environments known to man. They say "Measure twice, cut once", but when you have the lives of people in your hands, you measure tens of thousands of times to make sure the final cutting won't accidentally kill them! And before you go and say Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing it so much cheaper, yes, but that is because they are standing on a mountain of research & technology courtesy NASA. R&D done by NASA has given us billions and billions of dollars in spin-off technologies over the years, and I am sure if you charted it out, your return on investment is pretty good.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
In it's day Apollo 8 cost 20 billion dollars. In today's money that's about 110 billion dollars.
The SLS costing the about the same in today's money as Apollo 8 cost in 1968 dollars - is actually a MASSIVELY cheaper and more efficient project then. .
The argument is pretty flawed if you make such a silly mistake. Now let's consider the claim about amounts and where they go. Are these people seriously saying that ALL of what NASA does with their share is wasted effort ? Does NASA not have a stake in doing their own testing and validation - making sure that they get what they paid for and that their astronauts will be safe ? Outsourcing that seems seriously irresponsible but even if you DID the private sector companies would have to do the same tests. Maybe they COULD do it cheaper -but cheaper isn't the most important thing here, quality matters a lot more than price for this stuff.
Why exactly is it a bad thing if a large chunk of NASA's budget is spent on the parts NASA does ? Why are these people arguing that NASA should outsource more than they do ? NASA is the customer here - and this seems like a thinly veiled attempt to use politics to force the customer to buy more.
NASA is the dumbest thing to complain about in terms of cost anyway - as a fraction of the federal budget they are a blip. Seriously NASA has had it's funding cut so consistently for decades that, today, they are basically a rounding error on the budget.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *