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NASA proposes keeping commercial income
SEWilco writes " NASA suggests keeping extra income from commercial projects. Present laws require that money from commercial projects, such as a satellite launch from the Shuttle, go to the U.S. government rather than allowing NASA to use the money. ". On a tangential note, the Italian government changed their laws regarding income from historical sites, allowing them to keep their profits, rather then just funnel it to the gov't, and it's worked great. I see no reason why NASA wouldn't benefit as well-especially considering their budget cuts.
(Well, quickly, if they used better engines and better track.)
It's in the interests of both car manufacturers and politicians to ensure that traffic jams and gridlock persist or worsen. Quality train and bus services would provide too much mobility, so reducing demand for expenditure on the road system.
The same, I think, might apply to the space industry. Efficiency is "counter-productive", as it would reduce the benefits currently enjoyed by politicians and industry. The more inefficient something is, the greater the potential profit margins.
As far as most politicians are concerned, though, the space industry has done everything it needs to - providing telephone and pager links around the globe. It no longer serves any purpose, as far as politics is concerned, as there's nobody to compete against, and no votes are at stake.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The reason this is all coming about is that commercial rocket companies, such as The Rotory Rocket Company successfully lobbied to have an amendment to the Federal Commercial Space Act, as mentioned in this Forbes article, which removed the restriction that only NASA could land space vehicles on US territory. So now NASA, big bloated behemoth that it is, is running scared. Not that it's doing anything to reduce the price of putting payloads in space to compete, but I would say it has an unfair advantage, given it's resources (your tax dollars at work!).
NASA is SUPPOSED to be doing R&D, and releasing it to the public, so PRIVATE companies can use it to design their OWN spaceships, just as they do for ariplane improvements.
They have already put a major crimp on the private space program, by pressuring their suppliers with threats that if they provide stuff to the private COs, NASA will find new suppliers. (Just TRY to get a guidance system component, for instance, even if you are squeaky clean and have a couple senators in your back pocket.)
Letting them self-fund would give them even more incentive to suppress the people they're SUPPOSED to be helping, by setting them up as a direct competitor, and making their funding dependent on out-competing any independent private company.
Better would be to require them to STOP doing space shots themselves, but fund them to BUY their launches from private companies. That would turn things around, big time.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
(Someplace called NTTC claims to have COSMIC, but their web site only has obscure titles without descriptions or archives)
I'm not so sure this is a good idea. There are two agencies that have tried this type of thing
before: USPS (US postal service) and Amtrak (US passenger train service).
I think that after this happened, innovation died. USPS worried so much about competition, they
basically spent it trying to kill UPS and FedEx instead of innovating and eventually got out
innovated by UPS and FedEx. Amtrak basically used the extra money to subsidize their ticket
prices and as a result killed other passenger rail startups.
If there is truly a self supporting way to explore space, I'm sure that some enterprising people
will find a way to do it. If there is such a business plan, I'm pretty sure it would happen
with or without the US government's interference.
Big companies do basic research all the time IBM, Dow, Boeing, even (gasp) Microsoft.
I see no reason why space exploration would stop it there was a profit-neutral way to do it.
I suspect, however, that the lack of such a company means that nobody has figured it out yet.
In the worst case, space exploration could be funded just like the olympics, with sponsors.
I'm sure no sponsoring company would want their products to fail in a space launch, and it
would pretty much be just part of their advertizing/promotional budget.
This mean that feeding back some of the money to NASA would just be a money subsidy to
NASA to help it sabotage other upstart space company (like USPS and Amtrak did to their
competitors). This doesn't sound like a good idea for allocating dollars to me...
Indeed... The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we as a nation, want space research and exploration, or another Post Office.
.01 postal increase was, and I quote the Post Office, "to provide better bulk rate mail". Seeing as the junk mail industry represents a large part of their customer base, this makes sense from a business perspective.
Making the Post Office self-supporting, as we did several years ago, doesn't seem to have helped it very much. In fact, one of the big reasons for the last
I don't want to see NASA pander to commercial needs in this way... There would be little, if any room left for innovations like the Pathfinder, which would no doubt be steamrolled by business practices such as practicality, and maintaining the bottom line.
If, like me, you are concerned about recent talk of NASA budget cuts, I suggest writing a letter to your congressman. Contact info is at www.house.gov, some of them even accept email.
I don't think that your scenario would come to pass quite like you describe. However, I do think that a scaled-down version of your scenario could happen. Congress might be tempted to practice something we've done in social programs in the past: reduce their funding by the same amount they make. That way, we get all of the disadvantages but not all of the advantages.
Private space-related stocks would plummet and the companies would have trouble raising capital and getting business. Cost-effective solutions would still be ignored by NASA. And, tax dollars would still fund, on a partial basis, the whole fiasco.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
NASA does good, even great, as a research and exploration agency. NASA does horribly at operations, though. This is why they have turned over the day-to-day ops of Shuttle to USA (United Space Alliance- Boeing and Lockmart).
At every turn, NASA's Administrator, Dan Goldin, slams commercial space startups, like Rotary and Kistler. He, and by extension, NASA, have a serious beef with companys other than the Big Two having any piece of the launch market, or the exploration market.
NASA, in it's current, supposedly non-commercial guise, has killed many companys and efforts (Conestoga, almost Kistler, and Jim Davidson's "tourist to Mir" sweepstakes). If NASA became a competitor in an open market, it would wield an incredible and destructive influence, since it would still have huge contacts in other govt. agencies and the Big Two, it could effectively strangle any company that didn't fit 'the agenda'.
This might sound slighlty paranoid, until you reflect on how much damage NASA has done to commercial space efforts, even it's own commercialization efforts with Shuttle and Station, without being an actual competitor.
Be very afraid for the future of space exploration and utilization if NASA tries to go commercial.
J05H
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Latest subcommittee markup for NASA's budget can be found at:
http://spacescience.nasa.g ov/announce/housefull2000.html
Unfortunately, some of my potential work is on the list. Ugh.
Science isn't profitable in and of itself. It's the application of those sciences that creates the useful products we depend on today.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
But Congress only has oversight on funds it authorizes. Any profits would be used as Nasa saw fit, not in the program where funding was cut from (necessarily). Congress would have to be very careful or pork projects would suffer. Keep in mind that a profit is defined as an amount greater than the cost so they couldn't cut the funding to a self-sufficient program since it was not funded externally...
I'm all for space flight and exploration - I think they're neat, and I'd like to live on the moon if at all possible.
But I am not in favor of a few favored companies getting a lion's share of tax dollars to do their space exploration on my / our / the Public's back, while other companies get panned by the governmental / industrial complex.
Contrary to what some people have implied, NASA has always had a commericial element, because those rockets have to be built by *somebody*; question is, now that there are actual businesses (that is, those trying to do space launches for the profit involved, and not rooting through the public trough 'for the children') either doing launches or working on space travel options, why should we protect NASA funding at all?
Several people have expressed distaste that they might be encouraged by being able to keep some of their income (rather than it going back the gubmint) to do less 'pure research' and more 'commercial stuff.' Remember that the money they get is not charity; it's money that people earn and have taken from them -- I say it *ought* to be being used practically, because if it isn't there are plenty of ways it could be. Like by me, on a new Airstream. Or, if it must be spent by the government, on chipping away at the incredible deficit.
A starving man shouldn't buy diamonds no matter how cheap, or whatever.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I think this would be an excellent idea. Nasa always seems to be trying various technologies that then get commercialized into spin-offs so I think that since they are basically eing the R&D lab of the commercial market, they should get some of the profit sharing. I also think that this would provide a little disincentive towards the ongoing pork barrel economics happening in this round (and every round) of budgets. I really dislike the cuts that have happened this season. Some of the obvious pork that has been added into budget cut to pieces in the same session are just outragous. I'd much prefer Nasa run something like DC-X and be able to use the results to commercialize the technology into something that could become an industry segment long term.
Although I'm all for giving NASA more money, if they get to keep money from their business ventures, it will encourage them to do more corporate work and less research for research's sake. The more sway we allow corporations to have in the government, the more the government will cater to corporations rather than individuals.
dave.
"Goody! We can scrap =ALL= their funding now, without bothering to check if they're self-supporting yet, and spend it all on pay rises for ourselves and our voters."
I don't believe NASA would voluntarily become a commercial space-carrier. However, they could easily be forced into that role, by Government cuts and cynical industries.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There are a lot of reasons why this is both a good and bad thing.
NASA is quite deserving of funding in my opinion - it is one of the few government supported research institutions left, and its funding has been decreasing year after year, so any extra money it can gather will be beneficial.
However, a bad side to this is that NASA may become more commercial in its aims. Projects that make more money might gain priority instead of pure research projects that cost money. The research done on the space shuttle may become more market and commercially driven instead of scientifically driven.
It's an excellent idea, but it has been proposed for the wrong reason. NASA is facing one of the darkest periods since it was chartered. The republicans want to cut out NASA's budget to help balance theirs - incredibly shortsighted, but that's what they're up to.
Why do I say they're shortsighted? NASA has basically pioneered the entire aerospace industry - fast jets, reliable and well-engineered engines, heat shielding. No, Tang doesn't count. The materials they use in the shuttle are now used for firefighters to help combat the high temperatures they deal with. There's scarcely a high-tech industry in the country that hasn't been given a boost by NASA's research.
Cutting their budget will have a subtle, but important, impact on the united states' ability to compete in the global economy. Which is ironically the same thing Congress is trying to encourage!
Wake up Congress! You're destroying a national heritage and possibly a competitive advantage just to save a few bucks!
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