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NASA Administrator Calls for Space Privatization
According to this story on Wired News, NASA honcho Dan Goldin is now actively encouraging private companies to become more active in space research and exploration. In a speech he gave yesterday at the 8th annual Space Frontier Foundation conference, he is quoted as saying, "A partnership between NASA and the Space Frontier Foundation -- which consists mostly of aerospace companies -- will be the only way to make the new millennium the space millennium." For decades, NASA has seemingly done more to hinder than to help private industry get into space. Maybe this represents a long-overdue about-face. I sure hope so.
The European colony to which you refer is Jamestown, which was failing because most of its inhabitants were rich men, who were unwilling to work with their hands. "By January 1638, only 38 of the original colonists were still alive. Many of the first migrants were gentlemen unaccustomed to working with their hands. . . . Only when Captain John Smith. . . imposed military discipline on the colonists in 1608 was Jamestown saved from collapse." Norton, Mary Beth, et al. A People and a Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Page 44.
Don't mess with an AP US History student when you're giving wrong information about US History.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Lack of Volume & Scale - Spacecraft today are mostly made in ones and twos. Everyone in the industry knows that the key to reducing costs is through Henry Ford-style Economy of Scale. I've sat through dozens of "cheap spacecraft" seminars that each boiled down to, "...and by doing this umpteen zillion times we'll reduce cost to X".
Unfortunately, the sticking point is not that we need to figure out a clever way of engineering an assembly line (which we pretty much already know really well through the automotive industry) but in figuring out how to greatly increase the demand. Some people speculate that as costs lower, demand will naturally pick up. Maybe, but then you're stuck with the chicken and egg situation of needing to increase demand before the cost savings kick in.
Another problem is that it really isn't possible to design a Model T of spacecraft - each one is slightly different, and has slightly different needs. And with launch costs as high as they are, you really try to maximize the functionality you get from the mass you are allowed. This is the failing of _many_ spacecraft mass production schemes.
Risk Adversity (or, Politics & Regulations) - An incredible amount of money goes into making sure that a satellite will not fail. Most of this is plain old paperwork - tons of it. _Especially_ with expensive spacecraft. The cynic in me observes that this fear is driven less by the desire to avoid astronaut deaths or loss of expensive equipment, than the fear of having your career destroyed when something you're involved in fails - there is an incredible amount of shame associated with being involved in a failed spacecraft (or even a failed _test_!!). And this drives up costs a LOT. Build two, and if the first fails, fix the second and launch it.
Aerospace companies are so frightened about investing in a new piece of hardware, it makes me laugh that Golden expects them to invest in risky new space ventures! He's right, that NASA ain't the one to do it, but neither are the big massive aerospace companies. Way too much adversity to risk. $1B is a lot of money to be risking to a stray meteorite, when you could be putting it into internet IPO's. ;-)
Customization - Unlike cars, one satellite is not just like any other. Each one is custom tailored to meet particular needs.
Surprisingly, software is a major expense of satellite systems. It's very hand crafted. I would hope that some day someone abstracts the software for a spacecraft such that customization could be done via something like a config file, instead of custom low level hand coding.
Now, it seems to me that this need to customize each spacecraft could be addressed by making engineering software that is more dynamic and capable of doing most of the design customization automatically. But development of such software is beyond the ken of most aerospacers. The aerospace industry is still very much in the horse and buggy days when it comes to its design and analysis software. Most of it is in FORTRAN. That which is not, is often in Excel. But programming is considered to be monkey work, and is either given low priority, or inadequately funded (or both.) Smart, computer-literate kids like us end up quitting the aerospace industry and joining a dotcom.
Usually when I bring up the point that computers have gotten very powerful and can do a lot of the work that is currently done by hand, I usually get nothing more helpful than a "When I was your age, we used punch cards! And we liked it." 8-\ *Sigh* _ONE_ day someone will write a powerful, generalized and unified satellite engineering and design program and really clean up in the satellite business.
Anyway, I don't see these problems disappearing any time soon, and no matter how much NASA may wish for commercial companies to forge ahead in space exploration, it ain't gonna happen that easily. My personal opinion is that until a few more markets open up in space, commercial industry ain't going to be pushing us very far.
The next question is: How to build some new markets in space? That's the biggie that everyone is trying to answer. If you're curious of some of the many ideas people have thought of for getting started, check out www.asi.org, an organization founded on the very principles of furthering exploration through commercial means.
Bryce
I believe you're pointing your critism in the wrong direction. You imply that looking at what you do as "a job" and a love for space are somehow exclusive to each other. Furthermore, you seem to be saying that the "in the trenches" workers are ineffective. I believe you're wrong on both accounts.
To begin with, most of those I've dealt with at NASA are very much into space. They like working for NASA. Its something special to them. If not, a good deal of the engineers (as well as those in other occupations) would do great bennifit to their salary by quitting NASA and working downtown. Many of them do. But, again, many of them don't. They're good at what they do. They work for less than they're worth. And they do it because they like, if not love, space.
So why refer to working at NASA as "a job"? To some, this is completely true - their job is "just another job"; interchangable with any other task that results in a paycheck. However, my experience at NASA has shown that this is a rareity. But let's not forget - even working at NASA is work. It is, in fact, "a job". Ask a professional soldier what they do and I'm sure you'll find enough that refer to their occupation as their "job". That's not to say that they've forgotten the unique nature of their job, nor the implications of their actions. The same goes for NASA employees. For many of them, their "job" just happens to be something they love doing. Its where they want to be. And they're proud to be there. But it's still work; it's still their job.
So why do we even talk about NASA's "drive", or a lack thereof? Why is NASA's history of the Apollo years refered to in the sense of past glory? Why isn't the NASA then the NASA of today?
It's not the people. It's the management.
You have to understand - that is an amazingly powerfull thing to say within NASA. It's also damning. NASA is an unltimate beuocracy. And true to the definition of a beuocracy, it has a management system that sometimes seems to be more about sustaining itself than performing the task for which the beuocracy was formed. Pointing this out brings instant doom to one's career.
I suspect its because the emporor, in fact, has no clothes.
If you truely want to know what is wrong with NASA, look deeply at Challenger. Look at the decission process that lead up to that tragedy. Even Slashdot has had some interesting things posted on it concerning this subject. The answer to why of today is not the NASA of yesterday is there.
See my congressional testimony for some background on this space commercialization legislation.
Both of these laws were drafted, promoted and passed by citizen activists without "old boy network" lobbyists.
As evidenced by his long-term actions as well as his words, Goldin's idea of space commercialization is essentially the national socialist model of "free enterprise": The government works in partnership with elite private companies toward national goals.
There is a better way.
In the early 60's, NASA was prohibited from exactly one space technology: communication satellites.
Commerce has developed in exactly one technology: communication satellites.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that risk management is most properly done without government underwriting since such underwriting is inevitably targeted toward those with the most political clout -- a feature which is negatively correlated with technical ability.
Seastead this.
NASA, IMHO, has a serious problem. It's employees are too busy focussing on past achievements, they don't have time to do the work they're supposed to be doing.
(This is the view of someone who has worked as a programmer, contracted to NASA.)
Private industry's view of space is the same as it's view of anything else. How to increase profits and reduce costs. Be honest, here! What are the largest genuinely successful, genuinely private projects that have happened in the space industry? About the only one I can remember is Coca Cola's advertising on the side of a rocket. Iridium has been a catastrophic failure, bankrupting one company and nearly taking out all the backers, too. Telecom satellites are OK, and all that (but notoriously unreliable - anyone remember the Great Shutdown, after one satellite failed?) and are hardly space research, these days. (In fact, if you read A.C.Clarke's letter in Wireless World, there wasn't much research TO do, past the 1940's.)
There isn't anything for private industry, in space. Not yet. The costs of launching are too high, the benefits of zero gee and extraplanetary work are far too low, at least from a marketing standpoint. As mentioned before, cheap, throwaway satellites that handle strictly marketable, terrestrial traffic is all they care about and all that there's any money in.
If NASA cuts out it's R&D, which is what it sounds like it's doing, I'll bet that Private Industry won't pick it up. Any R&D now is going to be with the amateurs.
ObPREDICTION TIME: Amateur astronauts, probably from Australia, though possibly the US, will be the first to reach Mars. NASA's planned flight will be cancelled, and the corporate markets won't care.
Proposal for those interested: The ball's been dropped. There is easily enough technical know-how on Slashdot to carry an amateur space program to Mars, or beyond. Who wants to give it a shot?
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)
NASA Chief Calls For Space Commercialization_ commerce_3.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19990925/sc/space
I'm not sure how many people at slashdot read the space newsgroups but this topic (space privitization) has been discussed and debated for the last..umm...since the start of newsgroups on BBS.
:)
I see that one of the biggest misconceptions of privitization is that business, especially big business, is inherently more efficient or effective. The idea is that by making everything private all the problems are going away. Yet evidence shows just because something is a business does not necessarily make it better. Take for example HMO's in the US. Have they made the American health system better? General opinion is no. I recently read an article stating that the cost for an HMO to provide health care is 27% and the cost for a government is 3%. Which is better? The best public health system in the World is the government funded and run UK National Health System. It provides better care for less than the US system costs.
How about an example closer to our hearts, Open Source. How many would of you would agree that much Open Source software is as good if not better than their closed source breathren? Does Microsoft produce better operating systems than the public Open Source developers because it is a business? Business is in a market for one and only one reason, profit. Everything and anything is suborbinate to that reason. To say otherwise is to deceive yourself. The point is that business (or the free market) is not always the best solution. It is not the panacea for all the ills of space exploration and development that so many advocates claim. That is not say that there is not a role for business in space exploration and development. It is just different from what a lot of people see.
Space exploration and development is unlike any recent projects. The scale and complexity relative to the time is immense. The best analog is the travels of the 15th century explorers who, you will remember, were mostly funded by the monarchs of the day. The state so to speak. The risk of the space exploration and development along with the large time before a return on investment is seen does not make it worthwhile for business to invest. It is simply not a sensible investment option.
The first moon base, the mars missions etc. will be carried out by some public organization. These missions offer little or no return on investment and so it is unlikely (if not downright improbable) that any business is going to front the money for no return on investment. The likely aerospace companies are not ones to wear costs if they can avoid it. The US aerospace companies continually jack up the cost of items to the US government instead of wearing the cost increases like any other organization would. Whether the public organization is NASA is not determinable at this stage. Remember, NASA is the United States only and such missions are, politically, better done as an international partnership.
What is the role of business in space? It has already started with the communications satellites. The next area is going to be SSTO RLV (single stage to orbit reusabel launch vehicle). I expect that the revolutionary engine (probably a Rocket Based Combined Cycle Engine, RBCC, for those interested.) will be developed at NASA or some similar public or non business organization. The worst thing for that organization to do would to license that engine technology to a single company will do more damage than good. Competition in the SSTO RLV will do more to advance the general use of space than any other initiative. Once the SSTO RLV market is going next will come space tourism along with the first faltering steps into large scale microgravity manufacturing etc.
The role of business will be to fill niche markets and routine work such as SSTO RLVs. The focus of government and public organizations should be on the programs that open the niche market, leverage techonolgies such as RBCCs (Yes I am a fan of RBCCs for the simple reason that they have the potential to give a 35% payload fraction. For comparison rocket techonoly can only give 10%.), scientific exploration and big missions such as the first lunar base and Mars exploration.
About now some readers are going to be wondering whether I know about the Artemis program. Yes, I do and it is not a business. It is a public organization. Its' goal is the settlement of the moon, not to make a profit. The difference between Artemis and other projects is that it seeks to fund the program through the free market rather than the government. This does not make it a business. It is not trying to make a profit for the company owners. Artemis project seeks the settlment of the moon.
The thurst of this comment has been that business is unsuited to space exploration per se. Business is not going to front up and fund a lunar base or Mars missions. They will only come when it is a sensible invesment option and they can make money from it. They are not going to make money from a lunar base or Mars missions. At the moment space is not a sound investment option for most companies. It will become better once the SSTO RLV market is alive and kicking.
Strangely enough, the companies that are likely to put in the first major funding for big space projects such as a follow on lunar settlement and asteriod minning are going to be the big Japanese companies, the mining companies such as BHP and property development/construction companies. Not the major aerospace companies. These companies are use to large long term investments that take 5 to 10 years before payoff. The aerospace companies do not have that long term view. In other words, don't join an aerospace company if you want to go to space anytime soon.
Simon.
P.S. Lunar materials are not economically viable at this stage including He3. He3 fusion has to be proven to work before one can say that can be mined and sold for profit. It is all conjecture.
TrevorB wrote:
... all while the space science mission operates on a shoestring, and even what-if thinking about human exploration of Mars is all but banned.
[many things that are so flattering of Goldin, he might as well have been paid for writing them]
Goldin has taken a decade to be humbled to the point that he'll accept even the slightest hint of returning NASA to its original purpose, the same one it serves in the aeronautics industry: fostering new technologies and assisting industry in achieving what it's actually best at.
The most important thing NASA does, period, is space exploration via planetary probes. The "better faster cheaper" program in that area is a response (a good one) toward brutal budget cuts he backed.
The program Goldin loves the best is astronautics, in the form of the Shuttle and International Space Station. These are program which cost many billions of dollars, yet will achieve negligible science results. The lower flight rate of the shuttle in the post-Challenger era has only led to higher per-launch costs. "Privatization" in the form of the United Space Alliance is a figleaf for the benefit of Congress; it hasn't changed shuttle management, goals, or procedures much at all, and hasn't lowered costs except at the expense of personnel. We've seen the outcome of that policy in the wiring problems aboard the shuttle fleet.
Private business has never been charged with planetary exploration, so your comparison is pointless. If you look at what the private sector HAS accomplished in space, you will find hundreds of communications, weather, and imaging satellites, none of them put there by government programs.
As long as Goldin is running the space agency, we will continue to see many billions of dollars poured down the hole of the ISS program, and more billions spent dithering with "future technologies" intended to build massive public-works corporate welfare like VentureStar to keep Lockheed Martin in business
Almost everything that you praise Goldin for accomplishing, has instead, been accomplished IN SPITE of his administration.
Effective exploitation of near-Earth space will never be accomplished by a government program more interested in providing pork-barrel projects for Congressman and standing in for foreign aid to Russia. That's what Dan Goldin stands for, and if you don't see it, I'm sorry for you.
For a more clear-headed approach to thinking about Goldin and NASA, visit NASA Watch. Though sometimes attitude gets the better of them, they offer a welcome antitode to the "company line" of pro-NASA boosterism. And if you still aren't convinced, read Dragonfly, and be enlightened.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
If anything, NASA is trying to get away from the commercial aspects of space and get back to research and exploration. This was even stated during the award of the CSOC contract to Lockheed/Martin (CSOC manages operations to include Mission Control). I would suspect this is the motivation behind NASA's "turn around" towards private space interests.
I am afraid that the private investment in space that you are describing could only be done by mega-consortia of multinational companies. What we would end up with in your scenario is Tennaco-Exxon strip mining the moon. There have been plenty of sci-fi extrapolations of this concept, and they generally end up with colonies of indentured workers or otherwise exploited peoples of third world companies working in extra-terrestrial salt mines. No thanks.
"For I know a change has got to come...oh yes it will." (Sam Cook)
Fuck Slashdot
Congress has done nothing but hinder this country's space exploration.. and shame on them for that. This may simply be a move of desperation - they know that there's little chance of doing anything important left. The Apollo program is long dead, the Mars missions are tapering off.. and MIR is going to be crashing back to earth soon. What's left?
--
The biggest problem that NASA has historically had is that it was originally set up for a specific "big push" task. (Beat the Soviet Union to the Moon.) Once that was over, the standard bureaucratic disease set in. (Justify my Job!) Once that happened, the shuttle appeared.
We need a viable SSTO craft, and I think that it will be a cold day in hell before the U.S. goverment allocates the money to build one that really works.
Jerry Pournelle has a lot to say on this issue. Check it out over at: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
Lotek---
If we look at NASA's recent history, we find a lot of distressing items (the Mars observer being lost comes to mind). The fact that they had all of the shuttles at the Cape when Floyd was about to hit wasn't a great idea (who in the world though to have all of the shuttles in one place...).
HOWEVER, if we look a little farther back, we find the Apollo missions. This is quite possibly the United States's crowning achievement. They reached the moon. No one else has ever done anything like this before or since (from our planet ). What has changed??
I believe that what has changed is that the fire has gone away at NASA. People are treating it as their jobs, not as "I'm so lucky to be here. I'm going to do the best I can." Maybe by taking the space program private would help in this regard. But, I'm not entirely sure. If people really, really truly love space, they will work for any amount of money to be close to their dream. The only thing privatization (which I can't spell) achieves is the fact that they could lure "better" people with their better pools of money. Not sure that that will help at all...
OTOH, if the private companies find people who want to work in space-related fields for about what NASA is paying them, with their high financial resources, they could very well spend more on the actual missions (i.e. state-of-the-art equipment). At the risk of sounding foolish, I think it would be quite cool if NASA would allow sponsors to their missions. You could have the Yahoo! mission (paint the shuttle purple and gold like the cabs). This could be a really cool infusion of cash to help NASA out. =)
IMHO, our government needs to restore funding to NASA so that they can return to their peak. Private industry is shaky in this aspect. A unified space project is the only way to go...
Justin
Mu. P.S. The address you see is real. =)
"Where do you want to go today?".
...of things I want to do before I die.
also
"But I believe that when NASA can creatively partner with you, all of humankind will reap the benefits of access to open space."
So we're pretty much looking at a future like a cross between Alien and Star Trek? Maybe throw in a bit of Dune? At least making it profitable to travel in space will pump a lot of money into the idea. Not to mention alternative fuel research, fusion and such. And a big rise in star gazing. They'll need good pilots. Stable computer systems. Most likely a lot of embedded systems. And really cool admins. (hehe)
+&x
Not to disagree, or at least not entirely, with the basic sentiment, but I have to call you on this: your use of the term "strip-mining" stikes me as a cheap rhetorical device. It invokes images of the destruction done by evil corporations as they strip the surface off huge patches of land because it's a cheaper way of getting at the ore than digging a little, etc. However, does this really apply to the moon, which has no ecosphere? I.e., there's nothing to destroy. Really, how could you even tell if a piece of the lunar surface had been "strip-mined"? Moreover, who would care? The emotional appeal regarding the badness of "strip-mining" is meaningless.
By the way, according to Strangers From the Sky, (I know, the books aren't "official") we actually encounter Vulcans some twenty years before the Amity incident -- one of their scoutships crashes on Earth and, though the whole incident is covered up, Kirk and friends, who, through one of their little accidents, just happen to be around, help them get home. Please don't say your entire knowledge of Star Trek history is based on that TNG movie.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
After the Apollo (and even during the latter missions) and ever seince, NASA budget has gotten small and smaller and smaller and well, you know. The american people no longer see the importance of Space exploration and the government is too busy trying to pay for welfare and social security (IOW - money for people who don't work and didn't plan for the future) to worry about the future of the world (or, actually, other worlds).
This will add new life to the space industry (actually, it will create the space industry). If space truly does become a place for private industry, then all industries will benefit from this (the chemists and pharmicists will be able to do thing in almost 0G and the tourist industry will make a killing on `moon trips' and the like, perhaps plants grow faster (and year round) in space, this would benefit the farming industry exponentcially, and, well, you can figure out many more for yourself).
This might also solve (ok....maybe a little premature, but, hey, we can talk a few decades down the road) the over population problem. Suppose that we bulit moon bases (hey, another industry, the mining industry (new elemants, new products, new profits)) and they had millions of people in them, that could take a burden off 6 billion people on 1 planet.
Ok, in conclution, I say that the privatzation of space is good and we should be glad that it is happening. It's time we looked past NASA, the ESA and all the other space agencys and started developing space ourselves.
That's my 1/50 of $1.00 US
JM
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
demona sez:
A "partnership" between the state and private industry usually (not necessarily in this case) spells facism.
Well, maybe it spells "fascism" to you, but you may wish to look the word up first. Generally, it involves government telling industry what to do, rather than asking industry what it can do for them.
NASA already acts as a "partner" for the aeronautics industry; what we need them to do is graduate to the same role for the space industry. Up until Challenger, the mission creep at NASA had turned them into the biggest competitor for the commercial satellite launch industry; since then, they've had to find other missions, such as the space station. Right now the entire commercial launch business *is* privatized. What Goldin is proposing is getting business to take over a vast array of government pork barrel projects that are not profitable.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
"Businesses do stuff cheap..."
True, but the airline industry went through this and continues to face it every day. Their safety record is pretty amazing, I think, even compared to almost any government funded project.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Daniel Golden has done an incredible job for NASA in the past several years. He's taken a ho hum, shuttle after shuttle launching NASA without much focus, dealt with massive bugestary cuts, and trimmed NASA down (relatively) to a mean, lean space exploration machine. I know it's not quite what we expected when we were growing up, but who has done better? Not Private Business. The Russians stopped sending out interplanetary probes since their failed launch of a Mars probe in (I think) '96.
;)
Can you remember this may active spacecraft ten years ago? (There are ten right now, alright, so I'm counting Voyager 1&2, the greatest missions ever, which are still alive and kicking 7 billion mies away). Half of these active missions are the new "better, faster, cheaper" created under Goldin's regime. Two missions to Mars every two years? The man has this incredible ability to convince the American public that science and space exploration are a good use of American tax dollars...
Goldin's ultimate goal it seems is to build a mega-telescope, most likely a huge interferometer, that could image the surfaces of planets in other solar systems, generating an Apollo 17 like image of an extra-solar Earth like planet to inspire the next generation. Deep Space 3 should be a good first test of space formation flying and interferometry.
Of course, NASA sounds like they're getting more cuts. One of those few instances where I guess you Americans would want Newt Gingrich, who was a big NASA fan himself, back where he was... OK, perhaps the only instance.
At any rate, I hope Goldin gets to keep hold of the helm for a while, or that private industry manages to gain some of the public's interest in space. I don't want to see a return to the late 80's...
Private companies aren't in danger of being cut off from the government, and rely on private funding. If enough people participate (and more private ventures spring up), NASA could quite possibly get more accomplished then they would have with just Government Funding.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Cars were once impractical, so were planes, electricity, running water, computers and basicly everything else you use all the time.
Just because developing a technology may be extremely expensive initally, doesn't mean that it is a worthless technology. Space travel is a very advanced technology that will require a LOT of research and a LOT of money to develop. When computers were first produced, they cost a LOT of money, were impractical (no, a computer that is several tonne is not practical) and weren't very effective.
Also, space travel will provide spill over technologies in other industries as it is developed due to the new way scientists will solve problems. (I admit teflon sucks rocks though!).
It is extremely naive to simply dismiss an entire field of technology because of its expense. The results of this field could be incredible, given the money and resources required.
Oh, and NASA spends much less that the USA defence forces, so i can complain that USA spends 600 billion dollars (last time i checked) a year developing and using technology designed to kill people in a variety of ways, while keeping the technology secret so it cannot be used in other industries.
...calling people "science nerds" in a negative
way is not the way to go at slashdot.
Actually, if humanity always dropped something
that isn't practical, and shut down all of this
kind of research, we would get nowhere.
Besides we spend billions on sports, beer, music
etc. Although I find these good purposes, it just
goes to show that the world can afford some research that some people find unnecessary.
NASA is such an institution. (Granted, NASA took us to the moon and lifted us out of the Atmosphere, but what ELSE has it done?)
Back in the day, when a new technology was created, it wasn't the "inventor" that banked off of it. See the Lightbulb, the Printing Press, the Railroad, the automobile..., but rather it was commercialized industries and markets that not onlky banked on the invention/discovery but made measurable advancements on those inventions and discoveries, and would reap the benefits and latter discoveries of such ventures.
Commercial industries would find ways to make the same product, perform better, with less cost. That is what they do. Because it's their money.
As opposed to NASA which has a budget of someone else's money, mainly the American Taxpayer.
Being a scientist, I've always applauded when the Republican Congress cut funding for NASA and SETI, because frankly, I don't like seeing a scientific institution under the control of a civil authority, there are too many parrallels of when the Roman Catholic Church controlled the scientific institution, and things like a geocentric universe were upheld as truth.
But that is another dissertation.
But try an imagine a world where privitized organizations are using space technologies, which are made more availiable, or even "Open Source" for all to use, if they have the means to do so, where they reap what they sow, (meaning if they do it well, they profit, if they do it poorly, they fail) where they consumer decides.
If that was the case, we'd be colonizing Mars by now. (If you doubt, remember that North America was initially colonized for economic gain.)
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
The robotic exploration of space has been successful, educational, and fun for the whole family. Seriously. So NASA should remain in the unmanned probe business, which they're pretty good at. In fact, they should expand the unmanned program. Astronomy is Good!
On the other hand, privatizing the manned space program would be wonderful, because then I would be allowed to opt out.
Some people, including the ones who think Star Trek is a documentary, would spend billions of dollars trying to reach the mythic Final Frontier. But I wouldn't care, because none of the dollars would be mine.
People would die from launch vehicle failure, explosive decompression, radiation poisoning, lack of exercise, and accidental collisions with the millions of bits of debris that are already in near-earth orbit. But I wouldn't care, because I wouldn't be one of those people.
Astronauts would land on Luna, or Mars, or Europa, or Charon, where they would spend hours engaging in the only profitable activity I can think of -- autographing souvenir rocks. Then their companies would go bankrupt. But I wouldn't care, because I wouldn't invest time, energy, or money in frivolous tourist flights.
Well-heeled hobbyists would have a lot of fun, flying through space. That's good! I don't begrudge anyone their fun. I myself would love to fly on the space shuttle... if I could afford it. But I can't justify asking my neighbors to pay for it. There's a difference between a fun hobby and a public good. Manned space flight is a private hobby, like hang gliding, or yacht racing, or climbing Mount Everest.
The best thing about privatization: there is no for-profit company dumb enough to build a colossal white elephant like the "International" Space Station. Unfortunately, it looks as if Goldin's "privatization" plan won't kill the ISS.
Suppose you are IBM, and one day you are approached by NASA to "participate" in a "people" mission to Mars. Now, participate, in this setting, means commit a large number of resources and money to the project. You're (IBM's) task is to design the workstations, servers, and communication networks. You would undoubtedly use the expertise of 3com or one of the other networking companies to provide that aspect of the project, but for the sake of argument, let's say that you are providing that as well. You spend several million dollars on R&D. You monopolize the time of certain core groups of engineers in your company, taking them away from "profitable" endeavors. You involve the reputation of your company in the project... this is something that is rather "high stakes", since if it fails, everyone will know about (imagine losing some/all of the astronauts due to a malfunction in one of the systems you designed). The mission and people would have no doubt had full insurance coverage before departure, but it is still a large risk for a company to take on (for some, their business is tied intricately to their reputation).
So I wonder, What is the "payoff" for a company like IBM to partner with entities like NASA?
Incentives: I can foresee a time when NASA (the US Government) will sign a contract with a private company guaranteeing them mining, land, mineral, etc rights to a particular chunk of Martian real estate. Now, this opens an interesting and probably contentious debate (if not wars) about who can make those dispersals of "property" that technically no government owns.
IMHO, The real space race might be the huge land-grab of the next century where multinational corporations are in a race to claim as much Martian "property" as they can for future terraforming (mining).
I hope everyone realizes I'm talking about Voyager 1 and 2, launched by NASA in 1977, and not the USS Voyager, launched by Paramount sometime around 1996...
:)
Voyager is undoubtedly humankind's greatest acheivement in unmanned space exploration. Two quickly prepared spacecraft to take advantage of a rare solar alignment tha only occured once every 175 years, the "Solar Tour" trajectory. Both Voyager 1 traveled to Jupiter and then to Saturn. Since these mission were never planned to last longer than these two planets, the mission planners decided to leave the Uranus/Neptune option to Voyager 2, and do a closeup flyby of Saturn's moon Titan to check up on that atmosphere of hydrocarbons and hope for a "break in the clouds" (thier words). Hopefully we'll learn more with the Huygens probe with Casinni in 2006. Unlike Galileo's Jupiter probe, Huygens may actually land on the surface and record data for up to 30 minutes! That may be really cool... Let's hope it lands on "land".
Voyager 2 went on to be the only probe to explore Uranus and Neptune. Quadruple planetary gravity assist! By the time Voyager 2 reached Neptune, it's arthritic camera (I'm not kidding, it's motors were pretty shot by that point), managed to keep the cameras on Neptune for the 30 seconds requried to gather enough light for a single photo...
And now Voyager is headed for the interstellar void. JPL *Still* has a 30 year plan. The nuclear RTGs on board will be powering Voyager equipment until 2017! The Voyager team still puts out Weekly Status Reports
I remember reading the sci.space.* newsgroups about 10 years ago. People were discussing mass-producing a thousand Voyager class spacecraft and sending about 5 of them to every object in the solar system. Sure, the failure rate would be atrocious, but think of the science! That sounds a bit like NASA's new "Discovery" program.
As for MCO, we're just learning how to produce spacecraft with all the bang for 1/10th the price. Give them a chance, they'll work out the bugs in the system.
What is the point of being a great nation unless you can do things like this? Is all America is about just accumulation of $$$ and driving SUV's up and down the highway? Why shouldn't we be trying for something better than just establishing the biggest consumer society in the history of the planet? What happened to the idea of trying to better yourself? What do you want history to remember our nation as? The nation that invented the fast food hamburger joint, the gas guzzler and television shows like Myt Mother The Car? Or do you want to remembered as the first nation to land on the moon, establish a L5 colony, and solve the problem of escaping the earth's gravity economically.
The fact is that a nation should stand for something, and NASA is one of the few things that the government spends money on that is not just a transfer of wealth from high income to low income people.
Thank god.
One big source of revenue on the moon is Helium-3 which can be used for clean nuclear energy. http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html Lunar Helium-3 as an Energy Source.
The problem with space now is that people just aren't excited enough about it. If we had the kind of public outcry that we had in Kennedy's time so many exciting things would happen.
Just imagine what would happen to the president or leader of business that got us to the moon for economic reasons. What about getting a person to Mars. It wouldn't matter what else they did. they would be remembered forever in history.
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain are mostly known for their helping of Columbus. That was their claim to historical fame. For many people this is the only thing they know of these people. The fact that they were also leaders of the Spanish Inquisition, while still important, has been overshadowed by their funding of the discovery of the New World.