From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Jul 14 2002 - 18:02:58 MDT
On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, Technotranscendence wrote:
> A few months ago, someone suggested a way to load shed some work from
> NASA. The plan is to get all commercial launches away from NASA.
> Hughes, XM Radio, etc. would then have to contract with private launch
> companies, such as Sea Launch.
Accurate inputs please. I don't believe that NASA currently has
any significant fraction of the global commercial business. I believe
it is currently mostly working for the military, scientific exploration
missions and our space station boondoggle (which isn't a boondoggle at all
*if* they figure out how to use it for something other than contrived
science experiments). (NASA also does a significant amount of R&D
which one can argue that governments should be supporting -- i.e. things
like the space elevator, development of nuclear rockets, etc.)
> NASA would still do the ISS, manned spaceflight, planetary exploration,
> and probably military missions. This would remove some budgetary pressure
> from NASA as well as give a shot in the arm to the private launch industry.
Huh? I would expect that NASA is using commercial and military launches to
subsidize the ISS and scientific expeditions. Certainly accounting for all
of this is a "beyond-an-Enron" adventure.
> Naturally, this would lead to a lot of innovation given that private
> launch companies would just compete to deliver their product: launches.
As far as I can tell the private companies have been innovating and
competing just fine. The problem is developing a market demand for
their services.
> What do you think?
Number 5 is alive but without more inputs garbage out is probably
the plat de jour.
R.
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