From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Jul 14 2002 - 20:08:56 MDT
On Sunday, July 14, 2002 8:02 PM Robert J. Bradbury bradbury@aeiveos.com
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.
Start at http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/elv/netscape4.html NASA is definitely
in the business of commerical launches. That, e.g., XM went with Sea
Launch last year probably had more to do with scheduling than the fact
that NASA wouldn't take the payload. (I can't be certain here. I
wasn't in any of the Board meetings for XM...:)
> 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).
By the parenthetic comment: anything that is thought to be a boondoogle
could be reclassified in terms of some expected future use. So, by that
standard, there are no boondoogles. Accurate delineations please.
> (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.)
I'd like to see all this privatized.
>> 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.
Government accounting is appalling and makes Enron look like minor typos
on the yearend report. After all, the Pentagon alone lost over $1
trillion and no one seems to know where the money went. I'm not saying
NASA is guilty of the same level of budgetary incompetence. (After all,
the Pentagon is the gold standard in this area.:) However, the
motivations in NASA have always been and still are basically noneconomic
when it comes to these matters.
Why, e.g., has NASA taken an antagonistic stance against space tourism,
especially when this will provide extra money? Why not instead ask the
Russians for a %age on the tourism contracts? Or just not whine about
it, since the Russian space agency is even more strapped for funds?
(Granted, an extra $20 million per flight - - even if this is pure
profit -- is not going to pave over the ISS budget gap, but something is
better than nothing here.)
>> 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.
My point was: getting NASA out of launch business -- i.e., getting rid
of US government subsidized launches -- would increase market demand for
private launch services ceterus paribus.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html
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