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NASA to Privatize ISS Missions?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Dec 11, 2005 01:28 AM
from the farming-out-the-grunt-work dept.
from the farming-out-the-grunt-work dept.
Brian Young writes "Nasa is looking for private companies to take over the business of transporting astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. "'Certainly this is an opportunity for the new space companies,' said Jim Banke, head of Florida operations for The Space Foundation industry trade association. 'They've been lobbying NASA hard for something like this for years.' NASA hopes to supplement, and eventually replace, crew and cargo flights to the space station that had been planned for the shuttle fleet." One has to wonder how much money can be saved by NASA that can be put to use elsewhere, such as trying to figure out how to put together a manned mission to Mars, if they no longer have to dish out the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires."
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Duplicate! (Score:2, Informative)
I still think it's a good thing that might end up saving money if it's done right.
Re:Duplicate! (Score:3, Informative)
It would be appalling if nobody was able to, at the end of this, also fly cheaper resupply missions than Shuttle's loaded mission cost (which is over $1 billion a flight now, with the lower flight rates post-Columbia).
Efficiency and Safety (Score:2, Interesting)
On the one hand, being in a bidding situation forces companies to have a lid on their costs, while on the other it encourages said companies to cut corners whenever they can. If NASA were competently managed, then it would be obvious that outsourcing the missions would be silly. However NASA's management has some issues, so maybe this is the right move.
Re:Efficiency and Safety (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SAFETY is the key issue (Score:2)
Are you trying to say that flying is dangerous, or that commercial airlines are reckless? Depending on how you read the statistics [utu.org], flying has roughly the same rate of passenger death as riding on a train. If we could get people and cargo into space with the same fatility rate as riding on a train, I think most people would be thrilled.
Cheaper and safer (Score:2)
Re:Cheaper and safer (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a matter of flight rate. As more and more flights took place and it became a part of everyday life, people got a better understanding of how to make airplanes fly more cheaply and safely. The hope is that the same thing will happen with spaceflight.
Scuttle the ISS (Score:3, Insightful)
do you know how to climb a really big mountain? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:do you know how to climb a really big mountain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:do you know how to climb a really big mountain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:do you know how to climb a really big mountain? (Score:2)
The Mars project will take years. It will take months to get people there. Imagine a problem with the spacecraft a year after launch, killing everyone on board near Mars just because of a problem we didnt know about. We wouldnt even know what the problem was at that point, and will be bound to repeat i
Re:Scuttle the ISS (Score:5, Insightful)
We've gained a lot of knowledge, albeit, not quite the knowledge intended to gain, gained nonetheless.
Science is a wondeful thing. You start with a set of assumptions, add either hypothesis or theory, then design experiments to validate the whole works, or, sometimes try invalidate it. In the end, knowledge is gained. sometimes, the experiments accidently invalidate the assumptions, so, altho they appear on the surface as a failure, valuable insight is still gained for future use, even tho the failure of assumptions means the hypothesis or theory never did get tested.
The iss is a platform for developing and testing long duration mission technology. The goal is to reach the point where the technology for a mars mission exists (it doesn't today), and has been tested in the harsh environment of space. Low orbit is a good starting point, because it's a place we can go to 'routinely' to do this kind of testing. The iss was designed to take the best parts of the russian space program, combined with the best parts of the american space program, and get an international program in motion that could leverage it all. The iss itself is not an initial experiment in low orbit long duration, Mir already showed us that can be done, it carried on in that role for 15 years. ISS is a platform for hosting more advanced experiments and development.
The problem with the iss program is, access to low orbit as routine turned out to be an invalid assumption, and, pretty much everybody had to step back and re-evaluate the fundamentals on which the program were built. In order to fulfill it's mission, the iss needs to be completed, but, it's slowly becoming apparent that the american space program is not up to the task of delivering into orbit the modules required. This was the 'strength' of the program that the entire iss concept was built on. As sometimes happens in science, the setup for the experiment invalidates the assumptions, now you have to step back and re-evaluate the basics before you can finish the experiment. The whole program was launched on the premise that us space shuttles would be available to lift specific modules for station assembly, and a lot of other countries bet significantly on that assumption. It's turned out to be flat wrong.
The re-evaluation process is now ongoing. The usa took a couple years, spent a few billion, and 'fixed' the shuttle problem, then launched another shuttle. Up to that point, it was just a delay. The 'fixed' shuttle turned out to be not quite so fixed, the same old problem still exists. This really does now put the entire iss program in doubt, for a lot of reasons, some political, some technical. From a political view, other partner countries are asking a simple question. What happened during the 'fix the shuttle process'? A lot of time/effort/money was expended on the problem. Is this a core competency problem within the american space program ? Can other countries afford to continue investing billions into this program if the station is not going to be completed ?
ISS partners have gained a LOT of knowledge from the program. It's just to bad most of that knowledge is in the area of politics, and engineering required to get to low orbit. Those were actually 'assumptions' at the onset of the program. The soviets were able to service Mir for many years, the ability of an american/russian partnership to service ISS was never questioned. It's turned out to be the achilles heel of the program overall. Shuttles are not flying, Russia cant afford to fly all the missions themselves, and silly laws in the us prevent american money from extending funding to soyuz launches.
The ISS is proably going to die uncompleted. The biggest lesson learned for most of the partners, dont depend on the usa when large expenditure projects are involved, projects that extend beyond the 4 year election cycle hence they become suceptible to
Parent
Re:Scuttle the ISS (Score:2)
Have to differ here (Score:3, Interesting)
For several reasons, it will not die. Since it is already jointly owned, it can not be re-tasked. That is, we can not take it apart and use the parts for another station (Bigelow's).
More important, Europe, Japan, and Canada all own parts of it. Assume that USA and/or Russia make it to the Moon. It will be years before we set up a perm staffed base. Until then, we will need a base to keep testing equipment. But assume that we establish a base in 2010 or we deci
Re:Scuttle the ISS (Score:2)
It was originally planned to be something useful, but they went through so many iterations of paring it down due to budget cuts that there's nothing worthwhile left.
ISS is a colossal waste of money. We should negotiate to buy out the other countries' interests in it, and deorbit it.
Money still comes from NASA... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Money still comes from NASA... (Score:5, Interesting)
For what it did, I think it was very low cost. Could you imagine NASA developing anything with the same capabilities as Space Ship One for 20 million dollars? The closest thing I can think of recently was the DC-X project back in the 90's, and that cost 58 million dollars.
They got nowhere close to what it takes to send crew / cargo to the ISS.
True, but the X-prize's goal wasn't orbit, just up to space and back down. It was eminently do-able, but nobody was doing it.
Parent
Re:Money still comes from NASA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Money still comes from NASA... (Score:2)
Yes, but NASA doesn't get to keep the IP generated by the prize. This is a bit like spending $58 million and then selling the IP thus generated back to investors.
NASA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:NASA (Score:2)
Read... (Score:4, Insightful)
How much cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How much cheaper? (Score:5, Informative)
Much, much more cheaply. The private space startup SpaceX is targeting the ISS contracts with their Falcon 9 [wikipedia.org], which has a price of $35-$78 million. In contrast, a launch on an equivalent Boeing or Lockheed rocket costs up to $230 million, and a space shuttle launch costs somewhere between $500 million and a billion.
The key thing to remember is that a truly private company has a direct incentive to make things cost-effectively. For a government agency the incentive is quite indirect, and in the case of a typical cost-plus contractor (i.e. Boeing or Lockheed), they actually make more money if a project costs more.
And, seeing as how all "NASA" hardware is built by private contactors, how much of a difference are we really going to see?
Again, the big difference here is that they'll be using fixed-price contracts for deliveries, rather than using cost-plus contracts.
Parent
Re:How much cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)
You miss the whole point.. In a truely private "industry".. There is competition for consumers.. Each corporation MUST minimize costs, as that's the only way to maximize profit (technology, timing, etc help but are less reliabile). But the eact opposite is true of ANY government contract job. That "industry" works by a completely differnet set of rules. Yes there is competition, but only for the initial bid.. After that, there is a trick called "cost ovrerruns". The government will pay ALL over-runs, because they're in it too deep.. They can't afford to back out and switch to a competator.
Imagine being a software programing and KNOWING that your boss can't fire you, but pays you by the hour.. How long is that bug going to take to fix?
The incentives are completely out of wack. The gov-contract-industry is supposed to correctly estimate how cheaply they can do something.. Then their goal is to ahead-of-time estimate every innacurancy in the government-contract plan.. Each gov-err in their specification will require a renegotiation of the price, and almost always at a hansome profit for the contractor.. So the contractor that can find the most flaws in the specification knows they can reduce their estimatd bid the most, and ultimately turn the highest profit.
Then, when the contract is being fullfilled, the company has trade-offs.. Money-based trade-offs.. At any given point, they can choose to do something money-efficiently or not.. The determining factor is whether the gov will pick up the tab for the extra cost or not. And if the contractor can get the service done for cheaper than they know the government can track, all the better.
The end result is that the project will DEFINITELY cost more than anoter space shuttle mission the 1'st couple times; look at all the libability coverage; they can't just go out there with untested stuff. (NASA could, but a private firm couldn't).
In the long run, space industry has to be purely based on a high-volume consumer demanded, competatively offered industry.. Otherwise, somebody is getting the shaft.
Parent
Where's Russia, China, India, et al in all this? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if the chinese put up their hand... (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet NASA woould suddenly receive all the funding it needed, ASAP, and no questions asked!
Incredible opportunity... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/techno logy/space.html [angelfire.com]
Manned space flight has all but died, perhaps this will spark a new era - The one we geeks have been waiting for...
Re:Incredible opportunity... (Score:2)
Seriously, back on topic: I'm ambivalent about manned space flight. Developing to accommodate man in space is a serious engineering hindrance, not to mention that there are serious medical issues that we've yet to address about man's ability to survive after prolonged space exposure. Then there are payload issues - too much weight for life support et al that we haven't been able to optimize yet. If you're talking manned space flight - it's reall
Yet another step.... (Score:4, Interesting)
With NASA not even putting people in space, instead paying others to, it will be yet another step in furthering NASA away from... well anything involving space. After all, once a company does this, eventually people will begin to ask "what is NASA needed for? Can't we just have this company do it? We'll be able to save money if we cut out the NASA overhead and replace it with a smaller group."
Thank god this will be help in furthering private space-flight. If NASA has to be destroyed, at least they're doing it in a way that will give a boost to the private space industry.
Re:Yet another step.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yet another step.... (Score:4, Insightful)
When folk ask that, the answer will be "research and exploration, like they've always been good at."
Parent
Re:Yet another step.... (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA's mission is "to understand and protect our home planet; to explore the Universe and search for life; and to inspire the next generation of explorers."
As far as I can tell, transporting cargo and people to a space depot isn't part of NASA's mission. If they can pay a private company to take care of logistics so that they can focus on research an
Re:Yet another step.... (Score:2)
The problem then becomes there isnt really any money in space exploration. Your private company contracted by NASA is essentialy government funded. In 40 years your back where you started, bu
Outsourcing Core Competencies a Poor Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outsourcing Core Competencies a Poor Idea (Score:2)
Sort of like how NASA lost the ability to take advantage of airflight when private companies took over air transportation of people and cargo?
The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (Score:3, Interesting)
This sort of incentives-based policy is in the tradition of American values. It should be no surprise that such values are being eroded as the 'nation of immigrants' changes from pioneering independence to bureaucratic dependence. The use of a socialist bureaucracy to explore space is a fundamentally different experiment that other proven American approaches to expanding the resource base available to humanity.
In 1989 I was working on grassroots legislation to reform NASA [geocities.com]'s launch services policies. This led to the passage of P. L. 101-611, The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 [google.com] which required NASA to procure launch services from private vendors whenever possible. This is common sense if proper boundaries between public and private functions are to be maintained. As radical as this may sound to many who see NASA as a space transportation company, it was, in fact, Presidential policy at the time and the legislation was therefore, in fact, redundant, but bureaucratic inertia demanded separate acts by the Legislative branch to reinforce the Executive's own command structure. This legislative effort started out as an attempt to passsomething along the lines of the Kelly Act of 1925 (which formed the basis for Jerry Pournelle's recommendations [tinyurl.com] first put forth by his Citizen's Advisory Council for Space Policyin 1980), but compromised when it became clear that resistance from NASA, and its contractors, to citizen involvement in space policy was so intense that serious reform would be impractical. My testimony before Congress [geocities.com] legislative follow-up to P.L. 101-611 made recommendations for a focus onincentives for commercial investment, rather than plans or "programs". An example of incentives-based legislation, applied to fusion energy policy, was recommended for passage by Bussard, R. W., one of the founders of the US fusion program [geocities.com] in a letter confessing some of the subterfuge to which technical leaders resorted. It is still quite relevant today given the reliance on Middle Eastern oil and problems with fission energy. The point here is that incentives are more effective in general than governmental programs.
The first settlers in America experienced enormous causalities their first years they were in America. Entire colonies were lost. The original colonies included a substantial variety of fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America. America's frontier wasn't built by a centrally controlled bureaucracy -- and there is no reason to expect such a bureaucracy will take Americans to their next frontier.
Space policy is a touchstone of American values since Americans are spiritually a pioneering culture. Let's not forget who settled the frontier, how those "immigrants" differed from later immigrants, and what sort of "program" they had to settle the new frontier.
If Michael Griffin is for real about this he may just reawaken the very pioneering character of Americans. We must hope he is not just sincere but will be successful doing so.
Re:The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (Score:2)
You mean engaging in land wars for water sources and wiping out species though overhunting? Running buffalo off cliffs, camping in the gore and gorging until the rotting corpses drove them off?
All this happened *before* the Europeans arrived. There has been a glamorization of the 'Noble Savage', but keep in mind that these were people who collected parts of their enemies' bodies. Europeans also did s
Unfounded Rumor Mill (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't realise that the Halliburton Space Agency (HSA) was that far along in development.
kgf
Not necessarily a savings. (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the costs of privatized schools, privatized prisons, privatized utility companies (California anyone?) etc. In many cases of privatization the promised cost savings never appear but people still press ahead as if it will necessarily come.
NASA already contracts out much of their work. In a sense contracting for the whole shuttle rather than each part is not an illogical step. I just hope (for the sake of NASA and my tax dollars) that they privatize the flights if and only if real savings emerge not the expectation of savings.
Businessweek article on SpaceX (Score:2)
SpaceX [wikipedia.org] is one of the private launch firms mentioned in the article and considered by many alt.spacers as the foremost contender for the ISS commercial crew & cargo contracts. Businessweek just published a pretty informative article on them, The Final Frontier At Costco Prices [businessweek.com]. Here's some relevant quotes from the article:
If SpaceX succeeds in lofting its rocket and an Air Force Academy research satellite into orbit, Musk will vindic
NASA should focus on the mission (Score:2, Interesting)
2. NASA should sell it's stake in the ISS. It's a toy and a money sinkhole.
3. NASA needs to focus on space based research and exploration. Leave terrestrial flight research to the Air Force, DARPA and the private industry.
4. NASA needs to focus on robotic planetary research, astronomy related projects and deep space vehicle research.
BTW, a manned mission to the moon or Mars is the ISS on steroids sinkhole wise.
Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
They will still pay the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires. The only difference is that the money will be going to a private company instead of doing it in-house. What did the OP expect - that the private sector will do something like this for free?
Of course, it is possible that a private company can do it cheaper. However, since there are currently no private companies that can do this, it is equally possible that it will cause no end of scandals, court battles, disasters and bankruptcies that may force NASA to pick up unexpected bills. The good thing about doing things in-house is that a large number of variables can be trusted to be under control without the overhead of armies of lawyers, miles of contracts, thousands of accountants and unbelivably expensive insurance.
I would like to see the insurance company that would insure a small space company against the possibility of astronatus being stranded in space, or a failure to deliver setting a space program like the ISS back so long that it would have to be scrapped. Who can even provide an objective cost of such losses?
Saving Money - The Eternal Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Enter UAC:-D (Score:2)
Privatization = saved money?! Don't make me laugh! (Score:3, Insightful)
There are tons of examples that suggest that privatization, far from being the be-all/end-all cure to gov't bureaucracy, results in even shoddier service and actually costs more in the end.
One can pick out tons of examples: States that have privatized the investigation of welfare fraud find that it costs more. Privatized prisons not only cost dearly, but result in barbaric treatment for the inmates (not that state-run prisons are any prize!).
The US military has privatized many combat tasks to private mercenary corporations -- but does anyone think that privately hiring now-ex Green Berets and Rangers and paying them hundreds of dollars per day as mercenaries is really cheaper and more effective than paying them $30K/year as members of the US Army?! The Army is having to pay out huge bonuses to elite troops just to keep them from leaving the service to go work for the private mercenary corporations -- taxpayers pay to train them, then we pay through the nose because of privatization. Halliburton and mercenary corporation stockholders may benefit by military privatization, but the taxpayers certainly do not!
We can also have ample evidence that privatization doesn't work in health care. The US has the world's most expensive health care, yet Canadians live 4+ years longer and the cheaper Canadian system outperforms the US privatized health care system in almost every measure. (Standard disclaimers: The US system performs great -- expensive, but great -- if you're rich and/or have good insurance, and the Canadian system is far from perfect; but on a national scale there is no comparison -- Canada's public system is cheaper and far more effective than the US private system.)
I think there are very, very few people that will claim that Bush's privatization of FEMA resulted in an effective Hurricane Katrina response.
Privatization may be effective in some rare instances, but it is far, far from the cost-saving, effectiveness-creating cure-all that the article's lead-in portrays it to be.
Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe if they hadnt spent half a trillion.... (Score:3, Insightful)
if they'd spent the trillion on space instead of iraq, people would complain it was better spent on education- which it would be. It would be better spent on a lot of things.
But the truth is, we ultimately need to go to space, we ultimately need education, we ultimately need a lot of things which is why we have budgets and its not an all or nothing deal for one particular endeavor.
Re:Maybe if they hadnt spent half a trillion.... (Score:2)
Yeah, anyone daring to be so un-American and unpatriotic as to critize the Iraq war and the huge sums spendt on it must be a troll.