NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space

MattSparkes writes "Budget cuts could leave NASA without a Space Shuttle replacement, and leave it reliant on private firms to get payloads into space. A similar scenario happened between 1975 and 1981 when NASA made the transition from Apollo to the Space Shuttle. It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."

Cost Effective?

If its cheaper than the shuttle, and works just as well, why not?

Star Wars

If its cheaper than the shuttle, and works just as well, why not?

Without a reusable orbital vehicle, some of the military's more expensive spy satellites will be at risk. While I know the typical solution is just to spend more money and send up more equi

Re:Star Wars

Right now, the Space Shuttle is only infrequently used to launch satellites. The vast majority of them (military and otherwise) are launched with standard rockets. It's much cheaper to just launch the satellite, rather than launching the satellite plus a bunch of squishy bodies plus all the thousands and thousands of pounds of equipment it takes to keep those squishy bodies from going squish.

And we don't even need those squishy bodies there to successfully deploy a satellite; sending them up for such a mundane task is just wasting money and putting lives in danger for no good reason.

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I sort of agree... but I think I'd rather just give the government less money and make them pick the lowest cost supplier that can meet the business requirements and take less of our money so we can choose to spend it where we want. Give the government le

Re:Cost Effective?

I think I'd rather just give the government less money and make them pick the lowest cost supplier that can meet the business requirements and take less of our money so we can choose to spend it where we want.

Except that the tax money is coming back to Americans -- in the form of wages, stock dividends, purchases from other US companies, local property taxes -- and even some obscure stuff like corporate university research grants. If you're dealing with tax money that was TAKEN from Americans, I'd rather have it stay within the US.

-b.

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Then stop blowing up half the world, you imperialist swine. We want nothing more than for your money to stay in your country. Now go back in your SUV, buy a burger and go watch some football.

I'm not a supporter of the war in Iraq. Afghanistan was neces

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You know grinds my gears, is seeing people apologize for being a Citizen of USA. If any of these USA haters cared to look, most of us folk are not for killing. Too many uninformed voters voted for the wrong guy.

Is that the best we can do? Sounds like yo

Sorry, but I had to

Not to stir the pot, but think of how many space missions the war in Iraq could have paid for...

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Forget space... think about the massive Beowulf cluster we could have built.... OMGWTFBBQ!?!?!

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When it's an insightful statement? Something -can- be flamebait AND insightful, in theory.

Sometimes the truth hurts?

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If privatizing the work of NASA works, maybe the same thing could work for the military? Imagine military missions going out to the lowest bidder!

Re:Sorry, but I had to

I do not, however, believe space exploration is within the constitutionally defined limits of what the federal government should be doing.

NASA is a huge, wasteful organization that should be dismantled. If there is value in space exploration, let that be done by the private sector, who has a fiduciary incentive to not waste money.

NASA should not be eliminated.

The federal government is charged with the responsibility to "Promote the General Welfare". If, therefore, there is value in space exploration, then one could argue that this promotes the general welfare.

Launching commercial satelites is something that could be done by the private sector. There is money in it. Purer research is not as appealing to the private sector. This research is what NASA should be focused on.

Some folks might say that research is only worth doing if it leads directly to a profitable discoverty, and that therefore private research is all that we need. I do not agree with this point of view. Scientific research for its own sake is a worthwhile endeavor and is in the long term interest of the public.

Re:Sorry, but I had to

... a government has a right to maintain a military and defend a nation as it sees fit ...

That's creepy. "as it sees fit".

If there is value in space exploration, let that be done by the private sector, who has a fiduciary incentive to not waste money.

That's probably valid for stuff that pays off quickly. Long term stuff, like the survival of our species, is not gonna attract many for-profit organizations AFAICS. And yes, I do believe the colonization of space is essential for humanity's long term survival.

Also, FWIW, NASA makes you yanks look good world wide, which you might benefit from someday. In these times of dubya and "war on terror", I'm certain stuff like NASA helps alot of us non-americans to keep a nuanced view of your nation.

Re:Sorry, but I had to

I do not, however, believe space exploration is within the constitutionally defined limits of what the federal government should be doing.

Seems to me that it fits right in with the commerce clause.

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All these Republicans and Libertarians do is weaken America.

Actually, I think they're generally indifferent to whether their policies strengthen America, weaken it, or whatever. To the Republicans, a policy or program is considered desirable if and only if

Not the same thing

A sub-orbital 90 second flight is not the same thing as what NASA usually does. These comparisons where NASA is ridiculed do not make sense.

Re:Not the same thing

Indeed. There is not a single zillion dollar toilet seat on board, the average age of employees is somewhat less then 60, and they have a real fiscal agent called a Financial Officer looking at the bucks spent. The Shuttle on the other hand uses 8086 era tech, systems that are so obsolete that the fellow who designed them is not just retired, he is dead, and other such inovations. Yep. a company is not in the same game as NASA....Thank Goodness!

Obvious solution..

Just swallow the pride and buy a few Soyuz .... too bad its built in the wrong congressional district .... :-(

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Great answer.

The cold war is over and Russia isn't exactly on the opposite side. Give them some respect and do the right thing, buy Soyuz. The space program will keep going and USA will make friends which she so needs right now.

NASA

This is despicable. We need to ensure that our astronauts are up in space. Down here, they try to kill each other [cnn.com].

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I guess once you've been in space it's all downhill from there.

Re:NASA

This is despicable. We need to ensure that our astronauts are up in space. Down here, they try to kill each other [cnn.com].

At least this didn't happen on the way to Mars.

We would be able to buy all new shuttles

And a whole lot of other useful things like teachers, public housing, additional health care and other benefits to our country if we weren't spending our money somewhere else at the moment. [costofwar.com]

Not such a Bad Idea...

...considering that as of this morning, the Shuttle crew has turned into its very own episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

Unlikely.

I'd expect this issue to be brought up during the 2008 presidential campaign. It'd be highly unlikely for the US to abandon the shuttle program until a suitable replacement is found, given the current Chinese space program's ambitions. Remember - it doesn't matter how much it costs, as long as it makes the US #1.

Private companies

Looks like they'll be buying from American private companies as well as the Russians and Europeans. Actually, private exploitation of space will probably be a good thing if those companies find a way to make it turn a profit. Maybe we'll even get a perma

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Yeah, it's a "good thing" to funnel more tax money into the pockets of corporations. Oh how we love our corporate welfare state.

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Yeah, it's a "good thing" to funnel more tax money into the pockets of corporations.

Well, better American corporations than the Russians or anyone else. At least *Americans* get the tax money back in the form of wages, dividends, and benefits. And, BT

This isn't so strange

The US government doesn't design and build trucks. If they need something shipped, they use a shipping company. If the president needs to make a speech, they buy microphones and pay TV stations. Space should be no different.

This is just a small step toward the commercialization of space, and the use of off-the-shelf parts to get a job done. Perhaps one day, the Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, and Scaled Composites will be bidding to deliver the next satellite into orbit around Mars.

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The US government doesn't design and build trucks.

They sort of do - a lot of military trucks are built specifically to government contract and only sold to civilians later or as surplus. Look at the Humvees, the M-151 MUTTs, and the Gama Goats as examp

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Wouldn't be a problem, except that in this case, we're talking about a taxi or bus, and there are no commercial taxi or bus operators, yet. For that matter, as far as I know, there are no to-your-doorstep truckers either, except for Russia's Progress. (US

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Exactly, and this isn't something new. NASA's robotic missions have been launched via rockets from Boeing and Lockheed for years. So they're finally moving the manned missions over, it's about time.

Now they can focus on what they're good at, exploring and

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The US government doesn't design and build trucks. If they need something shipped, they use a shipping company. If the president needs to make a speech, they buy microphones and pay TV stations. Space should be no different.

Well, we're in the early stages

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and when the US needs to fight a major war is hires a million mercenaries...
Ok, it doesn't, the US has an army for that kind of thing. Some things are best done in-house, the discussion is whether space travel is one of them. Pointing out different situat

Magazine vs NASA

I'm no rocket scientist, but I think there's a big difference between:

1) Sending someone on a sub-orbital flight at 62 miles altitude and;

2) Bringing several working payloads into space, docking with a space station at 236 miles altitude, and performing orbital repairs on satellites at 355 miles altitude.

It's not like NASA is so incompetent that some private firm is beating them at this whole space thing.

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Not to mention sending probes to various planets, comets, and other parts of the galaxy.

And then there was that whole "men on the moon" thing. Let me know when a magazine is offering THAT as a prize...

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It's not a fair comparison. Atlas V and Delta IV have capabilities that approach that of the proposed Ares I though these vehicles aren't designed for manned use. And unlike the Space Shuttle, these platforms do a variety of useful things. And the suborbit

A tragic and pathetic end for NASA

I remember being a kid and thinking these guys could do anything--that it was just a matter of time before they had us living in moonbases.

Now, look at what they've become.

Scrap it, before they just waste more. Time to focus on providing incentives dir

Re:A tragic and pathetic end for NASA

NASA is just a wasteful old baby-boomer pipe dream.

On the plus side you must recognize that NASA is putting out a lot of research that is free to the public. This is going to be a keystone in the future of private space flight ventures. So while I agree that NASA is riding the edge of usefulness they have contributed a lot and still have room to contribute more in the areas where the private sector would not see enough ROI on some projects. This pure research could still offer a lot in the overall understanding of what it's going to take to get people into space, what it's going to take to keep them there on a functional basis and a reason to go that offers a profit motive to corporations.

Without profit motive the private sector is going to be just as slow, if not slower, than NASA. We'd have to ride the coat tails of philanthropy into the final frontier. That's not exactly a glowing prospect.

I think this will be a good thing

One of my biggest inspirations growing up was the NASA of the 60's and 70's. Back then, NASA had a blank check and could not only afford the best of the best, but could also give them whatever they needed to accomplish whatever they had to. I remember Ap

Corporate Welfare

Why not? Bush's aerospace program already tried to bail out Boeing [google.com] with $BILLIONS in wasteful jet tanker leases, rather than buying them upfront.

A Good Thing

This could provide much needed funding for the fledging commercial space industry.

Not Space...

Calling a sub-orbital jaunt a "trip into space" is like calling wading in the Pacific "deep sea diving". Rocket science is difficult and expensive. Only an few private firms can actually get a payload into orbit and if you give a quick google you can get v

SpaceX, Rocketplane, and COTS Option

NASA can fulfill its mission by expanding its existing COTS contract [spacex.com] with SpaceX [spacex.com] and expanding it to include manned launches using the dragon crew [spacex.com] module.

The American people will still have a vibrant space agency, that can focus on exploration, rather than on space launch, which is rapidly becoming a normal, commercial business.

NASA's COTS contract [nasa.gov] also includes Rocketplane [rocketplane.com], which also includes demonstrations for ISS support.

The COTS contract was a polite way for Congress to buy some insurance in case Lockheed's Space Shuttle Replacement [popularmechanics.com] spins out of cost control in terms of either dollars or time.

Which I think is a great move as a taxpayer, having watched ISS cost much more than planned and delivering much less than expected.

We just need the safest, soonest, and cheapest way to get people and stuff into space. I don't care who does it, so Lockheed and those people at NASA in bed with Lockheed, watch out, you've got competition.

Misinformation

There sure is a lot of misinformation in this thread. Here are some ideas I noticed that seem blatantly wrong.

1) There are private companies out there who can do what NASA is doing: If you RTFA, you'll notice that currently only the Shuttle and the Russian Progress and Soyuz ships can make it to the ISS. There may be a possibility of a JAXA craft or an ESA craft in the future. Both government built craft.

2) NASA is afraid/against private industry building space craft: Actually, NASA is highly in favor of a private company building a space ship to go to the ISS. They are actively funding two companies to help them build such a craft. In their current architecture, the CEV/CLV is not really going to be used for ISS. They would rather use a COTS solution for that.

3) We should leave all of space exploration up to private industry: Private industry will only do something if they know they can get money for it. Can you show me the business plan to make money off of trips to the moon? Trips to the ISS? Remember, you have to have a net profit on these endeavors. Until the cost and risk are reduced to manageable levels, the private industry will not do this on their own. The Russians did not get a net profit from their space tourists. They got a little extra money from a mission that had to happen anyway. Virgin Galactic may actually be able to make money by sending people into space, but that is sub-orbital. A huge difference between that and going to the ISS. The reason for government funding into areas like this is to promote activity in areas that are too costly or too risky for a company to do.

4) A magazine can take people to space: No, a Russian Soyuz capsule can take people to space.

That will do for now.

You mean NASA is going to follow the law?

Ever since the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (PL101-611) NASA has been required by LAW to purchase all launch services from the private sector that could be reasonably provided by the private sector. As the person who testified before Congress about the passage of that grass-roots law [geocities.com] I was fairly galled by the invitation I received a few years later from NASA to sit in the VIP stand and watch them launch the Advanced Communication Technology Satellite upon a shuttle. Well, actually, by that time I had somewhat come to expect that it was hopeless for a grass-roots legislative effort to actually have an impact on a governmental behavior but to actually receive an invitation to see them blatantly violate the clear intent of the law was still annoying.

Strange thing to say

It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."

Yeah, sure, because the magazine will use its own launchers and launching pad and won't turn to a third party to organize the trip...

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NASA is a government agency, the purpose of which is to advance science in the fields of astrophysics, spaceflight and aeronautics. It does not exist to offer a commercial service to members of the public who wish to travel into space for recreation. To do

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"Everyone knows republicans are afraid of space.

Sad to say, the areas with the most wide open spaces - Texas, Wyoming, Montana, etc probably have the highest percent of Republicans. Agarophobes they are not.

-b.

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There seems to be a lot of rather confused postings regarding the capabilities of the private sector in space. Virtually every commercial launch system has had large amounts of government input in some form or another. Even SpaceX used some government faci