Soyuz Lifts Off Again, Delivers Globalstar Satellites 40
First time accepted submitter ZoCool writes "No doubt to the deep relief of the Russian and Arianespace engineers, and the investors buying their services, Anatoly Zac's RussianSpaceWeb reports that on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011, at 21:09 Moscow Time (17:09 GMT) a Soyuz-2-1a launch vehicle carrying the third tranche of the 2nd Generation Globalstar network, in the form of 6 satellites, was delivered successfully to orbit. This launch from Baikonur's Site 31, pad 6, has broken the recent unusual string of malfunctions that has bugged this usually rock solid workhorse. I imagine that the troops in the space station might be breathing a little more easily too, as the Soyuz is the backbone of the world's space missions these days, when it comes to medium lift."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that ever true? (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly know that what costs a government a million dollars, a private company can do for a few hundred thousand at most.
I've worked both in private sector and public sector. I've seen quite a few decisions to pay private company for something that used to be done by the government until that point. I have yet to see a single instance where the total costs would have gone down for equal or better service! Whether it's large government institution outsourcing the IT support or a state paying for private company to take care of public health care, the total costs seem to consistently be higher and the level of the service usually doesn't go up.
It's true that government has a lot of inefficiency due to internal power struggles, people who are unproductive but difficult to fire, etc... But then again, the private sector also has a lot of overhead (Usually higher wages, large marketing/lobbying/PR overhead depending on the industry, internal power struggles between departments, dividends, CEO bonuses, unproductive people, etc.), not to mention that at every single step the private companies have all the motivation to charge as much money as they can, they either enjoy a monopoly or can't get economics of scale to work out as well as one massive buyer could, etc. etc...
The very few times I've heard about private industry being more efficient in something have been cases where the public sector has been systematically sabotaged first (Ideological decision to buy from private sector even if it's more expensive --> Private sector gets to pay higher wages --> Competent people quit government jobs and enter private industry --> Private industry can say "Look, your workers are incompetent, we are much more efficient than you are now (though we might not be more efficient than you used to be)"). So, I'd appreciate it if you could quote some real examples (preferably within the last two decades) where decisions like this have ended up saving money.
Disclaimer: I'm not a socialist. I think that private sector is necessary to keep the society producing what people want, not what bureaucrats or politicians think they should want. I also agree that private sector is a good way to increase individual freedom and the threat of private sector forces public sector to stay more efficient... But I lean left in my home country (North-European welfare state) which probably puts me far left on the left-right axis of USA. From what I've personally seen, it's just really difficult to argue that private sector is more efficient, even if it is necessary.