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NASA Space Businesses

NASA to Privatize ISS Missions? 156

Posted by ScuttleMonkey 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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NASA to Privatize ISS Missions? More

NASA to Privatize ISS Missions?

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  • Duplicate! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Firethorn ( 177587 )
    Dupe. See NASA Seeks Help Carrying Cargo Into Space [slashdot.org]

    I still think it's a good thing that might end up saving money if it's done right.
    • I'd imagine it would save a lot of money. The article said spending would be about $500 million over thye next 5 years, and I've heard that one shuttle flight costs roughly the same. I can't cite that, unfortunatly. So, many smaller supply flights, or one big shuttle flight?
    • First post, calling a dupe, rated redundant.

      Love those mods!

      I'll have whatever they're smoking.

  • Hmmm... Which is better at providing safe and cost-effective missions: the government or a private company?

    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.
    • Once an operation becomes routine, I think it should be privatized. In this case, NASA does a better job at developing the new (and highly risky) missions (like the one to Mars), and less well at doing routine things like lifting payloads into orbit. I'd put this akin to commercial freight hauling and less in the vein of the Apollo missions. Given this, getting someone in the commericial market to do the hauling should be cheaper, quicker, and probably safer than having the government do it. Sort of lik
      • Ever heard of the "Pony Express"?

        That was a commercial venture letter/package delivery service that worked.

        The problem was getting a universal and affordable service into the smaller areas. Where somebody in Podunk town, NY could send a letter to Podunk town, CA for a reasonable price.
    • Actually I consider this move to performance-based bidding a sign that NASA is more competently managed than it was. NASA should outsource stuff that's not in its core mission. Consider this. If NASA builds a specialty vehicle for ISS resupply, then that vehicle is unlikely to be reused for another purpose. However, if several private companies provide resupply, then those companies can also provide the launch vehicles for other commercial purposes and drive down the overall costs through economies of scale

  • Scuttle the ISS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:34AM (#14231966)
    How about we fire the retro rockets and bring it down? Do we really want to put more money into the ISS when there are so many more interesting projects to pursue (Moon, Mars, deep space exploration)? Apart from creating jobs, just what have we gotten for the billions that we've spent on the ISS?
      • Sure, but do you need a multi-billion dollar "tent" set up years in advance to put everything into? After all, during the debate on which mode to use to get to the Moon, an orbital station was never considered. The closest mode would probably have been EOR [marsinstitute.info], which allowed for on-orbit assembly of components before departure for Earth's orbit. I'm not sure that I see how having a manned orbital outpost would make things any easier. To use your own analogy, base camps are set up while on-route to the top o
        • You do if you plan on making the trip routinely. If a person goes up the moutain once a decade, put up a tent. However, if 25 ascend per week, maybe something a bit more permanent is in order...
        • A space base camp does much more than sleep and feed the mountaineers. Its the whole science of figuring out what space does to all things before all future projects, not just the Mars project, is carried out.

          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
          • After all, the two space shuttle disasters happened close enough for us to learn alot from it.

            You mean like strapping an orbiter to the side of a booster is a really bad idea? Other than that, I can't think of a single major thing that we've learned by flying the shuttle. Virtually every technology that the shuttle represents (with the exception of the heat tiles) had been flown in some configuration before. In fact, the shuttle was sold to the public as a cheap means to space, not as a technology demo

        • Sure, but do you need a multi-billion dollar "tent" set up years in advance to put everything into?

          Where else are you supposed to test the equipment you'll need for a years long mars mission or moonbase occupation?

          After all, during the debate on which mode to use to get to the Moon, an orbital station was never considered.

          Apples and oranges. A brief flags and footprints stunt has very little in common with serious exploration work.

      • The issue is that of the tradeoff between the cost of launching a base camp and the cost of maintaining it.

        The cost of putting a simple air-filled cylinder into orbit - with enough consumables to keep a handful of people alive for a week or two is MUCH smaller than the cost of getting the ISS up there. But the trouble with simple approach that is that every time you need a base station, you have to launch a new one. So over N missions that need such a base station, you pay N x LaunchCost.

        However, with th
        • Agree 100% on the shuttle, and the ISS might be salvagable, if we were to either accept a loss of safety or get off our buts and build a proper escape vehicle to allow enough people up there to do the maintenance and get some research done.

          My idea is to have a permanent space station built on the tinker toy model. Individual modules might not be permanent, but you launch new modules as needed, then assemble into the station. Number 1 priority would be research into reusability and recycling. Modules woul
    • I think the ISS is designed for general space research- which would help with things like long term zero g studies, plants, etc...

      Also, the ISS could at some point be a jumping off point for mars or other expeditions.
      • It may have originally been designed for that, but what we actually built and have on orbit isn't useful for anything more than keeping two astronauts/cosmonauts alive. Maintaining the station takes up most of their time.

        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.

        • Actually, only a few of the wildest rants in the space community suggest to deorbit it. Now that it is up there, it would be a mistake to bring it down.

          We did it once with skylab and found that it was a mistake then. But, it has been suggested that we pay the Russians to service it for the time being (which would be maybe a billion or two a year), and then devote the savings to getting the new heavy launcher and the crew launcher going in a fraction of the time. Once the HLV is working in about 2009, we c
          • Putting up the rest of the station (as planned) still doesn't turn it into anything useful. Just a giant space rathole to throw more money into.

            That's why we're better off abandoning it and starting over. And the only reasonable way to abandon it is to deorbit it; if we don't do a controlled deorbit, it will do an uncontrolled reentry anyhow.

            We did it once with skylab and found that it was a mistake then.

            There was no other choice but to let Skylab reenter. We didn't have anything capable of savi

            • Actually, we were going to develop the unit to push it, but Nixon did not fund it. Carter also had the ability to send an apollo, but decided against it. Overall, it was felt by the 2 presidents that Space was not a priority.

              As to ISS, rather than deorbit it, we would be better of splitting it apart and using it with bigilows. But that will not happen. Instead, if we do not go forward it, then we will simply turn over to the others (Russia, Europe, Canada, India, China, etc) to use.
              • They didn't build anything to raise its orbit because the Space Shuttle was going to be able to do it. That's what NASA was telling Congress and the administration. If the Shuttle hadn't been delayed so much, maybe it would have worked.

                If we could just turn over the ISS boondogle to another country that would be an excellent solution, but I don't think anyone else would be willing to take it over. Russia might, but we'd have to pay them to operate it. They can't afford to operate it on their own.

                If

    • I believe that what NASA is leading towards may in regards to expense travel to the ISS is tha they may be interested in furthering the privatization of Space travel. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic [wikipedia.org] Also, the NASA program has invented ABS breaks. Kidney dialysis machines were developed as a result of a NASA developed chemical process that could remove toxic waste from used dialysis fluid. And medical CAT scanner searches the human body for tumors or other abnormalities, the ind

    • Re:Scuttle the ISS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grozzie2 ( 698656 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @05:24AM (#14232425)
      Apart from creating jobs, just what have we gotten for the billions that we've spent on the ISS?

      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

      • This is probably the most accurate and intelligent post about the ISS I've ever seen on Slashdot. Bravo!

      • Have to differ here (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WindBourne ( 631190 )
        The ISS is proably going to die uncompleted.

        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

      • You don't deserve to be upmodded for this post. You should be flogged.

        We've gained a lot of knowledge, albeit, not quite the knowledge intended to gain, gained nonetheless.

        We have learned to construct a sizeable structure in space using equipment that will not exist in 5 years. ISS is the most criminal waste of money in the name of science of all time.

        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 mis

      • Talking of moon missions and mars missions is easy for joe average. It's real easy to say 'lets scrap iss, and go to mars instead'. But, the bottom line, if the program is not capable of managing completion of the ISS, then there's no way it's going to produce a manned mission to mars that operates without resupply for the timeframes involved. that's like asking a baby to run a marathon, before it's even learned to crawl, not gonna happen.

        It'd be cheaper too. ISS doesn't serve a legitimate purpose now, a

  • I believe the money to pay for the payloads to the ISS will still come out of the NASA budget (for instance, the article mentions a $500 million price tag just to fund this privatization effort). NASA just hopes that the price tag will be less once competition takes over. And, I suspect they're correct, given the remarkably low cost of the recent X-prize contestants.

  • NASA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:34AM (#14231969) Homepage
    Perhaps they should change their name to "Not Attending Space Anymore"
    • Not About Space Anymore. All About Beuraucracy Now.
    • IMHO, NASA shouldn't be competing with private industry for tasks that private industry can do. Resupply to the ISS is something that private industry can do now.

      • So you will kindly point out the private firm capable of doing this!!!

        Those things that the private sector can do, they SHOULD do. That is, things that NATURALLY happen in the private sector without needing public sector help (financing) should be left to the private sector.

        The problem with what is happening now is that they are trying to artificially create private sector companies do fill the role of public sector agencies. Think Halliburton and military services. The ONLY thing they are doing is creat
        • So you will kindly point out the private firm capable of doing this!!!

          Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital Science.

        • To elaborate on my previous reply, the usual suspects for space-oriented graft also have the technological capability to fill these contracts. It's probably connected in the obvious way.

          But seeing as the US is going to spend money on the ISS boondoggle anyway, this graft could yield considerably more useful work than continuing with a specialized NASA vehicle, the Space Shuttle whose sole purpose appears to be servicing the ISS. It'll depend on how the contracts are structured. "Cost plus" will be pure gr


          • Look, if Boing and Lockheed Martin could run these operations privately, wouldn't they have already done it by now???

            NASA source's it's equipment to Aerospace. However, they keep overall mission management in house.

            If Aerospace wants to cut out the government and service the private sector directly, I say all for it. Don't forget that these guys have to pay rental fees for NASA's launch and mission control facilities (unless they want to build and maintain their own).

            BTW, the purpose of the space shuttle
            • Look, if Boing and Lockheed Martin could run these operations privately, wouldn't they have already done it by now???

              It's not Boeing or L-M's call. Besides they might prefer it this way. You know, public risk, private profit.

              I support ISS. I don't support the Shuttle's role in either launching components or servicing ISS. But that's what we had to go with. Hopefully we can get back to launching "flying washing machines" soon that are disposable and ultimately a lot cheaper than the shuttle.

              If the Sp

  • Read... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TrevorB ( 57780 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:37AM (#14231977) Homepage
    Read "NASA decides to scrap ISS, blame private industry for not picking up the ball."

  • How much cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <wrosecrans@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:38AM (#14231979) Homepage
    Really, how much cheaper can we expect a private company to do this? After all, NASa just needs to do it, while a private company needs to do it and turn a profit. And, seeing as how all "NASA" hardware is built by private contactors, how much of a difference are we really going to see?

    • Re:How much cheaper? (Score:5, Informative)

      by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:17AM (#14232205) Journal
      Really, how much cheaper can we expect a private company to do this?

      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.

      • Re:How much cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by maraist ( 68387 ) * <michael.maraistN ... gmail.n0spam.com> on Sunday December 11, 2005 @11:38AM (#14233437) Homepage
        The key thing to remember is that a truly private company has a direct incentive to make things cost-effectively.

        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.
        • I think you're entirely missing the point of the COTS program; NASA is putting some seed money in, but then expects to competitively purchase cargo and possibly crew transfer mission services to ISS from the companies who succeed with their demonstrators.

          The ISS cargo mission is enough to create a moderate and sufficient commercial market for cargo launch and delivery services. The crew mission (3 people every 4-6 months) is on the low end of supporting a sufficient commercial market for commercial manned
    • You just answered the question. There's no incentive in NASA (and in its usual contracts) to reduce costs (in fact there often are incentives to consume all available funds) while there is a strong one for a private company. There's no mystery here.

  • Where's Russia, China, India, et al in all this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PurifyYourMind ( 776223 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:38AM (#14231981) Homepage
    I remember hearing something about Russia not being able to afford to help out the ISS project anymore, but what about China, India, France? These are hardly backwater nations... why aren't they helping more? Is it a contractual thing?
  • Ships that sailed without a flag were once pirates.

    Today, a nation needs them to function on the seas and in space.

  • This is an incredible opportunity for the aerospace industry as a whole, spurning competition, new jobs, etc... There is some really good info on the subject, and its impact on the economy and space program (USA).

    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...

    • ... sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!!!!!

      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)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:42AM (#14231994) Journal
    This is just another step in NASA's eventual demise that I spoke about earlier. [slashdot.org]

    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.
    • Don't count on NASA going anywhere anytime soon. Shifting strategy, and scientific objectives, yes - but "an eventual demise", no. Though it is not widely advertised, NASA is embedded deeply in the defense research industry. This is a vital conduit for government contracts and congressional funding - all of this is outside the media-spun "Manned Missions" hype. Remeber, the DOD relies heavily on NASA for direction, new technology, etc...

    • Re:Yet another step.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Planesdragon ( 210349 ) <slashdot&castlesteelstone,us> on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:23AM (#14232098) Homepage Journal
      eventually people will begin to ask "what is NASA needed for? Can't we just have this company do it?

      When folk ask that, the answer will be "research and exploration, like they've always been good at."

    • 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.

      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
      • The point is though if the smaller, private company can put people into LEO and do the engineering more efficiently, than whats the point of NASA being involved in the engineering at all? Why not just devolve/evolve NASA into a pure theoretical research outfit and let a private company handle the engineering/exploring.

        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

    • Is it commercially viable to go to Mars? How about smash a big block of steel and copper into a comet? What about sending probes to the furthest reaches of space? You think a small private company such as SpaceX is going to get men on Mars just for the science of it? Doubtful. Thus, we need NASA to perform the large and risky missions. So, IMO, NASA isn't going anywhere. Just outsourcing the simple stuff... much like private corporations do now.

  • Government outsourcing saves money ? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can understand this working if the task was already being done somewhere else by someone else.

    But NASA have the track record, and any privateer will have a really steep (and costly) learning curve to master. Of course they could take existing management skills from NASA and .. oh - that's not good :-(

    I guess that leaves the Russians and the French.
  • But why would NASA outsource the very skills they'll eventually need for future Moon, Mars, and beyond missions? They'd win the immediate budget battle but loose the war.
    • But why would NASA outsource the very skills they'll eventually need for future Moon, Mars, and beyond missions? They'd win the immediate budget battle but loose the war.

      Sort of like how NASA lost the ability to take advantage of airflight when private companies took over air transportation of people and cargo?
    • Any nation voluntarily losing core competencies isn't just a poor idea, it is a sign of its' eventual demise.

      Imagine a nation that reliquishes its ability to feed its' own people, or of a country that gives up on its' core industries (aluminum, steel, chemicals, electronics, or manufacturing) just because it can been done more cheaply elsewhere. Or a nation that hires contractors/mercenaries to protect their borders or to fight their wars.

      International commercial ties and economic alliances have a historica

  • The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:24AM (#14232101) Homepage Journal
    I was initially as cynical about Michael Griffin as I was about Dan Goldin when he took the helm with grand plans to "reform" NASA. This is sounding like a new NASA and it indeed may be in the offing in response to the public pressure generated by the Shuttle failures combined with the popularity of the Ansar X-Prize [xprize.org]. Seminal figures in the technological advances that lead to basic advances in transportation technology were conducted by private individuals competing for privately funded prize awards. These included the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.

    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.

    • "The first settlers in America experienced enormous causalities their first years they were in America. Entire colonies were lost."

      How do you know that?

      "The original colonies included a substantial variety of fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America."

      Thats not true. All the original nations respected a tribal lifestyle and had great respect for nature. There were several waves of settlement, the last three being the arrival of the Inuit (I bet you dont know what that is, its ESKIMO), the
      • Thats not true. All the original nations respected a tribal lifestyle and had great respect for nature.

        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

      • but the USA is, primarily, descended from Europeans. When talking about the USA, as a country, you can pretty much assume that people aren't talking about the natives that lived here before the 16th century.

  • Unfounded Rumor Mill (Score:4, Funny)

    by kgfowler ( 680743 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:26AM (#14232105)


    I didn't realise that the Halliburton Space Agency (HSA) was that far along in development.

    kgf

  • Not necessarily a savings. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Irvu ( 248207 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:49AM (#14232151)
    Despite what people claim "privatizing" something does not necessarily entail a cost-savings. I'm not saying that it won't here but people (on /. and elsewhere) have a tendency to assume that private companies are necessarily cheaper/faster/better than a public function. This is the mantra of both Republicans and Libertarians (as well as many Democrats).

    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.
    • True, what I see priavte comapnies do well is maximise profits. In the case of privatised industries, then you have a watchdog who forces a cut in prices once profits go too high. But the way this profit is achieved is normally to find a cheaper way to supply the contracted service.
      Whether that is through better management, less beurocracy, new technology or just plain cutting corners, the shareholders don't care. But this is still a good thing for the space industry, let them get the underlying cost down a
      • I would say most of that is "in theory". Private companies are good at maximizing profits but that does not mean that they actually do so by simply "doing things cheaper", especially not through any less burucracy. Nor is that necessarily a good thing. When California chose to privatize their power they suddenly found themselves being given the choise of paying more, or having none. No cost saving appeared and the way that Enron and others maximized profits was actually to delay use of new technology an
  • Wouldn't a company have even more to gain than just money from NASA by using similar technology to win America's Space Prize [wikipedia.org]? Maybe someone can correct me here, but it seems like it would be feasible to complete the two missions with similar enough technology that the two applications might offset the cost.
  • (Here's a copy of a comment I made the last time this story was posted [slashdot.org].)

    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
  • 1. NASA should get out of launch vehicle operations. It's become a commodity business.
    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.

    • Manned missions lead to colonization, which is the primary reason they are valuable. I don't want to diminish what has been accomplished with robotic explorers, but they are only prelude to the expansion of humanity beyond Earth. As great as our planet may seem, there are plenty of other planets out there and we're only a few generations away from them.

      We will not evolve as a species if we stay here.
    • I agreee with all that you say, but can I add:
      5. NASA to go back to doing X projects to push vehicle technology (DC-X for example)
      6. NASA (or equivalent agency) should have some manned presence (for things like servicing hubble's replacement)

      If you want to talk about surviving catastrophy, at the moment we'd be better placed to forget about trying to do that in outer space and set up a few self sustained colonies here on earth to do that first (if there aren't places like that setup already).
      Once space tech

  • Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by perrin ( 891 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @07:16AM (#14232648)
    if they no longer have to dish out the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires.

    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)

    by Joska ( 78000 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @07:18AM (#14232654)
    This may not be all bad but I don't advise any holding of breath. We have some insightful comments, yet judging by the scores, the moderators know nothing about economics or monetary policy. This is hardly surprising in view of the fact that it is not generally taught. The accepted belief system for most citizens is that money came from God or the Big Bang and as populations grow and society becomes more complex, we have to do more and more with a fixed amount of money, necessitating a sort of social, economic and environmental triage. What makes this silly model even sadder is the implicit assumption in all discussions of cost, that money once spent is simply gone. This is clearly contrary to everyday experience, yet we as a species simply don't often make these connections without serious study once a belief system is established and widely held. Sorry guys, but it is a fact that when the human resources, raw materials and infrasructure are available, then claims of a government being unable to afford something it purports to want or that the citizens want, is nothing more than Orwellian doublespeak meaning "We don't want to do that." The struggle to get by in a world of limited money helps keep people off the backs of the unelected real government that detests and fears democracy. Who has not noticed how infrequently the elected government does what was promised in the election campaign? Look into this or struggle, fight or pray for more money. When can we move on? The choice is up to us.
  • We all know and love that space corporation:-D
  • well, let's see here now... NASA learns everything it knows by putting up space flights. now they want to outsource it but keep paying for it. so NASA gets dumber and dumber and loses its ability to do anything except write checks.

    sounds like a job for Halliburton!

    prove me wrong.

  • Privatization = saved money?! Don't make me laugh! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by intnsred ( 199771 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @12:04PM (#14233572)
    I'm amazed that no one has bothered to note the inherent biased assumption that privatization will save money.

    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.
    • ... and, if nothing more, privatization allows funding to come from different "pots", simply hiding the true cost in an accountants dream world, ultimately allowing future expenditure. Does anyone think the costs of running NASA, like any government administrative-heavy organization, will go DOWN?
    • States that have privatized the investigation of welfare fraud find that it costs more

      Did they sell it as a contract, paying a set amount, or as a bounty system? I'd set it up as a bounty system where the company is awarded for each case of fraud caught & stopped.

      As for the health care system, I feel that it's suffering from the same symptoms as Lockheed and Boeing. Consumers are too insulated from costs on the whole. I've read studies that say that half the cost of a procedure is paperwork.
  • I seriously doubt that Scaled Composites or other 'up and commers' will have any serious shot at any dollars from this. I think we'll see more of the typical Big Business orientation that the US gov't tends to align itself with.

  • Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superdude72 ( 322167 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:33PM (#14234352)
    Privatization is always a scam. ALWAYS. It is always backed by well-placed insiders who want to line their pockets by providing the same-or-lesser service at greater cost. If you expect any such scheme to work out well for taxpayers while the current GOP is in power, you're a rube.

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